Avec who?
Doesn't bode well :/
But I agree it seems kind of a weird thing to be worried about right now for France. Russia is probably the much bigger threat, but invasion seems pretty unlikely given the distance from Russia and the relatively low population (vs the Soviet Union).
I guess some resurgent Soviet Union (ie Eastern Europe comes under the sway of Moscow, voluntarily or otherwise) could do that, but that seems really unlikely.
I can see Turkey or Russia invading its neighbors (I mean, Russia literally is doing this right now... slowly consolidating their annexation of parts of Ukraine), but not much further. If Turkey and Russia became strong allies (as well as maybe some disgruntled former colonies), I suppose that could pose a legitimate threat.
My personal opinion is that Turkey is threatening France's interest in Northern Africa. By saying Northern Africa, I would like to point out countries with a Muslim majority society and have a grim past of French colonization. I think the tension in Northern Africa will escalate. Because I don't believe Turkey would give up its position on Libya. Having a sea border with Libya is directly related to Turkey's potential rights on gas resources in East Mediterranean.
Another thing to mention here is Turkey's defense budget on maritime industries. In Turkey's threat modeling, they expect something profound in the Mediterranean soon. We can see this by looking at how much money they invest and how they build ships—the ships equipped with sensitive long-range missiles etc.
The whole point of globalization and disinterventionism was to avoid hot wars. And, given their potential foes, I’m not sure they want to get into a hot war.
More importantly none of the powers have high reproduction rates so they won’t have a large fresh pop from which to draught troops and the robots aren’t quite ready yet, so I don’t know what gives.
Neither Russia or China pose any military threath to Europe unless we send our ships right up their shores. Maybe that is what we are about to do?
Ukraine and the Baltic States are in Europe, no? The Baltic States are, for better or worse, NATO members and the alliance is bound to defend them.
NATO has the "enhanced forward presence" (tanks) in Estonia and "Baltic air policing" (fighter jets) covering all 3.
NATO in practice is an offensive alliance as much as a defensive one.
The scenario BAOR was prepared for was the Third Shock Army surging through the Fulda Gap, and likewise the Third was prepared to do that.
Now certainly that's a bit unreasonable as countries should be allowed to associate with whoever they want, but it's not exactly a live wire threatening war left and right, it's a red line they set out a very long time ago, and there's not much reason to think they're interested with much beyond that red line.
The Crimea was not historically part of Ukraine, though for political and administrative purposes it was assigned to the Ukraine soviet republic. Given its criticality Russia took it back.
Second, Russia is not just annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula but also attempting to annex parts of eastern Ukraine and recently moved a bunch of troops potentially to expand their held territory beyond the peninsula and deeper into central Ukraine.
I don’t understand these arguments carrying water for Russia. Yeah, we all know Russia wants to annex parts of Ukraine for what they consider strategic reasons. But we can’t go about justifying wars for annexation in the 21st bloody century! Doesn’t matter if it’s the US, China, or Russia. Annexation is not justifiable.
It’s akin to China asserting a claim on Guam. We will not let that happen.
That's like saying Ukraine has claims in Kuban, because it was historically Ukrainian.
Where the heck do people get off on justifying imperialist annexation of smaller, weaker countries by an aggressor?
In my understanding, if Ukraine becomes a NATO country, European Russia becomes indefensible. That means, the Russian govt is ready to escalate the matter all the way to the nukes.
I don't expect a major conflict, but who knows.
It’s insane to me that in a conflict between a smaller and poorer country and a larger imperial country, people keep taking the side of the aggressor who literally invaded and is attempted to annex portions of the smaller. NATO is no justification for this!
As far as Russia, it's not a question of right or wrong. As part of the dissolution of the USSR, NATO made a tacti assurance TO Russia that they would not push until the border.
The occupation of Ukraine is a response to calls from Ukraine to align with the EU and NATO. Since neither organism allows entry if there is an active territorial dispute, so Russia created one.
