Did they though? They knew Putin wouldn't allow a NATO membership to come through.
I'm more worried that Russia is gonna fuck with us (Sweden) if we join NATO. This is going to be a deciding factor for my vote, I do not want to be a part of big brother USAs extended military arm, I want us to stay true to what we've been doing for the last 200 years, staying neutral and peaceful. If we chose a side we're in the same boat as everyone else.
>I want us to stay true to what we've been doing for the last 200 years, staying neutral and peaceful. If we chose a side we're in the same boat as everyone else.
Good to know we can count on you Sweden if we get invaded by Russia. Glad that you also stayed neutral and peaceful during WWII. Not really sure how you managed that, seems really hard.
There's quite an obvious difference between helping your neighboring country (like we did in WW2) and joining a war pact that infuriates the enemy even further.
- Sweden, the non-aggressive Scandinavian country...
I guess the option of joining one of the gangs has it's merits, like having military moved towards your border. Yes the article says the video is unconfirmed so I guess it's just speculation. But when the war breaks out in our countries I won't have any pleasure in the "I told you so".
So the last 200 years of peace doesn't account for any kind of stability? I highly doubt Russia would start messing with us out of nowhere. If we start talking about joining NATO though, then he's got the same leverage on us as Ukraine.
But it wasn't out of nowhere, Putin didn't want Ukraine to join with the west, so he took action.
I'm all with Ukraine but can we at least realize that the war didn't just fall out of the sky, that there's been some back and forth political stuff that lead up to this. Maybe something like joining NATO, the EU or maybe because he just woke up one day and said "I feel like I want Ukraine to be Russian".
It's been brewing since before Crimea, and I don't see Putin eyeing Gotland that hard yet.
> maybe because he just woke up one day and said "I feel like I want Ukraine to be Russian".
There was progression of Putin theories. He expressed some of them in written form, others in speeches. Both about Ukraine and about Russian place in a world he envisions.
Zelenskiy's #1 campaign promise was to negotiate peace with Russia - meaning fulfilling Ukraine's part of the Minsk accords, perhaps with some concessions. Overall, about 65% of the votes went to parties supporting it. ~72% if Donbas is included. There was a clear democratic mandate to do it
To his credit, he did try to set things in motion. Mere days after, ultra-nationalist right-wing militias threw violent protests, in which they tossed grenades at police, killing three, calling Zelenskiy a traitor and threatening to take his life if peace is enacted. The peace negotiator was arrested for treason. Zelenskiy backed down, reneged on his #1 campaign promise, and started ramping up the tensions. As a result, the polling results for his party dropped from ~50% to mere 17% at the onset of the war. We don't know what happened behind the doors to cause such a 180 turn, but it sure wasn't pretty
Those of us from Poland definitely appreciate Sweden's "neutral and peaceful" stance, which meant selling resources to Germany so that the Nazis could slaughter our ancestors.
I'm sorry that you're finding the truth inconvenient, but yes, those who can't bring themselves to outright condemnation of the war — which includes torture, rape of women and children, mass destruction of civilian homes, war crimes, and genocide — are also morally reprehensible.
Ukraine didn't join NATO. It wasn't on the brink of joining NATO. It got invaded anyway. So if Finland, say, joins NATO and gets invaded, did it get invaded because it joined? Or would it have been invaded anyway?
I also condemn war. I don't want there to be war. But given the crazy man in the east, I'd rather have people to help me shoot back if it came to that.
As I explained to you in another comment[0], it's not about NATO expansion.
Furthermore, your pacifism is exactly what fuels Russia's aggression.
If you want fewer people to die and fewer nations to be subject to terrorism of the kind that Russia is subjecting Ukraine to, then you should be in favour of Russia's swift and crushing military defeat on the battlefield.
You can't appease a tyrant by singing kumbaya and cowering in the corner. Hitler and his buddies had to die for peace in Europe to be restored. The current administration of the Russian Federation is no different.
> to trigger further actions to be taken by the crazy man to the east
You are trying to argue that Putin is both crazy and rational in the same line.
> I condemn war, I don't want there to be a war, therefore I don't want more countries to join NATO as it would be another reason for conflict.
If someone wants conflict, anything will be a valid pretext for that conflict and if not one will be conveniently provided by a false flag operation. Standard Russian playbook since time immemorial.
> If war broke out here because we joined NATO, what would you say then?
The chances of that are roughly just as large as the chances of war breaking out if Sweden did not join NATO. But if you did join NATO then at least you would not be in the position that Ukraine finds itself in today.
Neutrality is a great thing, right up to the point where you are attacked yourself, and then everybody remembers that you took great pains to be neutral. I assume you do expect the rest of Europe and NATO to come and aid Sweden if it does get attacked?
Considering Sweden being completely surrounded by Nazi-held territory and that of a potentially hostile Nazi ally (Finland), what was it supposed to do exactly? Be "brave" while it gets dismembered just like Poland? They made a pragmatic accommodation towards what they considered the lesser evil for their territory, and on the balance, it at least let that country harbor hundreds of thousands of refugees in relative safety during the course of the war.
Arguably, Sweden's bravery could have only extended as far as banning the sale of iron ore which would have halted the Nazi war machine and brought the war to a close in a matter of months, saving tens of millions of lives.
It's wild to me that any Swede could be proud of this part of their history.
Had Sweden banned the sale of vital iron ore to the Reich, Hitler would have had it invaded in weeks, full stop, and his occupation would have been vengeful in typical Nazi style. The country was able to stay neutral largely by luck, unlike Switzerland, which the Nazis knew to be a very difficult and painful invasion target (aside from it being convenient as a money haven for stolen wealth). The Swedish government was pragmatic without a doubt, but given their geographical circumstances, I hardly see how they had much choice.
Since banning or not banning sales of ore would have in either case not stopped rapid and raveneous Nazi acquisition of said ore, allowing it, staying neutral and uninvaded and thus harbouring thousands of refugees was the better outcome in a sea of moral greyness. One wonderful example, the smuggling of Denmark's entire Jewish population to Sweden during the early days of the war.
Yes, they did. Russia did not, tho. For the record, Putin did not wanted to allow EU membership either and meddled into Ukraine politics, eu politics and American politics constantly.
The principal thing here however is, Putin thinking he can rule other countries and nations is the core issue here.
I agree that Putin is the issue, but he's been quite clear of his demands and that there will be repercussions if not upheld.
Since Sweden hasn't ever been part of NATO nor felt the need to, why now all of a sudden when that was part of what triggered the conflict putting an entire country into ruins.
Not to say you're wrong, but what says you're right other than this one article? There's usually more sides to something than a coin. The US just needs a terror threat to invade countries for oil, so I see that it might just be an excuse.
I still don't wanna join NATO, that's a reason for Putin to take Gotland from us.
Did you actually read the article? Have you actually listened to Putin's speeches which reveal his true intentions? Do you actually understand the ideology that motivated the invasion?
You appear to be trying to take a reasoned position after taking the Kremlin's arguments at face value, which is a pretty big mistake.
> he's been quite clear of his demands and that there will be repercussions if not upheld
Ah yeah, the crazy logic of every abusive ex. “Don’t you dare looking at anyone else or else I snap your neck” Very persuasive.
Ukraine was nowhere close to be even considered for EU or NATO membership. So what exactly “triggered” the conflict? Other than the fact that Putin decided to send in troops to grab larger and larger pieces of Ukraine?
Yes. People talk about about empathy, but it is the rarest thing in humanity - the ability to see things from your opponent's point of view and then predict their response.
Ukrainians did use "the ability to see things from your opponent's point of view and then predict their response." That's why they prepared for this war and knew that it will start about 2021-2022. They already knew in 2019[0].
- the country can be trusted to not invade you if you try to accommodate.
- sees willingness to accommodate as weakness to be exploited by pushing boundaries again and again.
That being said, if defensive military is others is likely to result in war initiated by the other country, the safe bet is that no amount of diplomatic relations will protect you.
Well, the purpose of NATO is to enrich defence contractors. LM, Boeing, BAE... Each new member country is an empty powder keg, ready to be filled with fighter jets and tanks. We're all like sticks of dynamite connected by fuse wires. It's great fun.
Sweden and Finland already have quite capable military. Joining NATO isn't some historical shift in their positions, it's more an insurance, made cheap by Russia's failure to conquer Ukraine.
I don't see why you're presenting those options as mutually exclusive. When you have an aggressive imperialist neighbour which has expressed interest in your territory, you both try to strengthen diplomatic relations with them to try to avoid a confrontation, but you may also wish to enter into defensive military alliances to be prepared if diplomacy fails. Anything else would honestly be irresponsible.
Which one would you choose if you were Britain in 1938?
Also curious about "strengthening diplomatic relations" with a country whose soldiers enthusiastically commit "bottom-up" mass murder and rape while its government joyfully obliterates civilian targets like apartment blocks as a matter of deliberate "top-down" policy. Like, how does it work? Do you simply ignore reality while holding said relations and focus on the positives?
The interesting and difficult thing to process here is whether this is a provocation without turning it into 'whatabboutism'
John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
Joining NATO means millitary bases, troop exercises, and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
From that perspective, avoiding the issue of morality and legality, it seems like a terrifying step towards war between nuclear-armed powers.
> John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
There is nothing difficult about it. It is not provocation, full stop. For that matter, Russia claimed Ukrainians talking about Russia atrocities are provocation too and that was nonsense too.
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> Joining NATO means millitary bases, troop exercises, and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
Sure. And Russia has army, millitary bases, does troop exercises and have both defensive and offensive missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
> From that perspective, avoiding the issue of morality and legality, it seems like a terrifying step towards war between nuclear-armed powers.
No, it is actual step towards safer world. Finland does not have to wait till Russia tries to invade them.
> John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
Stupid analogy from a stupid man. For this analogy to have any merit, the US would have to be a dictatoriship that has committed genocide against Canadians, is currently committing in occupied territories, and has declared destruction of Canada and Canadian nation as its goal. But the US is not an existential threat to Canada, hence no need for an alliance with China.
