West tacitly expects war in Ukraine to last for several more years

The key word here is not "attack" but "may". In a few years.

This automatically implies the expectation that Russia will emerge from the current war (a) intact, and (b) having retained its aggressiveness and military power.

“This automatically means that the authors of such forecasts do not expect this war to end with Ukraine's return to the 1991 borders. After all, as long as Russia remains aggressive and militarily powerful, it will not allow this to happen.”

Accordingly, the prediction that Russia "may" attack a NATO country in a few years means a tacit expectation that the current war will either continue for a few more years (and will not prevent Russia from maintaining a sufficient army for new attacks) or end in a truce in favor of Russia (with Russia retaining at least some of the seized territories), but will definitely not end in the defeat of the Russian army.

Is this really the case?

I'm afraid that the likelihood of such a scenario is not only high, but is increasing.

“Because all European countries taken together will not give us enough weapons to not only fight back, but to inflict a decisive defeat on the Russian army. Locally, yes; strategically, no. They simply do not have that much.”

The only country in the world that has as many weapons as we need for this is the United States. But they won't give us that much under either Trump or Biden, albeit for different reasons. Although one reason is common and quite real: the desire not to even come close to the risk of a "third world war." For them, the most desirable scenario is to "drown" Russia economically, as the USSR was once "drowned", and provoke something like a repeat of the Gorbachev "perestroika" scenario (yes, I know that this is very unrealistic; but I'm talking about something else now).

There is only one good news in this: many people do not want Ukraine to suffer a strategic defeat either (and Macron was the first to speak out loud about this seriously, not just at the level of empty rhetoric).

Well, we don't have much room for maneuver. We have to follow the principle of "do what you have to do and let things happen."

P.S. To all those who predict a Russian attack on a NATO country in the near future, I would like to remind you of a simple truth: Russia will only do so if it believes that it will strategically lose in the long game. That is, for the same reasons that Germany started World War I. Otherwise, Putin will leave NATO alone, put pressure on Ukraine, and wait.

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.