While Speaker Mike Johnson thinks the threat from Russia is all fun and games, in Europe we now see Germany deploying 5,000 troops to Lithuania in its first permanent deployment since 1945.
Understand that for eight decades, Germany had zero intentions of becoming a dominant military power, but Putin gives Europeans no choice.
@randahl You know what is between Lithuania, Poland and Baltic Sea. Russians have gathered number of rockets there, including nuclear, which can reach Berlin in minutes. If Germany is any serious about their security, they have plans, and resources to neutralize the danger within hours, in case Putin decides to escalate to war against NATO. The fact they have chosen Lithuania as the place to be does not surprise me.
Truth be known (and it will be, if the Ukrainians can't hold the line by themselves), we need our troops over there, too.
It may not have occurred to some people that WWIII has already started. Russian is at a nadir, right now. Defeating them now can be limited in geographic scope. As the battlefield enlarges, so does the task. And looking at the NATO maps, there are cracks on our side that will rip wide open, if not dealt with soon...Hungary and Slovakia, on Ukraine's western flank. You may not be paying them attention when the magnifying glass is elsewhere, but they've already become putative 'Soviet' states, while NATO members.
@skydog I agree. But what you and I want is not how democracies work. In the West it appears, the house needs to be burned half to the ground before everyone can agree, putting out the fire might be a good idea.