Subject: Re: No sign of riots...
Yes, it's far less than in 1990 = because the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union broke up, and Poland and Czechoslovakia (to say nothing of East Germany) went from being Soviet satellite states to being independent (moving a possible front line with Russia a thousand miles away instead of being the German border). The Red Army went from having about 5 million active-duty forces in the mid-1980's to about a million today (well, fewer now). You need a military proportionate to the threats your country faces - and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany faced a different and lesser threat profile. Now it's Poland that's the front-line NATO country, and the Russia army is a fifth of what it was. So, yes - they still have a force that's plenty big enough to get involved in conflicts on the Continent, if it came to that.

Absolutely. The dynamic changed with the fall of the USSR. Arguably, Putin is trying to reestablish it...sort of a USSR 2.0. I saw a Frontline program about him, and evidently he was devastated when the USSR fell. He was a relatively new, young, idealistic KGB officer. Poland is now the front line, and Germany is way back in the 'rear area'. Poland's defense expenditures reflect that, even though they are part of NATO.

The whole point of mutual defense treaties and alliances is that no one nation has to spend on a military to deter a larger adversary. You have several smaller militaries which, when working in unison, form a much larger and more effective force. So no member of NATO has to be able to repel Putin, just the entirety of the NATO alliance does. And -at least for now- it can.

I have a lot of sympathy for the innocent civilians whom have died (or been made homeless, or maimed, etc). But they still want to fight. We're not forcing them, they want Russia out. So I have no ethical qualms about supplying them arms to accomplish this. If it also helps us, then it should be easier to sell to our voters. Which is an important factor in a democracy. And it does help us a great deal. The sad thing is that the RW propaganda machine is convincing people that we aren't getting anything out of it. That shouldn't matter on some level, but it is factually incorrect regardless.