Butschi

NATO is the reason the EU doesn't have a standing army. I think it will change in the future. NATO is also the reason the US doesn't have a West European style of a social safety net. But back to support the Ukraine we all can't afford a Russian victory. 

To say "so far no nuclear escalation has happened, so to think it can happen in the future is stupid" is unreasonable. That's just like the proverbial guy who jumps from a skyscraper and 2 floors before impact says: "Ha, so far nothing bad has happend!" Whether there is a threshold for escalation, and, if so, which, is something that probably only Putin himself knows. If at all because that implies some semblance of reasonable behaviour right up to the end.

I, for one, don't think we should let fear of that dictate what we do but it would be remiss to not at least keep in mind that the threat is real.

Re German tanks: Now you force me to defend Scholz again, I really don't like to do that. 😉 But did I miss US Abrams tanks or British Challengers being in Ukraine? At least in that regard, Germany is not the only country being on the catious side.

IMO, there is a difference between asking s.o. to be grateful and expecting it. If I help someone I don't say: "I helped you, now say thank you!". But like most human beings I do expect some form of gratitude even if it's just a nod or a smile. We work like that. What I don't expect to happen is being instulted for not having helped more or faster even if that was true. Doesn't mean that can't be brought up as constructive criticism in a polite way and in addition. You may like it or not and an insult might help your ego but it will not further your cause, period.
And to turn your point around, who cares for what reason someone helps as long as the result is the same? Do you honestly think the US and UK are sending all those weapons just because it is the right thing to do? Of course, geopolitical and economical reason play a roll, too, not to mention upcoming elections. Leaves a mildly bitter taste but in the end what counts here is the result.
As @Aragorn2002 said, it also doesn't sound too unrealistic. You rightly criticised Scholz more than once but the Polish government also didn't play entirely fair during the last months. Whatever, as I said above, we all have ulterior motives, that's a (sad) fact of life. Maybe we should stop bickering about it, in the long run only the populists and Putin profit from that.

They were not in the EU for a long time and already the words of decadent Western Europe came out. TBH Europe has always been a Germanic West, a Latin South and a Slavic East. It is not politically correct to mention it, but it is true. The world also has an alliance of English speaking countries, it goes a little deeper than NATO. 

Hard not to agree with that. I think Scholz and Macron deserve a jab now and then, but apart from timely deliveries of heavy weapons,their countries really do a lot - German/ Dutch Patriot unit in Slovakia can be an example. There are also multiple European units deployed in the Baltics, Poland and Romania at the moment. US and UK are leading this effort in general, but what the rest of Europe committed is really not too shabby.

And yet those same European countries supply your country with arms deliveries worth hundreds of millions, risk their economies and help millions of Ukrainian refugees. I truly hope Zelensky will show more gratitude and will find a better tone to speak to and about Europe than you do. Personally I'm rather tired of your insults. We don't owe you anything, so just be a little more grateful.

The lack of political will appears to be shared by most other NATO members, though. The fine line, currently, seems to be "no western MBTs or IFVs". Leo 1s are roughly the equivalent of US M60s. No M60s in Ukraine, altough there are probably still a few around (er, experts: are there?). No Chieftains, no AMX30s. No Warriors or Bradleys. I doubt Ukraine didn't ask for any of those. Does drawing this line make sense? I don't know. But for once it looks like a somewhat consistent and coordinated strategy of the NATO members.
Re stalling and delaying and generally abysmal communication, I fully agree but that is a different issue. I'm not even certain it is all Scholz' fault or that of our defense secretary. The Bundeswehr is really in a desolate state, not only regarding equipment and readyness. It isn't like the Bundeswehr doesn't get a lot of money. I think > 40 billion $ / year over the last decade. That's less than the 2% GDP but still a lot. With that it isn't even possible to have regular body armor for everyone going abroad, a swimming area for the (elite) divers or even decent radios. My opinion: To achieve that level of epic failure you have to have a fine mix of incompetence and corruption (even if it is only the 'legal' kind) in procurement, planning and political leadership. Just to make the point: I'm not fully convinced it is active stalling on Scholz' side, possibly the Bundeswehr really just isn't able to deliver on short timescales. Even more reason to have good communication then, though.

I think NATO can afford to be a little more self-critical. Afghanistan, while indeed officially defensive was at least controversial. NATO and/or the USA were not attacked by the nation Afghanistan but by a terror organization with their home base in Afghanistan. To make that a case for article 5 was at least stretching things a bit. Making not handing over the leader of an organization a legal casus belli is also a really slippery slope.
Anyway, I don't think all this whataboutism is doing much good. What Russia is doing is really evil and it doesn't get better by pointing out that other countries are doing evil things, too. What annoys me, though, is that this way we are handing the really bad guys around the globe cheap justifications. (Nowadays everyone justifies every military intervention with war on terror, for instance.)

