Il nuovo modo di combattere l’Europa • Può l’Europa difendersi senza gli Stati Uniti? Una nuova visione strategica dice di sì.

Seriously, who does the EU have to militarily defend themselves against?

The only possible and yet very unlikely aggressor would be Russia. The same Russia that can’t take on a country a quarter its size just because said EU is backing it up. Let’s be realistic, in a conventional war with Europe Russia stands no chance.

Well that’s a stupid question. Europe has plenty of industry and population. 

It’s going to take y’all a little while to spin up production of equipment and recruitment of people to use set equipment but otherwise there’s literally no reason Europe can’t. 

Here’s the entire article:

Today marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, no one thought the war would last this long. But Ukraine has defied all odds and denied Russia victory.

For the rest of Europe, there is a lot to learn, especially as the NATO alliance and the unconditional backing of the U.S. military are no longer certain. European defense budgets are rising. Armies are recruiting. More military equipment is being “Made in Europe.”

And there may be a deeper shift taking hold. Over the course of my conversations with security experts in recent weeks, I kept hearing an intriguing phrase being thrown around: “the European way of war.” Today I write about what that might look like.

Europe rethinks war

Could Europe defend itself without the United States?
The conventional wisdom is no. Europe relies on America for nuclear deterrence, air and missile defense, intelligence capabilities and much more. The U.S. has the stealthiest jets! The biggest bunker busters!
All of this is true.

But some are now questioning whether Europe actually needs all of this to have a viable self-defense strategy.
“We don’t need to be better than the U.S., we need to be better than Russia,” said Christian Mölling, founder of the Berlin-based think tank European Defense in a New Age.

That thought could potentially be galvanizing. Russia has about 144 million people and 1.1 million active soldiers to Europe’s 450 million people and 1.5 million active soldiers.

Not having America’s capabilities would certainly mean doing things differently. It might mean accepting more risk for European soldiers. And it would mean a messier leadership structure than Europe’s fighting forces have gotten used to. But it could also mean that Europe moves closer to strategic autonomy and a European-led defense strategy.

This is what the people thinking along these lines are calling “the European way of war.”

The American way of war

One of them is Claudia Major, an expert on trans-Atlantic security. She told me that America’s way of fighting had evolved around specific characteristics — some cultural and some geographic.

The U.S. fights with a uniquely intense focus on air power. Its tolerance for losing soldiers is low. Minimizing casualties has been a precondition to recruit soldiers for the many wars the U.S. has fought in recent decades.
Then there’s geography. America, with oceans on either side, has a military that is designed to project power around the globe.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance meant that European countries were also trained in this way of fighting, Major told me. The way America plans and conducts wars became Europe’s way, too.

There are still many in European defense circles who would prefer to keep fighting the way they’re used to, and focus on acquiring more of the capabilities the U.S. currently provides to NATO.

But those talking about a European way of war say the focus on merely replacing what the U.S. provides can be distracting.

They say the most important aspect of decoupling from the U.S. isn’t buying more fighter jets. It’s making the psychological break required to rethink European security with Europe’s geography, political culture, strategic priorities and resources in mind.

Our defence costs should be much lower,

Given europe doesn’t seed terrorism in foreign countries by removing their democratically elected leaders for dictators we control.

That’s america’s thing.

Europe has always had the wealth, people, and technology to defend itself. Heck, it could probably invade and defeat Russia without much problem in a hypothetical conventional war if it were just up to numbers.

The problem was and is: how many UK, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., lives is each country ready to sacrifice for the Baltics or Poland.

And realistically, Russia will not invade Germany even if they somehow make it through Poland, so the motivation of defending your own country would not come into play.

The more important question is, Can Europe defend itself from the US?