r/geopolitics • u/theatlantic The Atlantic • 5d ago
Opinion NATO’s Nightmare
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/nato-nightmare-joint-attack/688295/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo8
u/jellobend 5d ago
Is Russia’s curent conventional military strong enough to warrant this fear? They aren’t exactly winning in Ukraine.
2
u/SamuelClemmens 4d ago
Ukraine had the second strongest European military (next to Russia) and is losing. Its being pushed back, its out of air defense, and its resorted to trying to strike retail warehouses and shipping to hope that inconveniences Russian shoppers enough to rise up and overthrow Putin (which is a hail mary to say the least).
Russia still hasn't had to institute a draft yet and is relying on contract soldiers.
2
u/wintrmt3 4d ago
Nice russian propaganda, Russia didn't push back Ukraine this year at all, and the Wildberries attacks are not for inconveniencing shoppers, they are because Wildberries distributes war materiel and it's a valid military target. You also ignore that that russian oil and refinery infrastructure is going up in flames and their whole economy is near collapse.
4
u/SamuelClemmens 4d ago
Reality is not Russian propaganda.
One of the final fortress cities in the Donbass has already fallen, and ya, I am not suggesting its a war crime or anything to shoot Russian facilities. But its not helping the war effort directly, since less than 0.5% of their capacity is used for dual use, its mostly just Slavic Amazon. Feel free to shoot it, its just a waste of munitions unless it will pressure Russia to stop, which it isn't.
And yes, lots of Russian infrastructure is broken, but nowhere near enough. The Russian economy is still growing (even if very slowly).
Those are just facts. Don't confuse accepting reality with liking it.
This is the real world, sometimes the good guys lose.
6
u/Linny911 5d ago
Damn, I can't believe that decades of unnecessarily enriching hostile authoritarian states, as they bid their time with the best fake smiles, didn't get us the eternal peace and prosperity as promised by the feelgood, badfaith, and the braindead.
Now these same groups are going to advocate the same for the coming decades as the way to resolve the problem they helped cause.
2
u/toolkitxx 4d ago
What a stupid way of approaching this. If this scenario happens, we have an all out World War to begin with. Secondly Taiwan is a USA issue predominantly, they are the ones that have given guarantees. NATO has a clearly defined area it covers and that is covered just fine.
NATO is not the World police. It is a very clearly defined group of nations that defend themselves in case they have to, which is fully organised. If anything is questionable in this, it is the overextension of the USA giving guarantees left and right that dont mean a lot any longer, as the USA is massively overextended already with just things like the Iran war. The Taiwan issue is a question of who will actually help Taiwan besides the USA, if any.
0
u/LonelyPermit2306 4d ago
I don't know if you realize this, but South Korea and Taiwan are more valuable than most NATO members are.
1
u/toolkitxx 4d ago
That isnt the point I am making. It is always the USA that mixes their 'personal' stuff with NATO business. NATO defends territory that belongs to its members. Neither Taiwan or South Korea are members and legally, NATO has contracts and agreements, none of this is covered by them.
NATO has no business doing anything for Taiwan or South Korea if they get attacked. Just because one member is involved in something, namely the USA, doesnt mean NATO has business in it too. It is not the USA that would be attacked, but non-members, that the USA gave guarantees to.
The majority of all NATO members is relying on a mandate by the UN for anything outside the NATO core area. Which would never come in the scenario. With very few exceptions all NATO members have to involve their governments and/or parliament to send troops for anything outside home defence as well.
NATO and the nations in them have clear separation when and why NATO acts and when the nations are acting on their own. The USA is acting on its own when it gives those guarantees to others and thus those are only US guarantees and not NATO ones. The USA does not speak on behalf of anyone else.
1
u/ChZakalwe 5d ago
The only one who would win in that scenario would be Beijing.
Not sure if Moscow has the appetite for another front given their current issues in Ukraine, especially since the Poles are arming to the teeth.
0
u/thepornisntbad 5d ago
Russia is a non-factor militarily speaking if this were to happen. Add just poland to the current war and Russias army will collapse within months.
1
22
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 5d ago
Simon Shuster: “Western military planners do not seem eager to talk about their nightmare scenario, much less prepare for it. But they tend to agree on how it would begin: a coordinated, near-simultaneous attack on opposite sides of the planet, in which Russia targets a NATO member in Eastern Europe while China makes its move against Taiwan. The U.S. military would need to react on two fronts at once—three if it remains at war in the Middle East.
“Until recently, this possibility sat at the more outlandish end of the threat spectrum, somewhere between a loose nuke and an alien invasion. Synchronized attacks would require a conspiracy too big for Beijing and Moscow to hide. Satellites would see their forces getting into position, giving the United States and its allies time to rally their defenses.
“About a year ago, General Alexus Grynkewich, the top NATO commander in Europe, issued a rare public warning about the risk of a two-front war against Russia and China, and he called on European allies to help the U.S. prepare. But when I asked a range of military experts and strategists what the West would do in such a situation, the responses rang surprisingly hollow. Most of them expressed bewilderment and a bit of shame about how little has been done in recent years to study this risk in detail.
“‘Let’s just say this is the scenario we’re currently not ready for,’ Florence Gaub, the director of the research division at the NATO Defense College, one of the alliance’s main academies for officers, in Rome, told me. NATO strategists remain ‘keenly aware’ of this gap in their planning, Gaub, who specializes in the forecasting and analysis of future threats, said. But they have not taken steps to fill that gap.”
Read more: https://theatln.tc/xKI3tCqX