I’m legitimately not sure what’s going to happen when Trump pulls the US out of NATO. Do England and France have enough of a nuclear umbrella deterrent to prevent Putin from invading other NATO nations?
What’s really scary is that the MAGA wing is actually full stop supportive of Russia at this point. To the extent that Trump might actually have the US support Putin if he wanted to invade the rest of Europe.
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Why do you need a nuclear umbrella when you are superior conventionally. If Ukraine has showed us one thing then it is that Russia is way behind in conventional warfare. UK, France and Germany have no trouble stopping Russia if they really need to.
Because Russia has nukes.
The UK and France also have nukes. What scenario do you have in mind? Nuclear first strike turning Europe into a wasteland? Something more limited? Only hitting one or two cities with the threat that more will follow if Europe doesn’t surrender?
The scenario where Russia strikes first because without the US nuclear deterrent they feel like they can disable the European nuclear umbrella. I’m wondering how likely that is.
I don’t know about France but the UK at least has nuclear submarines. Russia better be sure to also get those or Moscow and St. Petersburg are gone.
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Not an expert on this stuff but several of those countries have submarines that just by themselves would likely be sufficient deterrent from a first strike?
Also hard to believe Russia could ever be so confident of having US in the bag to think that we wouldn’t respond in some way to them nuking Europe.
That is a failure of imagination.
Maybe I’m overly imaginative because my imagination involves military coup if Trump let Russia invade Western Europe
All this being said sounds France wasn’t taking chances either and has 4 submarines x 16 nuclear ballistic missiles
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There are so many things that need to go right for a successful nuclear first strike. There needs to be a build up that needs to remain completely undetected by the West and its informants in Russia. No Russian general puts a bullet into Putin’s head to stop the madness. No Russian fears nuclear annihilation enough to warn the West. Russia’s nuclear arsenal must be in working order, not a given considering corruption, grift and just general expensiveness of nuke maintenance.
Then enough nuclear missiles must make it through the air defense systems to reach their targets.
That is a massive gamble.
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But why? The main lesson Trump will have learned from 2020 is to be more aggressive stocking key positions with people personally loyal to him. There won’t be guys like Mattis, Kelly, and Milley anymore
Also I think the mid-level of the military has gotten a lot more deplorable in the last decade.
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I don’t understand French election process but is this pretty 
for Ukraine?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/09/europe/macron-dissolves-french-parliament-europe-intl/index.html
I don’t get this decision (and maybe this is something about parliamentary politics I don’t understand), why would Macron be like “wow things are looking bad for my party, we should hold new elections so that we lose a ton of seats in government”???
Yeah the more I read the article the more confused I was
I think if your approval rating drops low enough as a French leader, their constitution demands that you be guillotined.
Only thing I can think of is he wants the country to get a taste of what it’s like to be governed by fascists before the presidential election in a few years in the hopes that it sinks their popularity. Seems like boldstrategycotton.gif but it’s the best I can come up with.
First strike doctrine is and has always been nonsense. Russia would basically need to make all of Europe a nuclear wasteland. Be sure the US lets that slide and that neither the US or China misinterprets Russias launches and launch themselves. And even then the UK and France have the ability to at least destroy Russias top ten cities if not more in a retalitory strike.