this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
820 points (97.0% liked)
Political Memes
9860 readers
1632 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The cognitive dissonace hits hard on this one, how dare you join a defensive pact!
They assert it is not a defensive pact, and that NATO will come for them as soon as they are powerful enough.
Sadly, that's not really something that can be disproven, so it's great propaganda.
People treated Russia as a superpower. They fucked up so bad they got successfully counter invaded by the country they were invading. They don't have 5th Gen fighters and they can't produce modern tanks. They're refitting older tanks and giving troops fucking golf carts. They've depleted a ton of soviet stock and their air defense can't even keep their oil infrastructure from exploding once a week. Prigozin nearly marched directly to Moscow with no resistance.
If NATO was planning to invade, they now factually know that Russia is a paper tiger and could take Moscow in days.
Also if NATO somehow forced putin to annihilate his own armor stocks and troops, then they are doing 5,000 iq illuminati bullshit and there's nothing to be done anyway. I tag those people as NATO propagandists because they're bigger western chauvinists than they even wish I was lol.
Which, as I understand the Russian military relationship with the Kremlin, came as a surprise to even Putin and would certainly incite some panic, renewed propaganda efforts, and saber rattling like we've been seeing him do lately.
And still: Europe is increasing it's military capabilities. How does that fit together? Genuine question.
Because of decades of chronic underspending on the military, as governments convinced themselves that a land war in Europe was unthinkable.
But "chronic underspending" doesn't fit together with "could take Moscow in days".
Paper Tiger is the wrong word. Russia has a dangerous military but is in no way the powerhouse it portrayed itself before invading Ukraine. They had built a small core of a modern professional military that they used a couple of times to great effect but they acted like they'd done that to the whole military. Also, some parts of the Russian military ARE excellent: their electronic warfare capabilities are top notch. They also maintain advanced espionage capabilities.
The irony of course being that NATO doesn't particularly have any interest in vast expanses of undeveloped potato fields giving away to frozen tundra, so they never had any impetus to invade. But Putin is now giving them one and at the same time demonstrating why the invasion would most likely be successful.
To be fair, Russia has geological challenges to maintaining an effective air defense; especially in the age of drones. It's one of the reasons they couldn't bring their whole air force to bear in the invasion of Ukraine: they had a huge amount of country to maintain coverage over.
Lack of evidence isn't evidence.
Well, NATO hasn't carried out a single defensive operation in history, and has carried out (officially like in Libya or unofficially like in Iraq) several invasion wars.
You need evidence to disprove something.
Not legally. That's why you always hide the body.
Indeed, it's not something that can be disproven, as in it's nonsense that shouldn't be entertained in rational discourse.
NATO is definitely taking its time then, it's been around since 1949. Also the strategy of not ramping up military production until after your enemy attacks a neighbouring country, for the second time, seems like a risky one.