British airborne forces join Nato allies in show of force to Russia

telegraph ^ | 21 JUNE 2019 | Dominic Nicholls,

[RomanSoldier19]

British paratroopers are taking part in the biggest airborne exercise since the end of the Cold War in a show of force to Russia.

The multinational exercise, based across four Eastern European countries, saw 7000 British, American and French troops join allies from over 20 nations in the month-long deployment.

[NorseViking]

Where are China and Russia and Britain? China and Russia has a thing or two to do before warring with chavdom.

[soakncider]

Patton was right. We should have killed the bolsheviks instead of handing them East Berlin and eastern Europe. What fools we are.

[mewzilla]

While the EU sucks up to Russia’s client state, Iran....

Okaaaaay.....

[MinorityRepublican]

[MinorityRepublican]

Long term Argies are still Argies. They can’t build a functioning economy that could support an actual, capable military, and even if they did, by that point they’d have a lot more to lose by attempting to invade the islands. They’d end up being sanctioned and isolated by Britain’s allies, of which the UK has more and more powerful ones than they have and their economy would collapse.

You're right about the Argies. However, the British will not always have a first world military. Their welfare state is depriving the military of necessary resources. They may find it too expensive to maintain their two aircraft carriers that will be activated in the next couple of years.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

The military budget is going up, the political mood is changing from one of cuts to increasing the budget in the realisation that we still have serious enemies and we need a capable military to defend against them. Trump played his part in this by applying pressure for other NATO allies to up their game. Russia’s chronic belligerence, and things hotting up again with Iran will only add to this imperative. I can see that UK defence budget approaching 4% of gdp as it was in the cold war within 15-20 years.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Britain has foreign entanglements that force it to take Russia and China seriously as threats, plus as an island nation we depend very heavily on the sea for raw materials to fuel our economy.

[Zhang Fei]

[Britain has foreign entanglements that force it to take Russia and China seriously as threats, plus as an island nation we depend very heavily on the sea for raw materials to fuel our economy.]

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The morons running US foreign policy in the immediate postwar period pretty much forced the European colonial powers to exit their hard-won conquests around the world. We are now literally paying for it with defense budgets as a % of GDP that are quadruple what they were pre-WWII, and hit a peak of 12% during the Cold War, because two of the five permanent members of the UN, China and Russia, are the same world-conquering empires they’ve always been, whereas Britain and France are no longer pulling their military weight, since they no longer have empires to defend. Eisenhower may have been a great peacemaker as SCAEF, but his Suez decision cost US dearly and continues to cost US today.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Russia’s gdp is less than Italy’s, both Britain and France could utterly outclass Russia militarily if we were willing to pay the same percent of gdp that the Russians do. Its kind of ridiculous Russia has as much geopolitical power as it does when it is economically speaking, a minnow on the world stage.

As for Empire, I think the writing was on the wall regardless of what the Americans did. Britain and France were both exhausted from the war effort and pro-independence movements were gathering strength, now aided by the communists in Russia. Decolonisation was inevitable. In the case of the British Empire this was the long term plan anyway, once each colony had reached the stage were it was considered to be ready for ‘responsible’ self government.