Europe, without waiting for Trump or Harris, is increasingly rebelling against Russia

Whatever happens in the US elections, Europeans will invest billions of euros along a 1,700-mile line between Norway on the Arctic Ocean and Romania on the Black Sea to defend themselves against Russia. They do this without waiting for Uncle Sam to protect them, and regardless of who wins today’s election in the United States.

While America is Ukraine’s greatest resource, the European Union is collectively a greater resource. With many Europeans feeling threatened by the continent’s biggest war since World War II, defense planners know they are backed by a $17 trillion continental economy – almost ten times the size of Russia.

The most proactive country is Poland. Last week, ground was broken for a 250-mile-long, $2.5 billion border wall with Russia and Belarus. When completed, President Trump’s planned border wall with Mexico could look like a fence.

Billed as Poland’s largest defense project since 1945, the four-year “Eastern Shield” will consist of moats, defenses, minefields and anti-tank obstacles. A series of base stations will house warning and tracking systems, some powered by artificial intelligence.

The shield will run the length of Poland’s 230-kilometer border with Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea. Barely the size of Delaware, Kaliningrad is home to the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic Fleet and arsenals containing vast amounts of Soviet-era war equipment. The Polish shield will also cover much of Poland’s 400-kilometer border with Belarus. This Russian satellite repeatedly tries to push thousands of Third World migrants into Poland.

On Kaliningrad’s northern border, Lithuania last month blocked key border river bridges with ‘Dragon’s Teeth’: tank traps made of cement pyramids. Mines are placed on other bridges over the border river, the Nemunas.

“Dragon’s teeth will eventually be supplemented with iron beams, which will be sunk and anchored,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas posted on Facebook last month with a photo of a blocked road bridge to Kaliningrad. “Reinforcements will be supported by firepower, should they be necessary, to stop and destroy the enemy.”

Eastern Europeans openly admit that they are learning from Ukraine’s mistakes. During the winter of 2021 and 2022, Ukrainians ignored clear warnings from Washington about an impending attack by Russia. On February 24, 2022, as Russian armored columns rolled north from Crimea, they crossed the five-mile-wide isthmus into mainland Ukraine, virtually opposite.

“If they attack even an inch of Lithuanian territory, the response will be immediate. Not on the first day, but in the first minute,” Poland’s former chief of general staff, Rajmund Andrzejczak, promised at the Defending Baltics conference in Vilnius last month. “We will hit all strategic targets within a radius of 300 kilometers. We will attack Saint Petersburg directly.”

To this end, he said, Poland is purchasing 800 American and South Korean cruise missiles with a range of up to 900 kilometers. “Russia must realize that an attack on Poland or the Baltic countries would also mean its end,” he said.

“That is the only way to deter the Kremlin from such aggression,” he added. To deter more Russian moves to the West, national governments and NATO are spending billions of dollars building a north-south string of three major land bases – in Finland, Lithuania and Romania.

Finland, which acceded to the North Atlantic Treaty last year, plans to build a new NATO headquarters next to the existing Finnish military command in Mikkeli. The new command must house an armored brigade with as many as 5,000 troops. Many soldiers will come from Sweden, a country that acceded to the treaty this spring.

Finland, a former Swedish colony, is officially bilingual with Finnish and Swedish as national languages. The base location will “send a direct message to Moscow,” Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen told reporters last month. Mikkeli is located 130 kilometers west of the Russian border and 320 kilometers from Saint Petersburg.

In August, Lithuania began building a $1.1 billion military base. This is intended to accommodate up to 4,000 combat-ready German troops. When the base is completed in three years, it will house the first permanent foreign deployment of the German military since World War II.

Lithuanian defense chief Raimundas Vaiksnoras said at the groundbreaking ceremony: “The brigade will work as a reassurance for our people, and as a deterrent, to drive out the Russians.” The base will be in Rudninkai, approximately halfway between Vilnius and the border with Belarus.

While Lithuania, with 2.9 million inhabitants, pays the construction costs, Germany has to pay for soldiers and equipment. Last summer, Germany asked parliament for $3 billion to order 105 Leopard 2 A8 tanks, partly to equip the Lithuanian base, Reuters reports. In view of the threats at sea, Germany last month new multinational naval headquarters in Rostock, designed to lead NATO operations in the Baltic Sea. Last month, Bruno Kahl, director of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, predicted that Moscow’s military could launch an attack on NATO “by the end of this decade at the latest.”

Also last month, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur and British Defense Minister John Healey signed a roadmap for military cooperation. Britain has deployed its 4th Brigade to the defense of Estonia and pledged to pre-position Challenger 3 battle tanks and other advanced military equipment.

To warn in advance of possible Russian movements to the west, front armies are coordinating the creation of a ‘drone wall’. “This is something completely new: a drone border from Norway to Poland, with the aim of protecting our border using drones and other technologies,” Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė told local news agency BNS. In addition to surveillance, the ‘wall’ will also use counter-drone technology to take down intruders.

In the largest project in the north-south line, Romania took the first step last spring with a 10-square-kilometer expansion to Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport, Romania’s closest air base to Russian-controlled Crimea. The new base is designed to house F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and will include two new runways, as well as housing, schools and a hospital for 10,000 NATO soldiers and their families.

The $2.5 billion project would become a Ramstein air base for Eastern Europe. “An American city will appear in Constanta County,” warns a Russian news site Reporter. Constanta is located opposite Crimea, 400 kilometers away on the Black Sea, and is Romania’s largest seaport. Faced with the Russian threat, two of these countries – Lithuania and Poland – are exceeding the Trump-imposed target of spending at least two percent of GDP on defense.

Despite this increase in spending, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary told European Union leaders on Sunday that Europe cannot bear the costs of supporting Ukraine in the event of a Trump presidency next year.

“We must realize that if there is a president for peace in America, which I not only believe in, but I also read the figures that way… if what we expect happens and America becomes pro-peace, Europe cannot continue to exist. pro-war,” said Mr Orban, who is a fan of Trump and Vladimir Putin. Europe, he said, “will not be able to bear the burden of war alone.”

This view is contradicted by the Foreign Minister in Berlin, Annalena Baerbock of Germany, Ukraine’s biggest resource from Europe. She arrived in Kiev yesterday for her eighth visit since the start of the war. On the eve of the US elections, she said of the Russian attack on Ukraine: “We are fighting this brutality with our humanity and support, so that Ukrainians can not only survive the winter, but also so that their country can survive. Because they also defend the freedom of all of us in Europe.”