Yves here. Because I have been devoting so much attention to the Iran war, I’ve been able to monitor what is going on with the Ukraine war, and the bizarre threats from many UK and EU leaders when they lack the means to do much, out of the corner of one eye. It would take at least a decade to muster even sort-of a serious threat to Russia (ex nukes), given their hollowed-out manufacturing and high energy costs and Iran-war-related commodity shortage a big headwind to reindustrialization. On top of that, as Stanislav Krapivnik has explained long-form, nominally European weapons depend on critical US-supplied components. Krapivnik has estimated it would take at least a decade, and more like two, for the EU to design and build truly indigenous weapons systems. Oh, and how cooperative will China be in providing the needed chips and materials if the EU gets even uglier vis-a-vis Russia? Having said that, even a weak party in a geographically favorable position can cause a lot of harm.…