And the same regime definetly has the power to rule territory in which it's despised by the majority of the population. /s

War is very expensive though. It makes sense to spend fraction of that on a deterrent and that's one thing EU does really well is to hedge all investments for overall stability. This is more of the same.

Defend the continent from people whose countries are becoming unlivable, and from missing out on all the resources we might want to procure.

I'm afraid we've really entered into a new era of increasing aggression and warfare.

Well, kinda, yeah. The only reason that has been a stalemate is that Europe mustered a bunch of support for Ukraine, at great expense. They’ve needed to gather and regather the will to spend money on this throughout, if you’ve been paying attention you’ve seen it.

Now I totally object to someone saying they need to dismantle their social programs to dump all that money into warfare, but neither should we say there is no threat at all.

What exactly will happen if there are suddenly "separatists" in Narva?