NATO is a defensive pact, if there was a NATO naval blockade there would already be war with NATO which almost certainly means escalation to nuclear war. that's my take anyway.
If NATO was directly part of the conflict, Turkey as a NATO member would be expected to be 100% on NATO's side, not "balancing" its allies against their enemy. If it was still trying to "balance" in that situation, it would either stop real fast or else end up expelled from NATO. In an actual shooting Russia-vs-NATO war, nobody would care about the legal niceties over whether NATO members can be expelled – the other members would just agree to do it, and the lawyers can debate the legality of it when the war is over.
NATO was made for this kind of mutual defense. Unfortunately, NATO is a massive political force that can also be abused for political ends, and no country wants to commit their armed forces to be used as pawns in someone else's war.
Small wars are better than big ones. NATO getting dragged into a big war wouldn't be better so the "at the expense" bit is doubtful, these things would still happen but be orders of magnitude worse.
that's as full scale as you can get, I mean if NATO gets involved then it would get nuclear, and in this case there would be no one left to discuss the issue...
Why? There is no EU based military coordination. Trade war EU, shooting war NATO. Balance of power games like missile shields in border states are in NATO's purview.
"An actual war breaking out, against the full Russian army, that NATO isn't directly involved in so it's fought in a very different way than NATO would, but in which a large part of the equipment is still provided by NATO" is quite different though.
NATO would have air superiority and not need as many stingers.
That’s a very good point. Perhaps non-NATO EU countries (Sweden, Finland, Ireland?) would even be best as NATO itself is such a flashpoint for the conflict.
reply