To say "so far no nuclear escalation has happened, so to think it can happen in the future is stupid" is unreasonable. That's just like the proverbial guy who jumps from a skyscraper and 2 floors before impact says: "Ha, so far nothing bad has happend!" Whether there is a threshold for escalation, and, if so, which, is something that probably only Putin himself knows. If at all because that implies some semblance of reasonable behaviour right up to the end.

I, for one, don't think we should let fear of that dictate what we do but it would be remiss to not at least keep in mind that the threat is real.

Re German tanks: Now you force me to defend Scholz again, I really don't like to do that. 😉 But did I miss US Abrams tanks or British Challengers being in Ukraine? At least in that regard, Germany is not the only country being on the catious side.

Oh, I missed bureaucracy! I kind of included it with incompetence, I think. I still think there is corruption, too, though. Not necessarily the direct kind but what I called the legal kind. Especially procurement appears to not be guided by what is the best from a "how to get the most capability for my bucks" point of view but by what is best for the company that produces the equipment. Even that is not necessarily bad, I can be of strategic interest to have a domestic arms industry. But this can go too far, like, remember when with Volker Kauder basically Hekler & Koch was sitting in the Bundestag in a very powerful position.
EDIT: For me, that is a kind of corruption, not in the direct sense, that a politician directly gets money for himself in exchange for whatever service he/she may be providing but of the indirect kind, where a politician gets a nice job afterwards or there is a generous donation to the party or the company invests more money in the electoral district of that politician. Similar things may happen on the lower levels of bureaucracy.

So far Business Insider appears to be the only source. I found a few reports in other media but everyone was quoting Business Insider. I can't say too much about credibility but given how generally uninformed German mass media is w.r.t. the finer details of this war, I doubt there is much real fact checking going on.
On a personal note: Could we please reduce the general Germany-bashing a bit? As I have said here severals times, I am not much of a Scholz-fan myself and Scholz is not Germany. Moreover, as (I think) Napoleon once said, never assume ill will when you can explain something with incompetence instead... Third point: While I often share the irritation caused by German politics, we should still keep in mind (and here I have to kind of defend Scholz): Germany's democratically elected chancellor is still called Scholz, not Selenskyj or Duda or Biden. So, while it is legitimate to ask or even demand something of a country it is also legitimate for said country not to grant everything. Not meant inflammatory and, as I said, I don't like much of what Scholz & Co decided (or rather did not decide) in the past.

The lack of political will appears to be shared by most other NATO members, though. The fine line, currently, seems to be "no western MBTs or IFVs". Leo 1s are roughly the equivalent of US M60s. No M60s in Ukraine, altough there are probably still a few around (er, experts: are there?). No Chieftains, no AMX30s. No Warriors or Bradleys. I doubt Ukraine didn't ask for any of those. Does drawing this line make sense? I don't know. But for once it looks like a somewhat consistent and coordinated strategy of the NATO members.
Re stalling and delaying and generally abysmal communication, I fully agree but that is a different issue. I'm not even certain it is all Scholz' fault or that of our defense secretary. The Bundeswehr is really in a desolate state, not only regarding equipment and readyness. It isn't like the Bundeswehr doesn't get a lot of money. I think > 40 billion $ / year over the last decade. That's less than the 2% GDP but still a lot. With that it isn't even possible to have regular body armor for everyone going abroad, a swimming area for the (elite) divers or even decent radios. My opinion: To achieve that level of epic failure you have to have a fine mix of incompetence and corruption (even if it is only the 'legal' kind) in procurement, planning and political leadership. Just to make the point: I'm not fully convinced it is active stalling on Scholz' side, possibly the Bundeswehr really just isn't able to deliver on short timescales. Even more reason to have good communication then, though.

Than stop mentioning it.
"In reality Berlin is supplying large amounts of weapons; not as much as the US, but comparable to other European countries. Experts say Germany ranks somewhere in the middle." according to the BBC. It's a safe bet Germany will have paid  the most and Poland will have profited the most of all European countries when the dust has settled.
I think the pressure upon Germany by Poland (as usual) and Ukraine is more political/financial than something else and aimed at weakening the German positon within EU/NATO for future use. Preparing those Leopards and Marders will take months and months. And will take away much needed production and maintenance capacity that the Bundeswehr badly needs itself now. The Bundeswehr is in full swing at the moment and not a day too soon.
Apart from that the German economy can't manage without the Russian energy yet. Hard fact of life. And if the German economy goes down, the whole of Europe goes with it.
https://www.bundeswehr.de/de/organisation/heer/aktuelles/einsatzverband-besteht-feuertaufe-fuer-litauen-5443686
 

To be fair, all sorts of things happening during wars, many of which are called war crimes nowadays, are as old as warfare. But, yes, I was just reminded of the movie "A Bridge too far" where early on that Dutch boy "rides his bicycle" (to his girlfriend because it's his birthday and she has a cake for him) and discovers Walter Model is there.

