The U.S. is no longer the only big kid on the block, and it may not be the biggest. From William Schryver at imetatronink.substack.com:
United States Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd J. Austin
It consistently amuses me when the NATO bros talk tough while waving the little stick they call Article 5.
Article 5 is a mirage.
Its language is explicitly non-obligatory.
If, for example, the Russians decided to do a little “regime changing” of their own in the Baltics, or to annex a significant land corridor to Kaliningrad — very conceivable developments — well, we would quickly learn that Article 5 is awe-inspiring in theory and meaningless in practice.
Other than the Americans, no one in NATO is in any position to go play real war with the Russians in a futile bid to prop up the Baltics, let alone rescue Ukraine.
And inserting hostile US/NATO naval assets into the Baltic Sea would be even stupider than putting them in the Persian Gulf.
Any move from Poland would bring Belarus into the game, and besides, I think the Poles have already gotten their fill of Russian firepower in Ukraine. The Polish “volunteers” in Ukraine suffered multiple thousands of casualties, and the loss of large quantities of Polish implements of war. It will be a long while before the Poles once again wax bold enough to mix it up with the Russians.
The Germans? The French? The Dutch? The Italians? Who cares? They’re all empty shells.
The British? Sure, they’ll send a token force of this, that, and the other — because that’s all the British military is: a token force.
And anyone who thinks the Turks are even a remote possibility as an Article 5 volunteer ought to be slapped silly.
The rest of the mighty NATO bloc is not even worth mentioning.
“But now we got the Finns and the Swedes!”
Sure, sure.
