What are your thoughts on NATO’s secretary general Rutte’s statement that Europe cannot defend itself. Stubb thinks differently. Links to original statements below.

10 comments

1. My thoughts are that Rutte has a job to keep nato together.

2. Rutte is the secretary general of NATO. He’s trying to keep the alliance together, including the US. Everything he says should be seen through this lens.

   Europe most obviously can defend itself without US help. The defense would be weaker but still strong enough to deter Russia.

3. Rutte could go to white house and continue sucking Trump’s dick, but I think Europe should be able to defence itself without US help.

4. Make Bundeswehr great again

5. Without NATO, US will lose a lot of it’s political influence over the EU.

6. Finland has been in NATO couple of years, our defense has always been “without USA”.

7. Just after the ukraine war began we got massive amount of reports on how outdated the EU arsenal was. We absolutely need US.

   Now I think upping our game to not need US is a fantastic goal to set.

8. Rutte has one job and one job only: flatter and suck up to Trump to prolong ambiguity of US response to russian attack and decoupling of US from NATO as long as possible

   For being able to defend itself, one has to define what that even means, just like what it means to “win” or “lose” in any scenario
   -would Europe be able to deter russia from gambling against the alliance without US? Maybe not
   -would russians “win” Europe by forcing surrender or dictating their terms? Absolutely not
   -would beating the russians be an absolutely horrendous in lives and economy without US help? Absolutely yes, as once they miscalculate as always, their dictator can not lose face and they continue to the last russian

9. Didn’t Stubb backtrack on that statement 2 minutes later in the same interview?

10. Stubb clarified his comments. The interviewer kept cutting him off.

    https://yle.fi/a/74-20205936