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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Your problem was probably the "only" part: until recently Russia was a pretty credible threat to many Eastern European countries, especially if the actual commitment of the US to NATO operations in some small EE European country was less than guaranteed (and if one views the US as a threat to Europe it logically follows that the US' willingness to defend Europe is firm in words only).
Further, the US has already been seeing Europe (especially the EU) as an adversary and attacking Europe for more than a decade - just look at how funded Brexit in the UK (most notably via Cambridge Analitica), how Americans were caugh eavesdropping on Merkel's phone or just what came out in the Snowden Revelation that related to Europe - it's just that it was all in the Trade, Political, Espionage and Social domains and without any territorial claims.
It's the, under Trump, territorial claims and pivoting towards considering Military options as possible, that is novel.
Not to trivialize the threat from Russia, but as we have seen they have a very hard time taking territory from Ukraine. Of course, the US has supplied Ukraine with arms and intelligence which has helped Ukraine in that war, but it's not the decisive factor here. The truth is that Russia does not have the strength to stand up to the EU, that's why I used the "credible" signifier.
And I don't want to make excuses for Putin, but economic cooperation between Russia and the EU might have worked to defuse tensions if the USA wasn't playing their "grand chessboard" all over the world, including in Europe.
I think that after the takeover of Crimea in 2014 and the direct Russian interference in two Ukranian regions were it pushed for their separation from Ukraine and merging with Russia as well as its long ongowing interference in Ukranian politics, it's reasonable to think that the Russian actions were mainly driven by its leader's desire for the resources of Ukraine, namelly the Gas Fields in the Adriatic and its highly productive agricultural lands.
Russia has a long tradition of imperialism, most notably displayed in recent History when it transformed into the Soviet Union and annexed quite a number of independent countries as well as taking control of some more.
I'm not saying that America has not interfered and doesn't have influence in the region, I'm saying that the tradition of Russian autocratic leaders is to take other people's shit if they think they can get away with it, and given the size and military capabilities of Russia, that would make Russia under Putin a credible threat for any small nation bordering it.
I mean, just ask the Finnish: a good chunk of their country on the side of the Russian border even has their main roads going parallel to the border and very few roads in the a direction from the border towards the center of Finland, exactly to make it harder for any Russian invasion force.
Ukraine, which is one of the largest nations of Europe by territory and population (about as many people as the UK, but much larger) barelly avoided a loss by decapitation in the first week of the invasion and had Russia invaded a smaller country, they would would probably have succeeded.
I'm not saying that in Europe Russia would be a very credible threat to the likes of Poland, I'm saying it would be a crdible threat to the likes of Estonia and Latvia.