See, you are being a bit more reasonable in looking at this, compared to the warhawks.
I could see Ukraine causing NATO to up-arm itself and finally deal with the German/Russian connections, and Finland and/or Sweden joining is not unrealistic.
I too doubt their will be a direct shooting war between NATO and the Russians over Ukraine, and understand Ukraine is a different matter than the Baltics.
However, I do not think Russia is a threat to Europe on the whole. France and Germany are not really playing the NATO vs Russia game (France isn't even in the NATO command structure anymore, and hadn't been for a while) and would prefer to deal with Russia via economic links, rather than military force.
And Russia does not need to take Europe to be a direct threat to CONUS; they already have a nuclear force capable of utterly wrecking the US, and most of the planet, without needing to take Europe by force.
First off, France officially rejoined the command structure in 2009, and even before then, it was widely understood France would slot right back in with the rest of NATO, especially in the 1980s.
As far as Russia not being a threat to Europe goes…Russia has this thing about not wanting to be invaded (though it’s perfectly fine and in fact only a defensive move when
they do it, of course…), and thinks that not only is the only appropriate border for them “west of the Azores and Iceland” but that they are also the rightful inheritors of the Roman Empire* and so it’s only right they should be dominant, etc, etc. It’s both a jaw-dropping lack of self-awareness and the fact that Russia has a habit of pushing how far it can go before it gets smacked upside the head.**
Now, as far as nukes go…you misunderstand what I’m saying. Sure, Russia has nukes, but so do we. If Russia did try firing or even threatening nuclear blackmail, the universal response from Washington would be dumping several megatons of canned sunshine on the Kremlin. Putin may be an asshole and not as smart as he thinks, but he’s not stupid, as that would be suicide. However, if he were to dominate Europe, he could make life miserable for America
without resorting to nukes (fucking with our shipping, making it impossible for us to do anything in terms of moving military assets without tacit Russian approval***. Likewise, it means we’d have to expend additional resources to secure the CONUS, something we’d prefer not to do, and that would mean having to leave our allies around the world hanging out to dry in the process.
And before you say “Oh come on, that would never happen!” I’d like to point out that there was a different country that did just that in 1940, and we ended up having to fight a massive war -with the help of several other countries- in order to ensure that threat was ended. That was why we didn’t just shrug and leave a severely weakened Europe to its own devices -we suffered tremendous casualties once to liberate Europe, and that was more than enough.
And one
other thing we learned from that war is that snuffing out aggression sooner tends to put the kibosh on worse things happening later, hence why Ukraine is important, and why we might just end up deploying troops there. I’m not sure that would be the best course of action, but at the same time, it would change Putin’s calculus enormously if he suddenly finds himself faced with shooting at American forces, because if there’s one thing history has shown, it’s that shooting at Americans is a damn good way to get the glorious giant sledgehammer of FREEDOM dropped on your head, which he also really doesn’t want.
*-This goes back to the days of Muscovy…Ivan III married Zoe/Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of Konstantinos XI, the last Byzantine emperor, and Muscovy, being Orthodox like Byzantium (which was at the time still called the Roman Empire -which it was, after all, just much diminished; ‘Byzantium’ wasn’t a term applied until the 19th century), declared Moscow the Third Rome and that there would be no other. It’s a mentality that still applies even today.
**-One of the Zapad exercises Russia ran (2009 I think?) had NATO invade Kaliningrad unprovoked (because Russia thinks NATO is some blob that just expands because it can and it wants to conquer or at least dominate Russia…projecting much here, guys?) and Warsaw got nuked…and nothing else happened except NATO backed off. Which…isn’t at all how any of that would go…NATO isn’t invading Kaliningrad unless Russia is already at war with it, for one thing, and it’s just as likely it’d just trash key facilities with air strikes so Russia can’t launch strikes from it or fuck with NATO supply lines. But that is a level of thinking devoid from how NATO thinks, and that’s a very dangerous thing because miscalculations like that only increase the chances of something going horribly wrong.
***-Tacit approval as in “We are sailing around without being harassed by Russian naval and air forces” not calling up the Kremlin for permission to sail to Tokyo. Right now, the USN is what controls the waves, but again, a unified Europe under Russia’s thumb is a direct challenge since it could project power right in our front yard.
One other thing I should mention is that, right now, I’m seeing people who normally don’t fuss over German behavior realizing just how stupid the German government is being over all this (Ukraine, NordStream, etc), and seeing such a shift in tone is quite remarkable. Hell, the French are trying to nudge the Germans and telling them to stop fucking around as well. So it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
