When someone says "nothing will ever change that" while not referring to fundamental laws of physics, it's mostly religious talk.
Come think of it, it definitely does
Barely, and definitely not in a thread like this. I'm just that kind of person.
Finland actually has one of the strongest militaries in Europe. Everyone else has disarmed and expects NATO and America to defend them to the point where many countries essentially have no military anymore but we can't do that with Russia next door.
Finland is the only country left where the vast majority of men go through military service and the immediate mobilization would be the largest (because it makes up practically all of the male population...). If any European country (including Russia) would throw everything they currently have at Finland, defender advantage would more or less guarantee Finnish victory. Of course we would not win the war if it went on for years because we'd run out of population, but even Russia does not have the immediate capability to do much in Finland (unless they proceed straight to nuclear bombs or such).
Of course Finnish military training is mostly focused on resisting Russian invasion and partisan warfare for the occupation and we don't invest at all in force projection ability since we have no expectation of going to war in Latvia or whatever. So we can't fight the kind of interventionist wars that American and Russian forces train for but we don't want to anyway. But for the kind of warfare that we prepare for we are the best and there is no way current Russia would be able to take Finland without some pretty severe brutality towards the civilian population.
The reason it would exist of course would be that when you have an overwhelmingly powerful force any competitor won't even try. If, for example, Britain, France, Russia and the United States had all allied well *before* World War I the Germans would have known that they face an overwhelming, unbeatable force and they would've had to back off. There would have been no WWI, no Bolshevik revolution and no WWII.
But instead all the countries kept waiting around and joining the war one by one on whatever side. If the winning alliance would have been gathered up before the war it wouldn't have even happened. That's the whole point of building an overwhelming alliance.
It would also occasionally bomb Arabs.Would it exist only to parade around,
The EU isn't exactly proven to be stable. The majority in a few countries (including big ones like the UK) would want to leave it and by the Lisbon treaty they have the right to a binding referendum (but the politicians get to decide whether to actually hold the referendum, ha ha). I don't see it at all unlikely that we might see another world war with some revolution like Nazis/Bolsheviks in some country taking them out of NATO and EU and allied with someone like Russia or Turkey instead.or perhaps protect us from fucking Switzerland? I mean, who, but idiot drunk on propaganda would ever think EU is under any kind of threat, so why bother with army?
That is called "reality" and the recent events this very thread is about show just that.
And please, do no follow my line of thought mmmmkay? Not you please.
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I begin to think I should have followed the other poster's advice...
I know it must be hard being proven wrong time after time, but you shouldn't take it personal, Gabriel.
It's page 774, and I once more gave you way more attention than you deserve. You're free to continue this "conversation" with the ones kind enough (or fool enough) to answer you.
If Russia invaded tomorrow, we'd have better equipment, not many fewer men, defender advantage and preparations entirely dedicated to fighting off a Russian invasion. We'd wipe the floor with Russia at first. Of course, like I said, eventually we would lose since we'd run out of population, but at first we would not be in trouble.
Remember, we can commit *everything* to defense while Russia has rebellious provinces, lots of neighbours and interfering Americans who would take advantage of it if Russia commited all its forces to attacking Finland.
You should also realize that we've done the whole Russian occupation thing before. In the Great Northern War Russia occupied Finland for a decade and Finns never ceased to fight the guerilla campaign, even though about half of the ethnic Finnish population was either massacred or carried off to slavery by the Russian occupier, the Russians burned down and looted almost the entire country and so on. We'll also have the morale advantage of knowing what to expect from Russian soldiers so Finns will volunteer in masses for suicide squads to keep the Russian soldier away from Finnish civilians while the average Russian soldier won't give a shit about the war.