Gabrielius Landsbergis🇱🇹@GLandsbergis
My 3 quick points on the European reaction to the US call for help in the Strait of Hormuz:
1. Western militaries are not ready to deal with the low-cost autonomous war fighting revolution that accelerated after 2022.
Iran, having helped Russia for those four years, had a chance to develop, upgrade and adapt its knowledge and technology to the latest standards. The US, even with the strongest fleet in the world, is not using it to unblock the Strait. Why? Because it might be vulnerable to drone, speedboat, underwater attacks. What do Europeans have to offer to defend against this? Very little.
2. Trust erosion. Europeans were not involved in the preparatory stage of the war.
They are kept in the dark about the goals of the war as it stands currently. Therefore many in Europe ask themselves a question—is it possible that the US might suddenly withdraw, leaving Europeans and Gulf countries to deal with the aftermath? Given recent experience, that scenario is not as far-fetched as Washington might like us to think.
3. And lastly - the confusion of the US global strategy.
The National Security Strategy, as well as a number of US official statements, stresses that European focus now should be devoted towards deterring Russia in the East, while the US deals with threats elsewhere. Three weeks into this new conflict—and the discussion now revolves around the question of European willingness to help the US in Iran, which is... elsewhere. With the US clearly distracted and their ammunition reserves shrinking, Russia’s ambition to test NATO could have only grown.European involvement in Iran, before a rebuilding of at least some of the lost trust, and without stronger US security guarantees for Europe and Ukraine, might be a very dangerous endeavour.