What we learned in this "special operation" is that NATO expansion is just a convenient excuse for Russia and that they constantly lie and lie and lie about lying.
The result is that their promises about not attacking someone if "they stay out of NATO" are worthless crap and the only way for smaller European countries to stop them is with force of arms and help of a big military alliance.
Sure, in essence of fairness, US would probably be pissed if China would make Canada allies, but in all fairness, you also need to see that there's no US missiles butchering children in Mexican train stations.
Because it's like having to provide evidence that the earth is round. That level of disinformation is only available to orc news channels.
> A Russian Tochka-U missile struck a civilian evacuation point at the Kramatorsk rail station on April 8, killing at least 50 and wounding around a hundred evacuees.[11] Russian attempts to deny the strike are completely false. Pro-Russian Telegram channels and the Russian Ministry of Defense initially claimed Russian forces conducted precision strikes on railway stations in Donbas before deleting the claims once heavy civilian casualties emerged.[12] Russian and DNR sources claimed both that the strike did not occur and that Ukrainian forces launched the strike as a false flag, ludicrously claiming that Russian forces do not use the Tochka-U missile—despite the fact Russia designed the Tochka, has demonstrably used it in previous strikes, and confirmed reports that Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army (operating in Donbas) is equipped with the missile.[13]
> The result is that their promises about not attacking someone if "they stay out of NATO" are worthless crap and the only way for smaller European countries to stop them is with force of arms and help of a big military alliance.
The sequence of events: 1) Ukraine government states that it is their priority to join NATO 2) Russia amasses troops at the border, states "don't join NATO, there will be consequences" 3) NATO and Ukraine say "you are bluffing, we'll do whatever we want" 4) Russia invades.
The lie is that Ukraine wasn't even considered for NATO membership and would be ineligible due to lack of territorial integrity ( Donbas and Crimea). NATO and Ukraine didn't claim Russia was bluffing, Ukraine refused to surrender their autonomy by promising they'll never join NATO. And of course, the real lie is that Russia was going to war no matter what. Leaked conversations of Kadyrov show that Russia was prepared to go in since last year, and the negotiations asking for impossible things was just a distraction. Like the Austrians did with Serbia in WWI.
Please go whatabout something else, people are literally getting slaughtered over the delusions of an ageing autocrat who has lost touch with reality.
> The lie is that Ukraine wasn't even considered for NATO membership and would be ineligible due to lack of territorial integrity ( Donbas and Crimea). NATO and Ukraine didn't claim Russia was bluffing, Ukraine refused to surrender their autonomy by promising they'll never join NATO.
Isn't it a bit contradictory? If Ukraine can't join NATO, then promising it won't is irrelevant. Rather, it was their stated goal to somehow resolve the territorial intergrity question and then join NATO. So ineligibility was just a problem to resolve, not an insurmountable obstacle. And of course increasing military cooperation can be done without joining.
I agree that "calling bluff" is not the best word. Rather, it was politically infeasible for both Ukraine (runs counter to their stated goals) and the West (looks too similar to what Chamberlain did) to enter into an agreement with Russia. So it didn't happen.
> And of course, the real lie is that Russia was going to war no matter what. Leaked conversations of Kadyrov show that Russia was prepared to go in since last year, and the negotiations asking for impossible things was just a distraction. Like the Austrians did with Serbia in WWI.
Even if the leaks are true, how does it prove that the invasion was inevitable? Yes, Russia was preparing for war to make the threat credible and this preparation included making detailed plans. Doesn't mean that Putin couldn't scrap those plans.
> Please go whatabout something else, people are literally getting slaughtered over the delusions of an ageing autocrat who has lost touch with reality.
You forgot a little thing that happened before this, that Russia had already invaded and taken Crimea in 2014. Its not like after that Russia should have been treated like a rational actor and their past actions ignored. What should Ukraine have done, just sat there and watched as Russia ate them piece by piece naively believing that this annexation will be the last as long as we do exactly what they say?
>"What we learned in this "special operation" is that NATO expansion is just a convenient excuse for Russia and that they constantly lie and lie and lie about lying."
I'll skip subject of Russia lying in general. Somehow poisoning of former spies and lying about it does not make me loose my sleep. What Russia does with its own population is disgusting though.
On this particular NATO issue I was that idiot that did not believe that Putin will really start the war. Now looking back I think the warning and the message from Putin was pretty clear and consistent. He went from wanting to join NATO, to bitching about the expansion, to annexing parts of Georgia and Ukraine when NATO had started to entertain the ideas, to starting accumulating large military presence on the border of Ukraine later on, to issuing the ultimatum and giving last warning, to finally starting the war.
>"Sure, in essence of fairness, US would probably be pissed if China would make Canada allies, but in all fairness, you also need to see that there's no US missiles butchering children in Mexican train stations."
Well. Mexico does not exactly let Russia to deploy their missiles. I am not sure what will happen if they would start the process. I think they will be given "offer they will not be able to refuse".
If we skip the Mexico and start count since say WWII you won't have much difficulties finding cohorts of children, women and civilians in general killed, maimed, starved, displaced etc. etc. All for way less reason than deploying missiles near the US. Of course it was all with good intentions and for a common benefit of humanity /s
If this is what really happened then yes they should be punished. No questions. But it was most likely a mistake anyways. It happens often enough. Ukraine shot down Siberia Airlines Flight 1812. It then tried to deny etc. etc. The US shot down Iran Air Flight 655 and had also tried to cover it up and after being cornered had never apologized.
There was settlement. No official apology. The US "expressed regret" you can read about it on Wikipedia. The USS Vincente shot down civilian aircraft that was transmitting whatever signal it was required to be recognized as civilian. Yes it was an accident. They did not have it as their mission to down passenger airliner.
You have the timeline wrong. Russia had decided to invade Ukraine long before they had their impossible ultimatum ( for NATO and Ukraine to promise Ukraine will never join) rejected.
The Russian government lies about everything. They lied about Crimea, Donbas, MH17 and a ton of other things. They have assasinated dissidents, journalists alongside former spies. Anything coming out of Moscow should be treated as flat out wrong, or at most indicative of what they want to do ( they're claiming Ukraine has chemical weapons? They're probably going to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian civilians).
> Somehow poisoning of former spies and lying about it does not make me loose my sleep.
Russia used chemical weapons in a NATO country which harmed 3 and killed one (innocent UK civilian). The UK would have had cause for war. It should have at least responded in kind and assassinated Russians.
Sure. For some inexplicable reason they've decided to act in a rational matter and not to start WWIII.
>"It should have at least responded in kind and assassinated Russians."
Yep. And they did not. Probably to their credit they do not go down to the same level and do not for example behead people like their other enemy does.
Interestingly the UK does have a strange case of their own spy committing "suicide" and stuffing themselves in a duffel bag.
They also have an example of...themselves - that all it takes to be left alone is being reasonable and not needlessly bellicose towards their great power neighbor
I think you forgot to add 'so far...'
that all it takes to be left alone is being reasonable and not needlessly bellicose towards their great power neighbor so far.
and either way, there is nothing at all that Ukraine did that justifies the murder and rape of thousands of civilians including children. Russia has forfeit their place on the stage to be treated as a rational actor. At this point its like saying all you need to do is not purchase a firearm to provoke your serial killer neighbor.
Like how invaded Finland, stole a bunch of land, and then interfered with Finland's internal politics so much they came up with the term "Finlandization" for it?
Not a great example dude. Everyone eventually hits the "Poland" moment, where you can't keep appeasing a dictator.
From Russia's perspective, almost everything is a provocation and a threat. Not rationally, but because Russia's official viewpoint is about as irrational as it gets. There isn't anything to appease them with, because they've chosen to ignore the facts.
And from an outside perspective it's not hard to see why two states, one with a border to Russia, would join a military alliance after Russia invaded a sovereign neighbor.
You know what seems like a terrifying step towards nuclear warfare? Removing one countries nuclear weapons by promising not to invade, then invading. What a boon for nuclear proliferation.
>John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
Most likely by reflecting on what went so horribly wrong in the relationship with Canada that a formerly closest ally of them all has decided to turn to a different power from across the ocean for help. Then, by attempting to fix said relationship without starting a futile and criminal war of aggression that will cement multi-generational hatred of all things American north of the border.
>Then, by attempting to fix said relationship without starting a futile and criminal war of aggression that will cement multi-generational hatred of all things American north of the border.
He has no interest in fixing any relationships. This is a war of genocide. Things are only getting started, and the sooner the world realizes we are already at war, the better.
Yes, I'm aware. Here we are discussing the absurd parallels that some people are attempting to draw with North America, and a hypothetical Canada that has turned to China. As a Ukrainian Canadian, I am fully aware of the absurdity of this scenario and of the fact that Ukrainians are being denied their right to exist.
>"...and of the fact that Ukrainians are being denied their right to exist."
This is what is actually happening. It is a crime and I wish Putin, his close circle and other directly responsible would end their days rotting in jail.
As for Canada turning into China and hosting their nukes. Of course this will never happen and is absurd. But in pure hypothetical world I am pretty sure the situation like this will turn into invasion if all negotiations fail. As a mini example see what happened when Noriega had started switching his allegiances from the US to a Soviet block.
>As a mini example see what happened when Noriega had started switching his allegiances from the US to a Soviet block.
Hm... Not quite. Noriega began switching allegiances to the Soviets well after the relationship with the US became hostile, and well after the US made it clear they want him gone, due to Iran-Contra and other reasons. He was also a dictator who lost an election by a factor of 3 to 1 a few months before the invasion. Bush was still hesitant to invade until a group of unarmed off-duty US soldiers was attacked, one of them killed and others abused in custody. Not defending the idea of propping up dictators or invading countries to remove them, just that this is not a good example of the point you're trying to make.
Wasnt Canada viewed as potential enemy for a long time after Independence War? Both Canada and US had plans for invading each other IIRC, with the Canadian forces hoping they would hold on long enough for UK to arrive and help. Though at that time UK was already seeing US more as a partner.
Other than the San Juan islands, there are no territorial disputes between the countries. The Canadian military is utterly dwarfed by the USA's, so any aggression on their part will likely result in a total loss. And if the USA really wanted Canadian territory, they could probably ask for it and be granted some in a popular vote (at least in the south western provinces).
