Thread by @andrewmichta

🧵After several days in #Warsaw, and having just arrived in #Helsinki, one thing is clear: @NATO allies on the Eastern frontier get it when it comes to the nature of Russian threat. They're ready to do what is necessary to return NATO to its collective deterrence/defense role.1/9

The Poles and Finns understand the existential nature of the threat #Russia poses. If anyone should doubt that, ask yourself why #Poland joined @NATO in 1999, and why #Finland abandoned its neutrality to join the alliance after the Russian invasion of #Ukraine. They get it. 2/9

When it comes to understanding the nature of Russian predatory imperialism, #Poland & #Finland get it. Several years ago in Helsinki, a man driving me to the airport told me that there is an old saying: "A Russian is a Russian, even if you fry him in butter-tastes the same." 3/9

Over the past 2 yrs, as I've watched the devastation and murder that #Russia has visited on #Ukraine, I've lost all patience with the sophisticated meanderings of our national security intelligentsia about "end-states," "calibration" etc. when it comes to the war in Ukraine. 4/9

The war in #Ukraine has shown the Ukrainian nation's determination to fight for its sovereignty its very existence, but also has laid bare what the West has become. We live in a world where #Europe with its over half-a-billion people can't face up to #Russia of 140 million. 5/9

We live in a world where #EU's $20 trillion (nominal) GDP can't balance #Russia's 2 trillion. As I said recently to a European colleague (impolitely, I admit): "Europe's dilemma is that being fat is not the same as being strong." It's not about the numbers, GDP or population. 6/9

It's about political will. The Roman empire didn't implode because it had a higher standard of living than the barbarians; it imploded because it had no more willpower to fight, its borders were open, and the barbarians roamed free across the realm ready to attack and pillage.7/9

The democratic West will lose unless it wakes up to the enduring realities of hard power. We don't live in a "rules-based international order." The international system remains anarchic and is based on self-help. There is no substitute for an economy based on manufacturing.8/9

Unless we have an industrial economy that can produce weapons/munitions at speed and scale, and a military with adequate reserves, we will lose. I recall a line from the Cold War: "If you don't feed your army, you will feed somebody else's." It's time for a reality check. 9/9