Nuclear states can and HAVE gone to wars - but no one wants to mess with the devastating conventional power of NATO.
After the recent gutting, Russia has a few dozen SU-34s that can fly. NATO has thousands of planes.
And Ukraine is about to receive their F-16s
And Russia has explained why they believe they are at war, the insane dictator at the top explained that in the 13th century it was really unfair that some army marched from Poland to what is now Chechnya (even Tucker Carlsson frowned as hard as he could and needed about 6 seconds to collect his jaw from the floor) and therefore Ukraine isn't a "real" nation and should be part of Russia. And that, in any case, Russia has the borders it chooses, as does any large country.
You mean US has. And someone like Trump may decide to not engage in conflict as part of NATO.
If you put various trainer, transportation, support role aircrafts, maybe it will be few thousands.
There is a non-binding convention that member should spend 2% of their GDP on *their* armed forces. That way when other nations call for help they can respond. It's a guideline figure though and some countries do it and some don't.
I didn't feel that strongly about this a few years ago but with the Ukraine war demonstrating how unprepared certain NATO members were (ex: Germany), despite their pledges at the 2014 Whales Summit[1], which was essentially preparing for this possibility. I can't help but view Trump's anger about this as fortelling, even if obnoxious. Still, I'm confused why this is getting re-interpreted as an attempt at disbanding NATO, from my perspective the allies who refuse to follow through with their promises are fundamentally what challenges the alliance's integrity, not the allies who call them out on it...
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Wales_summit#Wales_Pled...
the point is that many countries through the history surrendered very fast and agreed on whatever aggressor demanded.
> It's not like Russia needs any further territory
that's Putin's wish, he wants to become some historical figure, and people have little choice but follow to meat grinder
In fact it is common knowledge that before 2014 Ukraine and Russia were brotherhood nations. Ukraine couldn't imagine being attacked by Russia, that's why the army was a joke at that time and Putin took over Crimea so easily.
It failed, yes. But it succeeded in great many places, eastern europe, large part of south east asia, some african countries.
Russia is just a sorry ass loser, their country is in downward spiral and needs to exert power over its sphere of influence, thing is that countries in that sphere some time ago decided they dont really want to be aligned. Thus Russia decided to punish Ukraine otherwise the rest will also fall out of sphere (ironically I think they accelerated that process even more).