From our position, it looks like Ukraine is only trying to defend from Russian imperialism, a much bigger power. From the Russian position, it looks like NATO coordinating a total encirclement of Russia and massing troops directly at its border and cutting off any hope Russia has to be able to assure its trade routes and even territorial security, against an openly interventionist empire.
Ultimately, both perspectives are true. NATO does seek to geopolitically checkmate Russia, which will make life for the average Russian citizen worse and increase the risk of a major war. At the same time Russia is indeed imposing on Ukraine.
Russia could be headed by anyone else under any even remotely functional system of government and it would go to amazing lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, no matter what. It's a simple matter that there is not really any choice available here.
Come on, there is no moral equivalence to invading and annexing a country. This is not excusable.
Morality matters very little here. Was it moral for the West to intervene after 1991 to loot the post-soviet states leading to the death of 7 million people? No. Was it done anyways? Yes. This is the context in which you operate. If you decide to operate morally when confronted with amoral actors all you will do is cause the suffering of millions of your own citizens.
This is imperialist justification of literally invading and annexing parts of another country that they consider a renegade vassal state. It’s not defensive in the least. Come on, this is super weak justification.
Russia hasn't invaded Ukraine because they consider it to be a vassal state, Russia only invaded Ukraine after the Euromaidan movement suceeded and pursued integration into the EU and NATO. What you are saying may well be the propaganda Putin and his proto-fascist cabal give, but it is not the actual reason, or they would have acted much before and wouldn't have stopped in the Donbass.
And again, who Ukraine wants to align with is Ukraine's choice. Just like the US has no business demanding Cuba cannot align with the Soviet Union or Venezuela (threatening or especially invading them in response being morally reprehensible), Ukraine must be free and sovereign and in command of its own future.
Who Ukraine wants to align with is Ukraine's choice as a matter of fact, and as a matter of fact where Russia puts its troops is also it's choice.
You can't compare Ukraine with Cuba or Venezuela. This is as if, after Mexico had joined the Soviet Union, Canada was about to do so as well. It's a core Russian national interest. No matter how Russia is structured, it simply won't ever allow NATO to share a border with it. The West invaded Russia on average every 40 years since the start of the 19th century, and just three decades ago American intervention in Russia led to the death of millions. There is no comparison, from the Russian perspective this is a matter of survival, they perceive that if NATO is able to surround Russia they will use this tactical advantage to ruin the country.
Should Ukraine in theory be able to join NATO? Morally, you may very well feel that way. But in the world of real politics, you cannot always chose the moral action unless you are a Hegemon. Otherwise, millions of people will suffer. It's just how it is. And unlike you were claiming, it has nothing to do with some ideals of national identity or manifest destiny, it's simply a cold geopolitical calculation that concludes that Ukraine in NATO is unacceptable and will probably in the long run lead to mass misery.
And compared to NATO, Russia absolutely is the underdog.
But sure, good on you for missing the point. It's very principled to just ignore reality. It's not like Russia got absolutely fucked and millions of people died when they tried to open up to Western Europe the last time. What matters really is that we can pretend that Russia is the bad guy and we aren't when they occupy a region whose majority want to secede anyways from another authoritarian oligarchy to prevent a military alliance who only ever operated offensively and was involved in the deaths of millions of people to settle on their borders, right after the puppetmasters of that region trafficked the Russian elections to extract hundreds of billions from its economy at the cost of millions of deaths.
But surely what matters here in this incredibly complicated situation is to follow the Moral (tm) course of action even if it drastically increases the risk of war and suffering.
'[C]hanging borders is not the best way to resolve problems' - Vladimir Putin on the Karelian question
I doubt the condition of the exercise in the North-East of France are transferable there.
(Although, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure there are people in the French army with some ideas about how to wage war in a tropical forest.)
That being said, it's still nice to have been alive during a span of ~50 years without any actual full-on people-are-killed-in-your-neighboorhood warfare.