If you put all the defense budgets of the EU together it dwarfs Russia. Sadly because of historical reasons we can't have a European army.
No, history is not the issue, it's because good luck convincing French or Germans for example, they gotta send their men to fight protecting Poland, Romania or Bulgaria for example, or vice versa.
All you have to do is look at how badly EU countries cooperated during the Greek economic crisis, the migrant crisis of 2015, the Covid crisis, etc. Every EU member government was blaming each other or the immigrants from poorer countries and refusing to cooperate or come to a consensus.
And you think military cooperation will somehow work better?
> EU announces it has agreed unanimously amongst all member countries to take in Ukrainian refugees fir up to 3 years without asking them to first apply for asylum.
- The Greek economy is not dead thanks to an EU debt jubilee that could not be called that way.
- The migrant crisis has increased the role of Frontex and other EU level instruments by an extent unimaginable before.
- My significant other is Latvian, lives in Belgium, got her first and second covid shot in France, and her third one in Germany.
- In this crisis, even - hm, let's call them "less cooperative" politicians- like Matteo Salvini, Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orban got behind several common EU policies at political light speed.
- Did you see the recent flurry of NATO moving east announcements?
The war is a few days old. Everyone was hoping Putin is not lying in there faces.
Ukraine is not in the NATO and you want to find the right balance between total war and diplomatic ways.
And yes Russia has nuklear weapons btw.
1. It may be a few days old but we stood by as Russia took Crimea years ago. We shouldn’t have allowed that in the first place.
2. Many counties have nukes. Ukraine had them and gave them up in exchange for security assurances from UK/US/Russia.
3. The UK gov is now saying if British citizens want to go and fight in Ukraine they support them. Maybe we should send some of the soldiers we’ve spent lots of taxpayer money training instead?
But otherwise let's see how it plays out.
Currently the sanction level is not low. It's already surprising high. Totally different to Crimea.
That is a mistatement of facts. There were Russian troops controlling Russian nukes under Russian control on Ukrainan soil. Even if Ukraine somehow seized them they couldn’t have maintained them in the long run.
Saying that “Ukraine had nukes” is equivalent with saying that Belgium has nukes just because the US keeps some nuclear warheads in an airbase physically located in Belgium.
If you are interested in more I recommend this Arms Control Wonk podcast episode: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1215097/deterrence-i...
But a Russian allied governement was installed at that time ( the president then wasn't even born in Ukraine and was a member of the Communist Russian Party before).
It's Russia who broke that word and the West did react pretty quick. This could and probably will decimate the Russian economy and shorten the lifespan of the potential invasion significantly.
The problem is that we’d need an even more integrated Europe (and probably language). And a lot of people don’t want that.
That's not what the OP said.