Summary
Germany warns that Russia is rearming faster than expected, replacing war losses and stockpiling tanks, missiles, and drones.
Putin has redirected Russia’s economy to fuel its military, aided by supplies from Iran and North Korea.
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
On the Ukraine front, Russian forces are advancing in south Donetsk, nearing strategic town Pokrovsk, a key supply hub and coal mining center.
Analysts suggest Putin aims to seize land before potential peace talks.
This is actually not true.
Article Five states that an attack on one becomes an attack on all. This wording is very specific, and they wrote it with this wording intentionally, to get people to be willing to agree to join.
It does not require counterattacks or declarations of war, merely that you consider an attack on a member an attack on you.
How do people respond to different sorts of attacks? How can they theoretically respond if they so choose? These are the kinds of games being played in Putin’s head.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm
As far as mutual defence treaties go Article 5 is worded very strongly and any nation failing to provide assistance to a member nation would find itself a pariah.
The chances that an article 5 event involving Russia doesn’t trigger full scale war are slim to none.
That’s a key phrase.
Pariah, possibly, but I don’t think a party like the AfD would particularly care about pariah status. I’ll also remind you that Article 5 has been triggered once, by George W Bush after 9/11. He then wanted to invade Iraq, and did not receive the full support of NATO members.
It’s just not that simple, unfortunately.
Yes because Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. You can’t make up an attack on a NATO member and then ask for the article 5 to be invoked.
Surely you see that?
Of course. But the principle remains that if your allies do not want to participate in your military action, they are not required to.
It’s the people in charge of that country that make the decision of how they want to respond to your Article Five invocation, based on their own values and priorities. That freedom of choice is fundamental to NATO.