[pierrem15]

Europe and NATO are no longer credible deterrents because Germany is essentially a neutral state now. Decades of anti-American propaganda from 1968 onwards plus the absorption of the Sovietized East German population have taken their toll. In addition, Putin purchased the Social Democratic Party under Schroeder and the SDP now functions as a bought and paid for branch of the foreign ministry. Public opinion polls in Germany show the Germans are willing to accept a Russian "sphere of influence" in Eastern Europe as long as they maintain business ties and it only costs their neighbors not them. Let's call it a new von-Ribbentrop-Lavrov pact.

Meanwhile, the French are flailing around trying to bamboozle the Germans into paying billions more for French weaponry, while their hands are tied by traditional French loathing of les anglo-saxons and the pro-Russian, anti-NATO stance of Le Pen and Zemmour.

What is likely to happen is that the US will make a bunch of bilateral committmeents to Eastern European and Scandinavian states like Poland and Finland as NATO drifts into irrelevancy. The German slide into neutrality could be slowed by exposure of Putin's financial connection to German politicians and by stiff actions against German trade by the US, but with the clownshow unelected junta currently in charge of the US, nothing substantial will be done.

[the_individual2014]

“Public opinion polls in Germany show the Germans are willing to accept a Russian “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe as long as they maintain business ties and it only costs their neighbors not them.”

I work in a certain command in Western Europe and I have heard in some circles how the Germans are just unreliable in a potential war with Russia. Really though dont they remember the rape of Berlin and what the Soviet Army did to them in 45, guess not.