I don't consider myself the most pro russian guy but I can see why Russia feels threatened. Its not irrational, lets be honest.
On paper NATO is a defensive organization but its members have conducted and have been involved in the most wars and invasions since the end of WW2. Mainly US. NATO offcially has also intervened violently, bombing in the Balkans, Libya and waged war on Afghanistan for 20 years. So not a strictly defensive pact per se. The other most important member of NATO, (once Great) Britain, has been a colonial force for centuries, occupying and looting countries at will, and only recently has withdrawn from most of its distant colonized lands. Not a great record to be honest. France is not lagging that far behind on that matter and Germany has the most dark recent past of all of them and a special wound with Russia. So, yes not that aggressive anymore, but not a great criminal record if you want them for neighbours.   
US, the flagship and mastermind of NATO,  has bypassed UN council to invade sovereign states like Iraq with false pretext of WMD and has 750 military bases around the globe, thousands of miles beyond its borders. Its military spending is 10x times more than the second on the list. An alien observer coming from space would argue that these guys with the stars and stripes are everywhere, how can they complain of expansionism of others?   Russia is not nervous of NATO but of US army presence so close to its vital routes. Imagine a US base in Sevastopol (again distance from home:  
https://www.google.com/search?q=sevastopol+distance+from+US&oq=sevastopol+distance+from+US&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.9435j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 )
completly blocking Russia way out to Bosporus and Mediterranean Sea. 
In this story Russians might seem the bad guys and we would probably not want to see them reaching the polish borders but from their POV and as an entity , they have probably sound reasons to not want NATO(US) presence that close to their home. This regardless of what we feel is moral or not.    
 

And the latter two are not going to happen anytime soon. Legally (although I'm seriously no expert on that) NATO membership would only be possible with a real peace contract, a cease fire and a frozen conflict are not enough. I also imagine a fast track towards EU membership wouldn't sit too well with Turkey - they have been waiting for this for decades - so they could veto NATO membership. In Germany, there are many who would rather have Ukraine become a neutral state and I think France may be similar. 
EU membership is also very unlikely to happen soon.
Turkey and the Balkan states have been held in limbo for a long time, so it would be difficult to argue why an exception should be made for Ukraine. With every country having veto power, EU is already pretty inefficient and there are many who say that reforms should be made before any new members are accepted. Ukraine maybe has too close ties to Poland which is not the most popular member right now due to its autocratic tendencies. It could be perceived as making the Visegrad Faction even stronger. Adding more and more net receivers means less money for the other receivers. Not to mention that we want resume normal business with Russia at some point, so let's not be too nice to Ukraine. /irony off

Yet the us is investing significantly in missile defense possibly rendering the nuclear option void. Also a nuclear war would still mean the end of russia.
 
Except the first thing he said was that it would be a problem. only later did he change that and id argue thats mostly because he cant make any credible threat to Finnland atm.

In many ways a Taliban type opponent so -equipped would be even harder to deal with. The Ukrainian army is, at least, a regular army in the sense of wearing uniforms, carrying their weapons openly etc. A Taliban type foe (with NLAWs/Javelins, Stingers/Starstreak and UAVs all backed up with a modular cell network) who merged back into the population following their actions would be a nightmare for any military, even one as well equipped as the US,  that had ambitions to stay more or less the right side of the Hague and Geneva conventions.

Youre not looking then.
In international relations intentions cant be known and can change so you have to base decisions on capabilities.
NATO massively outmatches russia in conventional military power so were they to decide to attack russia has little i could do except nuclear excalation. Having buffer states makes it harder for NATO offensive actions since no forward supply depos can be established early.
Now you and i know that NATO has no intentions of ever attacking russia but as pointed out above that could change. Just like NATO was worried about the Warsaw pact because they did have the capability to possibly successfully invade europe even though they might never have wanted to.

So I ask myself "what if the Taliban had NLAWs/Javelins, Stingers/Starstreak and UAVs all backed up with a modular cell network?  And the support of a great power(s) behind them for training, force generation and ISR?"
We concentrate forces too and our logistics lines are built on sustaining heavy mass.  I think technology may be lowering the cost of what it means to be "peer" at some levels of warfare.  Finally, unless we are talking about war in mainland NA or western Europe, we are talking interventions/crisis response wars.  We historically have been allergic to high casualties in these types of conflicts since the end of the Cold War.  A much smaller power could theoretically become a strategic peer in war simply by creating too high a cost for us to get directly involved.  The whole thing points to a re-emergence of attrition/exhaustion as a strategy...although many will argue it never really went away.

