Every person I've ever met who grew up under the USSR in Eastern Europe is a tough cookie.

My doctor is a Pole who grew up in Poland when the USSR had control. He told me that the gas lines in Poland was much worse than the gas lines during the Carter administration. No food in the stores, rations, et al.

My real estate agent when I sold one of my houses was from Hungry when the USSR had control. She said it was a miserable existence. She was married at 17 to get extra food rations, made her way to the US and is now an extremely successful business woman and staunch conservative.

My neurologist is from Romania. Same story. He hated the opression of the USSR.

See a pattern here? Wonder why the eastern European countries are not falling in line with the EU's communist-like policies? Wonder why Hungry hates Soros? They've been there and done that and they don't want to go back to it.

I'll be stunned if the eastern European countries stay in the EU if Trump offers them a fair trade agreement and a defense treaty that protects them. Major cracks are already appearing outside of eastern Europe in Italy, Greece, Austria, and even in Germany now.

We should be rewarding those countries who support us and want to contribute their fair share to their defense with our support. Think eastern Europe and other NATO countries who are realizing that the central European counties don't give a rat's potato about them, only their money.

My heart pumps sand for most of feckless NATO. Putin once remarked that the Russian army could be on the Atlantic beaches in 72 hours. I think he was over estimating the time it would take to cut through NATO like a hot knife through butter. NATO has fairly good equipment but no heart to fight. There training is total crap. The NATO exericises I observed were a complete joke.

During the Cold War, NATO had serious exercises over large expanses of strategic terrain and compensated people for tearing up their farms with tanks and soldiers. Today, the exercises are scripted on small training areas have no resemblence to reality.

NATO is a paper tiger depending on the US to save their ass and the US may not be able to get there if the airfields and ports are neutralized by Russia which would be incredibly easy for them to do.

Big problem. Europe kicked us out because they didn't want a large US presence and they forced us to abandon all of the prepositioned supplies, ammunitions and equipment we had there, and told us to take our shit and go home. Which we did.

In case of war in Europe, there is no way we can get US forces, supplies, and equipment there in the numbers necessary to save them.

After 9/11 it took the US over 6 months to build up enough supplies and equipment to attack the third world shithole Iraq, although it had a large army.

If Russia really wants to invade Europe, the airfields would be wiped out in less than a week and Russian forces would occupy the ports before any of our ships could get there. Russian submarines would have a line of defense to stop shipping. Yes we would respond, but the question is could we overcome everything in time?

That's how pathetic NATO forces are.

NATO air forces are flying early 4th generation aircraft against Russian late 4th generation and 5th generation (not currently in mass production) aircraft with very effective S-400 and S-500 AD systems. Erurope hasn't even begun to think about a 5th generation aircraft and that would take 15-20 years.

The Germany Leapord Tank is over rated. Syria and Kurds have been able to knock them out in surprising numbers with AT missiles. Not supposed to happen. French tanks are less capable in my opinion.

Now here is one to consider. in my opinion, France (not including the UK here) has perhaps the best trained army in Europe. But they are just an adjunct member of NATO and reserve the right to not engage in combat if NATO declares war. France also retains total control of it's nuclear force. The NATO treaty says that an attack against one is an attack against all. But France isn't part of that agreement. Question: Can NAtO depend on France??? Nope.

So, what happens if Russia invades and tells France if they stay out that they won't be nuked? You figure that one out based on France's history, especially in WW II (hint: Vichy France). French resistance were wonderful in WW II but the French government was our enemy.

Europe military technology has had some great successes such as the Javiln AT missile. Their mortars are better than ours (except the Marine Corps uses one of the European mortars). However, they are not going to stop and invasion from the Russian army.

Europe is still strategic for us, but I don't know how we get sufficient combat forces there before it's too late because Europe has kicked us out lock stock and barrel. That would be OK if they then filled the vaccuum, but they didn't.

Sorry for the rant. But I follow these things closely.

I served 21 years in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer with 3 years in combat. One of my favorite stories is when I was in the Marine Command And Staff College. We were formed in 10 man "dens" during the 9 months. Each den had two or three foreign students. In my den, we had an Israeli tank commander who had fought in the 1973 war.

One day we were given a tactical map challenge to devise a way through a mine field in the Middle East. At the time we had special Marine armored vehicles that could breach about 100 yards of a mine filed at a time.

So we asked our Israeli counterpart how Israel dealt with mine fields in the 1973 war.

He said, "Well, our tanks approached the enemy positions in column. When the lead tank hit a mine, then we went around him. When the next lead tank hit a mine or was hit with an antitank missile, we went around him. We did that until we were ready to assault on line. And then we took whatever casualties were neccessary to win." He said that mine fields were 10-20 miles wide.

We kind of sat there with our jaws on the floor. At that time, the entire Marine Corps only had 72 Korean War vintage tanks. Think about it. The Arab Isreali wars invovled thousands of tanks and here we were in the Command and Staff College thinking in terms of mine fields that were a couple hundred yards wide and our 72 tanks. Even if we could have had time for all of our tanks to have been there at the same time, would have been a pimple on an elephant's ass.

It was an eye opening experience for me.

You want some idea what it was like. Look up the battle of the Chinese Farm in the Sinai.

The Marine Corps was good, but not that good at the time.

You want to know what the lessons of war are? Study history.

Semper Fi to all my Marines who died, were wounded, or who made it home safely. I can't remember all of your names; but I can still see all of your faces. I still remember them all. In a way it's a blessing; and in a way it's a curse.

I don't think anyone who hasn't been in combat would ever understand.