Even if China and Canada become besties, China still can't do anything militarily. Canada is still gigantic; protecting the east of the country is impossible. And it would be straight forward for the USA to deny access to the Atlantic.
Yeah, the US government would not at all like the idea of China stationing troops or missiles in Canada, but Canada would see the stupidity of allowing such a move long before it came to pass. And if they didn't, the USA has diplomatic options (mainly, "hey, BC/Alberta/Sas, u wanna b american? :cowboy:"). Getting one to come to the red white and blue side effectively divides the country in half.
> John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
I think we have an clear example of how this _could_ play out. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
It's completely stupid to compare the Cuban Missile Crisis with NATO expansion. You need to completely ignore history to do that. And the only motivation would be to justify the motives of a dictator, mass murder and war criminal....
My reply is based on the sentence which I quoted in my original comment. It was about the U.S and how it would respond to missiles near its borders. Please don't take my comment out of context
The USSR's alliance with Cuba is a good analogy. The US viewed deploying nuclear weapons to Cuba as provocation, but did nothing to prevent the alliance itself, which continued for decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Merely joining a defensive alliance is not provocation.
Mearsheimer and the entire school of "neo realists" have absolutely zero credibility. It's really a shame that his youtube videos started to spread so much on youtube following Russian invasion given the amount of bullshit he's spreading.
> 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility
That's not true in any meaningful way. It's a massive process to convert a silo made for anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) into one for ICMBs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) or other type of offensive missiles. It's not an easy or fast thing to do and would definitely be visible from the outside.
I don't know who this Mearsheimer is, but your comment is essentially ad hominem because you haven't addressed the point. If it helps you, the same thing has been said by others e.g. Chomsky.
Could South Africa join NATO? Thailand? Russia themselves asked to join but were rejected.
> Russia themselves asked to join but were rejected.
"In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russian president Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to NATO, suggesting that Russia's long-term aim was to join NATO."
That was their position once NATO had expanded eastward.
Here's an extract from a NATO report[0] in 2000. The whole chapter is genuinely worth a read:
> Nevertheless, in August 1994, Boris Yeltsin again said to the reporters, that Russia could join NATO in due course. Then, during 6-7 years, this question was not raised by the Russian political elite and the mass media. The main reason for that was NATO’s expansion to the East...
Russia actually has a long history of wanting to join [1]
"You talked about Putin targeting civilians, or the Russians targeting civilians. It’s obviously very hard to tell what’s exactly happened here."
This was just four days ago, in a closing rebuttal to another speaker, during a panel hosted by Katrina vanden Heuvel - yeah I'm thinking the civilians shot in the head with hands tied behind their backs show he is no real authority: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/11/world/europe/...
>‘They shot my son. I was next to him. It would be better if it had been me.’
>Russian soldiers set up in this school. A sniper in a high-rise fired at anybody who moved. Other soldiers tortured, raped and executed civilians in basements or backyards.
>A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks.
South Africa or Thailand are not in the area covered by the treaty so no. Hell even an attack in Hawaii would be outside the treaty according the the US department of defense.
This is also why Australia and New Zealand are not part of NATO.
> Russia themselves asked to join but were rejected.
Except they were not. They were told to apply like any other nation and they did and were in the program but their constant threatening (and actual use) of force against their various neighbor countries slowed and eventually stopped the process with a final severing of official relationships due to the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Again the treaty is quite clear in this as a requirement to join nato.
Russia had no issue deploying such weaponry on NATO's doorstep (Kaliningrad teaming with weaponry, including short-range ballistic missiles that Russia claimed to no longer hold, long-range AA missiles, constantly flying bombers into NATO airspace, etc.).
So for the analogy of Canada-China alliance, you'd need, hmm, East China Sea to be already teaming with US or NATO weaponry. Not just an aircraft carrier here and there, but sizeable army ready to attack. (clearly doesn't work so very well with a maritime border, but that's where China's fragile bits are. US troops in Kyrgyzstan clearly stir far less emotions. Indeed Americans were in Afghanistan which borders China and they didn't seem to mind).
Well, we had this happen in the 1960s with the Cuban missile crisis. No need for a thought experiment.
But more broadly: We have excellent relations with Canada. If we step back, what would we be doing to Canada that would make them think "Holy crap, we need to join a defensive alliance with China to prevent a possible US attack!"?
Is the US entitled to treat its neighbors so poorly they seek defensive alliances elsewhere?
I do not get this. Why you need to create unreal analogies just to state some point?
Especially now, when non-NATO neighbour of Russia was attacked by Russia?
What if USA invaded Mexico and Canada became close allies with China? I do not know this is hardly going to happen like ever.
Between my country and Russia is one country: Ukraine. If Ukraine was in NATO there would be peace today. I'm so glad that my country is in NATO. And what you are trying to say seems to me like you do not consider us as sovereign nation.
Side note: it is not "whatabboutism" more appropriate term is "Putinversteher"
The alternative is the doormat strategy that failed before. Putin will not stop until he is stopped. There is no way to do that without incurring the risks so the logical choice is to not let him take strategic positions before incurring the risks.
Following the Kremlin's logic, the advent of hypersonic missiles and the neoconservative bent of US/EU politics, it is seemingly inevitable that war is here.
I've asked experts repeatedly and have yet to hear back one example of where the Mearsheimer realism school predicted any international relations occurrence correctly in the past 30 years. It seems to have no predictive power as a theory. I think it only gets the traction it does for it's catchy misleading name.
> Joining NATO means millitary bases, troop exercises, and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was no NATO military presence in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Norway, the only defensive missile base was in Romania, with another under construction in Poland and both Finnland and Sweden already extensively train and cooperate with NATO troops. Troop deployments were token-sized in the order of low five digits in total. (1) All troop presence in the Baltic states is at the explicit request of those states - it ensures that if any of those states is invaded, other NATO members are immediately directly involved: Attacking any of those states means attacking US, British, French, German soldiers. Unsurprisingly, countries on the eastern border have requested and received more troop deployments, for example German air defense batteries have moved to Slovakia as part of a new NATO battle group.
> The interesting and difficult thing to process here is whether this is a provocation without turning it into 'whatabboutism'
I don't know what you mean with whataboutism in this context, but traditionally non-allied European countries considering their defensive options when Russia has invaded a sovereign nation is certainly not a provocation.
> Joining NATO means millitary bases
Not automatically. Not all NATO member countries have e.g. American military bases [1]. The Baltic countries have a small NATO military presence, but not a large enough one that it could pose any offensive threat towards Russia.
It's entirely possible for a NATO member country to say "no thanks" to foreign military bases. That might even be likely at least in case of Finland which has maintained its own credible defensive capability.
If Sweden or Finland consider joining NATO, it's because they'd like to have someone's back in case of a crisis, not because they'd want to host someone else's offensive capability.
> troop exercises
All military forces conduct exercises.
> and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility
Again, that's up to the individual member countries. Also, I'm not an expert on missile tech, but I don't think e.g. anti-air missiles can be easily turned into cruise missiles or other kinds of offensive weapons.
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Russia would likely consider Sweden or Finland joining NATO as a provocation. But it's not really possible in good faith to believe it would actually be one.
is a well known supporter of Russia and China and of their whole imperial way of thinking.
Unless you want wherever you live to look more like China or Russia do, I would recommend not listening to him, and definitely not spreading his disgusting ideas.
Seems unlikely, Sweden has elections in the autumn and the second-biggest party was previously anti-NATO (as is the current ruling party, in the past at least).
It all looks rosy now, but remember just a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border and almost led to NATO involvement?
The winds seems to be changing quite quickly and both the second and third largest parties have now stated support for NATO (if Finland would join at least).
While the biggest party still hasn't voiced their support, they aren't completely against it and there seems to be hectic discussion behind closed doors.
> It all looks rosy now, but remember just a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border and almost led to NATO involvement?
Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and it didn't lead to NATO involvement? We have direct evidence that a European country can be attacked without NATO immediately jumping in to help. If Russia "only" wanted the Eastern "wilderness" of Finland, do you think the other European powers would immediately send in their own troops?
There's a reason that the smaller European countries that border Russia haven't been attacked and absorbed yet, and that's because they're NATO members.
Being a NATO member clearly has more upsides than downsides.
> We have direct evidence that a European country can be attacked without NATO immediately jumping in to help. If Russia "only" wanted the Eastern "wilderness" of Finland, do you think the other European powers would immediately send in their own troops?
So while the exact action is not specified there, an attack on Finland might already very well mean that some NATO states (and by implication all of NATO) would get involved in the situation you're describing.
This is not how NATO works, and very likely not how the mutual defense clause works. Article 5 doesn't apply if you send your soldiers on some mission (e.g. defending Finland) on your own accord and Russia kills them. The EU clause is generally interpreted - from what I've read - to not require other EU members to offer direct military support to the attacked nation.
> Article 5 doesn't apply if you send your soldiers on some mission (e.g. defending Finland) on your own accord and Russia kills them.
That depends where you send them, as Article 5 has geographical constraints specified in Article 6 (there is no general exceptions for troops being attacked after being voluntarily sent “somewhere”.)
Moreover, even without triggering Article 5, an attack on NATO member troops in the Euro-Atlantic region but outside the territory specified in Article 6 would probably be a trigger for regional security consultations under Article 4, which have produced more NATO interventions than Article 5.
> there is the Mutual Defence Clause (article 42.7 of the Treaty [of Lisbon]
Article 42.7 “leaves more room for interpretation than one might expect for a clause in a legally binding text” [1].
If Finland and Sweden turned down NATO membership and then suffered territorial degradation, I doubt the U.S. would step in. That, in turn, might motivate EU members to exercise their opt outs or neutrality caveats, or find that all that can be done within their power is send non-lethal aid.
To expand on this: It also explicitly provides for an opt-out to preserve the neutrality of countries like Sweden and Ireland, such a clause being added at their insistence.
I suspect that when the rubber hits the road nothing would happen, are Western European countries going to get into a potential nuclear exchange with Russia defending an EU member that's got a carve-out allowing them not to do the same for them?