So far Business Insider appears to be the only source. I found a few reports in other media but everyone was quoting Business Insider. I can't say too much about credibility but given how generally uninformed German mass media is w.r.t. the finer details of this war, I doubt there is much real fact checking going on.
On a personal note: Could we please reduce the general Germany-bashing a bit? As I have said here severals times, I am not much of a Scholz-fan myself and Scholz is not Germany. Moreover, as (I think) Napoleon once said, never assume ill will when you can explain something with incompetence instead... Third point: While I often share the irritation caused by German politics, we should still keep in mind (and here I have to kind of defend Scholz): Germany's democratically elected chancellor is still called Scholz, not Selenskyj or Duda or Biden. So, while it is legitimate to ask or even demand something of a country it is also legitimate for said country not to grant everything. Not meant inflammatory and, as I said, I don't like much of what Scholz & Co decided (or rather did not decide) in the past.

I'm not sure a one sentence comment is gonna change anyone's mind here. Happy to hear a russian perspective but it needs to be a properly constructed arguement.

So far Business Insider appears to be the only source. I found a few reports in other media but everyone was quoting Business Insider. I can't say too much about credibility but given how generally uninformed German mass media is w.r.t. the finer details of this war, I doubt there is much real fact checking going on.
On a personal note: Could we please reduce the general Germany-bashing a bit? As I have said here severals times, I am not much of a Scholz-fan myself and Scholz is not Germany. Moreover, as (I think) Napoleon once said, never assume ill will when you can explain something with incompetence instead... Third point: While I often share the irritation caused by German politics, we should still keep in mind (and here I have to kind of defend Scholz): Germany's democratically elected chancellor is still called Scholz, not Selenskyj or Duda or Biden. So, while it is legitimate to ask or even demand something of a country it is also legitimate for said country not to grant everything. Not meant inflammatory and, as I said, I don't like much of what Scholz & Co decided (or rather did not decide) in the past.

I doubt The West (tm) is that directly cynical but maybe you are not too far off the mark. I often hear things like "Russia must not be allowed to win the war!" but rarely "Ukraine has to win the war". So my take on this would be:
What most western politicians have to fear right now is the record braking inflation. Exploding prices for bare necessities like food and electricity and heating are threatening to become too much for low-income households to handle and there is only so much the state can do to mitigate that. At the very least this has the potential to drive people into the arms of populists (who incidentally are more often then not funded by the Kremlin). From this point of view the goal of many/most politicians has to be to end the war as soon as possible because then goods can flow more freely between Ukraine and the rest of the world which would improve the food situation and also help economically, e.g. for the automotive industry. At the same time, at least a partial lifting of the sanctions could possible reduce costs for fuel and electricity. Lifting of sanctions, however, is only politically feasible if there is at least a permanent ceasefire at max. minor violations occuring. Even with media attention shifting elsewhere it is hard to imagine lifting sanctions is on the table while there is still a war ongoing (but maybe I'm too optimistic here). A ceasefire will only happen if neither side thinks it can win easily. And so the logical course would be to supply Ukraine with enough weapons to not lose and possible even win back the territory lost after 2/24. But not more. There is also the threat of nuclear escalation. Yes, many here have said that it doesn't make sense for Russia to escalate but then it didn't make sense for Russia to start this war in the first place. A terminally ill Putin or a Putin who thinks he will not survive an all out military defeat may not act that rationally and then it boils down to how loyal the military around him is. I think some western politicians are genuinely afraid of causing a nuclear war. We often here that Putin should be given a way to get out of this without entirely losing face. Disgusting or not, if your intention is to avoid nuclear war then this is probably what a politician would try to do. Just my thoughts but I'm also just trying to get into the heads of the decision makers of this world... 🤷‍♂️

So far Business Insider appears to be the only source. I found a few reports in other media but everyone was quoting Business Insider. I can't say too much about credibility but given how generally uninformed German mass media is w.r.t. the finer details of this war, I doubt there is much real fact checking going on.
On a personal note: Could we please reduce the general Germany-bashing a bit? As I have said here severals times, I am not much of a Scholz-fan myself and Scholz is not Germany. Moreover, as (I think) Napoleon once said, never assume ill will when you can explain something with incompetence instead... Third point: While I often share the irritation caused by German politics, we should still keep in mind (and here I have to kind of defend Scholz): Germany's democratically elected chancellor is still called Scholz, not Selenskyj or Duda or Biden. So, while it is legitimate to ask or even demand something of a country it is also legitimate for said country not to grant everything. Not meant inflammatory and, as I said, I don't like much of what Scholz & Co decided (or rather did not decide) in the past.