January 8, 2025: Threats to America come in many forms. Some are barely visible, like foreign hackers stealing data, including details on the lives of millions of Americans . This includes employment and financial data as well as medical records. Then there are the international threats, like the possibility of declared or undeclared war with foreigners. The United States declared war on terror in 2001 and since then many victories have been won in what turns out to be an endless war.

Other overseas threats involve nations and coalitions. American politicians are warning their European NATO allies that Europe must assume more responsibility for their own defense. Since the 1950s most European nations have been content with allowing the United States to carry most of the defense load in terms of specialized equipment and combat ready troops as well as warships and combat aircraft. The Americans spend three percent of their GDP on defense each year and European nations agreed to spend two percent. The United States continues to spend three percent but not all of the European nations met their two percent goal. Poland and Finland, which border Russia, did meet the two percent goal but NATO nations further west, like Germany, are only spending 1.5 percent.

This disparity in defense spending was ignored by the United States until that actually a war when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. That was the first major war since 1945 between nations with modern armed forces. This is called a near peer war and it’s costing the United States over a hundred billion dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine. The Americans have spent more, so far, on Ukrainian aid than was spent on the 2001-2010 war in Afghanistan.

No good deed goes unpunished as Russia threatens to inflict some punishment on European nations that support Ukraine, which is inspiring the NATO nations to at least consider trying to up their defense spending and reach the two percent goal. Right now American defense spending exceeds that of Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine. Currently the United States is spending $877 billion a year on defense, which just about exceeds the combined defense spending of every other nation on the planet. Considering this situation, the Americans feel justified in demanding that their European allies meet the two percent of GDP goal they agreed to. The continued fighting in Ukraine has proved to be an incentive to meet the two percent demand.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is another example of Russia reviving the Cold War that ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then Russia continued getting involved in wars. For example, Russian operations in Syria caused Russian defense spending to increase to $48 billion in 2015. That was 4.2 percent of its 2015 GDP. Military spending declined to $45 billion or four percent of GDP in 2016. Russia was forced to cut defense spending sharply in 2017 and 2018 because of continued low oil prices and economic sanctions imposed because of Russian aggression against Ukraine that began in 2014. As a result, in 2017 Russian defense spending fell to about 3.2 percent of GDP and in 2018 it was 2.9 percent of GDP. There it remained until the eve of the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022.

The United States is not directly threatened by these Russian problems, but indirectly it lead the United States to increase defense spending and continue sending weapons to Ukraine just in case.

Low oil prices since 2014 have done serious damage to the Russian economy and Ukraine-related sanctions made it more difficult to cope. To put it all in perspective, note that this lost income means Russia’s GDP dropped from $2.1 trillion to $1.1 trillion in ten years. This was a combination of low oil prices for the major Russian export and the ruble losing about half its value compared to the dollar, which is the currency of international trade, as a result of that and the sanctions. The impact of all this meant Russia dropped from being the sixth largest economy in the world to 14th place. The United States is still in first place and that bothers Russia a great deal. They see Ukraine as a threat to Europe as well as Russia because the war has disrupted Russian oil and natural gas shipments to Western Europe. Sanctions against Russia have crippled their economy. Even their oil exports are forbidden. The Russians get around that by smuggling the oil out and selling it for lower prices to cover the cost of smuggling

Russia believes many of their problems were caused by American economic, military and political policies. Russia wants revenge against Europe and the United States. To Russia, American actions have caused the revival of a police state over the last decade. The average Russian does not feel free to openly protest. The senior bureaucracy is another matter and the economic experts and heads of the security services are obviously unhappy with the situation, though they are generally safe from a wide scale purge because they have kept the economy and government viable, something their Soviet predecessors could not do. The Russian government is running out of economic options and blames the Americans for becoming the major enforcer of the sanctions. This resentment makes Russians more likely to encourage subtle terror attacks against the United States or Americans overseas.

American and NATO analysts believe that Russia will continue to be a threat even after the Ukraine War is over. The invasion of Ukraine proved that the post-World War II creators of NATO were correct. While Russia was threatening from 1947 to 2021, that 74 year Cold War turned hot in 2022 when Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, a former secret police officer, gained control of Russia in 1999 and made no secret of his desire to reassemble the Soviet Union. This would involve persuading or conquering the other fourteen nations that came to life in 1991 when the Soviet Union was disbanded.

The largest of the fifteen states was the Russian Federation. The next largest was Ukraine and that made Ukraine the first nation Russia needed to subjugate and absorb. The 1991 Soviet Union had 300 million people and by 2022 Russia had 142 million and Ukraine 46 million. None of the other post-Soviet states wanted to rejoin the Soviet Union.

While the United States doesn’t want to fight Russia, it was willing to supply Ukraine with weapons, munitions and economic aid to defeat the Russian invaders. Russia, frustrated that its conventional forces could not conquer Ukraine, threatened to use its nuclear weapons. That was not a real threat because three NATO nations had nuclear weapons. In addition to the United States, France and Britain have nuclear weapons that could be delivered by aircraft or missiles fired from submarines. The nuclear threat was a phantom and Russia insisted its conventional forces would keep fighting in Ukraine until the United States and NATO got tired of the expense of supporting Ukraine. NATO nations believed Russia would give up first because the war was making life difficult for the Russian people, who were increasingly hostile to the war. Russian leader Vladimir Putin knows that the people will suffer in silence. As long as their leader Putin supports the war, the people will reluctantly go along,

Some NATO members are suggesting that NATO members be allowed to send troops to assist the Ukrainians in expelling the Russian forces. It is pointed out that the NATO coalition has a population of nearly a billion people. Adding Ukraine would make it a billion. Russia does not want Ukraine in NATO but Ukraine sees NATO membership as its only long term protection from Russia. The Americans will say they will protect some foreign nations but rarely make good on that. A 1994 treaty had Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons in return for Russian promises to forever respect Ukrainian independence. Britain and the U.S. pledged to assist Ukraine if Russia violated the treaty. This is why the NATO threat to send troops to aid Ukraine is frightening. Russia reneged on the 1994 promises and the Americans and British agreed to support Ukraine if that happened. It happened and Russia finds itself at war with the largest economic coalition on the planet. On the other side of this the American people feel threatened by some kind of backlash. That backlash sometimes comes in the form of Islamic terrorist attacks on the United States, as happened in New Orleans on the first day of 2025. Americans get nervous about rare attacks like that, fearing that it will spread but it never does. It’s the fear in the mind that is the biggest threat to Americans.