The worst-case scenario is now a possible one: European troops fighting off an invasion largely alone.
It’s by no means clear the Europeans would succeed. Romanian and other European officials at the exercise in Cincu, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) north of Bucharest by road, voiced concerns about how long it would take for NATO allies to make it to the front.
French four-star General Philippe de Montenon said he’s confident Europe could prevail, even without the US on side. “The direction of history is a progressive disengagement of the United States from the European continent,” he said.
They were more than willing to engage in good faith from late 1990s to early 2010s, it’s the constant western meddling in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and other Russian sphere of influence countries, coupled with the expansion of NATO, that pushed Russia to isolation. Russia doesn’t have the economic or soft power to fight the US+EU in that field, so either US+EU accept Russia peacefully having its own sphere of influence, or Russia will naturally attempt to do so militarily.
The USA doesn’t need to militarily engage in Mexico because it already belongs to its sphere of influence, in Venezuela they don’t enjoy that so the natural response is to threaten with military invasion (as it’s doing now). It’s basic geopolitics.
Aww poor Russia, they were just trying to “peacefully have its own sphere of influence”.
Give me a fucking break.
And what the US is doing in Venezuela is not a “natural response” to anything, and to try to point to it as a justification for Russia’s actions is actually insane.