This is already ongoing - only a week ago I spotted the three P-8 Poseidon’s of the USN at Keflavik and the Spanish F-101 Alvaro de Bazan in Reykjavik harbour and then she popped up nearby as we crossed to Greenland Sea. These waters are heavily patrolled by Russian submarines and it’s an ongoing NATO priority to keep an eye on them.
NATO and Ukraine however - still seems fragile to me.
‘Inevitable membership’ is the goal, but Hungary stands in the way and it’s never going to be an acceptable outcome for Russia - and if there’s to be peace at some point, the only way Russia will accept is if it has no choice.
Even if that sage is reached, it will be a continuous running sore Russia won’t like living with, even more so if it was effectively coerced in some peace deal.
I know what Ukraine and NATO really want is Ukraine inside the warm and protective embrace of the community of freedom, but achieving that goal seems almost impossible right now.
The other issue of course is the Nuclear Deterrent. America’s nuclear umbrella must remain universal. Britain and France can wreak havoc on Russia even with their small arsenals. Each could wipe out greater Moscow and St.Petersburg and more besides - Russia would never be the same but the mentality is based not on destructive capabilities and costs but on numbers of weapons. Russia has 6500, France & UK not even 500 between them and probably no more than 150-200 deployed jointly at any one time. And that would be generous. So is it a convincing enough reason to keep Russia at bay? To prevent nuclear blackmail? We just don’t know. So the US umbrella needs to be believed and real.
And that lead to a quite surprising development. The US is to place conventional long range Tomahawks and eventually hypersonics, in Germany with some haste. Those Tomahawks could be nuclear armed if it became necessary.
So the world is still changing at frightening pace. And just in case you thought China wasn’t deeply involved, its military exercises in Belarus were a clear statement of what they could potentially see themselves doing in the not overly distant future. Small now, China always starts that way. The end goal is not just a message of capability but of intent. Treat it as the threat it was meant to be seen as.

‘The Analyst’ MilStratOnX