That doesn't apply for Finland in the same way, but I'd still expect more of a "thoughts and prayers" response from the EU than anything else.
Well, I'm pretty sure Europe is capable of sending nuclear missiles that would destroy any FOB Russia set in Finland (this wouldn't trigger Russia doctrine of only using nukes to defend its territory, not its troops).
Invasion would become way to costly for a demographically challenged country.
Would EU countries waste their nukes in attrition of RU troops on aligned soil? There aren't that many (by official figures). I'm guessing most countries would prefer not to escalate to nukes unless their own territory was threatened.
Unfortunately, no, not by implication. Chapter 5 only means defending a country that's attacked. So if Russia invades Finland, and say France send troops to defend it, and Russia retaliates against France, then US, UK, and Turkey are not obliged to defend France. As far as NATO is concerned it's France's affair.
In reality of course the the non-EU NATO members will probably decide to get involved one way or the other, but they are not legally bound to it.
> Chapter 5 only means defending a country that's attacked.
This is true, but there are no limitations on the circumstances of the attack. For instance, if the US was fighting a low-grade global war with an Afghanistan-based terrorist network that has not previously attacked the US anywhere covered by Article 5 because of the geographic constraints of Article 6, and in retaliation for the acts of the US in that war that global terrorist network attacked, say, New York and D.C., then Article 5 would apply, there is no “well, you chose to fight them for other reasons before they attacked you” exclusion.
Now, if Russia only retaliated against French troops in Finland, Article 6 would geographically exclude Article 5 applicability.
The EU defense clause is no NATO replacement and in a state of war it is highly unclear would it even merit material transfers. Currently it's more of a gesture or suggestion for future collaboration.
I think there is a pretty large chance countries like Germany figure out some way to ignore that. IMO the only thing keeping a European country exempt from Russian military action is the presence of US forces.
Just because the EU gets involved, doesn't mean NATO will follow suit.
There's an argument that EU is the aggressor for the purposes of Article 5 if it comes to the aid of a non-NATO member. The USA and other non-EU members would have the option to sit that one out, if they wanted. Alternatively, they could offer support to only NATO members.
This is probably part of what's spurring NATO membership. I bet most Fins and Swedes thought that the USA would deploy forces the event of a conflict. Now they see that American policy will be aid only, regardless of the death and destruction.
> There's an argument that EU is the aggressor for the purposes of Article 5
There is no such thing as “an aggressor for purpose of Article 5“; and the only case to be made for an “aggressor” status that would obviate Article 5 commitments is an aggressor under international law (that is, someone engaging in aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter, North Atlantic Treaty, and customary international law.)
Participating in individual or mutual self-defense action outside the scope of NATO doesn't void Article 5 (we know, because it didn't, despite definitely being part of the scenario, in the only actual Article 5 invocation in history.)
Mutual defensive pacts are not transitive. Germany being in NATO does not mean that every country Germany has a defense pact with is de facto in NATO.
Finland probably doesn't want to find out the hard way how the USA is going to decide to roll here. Being a NATO member removes all doubt as to what happens.
It has a lot of upsides for the military establishment, remember when Russia was not a threat and NATO decided to have 3 trainings in Ukraine and start talks about a Russia bordering country joining a Russia enemy conglomerate? Remember when a bordering state of US tried to put enemy weapons on their territory and the US almost deleting that state from earth logs?
I think US right now, especially if this announcement is true is the main european Enemy, US is expanding it's world oversight by expanding NATO on European borders at expense of European stability, this is due to the shallowness of european leaders
But one training can still be seen as a threat on the border of a superpower? IS Army.mil news credible enough for US people outside the reach of russian propaganda? Does it reply your question when was US training on the border of Russia? Can we accept US as a enemy of europe? Or better, can we accept the fact that US is only giving important to ITS own interests without care of the safety of anyone else? (makes sense, it should be european leaders representing europeans interests), but someone should be able to say, european leaders currently suck, damaging their people in order to represent US interests in ukraine
Yes but you asked me when was the time when NATO trained on the border with Russia, now you move the goalpost? I think Russian invading Crimea is despiseful and the referendum is fake because there was no campaign or anything, but I also understand that superpowers earn different treatments due to the fact that they can cause nuclear blasts and end the world in minutes. Russia invaded Crimea when the political sentiment in Ukraine started considering the sentiment of joining NATO/EU, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#United_S...
I think the issue is that US has been involved in the political environment of a EU bordering country, without any opposition from European leaders.
> Yes but you asked me when was the time when NATO trained on the border with Russia
No, I asked, and I will quote directly, “When was this time that Russia wasn't a threat and Ukraine was having trainings with NATO?”
That was the claim: that NATO conducted multiple trainings with Ukraine when Russia was not a threat, and that this was the casus belli for Russian aggression. Leaving aside that this would not be legitimate casus belli in any case, it is simply factually false: all the NATO trainings occurred during the war, after Russian aggression against Ukraine began. There cannot retroactively justify the aggression.
This is absurd. US has been the guarantor of European peace and indenpendence after the second world war.
European union basically started as a Washington think tank project.
Yes, US wants to advance it's own interests. No, it does not make US enemy of "Europe". Which is a silly way to put it. "Europe" is not a single polity or a state (not yet at least). It is still a collection of independent nation states. Most of which want to be aligned with US.
Nobody is forcing them to be aligned with US.
China or Russia would be happy to welcome them into their fold of corrupt autocracy.
Europe and US are strongly aligned economically, culturally and politically, while the world around them turns authoritarian.
Sure, they sometimes play against each other.
But, US and the nations of Europe are first and foremost allies.
The fact that you think that a union of european states is a product of US think thank is straight bullshit, like that even if you don't know that there were italian politicians saying that union of european states would be the best way to have stability in europe in 1800s (Like Giacomo Matteotti in Italy, but I'm sure others in other nations had the same idea), you would still have to ignore the fact that in 1920 we had already a league of nations
I mean why should it be reported? If someone is agreeing with a policy then it would consistently agreeing with such policies? Like it has been 2 months that European leaders have fought for US interests but do you see people saying “ok you can’t trust this politicians anymore cuz they’ve protected us interests for a while already”, I’m Italian without any interest in Russia and still if you check my history I am more against the only country who dropped 2 atomic bombs killing 200k civilians , than Russia, am I not repliable?
I don't even agree with the policy. I'm just trying to get to the truth instead of blindly following the media narrative. No claim about war crimes should pass without further thorough investigation. I don't understand why my previous post had to be flagged. It is a matter of fact that the western media for the most part has lost any interest in investigating and covering the Kramatorsk shelling after the rocket's serial number had been revealed in a footage of an Italian media [1]. One would think that once you have the number it would be relatively easy for NATO to precisely identify and name the perpetrator, but the media is silent on that matter since two days ago.
"I'm just trying to get to the truth instead of blindly following the media narrative."
The simple truth is that Russia is currently engaged in a genocidal war with the intent of erasing Ukrainian people, which utilizes intentional terror on the civilian population. Everything else can be approximated based on that information.
This is one of the few clear cut conflicts between unspeakable evil and a distinct people who are being eradicated real time.
The ethics of the situation are exactly as clear cut as a Hollywood movie. Russia is the big bad. The Ukraine are the hero. And they are dying by the thousands.
> The simple truth is that Russia is currently engaged in a genocidal war with the intent of erasing Ukrainian people
If that were true then Melitopol would be the first erased Ukrainian city, but we see that's not true [1]. Perhaps it's because Azov battalion didn't have a chance to position their artillery on the backyards of civilian flat blocks in that city.
> This is one of the few clear cut conflicts between unspeakable evil and a distinct people who are being eradicated real time.
No it's not, there are far fewer civilian casualties in Ukraine than in Iraq during active months of 2003 alone [2]. Neither NATO nor UN nor the western world in general identifies civilian casualties in Iraq as victims of a genocide.
UN has a specific definition of genocide: it's "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
But a “substantial part of the populace” is “also guilty” and would require “reeducation” and “ideological repressions” lasting “at least a generation” and would “inevitably mean de-Ukrainization.”
The intent to destroy Ukrainian identity, and the actions taken so far, is what makes this look like a genocide. Not the relative number of victims.
Of course until "an official body" declares this a genocide - which is not 100% sure - we can always pretend it's just "a normal war".
The media is silent because it is bullshit.
They don't report stupid Soviet lies.
I am a machinist. Do you know how easy it is to fake serial number stampings?
One guy with a hammer and number set.
Are Russians that stupid?
They think a serial number is some kind of authenticator?
Heck from the pictures I saw it was spray painted on.
> I am a machinist. Do you know how easy it is to fake serial number stampings? One guy with a hammer and number set.
And you, as a machinist, know it as a matter of fact that this particular serial number on that particular engine block was fabricated? What are your proofs of the claim? Could you name a single media outlet or a single investigative journalist who is collecting evidence of that potential fabrication at the moment?
ghostwriter does seem to repeat all of the well known Kremlin talk points. If anyone is unsure what Putinist propaganda specifically is like just read through his messages in this discussion, he is iterating on the familiar themes. Whataboutism, denying Ukrainian statehood, etc.
Everyone is of course free to express their opinion on this forum and that's why I cherish this site so much.
> Not undefined. Ukrainians. Some of whom died for their convictions.
Thank you. So a group of Ukrainians organised a coup against a legitimately elected president instead of substituting him with another legitimately elected individual at the next election cycle. This is a valuable insight for everyone who claims that Ukraine is a democratic state.
> Nonsense. Who else would control Ukraine except Ukrainians themselves?
Was there a referendum for joining the EU or was it a political program? You know, at least something that would resemble the UK referendum for leaving the EU. Otherwise how else do you know what the majority of Ukrainians want long-term as a nation?
> It was a part of struggle of open society versus autocracy.
oh yes, the open society of the Panama and Pandora papers [1][2]. Two consecutive presidents that can't help themselves from being anti-autocracy.
"the open society of the Panama and Pandora papers [1][2]. Two consecutive presidents that can't help themselves from being anti-autocracy."
