If you listen to European leaders, Russia is on the verge of challenging NATO militarily. In response, non-US NATO countries have made loud noises about preparing for war, and have made modestly impressive announcements about increasing defense spending.
There are a lot of snarky things I could say about how these countries are trashing Trump while doing exactly what he and other presidents have been demanding for years, but I’ve made a lot of those snarky comments in the past, so I’ll pass on it this time.
I could also question their warnings about Putin invading a NATO country, but actually, it’s not as implausible as you would think. Putin’s goal would not be to take over a NATO country, but to create a strategic dilemma that could fracture NATO and undermine its solidarity. He could send in troops to occupy a small, unpopulated or sparsely populated region of a border country and essentially dare NATO to mobilize over a few square kilometers of worthless land.
It would be a tough sell to pick a fight with a nuclear-armed country over worthless, but sovereign territory. Would you go to war for a tiny slice of Finland? Putin certainly thinks NATO is already at war with Russia through a proxy, and it’s plausible that he would take his pound of flesh without risking all-out war.
No matter how plausible this scenario is, European countries are floating some version of it as an imminent threat, yet when you look at what they are actually doing, you have to wonder.
The British Army is currently not training for the next 6 months because it has to save £30m. https://t.co/O1iCOMkZBt
— Britsky (@TBrit90) September 24, 2026
I saw this tweet, and it reminded me: Britain, whose leaders make loud pronouncements about potential imminent conflict, has restricted troop training (which is already understrength) to save a modest amount of money, but can find three times as much to help Gaza?
How seriously should we take their concerns, given that they apparently don’t take them that seriously themselves? They certainly don’t ACT like they are ready to defend Europe. They act like the existential threat they are worried about is memes making them look bad, and not virtue signaling quite enough.
“Gaza reconstruction,” we all know, means little more than providing the raw materials for Hamas reconstruction. It’s sad to say that, given that investing in improving infrastructure in Gaza sounds nice and all, when Europeans put in a water distribution system, Hamas dug it up to make rockets. When Europe built a cement plant, the tunnels were hardened.
Yet the UK can find nearly three times as much to help Hamas prepare for the next war, but has to cut $30 million out of its training budget for a war they predict could be around the corner?
Of course, given that this is the UK, it’s quite possible that the leadership simultaneously believes that war is around the corner and that cutting the defense budget is a good idea. These people are so disconnected from reality that they think the UK controls the weather. Insane people do insane things.
But it’s just as possible that they’re blowing smoke, or still confident that Daddy Trump will come and save them. If Russia does pull a fast one and takes a small, useless chunk of territory, I’m not sure any NATO country would want to risk a war over it. But then again, if they don’t, it calls into question NATO as an organization.
If these guys were smart, they would pre-position troops in key spots as tripwires and make the deployments multinational. If Russia killed German, UK, or American troops, that is a credible tripwire. As it is, most of what is happening is talk.
And while they talk about budget increases, it’s not clear how serious everybody is.
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