Originally Posted by
Skroe
Yep. Nailed it 100%.
"Putin's Lackey" is a nice way of reviving an old Cold War phrase for people like Djalil. It's two words, first word begins with a U. Second word begins with an I. And it's pretty rude.
But yeah. You got it exactly. As I've said on many occasions, I don't believe anyone, even the most diehard Putinistas on MMO-OT are paid Russian trolls. Some others on the Team West contingent think otherwise, but I think we're too small and obscure a target. If you go to the Guardian CiF threads, you see them there. And they are legion.
Djalil is rather simple really. It's 2016... and for three years now he's been holding onto dear life to the concept of Peace-by-Pan-Eurasian political and economic integrate. He, like me, is a big believer in the European Union. However unlike me, he closes his eyes to the Russian threat on the Eastern border, that is not stupid and knows full well a strong Russia cannot survive being bordered by a strong EU to the West and a strong China in the East, and a strong America everywhere, especially in space, cyberspace and it's global network of alliances. Djalil rather ignore, obfuscate and excuse Russian bad behavior because he rather be right than evolve his position. Or to put it another way, he wants to validate his world view, no matter what is actually happening in the world.
Djalil is not wrong in that economics can be the cement that keeps continental peace. But he's dead wrong in that countries are unwilling to sacrifice economic benefit for strategic/political benefit. Russia's campaign against the US is the side show really. The real target is the European Union and NATO. Both of them. it was the European Union, not America and not NATO, whose discussions with Ukraine began that whole affair. Djalil has a vision, but he refuses to take a stand against Russia and Vladmir Putin who are all to happy to weaponize people like his rather Anti-American viewpoints, but doing so while really working directly against the interest of people like Djalil.
If Djalil truly cared about the idea of Europe like he says he does, he would be at the very front of the anti-Putin army because there is no greater threat to Europe than the man who is systematically trying to destroy it by funding the far right AND far left across the entire continent who have one thing in common - they reject European integration.
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The US would absolutely defend Estonia and any other NATO country. ABSOLUTELY. Why? Because if we didn't, it would undermine our promise of protection on a global scale. We are STILL recovering from Barack Obama letting Bashar Al-Assad waltz over his red line, and it will take another couple of years and an new President to fully recover. But make no mistake, that fuck-up on Obama's part, was the strategic blunder of the decade. That was Obama's Iraq, in a less obvious kind of way. Yes, it was that bad. His team doesn't believe it, but the US National Security establishment has spent the past almost-three years repairing the damage he did in a week. And that's coming from someone who did not want to bomb Syria whatsoever.
As for NATO, you're overlooking the most likely scenario. Would Russia ever try anything in the Baltics, the US would try to limit it. It would assist the baltics military and fight Russia. it would have help maybe from Poland and Romania and the United Kingdom. But it would, on purpose, try and keep NATO out of it. Missile strikes (conventional here) on German industry, air raids on Norway, and the sinking of Italian warships is not something we'd rapidly jump to especially when the US Military, properly positioned, would be a bloody meat grinder for Russia's poorly trained, under-equipped and under-experienced military.
Look at it from this perspective. The US would not want World War III. By keeping NATO out of it, not only do we prevent wider damage to Europe, but we stop escalation then and there. Without NATO, with the US flying troops on airliners to Europe to man vehicles and equipment already pre-positioned, the US and Russia would have a 1:1 parity pretty much. With all of NATO mobilized, Russia is out numbered around 4:1.
Consider that the US approach will be to offer Russia as many off ramps as possible to return to the status quo ante, and do it early. Because the alternative is (and the longer the fight goes on) we begin strike inside Russia, beginning with a SEAD campaign against Kalingrad, the outskirts of St. Petersberg, and then Russia, to destroy Russia's capacity to make war. We do that, this fight goes nuclear very quickly because Russia will not win any military campaign against the more modern and battle harded US Military that could strike it from it's soft underbelly in Central Asia if need be. Keep in mind: the US can strike inside Russia at any time, Russia, without resorting to Nuclear Weapons, cannot do the same.
So we'd try to keep it small, so that only a few hundred troops die, and Germany, France and China drag us to the negotiating table kicking and screaming, and nothing is accomplished, aside preventing the end of the world. That is much more likely than an all-hands-on-deck moment for NATO. You'd see that moment when Russia pre-emptively nukes a German-American base to prevent those US troops from joining the fight.