Western institutions stand firm. The fact that you have even heard of panama papers is a proof of this fact.
Democracy is not a joke, it is standing fast. Regardless of the attempts of the autocracies to claim otherwise, or sow dissent by nefarious "whataboutism".
Nobody is "good", everyone does mistakes. They key to understand in the west is the belief of the people in the institutions, and the self correcting dynamic a western style of government instills into a nation.
To get a high level understanding of the situation I recommend Darren Acemoglus "why nations fail" which tries (and in my mind succeeds) in explaining what distinguishes western style of government from more closed autocracies (and how and why it's better in many ways, even though not perfect).
What kind of mental gymnastics are you jumping thru to think a full-scale foreign invasion is acceptable because a president that's suites your political wills gets ousted thru civil protests?
In a parallel universe where Trudeau promised closer ties to the EU and pivoted mid-term to get closer to the USA, would the USA be entitled to invade and annex us should we decide to throw him out?
Why would US invade Canada for wanting closer ties with EU? Like EU is damaging its population for US interests? Like you maybe misunderstood my point, but it is enemy entities that are not liked on the border of superpower, let Canada say that they want to join CSTO and see what happens
They got invaded the day after a president that turned the country away from the EU to Russia was ousted, not NATO to CSTO. They're getting shelled for exercising economic sovereignty, not military ones.
If Canada was to get wrecked for joining the Schengen Area (or somehow the EU or China's RCEP), which FWIW I don't see happening, it in no way would justify one or the other superpower pre-emptively crushing sovereign countries. Just like other cases of the US encroaching on foreign countries for dubious reasons don't excuse or justify Ukraine in any way.
People died there. 67 of the protesters died after being shot. They were killed. However, 18 police officers died, too - and probably not to friendly fire. That seems to suggest there was violence involved. Most of that violence was done by the police. Still, that death toll on the police side cannot be just an accident. There was fighting happening there. The police used violence, but the protesters reciprocated in kind.
I'm not saying who was right or wrong. Obviously, 750 people with gunshot wounds is too much for any police action. The officers evidently failed to get the situation under control, and, of course, they are paid to do just that, so the large part of responsibility lies with them. They shouldn't have needed to shot to kill. But, the protesters also could have gone home. Or they could have stayed there, but without resorting to violence (though they would be tortured and some of them would get killed anyway). What actually happened, though, resembled regular urban warfare, if Wikipedia description is to be trusted. One side was out-armed, the other outnumbered, but there definitely were two opposing forces, fighting for territory, taking and re-taking important points, moving wounded to the rear, making surprise attacks or night raids, and fighting them off, involving third parties, and so on.
Again, none of that justifies the invasion by Russia. Annexation of territory, and the war that ensued are both Russia's responsibility and crime. Obviously, Russia is an aggressor here, and it violated sovereignty of Ukraine, no matter the reasons. I'm writing this much about the obvious, because last time I pointed this out I got into a lengthy, very frustrating, discussion with someone who accused me of being on Moscow's payroll. I'm not. I'm not justifying any action of Russia, and I'm not endorsing their aggression, and I don't feel (at very least) like I advance their agenda.
But. More than hundred dead and more than a thousand wounded is not, in my opinion, (EDIT: just a) "civil protest".
Civil unrest is more what I meant, with those people much in mind, felt like a better term than coup. But I don't think "protest" is necessarily wrong, it doesn't count out violent ones AFAIK (lethally repressed, riots, etc), i.e :
This is about Russia attempting a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
This is not the first time Russian state attempted such a thing. Holodomor was an engineered famine with the intent of destroying Ukraine. And now they are at it again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Generally as a state Russia is just horrible to all of the nations at it's borders it feels it has enough force to subjugate.
They are not idiots - they realize NATO would never invade Russia.
However, what NATO would have done, is give Ukrainian so much force projection capability within their territory Russia could never threaten them militarily again.
This about a narcissistic bully wanting to subjugate as many people by fear under it's thumb as possible.
If Finnish land helped Russian national interests, it would have been taken in 1944 or 1945. By early 1943, Russia was pushing back Germany, and Finland would not have been a problem.
Finland would be in more danger if it joined NATO, not less.
"Finland would be in more danger if it joined NATO, not less."
What nonsense is this.
Russians respect force. The more the better. NATO gives Finnish Defense Forces enough credibility to deter any Russian aggression specifically targeting Finland for the next 50 years at least by making the cost of invasion psychologically and analytically too high.
I don't understand this argument. Turkey is a NATO country, Ukraine is not a member? So, why would it lead to NATO involvement. If Russia had attacked turkey due to Turkey's strike on Russia Jet it would be debacle.
>Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and it didn't lead to NATO involvement? We have direct evidence that a European country can be attacked without NATO immediately jumping in to help.
Yes, because Turkey is in NATO and Ukraine isn't. It has nothing to do with Ukraine being in Europe. Not all of Europe is in NATO, and not all of NATO is in Europe.
> but remember just a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border and almost led to NATO involvement
It led to nothing, Turkey asked for Patriot missile systems (to protect from attacks from Syria, not Russia or Black Sea), which were hastily provided. Russia started cutting economical ties with Turkey, Erdoğan wrote a personal apology letter to Putin, and after that things got better.
on the other hand, if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too. It serves geo-political interests of the US, but whether it serves interests of Finland and Sweden is a question for their citizens to answer.
I'm pretty sure a lot of people think NATO == US Empire and Interests. Its simply not true, and this is a pretty great example of how much disinformation and FUD certain "interests" have created around NATO.
Hawaii isn't even covered under NATO, even if someone attacked the US:
> Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not.
A similar scenario with Taiwan would not mean "Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too" as you asserted; they'd have the option to join in if they saw fit.
> Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not.
I'm not saying it would be a verbal and written requirement to participate, and yet, they might have to for other political reasons, like a supply of additional defensive equipment or maintenance programs. For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance. All at the expense of human lives and taxpayers' money [1][2].
Before you say that the US interventions are not NATO interventions, could you name at least one instance from this list [3] where the US was not an active participant of and was actually disapproving of other members' actions? I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US is not a potent alliance.
> For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance.
Well, now you're arguing something entirely different - that NATO will rope you in without being a member. Hard to say it's a downside of joining if it happens anyways.
yes, I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US military influence is not a potent alliance.
> if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too
Nothing in NATO's organization or the Treaty itself supports that assertion; in fact, it explicitly says otherwise.
Yugoslavia was not an Article 5 action, it arose out of Article 4 regional security consultations. It is important to remember that NATO is not, even in theory, a “defensive alliance” it is a regional security organization with a mutual defense commitment.
I believe our military is strong enough to offer deterrence from Russian military aggression without NATO, so I don't see the point of NATO based on this belief.
I mean even NATO hawks believe this so its kind of a ridiculous situation.
Negative. Finnish defense forces, while highly capable, do not suffice.
The cornerstone of Finnish defence strategy is to make sure, that the cost of invasion is for all sane parties obviously too high. The point is that anyone in Kremlin considering their next foreign adventure looking into FI would go "no way in hell, nope, need another strategy".
Alone the Finnish defense are not sufficient to instill this "cost-plus" model to the adversary's calculations.
Finnish defense forces would incur considerable manpower and material cost to invading army, but in a long conflict their capability would decline. Without military alliance, material transports would be questionable and attrition would soon kick in.
The cost would be high to RU, but without alliance, not blatantly obviously too high.
Before Ukrainian invasion the second part of this "cost plus" model of territorial defence was belief that international community would incur huge economic penalties on Russia, and the fear of this repercussion would be enough to make even the most courageous military gambler to reconsider their options.
Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker.
The invasion of Ukraine basically demolished this second part of the defense strategy. First a single huge blow - no, RU will invade regardless of trade sanctions - and the second blow, continuing - even though sanctions have kicked in, RU still has exports and not all countries oppose it's illegal behaviour. And it still continues the war effort.
FI therefore needs something else to rebuild it's cost-plus model of deterrence. Only thing that can be used to immediately patch it, is NATO alliance.
Let's not exaggerate. There is a large middle ground where Finland bets on that the EU defence clause will deter Russia, that we can build an EU army or that the war in Ukraine will cripple Russia.
But yes, your main point is correct. The Finnish and Swedish defence strategies have been primarily based on knowning that we will lose to Russia but making the invasion too costly for a sane Russian leader to consider an invasion. And Putin's stupid invasion of Ukraine just reduced confidence in the idea that we can rely on a sane cost benefit analysis from the Russian leadership. Which does increase the appeal of a NATO membership.
From what I read, Putin is not insane in a strict sense, but he based his decision on wrong information (Ukrainians hate their government and will not put up a fight). He would probably not get the same wrong information about Finland and Sweden - it would be much less plausible and the history-based Russian biases don't exist. Well, I still see the point for Finland and Sweden.
The kowtowing to Kremlin/Beijing would not be due to direct military pressure, but from lack of capital sources elsewhere.
It's a plausible scenario, but not a sure one.
Finland is capital poor country, it needs foreign investment or else it will stagnate.
Without NATO after Ukraine the investment environment in Finland will likely be perceived as highly unstable.
China, OTOH, is happy to continue investing vast amount of capital in it's Eurasian project / Belt&Road initiative.
Without NATO, Russia being a loyal subject of the CCP after being sanctioned out of the western sphere of trade, Beijing alliance would be irresistible by guaranteeing both capital and security.
Would that be bad? If you like free speech, then yes. If you like high quality institutions then yes.
This is of course again a bit hyperbolic - western capital flight might not happen.
If we do not have enough deterrence to maintain territorial integrity (as of now) against Russian military aggression (by virtue of the cost model being broken), then what is going to deter Russia from dragging us into a localized conflict tomorrow if we announce we are joining NATO day-after-tomorrow?
I mean, something has to guarantee that we have no conflicts between now and being an actual member AFAICT. There's talk of "safety guarantees IF we start membership procession" or something, but then there's still a gap where we need to guarantee territorial integrity / "no conflict".
The point being, if we can deter them from attacking us between now and being a member (when attacking us would have higher ROI for Russia, stopping our NATO track) ... we have the deterrence to stop them from attacking us without NATO membership too (since it would be costlier for them in that case relatively speaking, the ROI would be lower).
