saxitoxin wrote:And the puppet régimes you mention would be impossible to erect. If you take the Napoleonic wars or WWII as an example, the only parties willing to collaborate were those who ALREADY felt they were under foreign occupation and those who already desired to ignite revolution. This, however, is not the case in current day europe. We might disagree with our politicians on many points but current day europe has no desire for revolution whatsoever.
Russia doesn't need puppet regimes, it needs pacifist regimes. After a couple European cities get leveled it will sweep parties like Die Linke, the Greens, Corbynized Labour, and every other progressive party that has been a NATO critic into government on a "told you so" platform. European voters will see the old, conservative, pro-NATO parties as responsible for having led them into the furnace and will want an immediate change, like all war-weary people do. Once the political face of Europe has been changed through a quick and destabilizing war, and peace is re-established, then the SVR will have a safe cushion to begin
active measures.
You're living in a dream lad. History has already proven that humiliation and destruction create more civil hostilities towards the enemy, more than it inspires pacifism. I think Russia is a top class example of this. After the Russians/Soviets lost the cold war their nose was rubbed into their humiliation by the western world for years, which only strenthened Russia's nationalism to which Putin is now evidence. The same has happened over and over. The Prussians defeated the French in 1871 and earned french resentment of them for decades to come. It's not as easy as you think. War weariness and igniting resentment against active governments is something very difficult to pull of. The Americans have been doing it for decades and look where it got them with latin america.
saxitoxin wrote:The location of Stuttgart isn't really the point, I was saying that Europe's industrial capability as a war asset only matters in a war that lasts months or years. In a short war, civilian industrial power doesn't matter because it takes time to switch-over a factory from producing luxury sedans to producing tanks. There's not a switch in Merkel's office she can flip for "Tank Production Mode."
You also forget that even if a country gets hit severely, that will not immediately result in surrender. The british got bombed to pieces at the Battle of Britain, but did that mean the inferior british army just gave up? Napoleon's generals crushed Spanish armies over and over again and yet the Spaniards kept on fighting, eventually the Spanish war bankrupted the french empire. Countries simply don't surrender as easily as you seem to be assuming, especially when the commanders KNOW time is on their side and all they'd have to do is play for time.
Invasion can have the exact opposite effect of what you are claiming. War weariness is only something that comes after long periods of time. You can't expect an entire populus' opinions and emotions to change on a mere couple of days and weeks. In history war weariness often only came after years of war.
The only way the Russians can defeat europe is if it can divide europe from the start or if it uses nukes, but in the latter case it would just mean mutual assured destruction with at max a pyrrhical victory. Even the few nukes europeans hold are enough to blast away most of the Russian population, which is much more centralized around cities than the european populations.
