Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
European armies are not what they have been anymore, too, oberon. An internal report from the German defence minstry from maybe two or three years ago said that Germany could no longer fulfill its NATO obligaiton in case of a full scale war. Navies have dramatically shrunk in size and capacity, whole technical fields of military competence have been given up across or have been turned into respurces now focussing oin asymmetrical warfares. Some nations have given up their fleet of platforms like MBTs. Logistical capacity have been dramatically reduced, ammo stockpiles have shrunk or are extremely old, questioning their efficiency against latest counter measures. The german army cannot even meet its perosnell needs now that the draft is gone. The physical quality of recruits is at an alltime low. Experience is getting lost across most branches of the forces, especially army and air force. And so on and on. Count the number of soldiers in your own Royal Army and ships in the Navy. Be aware that most of Greek tanks have no ammo since they bought the tanks, but no ammo for them.
But allk that is academical only. Any major war with an Europe invading Russia (which is aware it cannot do that anymore) still would be a nuclear war from day one on.
The point is that if Russia does not invade with the goal to get all of Europe, but just to take back the baltic sttaes, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, there is little NATO could do before the Russians have taken all of these. When NATO is ready to counterattack, the Russians already would be deeply dug in. With plenty of toys that the Iraqis did not have.
And as you already pointed out, with China starting to get angry in the Far East simultaneously, America would be seriously hampered in its ability to deal with two majhor wars at the same time. I did not beleive that already when Colin Powell reiterated that the US still could. Since then, even the official Washington has somewhat relativised that assessment. One major war at a time, is now the official view, it seems. and that is more realistic a self-assessment.
BTW, the POMCUS sites in Germany, Belgium and Netherlands have been given up completely, meanwhile. Their equipment no longer is there. That happened after they already were "cannibalised"  for the wars in Iraq 91 and 03. |
Oh, I agree completely, on our own Europe cannot fight Russia effectively, not unless we organise ourselves a Europe Defence Force which is not too likely to happen within the next couple of years as it would have to be done under the EU and we all know how good Europes relationship with the EU is at the moment.
So at the moment, really, we're reliant upon American manpower...so that's nothing particularly new.
Of course, if America is distracted by the PRC in a Pacific conflict then it gets ugly, however that would require a level of co-operation between Russia and China which is beyond what we've seen so far, and it would also have to wait until the PRC was able to take on the US in equal terms in the Pacific which is probably not until around 2020.
In regards to just retaking the PACT, you're probably right, by the time we got all our forces into position it would be all over...however, that being said, Russia would have to get its forces into position first, and that would be detected by intel so a troop build-up on both sides would begin. The element of surprise is not so easy when you've got several thousand units to move.
True, a lot of the infrastructure isn't what it used to be, I know that a few of our old USAFE bases have gone but others have strangely been left relatively intact. However the US is pretty good at logistics, and we're pretty good at helping the US so there would be ways to work around it.
I don't know if it would go nuclear from day one, because it would completely defeat the objective of seizing control of territory if it's unable to be used, but then again the same could be said of any Soviet invasion of West Germany back in the day, and fortunately that didn't happen either...so the odds are in our favour thanks to MAD and I think Russia knows that starting any kind of nuclear war is a bad move for self-survival, likewise the PRC.