> what is going to deter Russia from dragging us into a localized conflict tomorrow if we announce we are joining NATO day-after-tomorrow?
The Russian military being bogged down in Ukraine. So the trick is having something else in place by the time it extricates itself from Ukraine and starts looking for ways to rebuild it's credibility in the aftermath.
Which is why some previously NATO hesitant places that have shifted are likely to seek to act quickly.
> Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker.
The impacts of those sanctions are frequently not immediate. 3-6 months from now, some of them may have a lot more impact than they're having by now.
If I were Russia, my difficulty with the Ukrainian armed forces might give me pause with the idea that Finland's - with a comparable military budget and similar conscription - would be manageable.
"3-6 months from now, some of them may have a lot more impact than they're having by now."
The problem is, 3-6 months of Russia heavy bombing of civilian targets would likely level several major cities in Finland (most smaller than Mariupol) to rubble.
Sure, but if the Ukraine-conflict sanctions have the desired longer-term impact, that impact would serve as a deterrent if they're thinking about invading Finland a few years down the line.
As would the fact that Ukraine's military stood their ground quite successfully.
It was also very successful to stay neutral in ww2, you get a lot of market share if your competitors destroy each other while you manage to stay out of it.
It's only through luck and concessions that Sweden maintained their "neutrality" in WWII. Everyone had their eyes on a prize somewhere else. Had things gone differently between Germany and the Soviet Union, Sweden may have found itself divided up by both.
Switzerland also made concessions to stay out of the war. Germany wanted to invade, but the risk/reward wasn't worth it at that stage of the war.
Spain was in a civil war and I wouldn't call their post war situation a "success."
Ireland, I guess you could say, faired okay after the war, but during the war, their ships were attacked by both sides and often received no response to distress signals.
That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war. There are countries in the NATO which Sweden has historically had quite big disagreements with, e.g Turkey and the US. And we do not want to be dragged into wars which we oppose. Military spending has never been an issue, during the cold war our military spending was higher than most NATO countries.
I'm not sure if you know this, but you do realize that pretty much every decision NATO takes has to be unanimous, right? Even as little decisions as "do we want this PDW caliber or that PDW caliber as a [non-binding] NATO standard?" can be blocked by a single member (Germany, in this case).
> That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war.
Is this a way of saying, like in WW2, that since Sweden doesn't share borders with aggressive neighbors you don't want to have the burden of defending the free world?
What does the US and Turkey have to do with anything? Turkey only requires defending if it's being attacked, not if Turkey starts a war.
There has been a pretty strong anti-US sentiment in the left leaning parts of the political establishment. Partly due to the same reasons communism enticed global intelligenzia, and partly due to the lingering effects of Finlandization.
Finland was "non-aligned" during the cold war and as silly as it sounds, most people in Finland believed this. What it actually meant was that Finland was heavily leaning towards Kremlin - politically and journalistically - even thought it's civil society existed in a nordic egalitarian bliss. But the higher you went in the society, the stronger the Kremlin corruption was.
(I'm 42 and that stuff feels pretty foreign to me already).
This corruption was hidden from the Finns as a people, who most part distrusted Russia - and as Ukrainian events have proven again, for a good reason. Hence - internal policy was based on blatant obfuscation of truth. After the second world war this was a strategy for survival as Stalin could have likely wiped out the whole nation if he had detected any inch of resistance. But after decades, it became an established "way the things are".
Soviet Union was really successful in it's influence campaigns, and Soviet Russia was lauded as a paradise on earth by many prominent members of the intelligentsia up until it collapsed. Ideological hatred of capitalism is also a theme here.
I have to point out that there was enough multipolarity in the political field that Finland never became a communist state. And could have not become - such a thing would have likely caused a civil war. But the left and center heavily colluded with Russia for decades. And Finland had the same president (Kekkonen) for 25 years.
So, that's the background up to 1990's.
So, Finland had a strong culture of Kremlin appeasement starting from the end of second world war, and it left the political and journalistic tradition scarred for generations. Like the victim in an abusive relationship, the subconscious tries to avoid irritating the bully with whom you live. The first time there was even a hint of honest journalism about Soviet Union was during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The political and journalistic establishment started only heal after the fall of the soviet union.
For a while, though, it looked like Russia might grow up into a democratic liberal economy. There was therefore no reason for the pro-Russia sentiment to die. And no reason for the anti-US sentiment to die either.
This left the political field with lots of people, who in their subconscious viewed US as "the enemy" and Russia as "the great enlightened people".
I for myself cannot fathom this anti-americanism, and have not met it in my daily life as an engineer, but it seems to be a thing in the older corrupt generation of politicians, as well as among the more naive younger types.
I think my generation (42 like I said) and younger recognize US as an innovative, cultural and scientific superpower and Russia as the degrading husk of a state it is.
I think these "we can stand alone" and "make piece not war" sentiments are remnants of the Finlandization period.
As horrible as the Ukrainian war is, I think this enables Finnish society to finally get rid of the 80 years of dishonest kowtowing to a totalitarian state and enables it to become the truly western state it needs to be and finally unleash it's full potential (even though small) in the western world.
Sweden was never really been very interested in appeasing Putin. Our opposition to NATO has much more to do with Erdogan plus various US led wars (recently Iraq and Afghanistan but before that a bunch of other wars) than with fear of provoking Russia.
The left wing parties in Sweden do not like the idea of a military alliance with Turkey or the US, but this invasion might make it the least bad option to them.
Finland has a long history of trying not to anger Russia. Sweden to some degree also.
On the long haul, friends of the US have a much better time than "friends" of Russia, especially those with a border to their "empire".
I don't think a lot of people like being allied to Erdogan. Turkey itself is not so much the problem, it is actually a valuable member due to location and contribution.
As I said, non-membership makes involvement of Finland and Sweden in any future wars between Russia and its neighbors more likely, not less likely.
The upside is to avoid nuclear war. Believe it or not, prior to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian peoples wanted peace, too. Joining NATO wouldn't have done so.
The idea that disputes between countries all over the map should lead to NATO involvement is dangerous. It's astounding how so many people don't seem to understand this. Of course, if you say, "How would we react?" it's "whataboutism".
You label the invasion of Ukraine a "dispute"? It's a war of unilateral aggression involving war crimes and genocide.
The point of NATO membership of Finland and Sweden is to avoid military conflicts. Putin proved to the world that he does not abide by any norm or treaty, so not joining NATO will give those countries no security from his forces should he decide attacking them is in his best interests.
NATO should really award Putin for being the most effective NATO spokesman of the decade. Finland went from 20% in favour of NATO membership (2019) to 68% in favour of NATO membership (April, 2022).
I think NATOs new popularity is what will ultimately save Macron in the French elections. Le Penn wants to disband NATO and snuggle up with Putin and I doubt if the majority of the French will fall for that.
Pre-invasion, I put the odds of invasion around 30% because one of Putin's gripes was Ukraine flirting with the West and NATO, and while invading would could cement its role as "borderlands," it would also convince Sweden and Finland to join, and quickly.
I also saw it as long-term detrimental to its role as an energy exporter because this would inspire Europe to quickly migrate to more renewables, though this take is more of a western perspective and probably wasn't a priority for Putin.
Pre-invasion my own thoughts would have tended to agree with yours. I think that what caught us off guard was the mistaken assumption that Putin was actually well-informed enough to reach similar conclusions, rather than him sitting in a Potemkin ivory tower while being advised by pusillanimous yes men.
Let's assume Putin is not a NATO puppet or a masochist. Why do you think he attacked Ukraine? What is there to gain?
Russia made concessions to NATO for 30 years and got nothing but NATO expansion Eastward.
I don't see any other explanation except that allowing NATO rockets in Ukraine is suicidal for Russia, therefore there is no choice: it is a fight for survival.
Think what US would do if Russia were to put its rockets in Mexico and/or Canada. Or just remember Cuba/Turkey situation in 60s.
(it is funny how socialism was replaced by capitalism long ago but it didn't affect the cultivated hatred to / dehumanization of Russian people on the West).
> I don't see any other explanation except that allowing NATO rockets in Ukraine is suicidal for Russia, therefore there is no choice: it is a fight for survival.
> Think what US would do if Russia were to put its rockets in Mexico and/or Canada. Or just remember Cuba/Turkey situation in 60s.
If it is just a defense pact and not first strike nukes, I wouldn't care. AFAIK, the US hasn't expanded nuclear weapons eastword since the cuban missile crises so I'm not sure what your point is. Estonia is part of NATO but we don't host nukes there because we don't want to trigger the Cuban missile crises again.
No one I know "hates" Russia. Most just don't care about it. Russia has some strange national narrative that the West is trying to westernize it. We don't care if Russia is westernized or not. That is up to the Russian people who also seem fine with adopting some western concepts, it's mostly the boomers in the Russian government that demonize it. Instead of governing well they make a "western" strawman and cry over that instead of fixing their country and moving into the 21st century.
There's some weird vibes from Russians online with regards to the West and the US in particular.
Anytime you tell Russians that the US basically just wants out of Europe and to focus on China (Remember the pivot to Asia? This doesn't even paint the US in a good light, just a self interested one), they insist that Russia is the US's greatest enemy and that China is basically just a minor member of the team Russia built to destroy the west.
> allowing NATO rockets in Ukraine is suicidal for Russia, therefore there is no choice: it is a fight for survival
This is the ridiculous Russian twist of facts that makes absolutely no sense. I can't even bother debunking it now. Just as credible as the de-nazification.
It's just Russia losing its sphere of influence and Putin can't take it in his delirious dreams of imagined Russian supremacy. In truth there's no threat except of losing some influence as all Russia's neighbors naturally want to get as far away them as possible.
The atrocities done by Russians in Ukraine might be new to people of the West, but are the same old Russians for us in Eastern Europe, or everywhere else bordering Russia.
