Trump’s Loose NATO Talk Already Has Endangered Us

[auntpurl]

3. How Putin could invade the Baltic States in 6 easy steps.

1. The Brexit vote inspires other angry white nationalists to rise to power in other European countries. Let's use Marine Le Pen in France as an example. The EU is now critically fractured.

2. Trump wins in the US, weakening NATO.

3. Putin, ruling Russia through fear but facing economic hardship as he already is and needing a distraction from his own disastrous policies, funds extreme right anti-EU government factions in, for example, Latvia, which starts a civil war and allows Putin to send in "aid trucks" and "peacekeeping forces".

4. The rest of Europe is in a f*cking mess after the rise of far-right forces in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia etc who are now (in this scenario) pro-Russia since the EU is doing no significant pushback. So the EU ignores calls for sanctions or intervention.

5. NATO is slow to respond/makes no response because Trump doesn't want to be involved. Russia, with a free board in front of it (you've played Risk as a kid, right?) goes further into Latvia and then into Estonia and Lithuania.

6. The Baltic States declare war on Russia. I don't think I need to enumerate what happens next. Archduke Ferdinand was metaphorically shot way up in step 1. Half of Europe is for Russia, half against. But now we've got nukes on the board, something that wasn't an option for the European powers in 1939.

TA DA!!!!

(Much of this post cribbed from this Medium post by a historian, which really everyone should read)