Russians aren't really treating Ukraine any differently than they were treating whole Europe but especially Poland in WW2, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and of course Afghanistan. And the fall of Soviet Union didn't change anything - since 1990, Russians managed to fight war in Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, Dagestan, Chechnya again, Georgia again, Ukraine, Syria, and now Ukraine again in full force. All of these places have felt the Russian touch.
Nobody in the world is doing more to make sure Russians are hated than the Russian soldiers and government themselves.
Self-defence has nothing to do with Russias invasion. This was not a war for survival but a war for subjugation.
Nobody outside of ex-Soviet Union countrys hated Russians before the war.
If you really want to invoke and analogue from US history then the only example that comes to my mind is the US war of independence and I'm pretty sure on which side of that fight US would like to be.
Additionally, gas was found in Crimea which would make moving away from Russian gas much easier and they tried to reference the invasion of Ukraine to the decline of the west. Russia ( or better: Putin) obviously still lives in the USSR past, which collapsed without any military action of the west.
The invasion of Ukraine has as much to do with NATO as the invasion of Chechen and Servia had to do with NATO. The only thing NATO caused was they waited longer to actually invade and tried a gray zone invasion first ( without much success), but NATO is not the reason for invasion.
Russia's self claimed sphere of influence is, while they are losing influence constantly, just look at their military interventions in their CSTO allies. Even Orban isn't yelling to loud about preferring Russia over EU countries, although he would want to.
Post soviet countries aren't getting invaded by NATO and annexed by force. They are choosing to move away from Russia and choosing for closer ties with western countries.
It is better to call Putin's bluff now rather than wait for Ukraine to fall which might force cooler heads to prevail. Also a dual ascension dares Russia to go to war on two perhaps three fronts?
I live in Finland and have not seen any headlines making this claim this definitively in local news outlets. But on Reddit I've seen article after article from foreign sources stating that Finnish NATO membership is imminent.
Edit: There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what I am saying. The headline (as of this writing: "Finland and Sweden set to join Nato as soon as summer") is not true. Lots of people wish it were true. It may even become true in the future. But as of today, it is not true, and I take issue with that.
> Reddit is 100x worse than facebook and 100x more gamed than facebook. we will see once the war ends and the truth is revealed.
Let's just say that the traffic to certain subreddits stirring up the west dropped off a cliff when the Russian invasion started. It _was_ worse than Facebook, but the troll farms are no longer pumping nearly as much division.
If Russia had been in the middle of a war during the Brexit vote, there's no way they could have swung the influence they did.
I believe that the parent tried to emphasize that there were many different (international) news articles about this. I don’t think they were questioning Reddit’s credibility.
Reddit is basically a proxy for mainstream US/UK media narratives. If you google "Finland NATO," you'll see almost every US/UK news outlet has published an article with this same definitive-sounding BS headline in the past 2 days.
The real question is why? There have been no definitive announcements from Finland and Sweden, nor even rumors of upcoming announcements. It's all speculation.
So either someone is coordinating to feed this story to US/UK outlets, OR some idiot published this incorrectly and all the copycat content factories are playing a deadly game of telephone seeing who can re-write this headline in the most inflammatory way to get clicks.
Have you not read the article? They quote a US official. It's in English news everywhere because it's the something the US government wants to make happen!
True, there hasn't been any headlines about dates or even that we would be joining Nato for sure. But party after party have come out as pro-Nato or the very least changed their stance to not be against joining Nato.
I would not be surprised if this headline turns out the be true.
As a Swede I would be very surprised if this article turns out to be true. The current ruling party is anti-NATO and has changed stance from strongly anti-NATO to "we need to re-evaluate our position on NATO". Does this mean we will join NATO? I think so, but it is far from as clear cut as this article makes it seem.
Someone seemed to have played a game of telephone where "Finland and Sweden could join NATO by summer if they start now and do it as quickly as possible" got turned into "Finland and Sweden want to join NATO by summer". Or perhaps "Finland and Sweden want to decide by summer" got turned into "... join by summer".
This is also the strongest headline I’ve seen in Anglo-American media, though there are a lot on the recent policy statements and movements, which have been quite strong but not definitive (and are at least in part intended to put pressure on Russia wrt Ukraine, so in the unlikely event that that situation resolves itself in the interim could easily be backed away from.)
I have heard a lot about Finnish appetite for joining NATO via https://mobile.twitter.com/alexstubb. How is he thought of in Finland? I have assumed as ex-prime minister and foreign minister, he has quite good knowledge of the inner machinations and public sentiment toward such a move.
As a Finn I agree with everything he posts in twitter. As a prime minister he was perhaps a bit too young and inexperienced, but I agree with his current analysis completely.
NATO membership has been a hobby horse of Stubb's party (the Coalition party) for a very long time. Now that the political winds have shifted in favor of NATO, the Coalition party is trying to capitalize on that shift in public opinion. So while it's true that public opinion is going that way, it is very much in Stubb's interest to frame it as favorably as possible, domestically and abroad. I happen to disagree with the Coalition party (on many things), but I can't fault their methods in this case-- It's good politicking.
Main political parties in Finland are now supporting NATO. Public is supporting it as well. Top officials are busy travelling to meet heads of other member countries to make sure there’s support for membership. Likely they are also discussing about getting security guarantees during the membership process as Russia has put out certain threats.
We finns are in general quite confident with our military, but war in Ukraine has shown that potential conflict may not be ”a fair fight” between armies. In Ukraine there has been attacks against civilians and soft targets with missiles. This is not something you can easily defend yourself against. There’s strong feeling that we need some backup to reduce the likelihood of such attacks.
what is a framework to distinguish NATO and non-NATO intervention? Let's say a conflict is small enough for a single country like the US to handle it. Is it still NATO or is it only the US with other members not objecting to it?
The NATO has no power to restrict actions of its members - it can just decide not to support them, which is common. Any action unilaterally taken by a member state or a group of member states that is not explicitly adopted by the NATO council is not a NATO mission.
I know that. I am asking about a framework to distinguish between a NATO intervention from the sole US intervention for the side on the receiving end of it.
Has the nato council voted on it and unanimously accepted the mission? It’s a NATO mission. Has it not? It’s not. Turkeys actions in Syria? Not a NATO mission. Germany and France providing troops to the Minusma mission in Mali? Not a NATO mission. German soldiers getting killed in Mali doesn’t trigger Article 5.
Many NATO interventions happen because the UN Security Council asked the NATO to take leadership on them, others without UN involvement, but all of them require that there’s a political decision before the intervention happens.
Of important note: there is currently no NATO support for Ukraine - many NATO member states do support Ukraine, but others are very reluctant- Hungary for example. NATO certainly is a body that acts as coordinator and supports states that feel threatened by Russia at the moment, even backfilling for capabilities that they’re handing over to Ukraine, so that distinction is mostly political - but it has real effects. Should any of Ukraines neighbors decide to unilaterally send troops into Ukraine and they get attacked there, it’s not an automatic trigger for Article 5 either.
I am pretty sure Libya was never a NATO member. I am pretty sure you too are talking about different things. Grandparent was talking about difficulty of measuring the upside of joining NATO while you are talking about the more easily measurable downsides. There is no contradiction here.
NATO is primarily a defensive alliance. The organization has been used to coordinate some non-defensive activities under UN mandate, mainly intervention in the Yugoslav Wars, enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya during the Arab Spring, and fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. All of these operations took place after the end of the Cold War.
The defensive clause of the treaty has only been invoked once, by the United States after the September 11 attacks.
Judging by actions, it would seem primarily to be an offensive alliance. What's the point of its existence after the Cold War? Operation Gladio is another facet that seems to be much more offensive than defensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
There's an article in the most-respected British newspaper, articles in English-language Swedish newspapers and an original press release providing a primary source for part of the news (I assume there were interviews or similar as it was announced).
> The Social Democrat general secretary, Tobias Baudin, said the security review would be complete “before the summer”.
(From another article as I'm not a Times subscriber.)
If you won't believe quotes from senior politicians in major newspapers I can't help you.
And the "security review" that will be completed "before summer" has already yielded results, and the results are 100% in favor of one possible outcome?
I read an article a few months back about a Swedish town that prepares itself as a place for storing nuclear waste for the next 10000 years. The one thing I remember from that article is that it took 18 years to start building the facility. I get that desperate times and so on, but I think deciding something huge on a timeline this tight is not very probable.
The security review you mentioned is actually called a ”säkerhetspolitisk dialog” by Tobias himself. Directly translated ”säkerhetspolitisk dialog” means "security-political dialogue", and the dialogue it refers to is an internal dialogue within the social democratic party.
Nothing is decided yet, and although it is a lot more likely to happen now than a week ago the foreign sources make it sound like a decision has been made. If that was the case it would be headline news in all the swedish newspapers.
I live in Sweden. He said that the chats will be done in summer [1], not that Sweden will _join_ NATO in summer. I can't see what being a major British newspaper has anything to do with the veracity of Swedish news, and besides, when has journalists not blown crap out of proportion for clicks? What a weird hill to die on...
Yes, and I can read Swedish and understand enough of our politics to say that the press release for the most part contradicts the linked article.
Will we join NATO? Still not decided but moves from S and SD has made it seem quite likely. Before summer? Very unlikely, discussions in Sweden have just started.
Maybe this is just my dumb American in me speaking, but is this really a good way of going about as a "source"? I wouldn't* trust the average American's understanding of American economics as a "source". It's possible that Americans are just dumber than the average European, but I doubt Sweden is just completely devoid of ignorant people.
Not trying to call you ignorant (I don't know you), but I don't know that Swedish citizenship is a source in itself.
I am Finnish and neither is there any decisive public information in here either.
You should trust SWE and FI journalism on this matter first and foremost before external sources.
Of course there are discussions that are not public. But it would be quite the outrage if the official information was made public in a non SWE or FI source.
Generally Nordic societies are fairly egalitarian. NATO membership would be a major shift and it would be discussed in public as soon as the definitive decision was done. Of course this is they way the wind is blowing but it's not official until SWE and FI state officials say it's so.
The way I see it, the public discussion has been going on in Finland since February 24. The effective decision to join was probably made last month, and it will be made formal when the time is right. There is currently more uncertainty about whether NATO would accept Finland than whether Finland would want to join it. To avoid provoking Russia unnecessarily, Finland won't make the formal decision to apply until it's clear that NATO will accept it.
The headline “set to” here means they could. Or “things are pointing in the direction that…” or “multiple signs seem to indicate that…”, or similar. Nothing strange in this reporting at all.
LOL. Does it include Turkey and US currently occupying sizable chunks of Syria? Also calling Turkey democracy is questionable at best considering current regime and multiple military governments before whole Turkey was in Nato.
How is Turkey a member then? How was fascist Spain a member? And it's all lead by a country that respects sovereignity the least of all on the entire planet, lmao.
> Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join Nato but did not want his country to have to go through the usual application process and stand in line “with a lot of countries that don’t matter”, according to a former secretary general of the transatlantic alliance.
Russia would love to join if it could, and there was some talk about it in the 90's when Russia was drawing closer to the west. There are several reasons why it didn't happen.
NATO has requirements for membership, and Russia is too corrupt and undemocratic to meet them ( this is also why full membership for Ukraine was always in the future).
NATOs main purpose is to project American power and influence foreign policy. Russia being in NATO would make this more difficult.
> Russia would love to join if it could, and there was some talk about it in the 90's when Russia was drawing closer to the west. There are several reasons why it didn't happen.
The main reason is that the reason Russia wanted to join changed from cooperative regional security (which was at least plausibly the motivation early on) to “NATO works by consensus not majoritarianism, so if we can get in we can screw everything up“, which it firmly was when Putin demanded immediate admission without the onboarding other ex-Warsaw Pact states were getting.
> NATO has requirements for membership
To be fair, NATO decides those on a case-by-case basis, not like they are common binding rules (I mean, there are the latter, too, but that's not usually the main issue.)
A lot of memberwannabes rely on Article 5 of NATO, but as Nigel Farage asked himself, do you really believe NATO will start WWIII over a small country?! And how is these countries joining NATO benefiting the existing NATO members? Obviously, Russia has nothing more to lose given the sanctions, so, the only thing left is a direct NATO conforntation, but it seems that the West is more afraid of such conflict than Putin, who believes that this is inevitable and that if you're faced with an inevitable flight, it's better to strike first.
I don't personally like the idea of joining a military alliance with state like Turkey in it. I mean, Greece and Turkey are both in NATO but Greece tries to maintain "rough" parity with materiel with Turkey for obvious historical reasons ..
So what happens if they decided to go town on each other someday? A5 invocation, first come first served? I really don't know what that would imply.
> And how is these countries joining NATO benefiting the existing NATO members?
Stability in Europe. The west doesn't want refugees from whatever country Russia decided to invade this week to show up on their doorstep all the time, or the supply chain interruptions that happen when war constantly breaks out. You might remember that NATO arose almost immediately after World War 2 which had a rather negative effect on Europe and European influence in the world.
> Obviously, Russia has nothing more to lose given the sanctions, so, the only thing left is a direct NATO conforntation,
Russia has plenty more to lose. Namely every major European power and the US unloading all their armaments on Russian cities that are very close to the border.
> but it seems that the West is more afraid of such conflict than Putin, who believes that this is inevitable and that if you're faced with an inevitable flight, it's better to strike first.
This is an absolutely unrealistic take. Russia _can not_ win major combat against NATO in any shape or form. They couldn't do it with their made up propaganda army and they certainly can't do it with their actual army.
> And how is these countries joining NATO benefiting the existing NATO members?
Finland has one of the bigger armies in Europe (way bigger then many of the existing european NATO members). At least for the baltic NATO members Finland being a member is a huge boon basically blocking Russian fleet into the bay where Saint Petersburg is as the Gulf of Finland is rather narrow (you can literally see from Helsinki to Tallin if you go top of a tall building) completing the encirclement of Russia on its western border.
Sweden also helps with controlling the Baltic sea due to Gotland.
If NATO wouldn't react then it's a joke and effectively dissolved and Russians are free to invade whoever they feel stronger than.
Trashing the invading force seems like fast way to prevent the war from escalating.
I'm baffled as to why anyone would listen to the shit coming out of Nigel Farage's mouth, let alone quote them as some sort of authority on anything. The man is an empty populist and doesn't deserve any attention.
I've heard others calling it "an article of faith", not just Farage. Well, NATO's existence is not preventing Russia's aggression assuming people believe Putin is crazy, a murderer, soulless, a war criminal, etc.; it's provoking it. If there was no NATO, Russia would be focusing on economic partnership, not feeling cornered by an obsoleted since 1991 alliance, which is increasing the member state's risks as now Russia builds alliances on the East. As a Bulgarian, I really doubt NATO will protect Bulgaria if Turkey or Russia attack our territory, so, pretty much to us this alliance is useless as it earsed our army and left our security in the hands of NATO, which member states have their security interest as top priority. We've prepaid 8 F-16 Block 70 years ago and they got severely delayed - just got an approval by congres (why was that necessary?!) for 8 more. So far, all we've got is a webpage [0] - not jets at least 2 years from now! Also, should I mention that Article 5 has never been tested yet? Also, if Trump wins in 2024, interesting thigns may happen to NATO then!
It's a confidence and trust thing thing. If NATO doesn't protect any of its members in case of attack , even Bulgaria, even against Turkey, NATO is dead - nobody would ever trust it and the alliance will fall apart. ( Of course for Bulgaria that would be of limited impact because there's the EU mutual defence clause).
Yes, a Trump like character in the White House might refuse to help, but the US isn't the only NATO member.
> Also, should I mention that Article 5 has never been tested yet
It has, the US invoked it after 9/11
As for you presumptions about NATO and Russia, you're just guessing, same as anybody. However seeing Russian atrocities across the world, I'm very happy there's an alliance containing them. They can't use NATO's existence as an excuse for their war crimes in Ukraine and you shouldn't be using that excuse for them. Their narrative has been that Ukraine isn't a real country. Without NATO, do you think they wouldn't have said the Baltics, Poland, and who knows who else also aren't real countries?
Russian army has been revealed to be a joke, so I don't see the why all the rush to join NATO because of their fiasco in eastern Ukraine. We bordered USSR and they had a military that went toe-to-toe with the Nazi Germany; USSR military was a much greater threat and yet we brought them to stalemate and had enough deterrent to stop them from conquering us later.
Isn't Ukraine a fairly large country, compared to the European average? For example they appear to have around 9x as many people as Finland. Of course, Finland has a more high tech economy, maybe a much better army. But I don't think getting stalled by the 8'th largest European country, particularly given the outpouring of high tech western weapons, makes Russia non-scary. (8'th largest by population, and that's with the no-EU Turkey and Russia included).
If I were Finland I'd join NATO ASAP, while Russia is distracted and before a bunch of mysterious "border disputes" arise.
The Russian fiasco in Ukraine is that they haven’t won, and it seems less and less likely that they will ever win. They’re still doing plenty of damage in the meantime. Damage that could perhaps have been avoided if Ukraine had direct military backing from NATO.
All things considered, I’d rather not get into a fight at all than get into fight I win.
I don't know if you refer to Winter War or Continuation war, but both ended by Finland surrendering territory to the Soviets. After the first one, Finland allied with the Nazis, after the second one it lost freedom and sovereignty through Finlandization.
I'm not sure how both can be seen as anything but Soviet victories?
Finland is very likely to join NATO. Support for NATO among the population is very high and among active Finnish military personnel it's over 90%. The country shares a border with Russia and there is some historical bad blood between Finland and Russia.
However only 50% of Swedes want to join NATO and the current ruling government is anti-NATO.
If I was a betting person I would put the likelihood of Finland joining NATO at 99% and the likelihood of Sweden joining NATO at 0%.
If Finland joins, Sweden will follow. We can't be the only baltic nation outside NATO. That would be both foolish and selfish. With the third largest party, SD, switching there is a majority in Riksdagen pro-NATO. S will follow soon.
Is there any benefit for Sweden to join NATO? Finland is directly attached to Russia, so it might benefit them from future aggression. But, I don't see any reason for Sweden to join NATO. Also, people seem to forget the cost of joining NATO is not free.
And Finland is already spending between 2.5 to 3.5% of its GDP on defense already (depends on how one calculates the actual cost of conscription). Finland joining nato will not increase its defense spending in the long term
The Swedish island Gotland is of central strategic importance in the baltic sea, so in case of a conflict either NATO or Russia would seize control of the island with or without Sweden’s consent.
Not to mention to secure against a Russian invasion of the mainland, of course…
Finland and Sweden have historically been very closely aligned with their foreign/defense policies. Neither would join without consulting the other, so while there’s no guarantee that they’ll make the same decision, I certainly would not place the two at opposite ends when making odds.
In most scenarios it would serve as a most advantageous base for RU operations, including serving as an unsinkable airplane carrier / missile platform.
If SWE was the only non-NATO country in Northern Europe it would be quite open for an attack.
In case RU decided to invade Gotland from it's base in Kaliningrad, there is very little anyone could do to stop it.
The current conflict has taught that NATO forces will not engage with RU forces. If FI joins NATO, it effectively blocks FI from helping SWE to defend itself.
Basically, if FI joins NATO Gotland is open for picking for RU.
>But if Finland joins NATO, Sweden either must yield to RU or join NATO itself.
Why? Russia has made no mention of any issues with Sweden. And in this scenario, the only reason Finland would find themselves in conflict is if they joined NATO. Not saying that is a valid reason for Russia to go on the offensive, but it is a well known and documented policy.
"the only reason Finland would find themselves in conflict is if they joined NATO."
No, Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
I don't understand where this logic "if Finland joins NATO then Russia will invade it". That is backward logic. Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
> Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.
Well, Finland was basically Sweden's shield, and Finland was yielding to Kremlin, so there was very little risk of conflict.
Now Russia has more or less proclaimed it's "back to the empire" agenda which implies subjugation of all of the former states of the russian empire.
Which includes Finland.
The weird thing is, even though Russians lie constantly, when they declare foreign policy targets, they are surprisingly honest and consistent about that.
This implies
1) Finland needs to join NATO asap.
2) After that sweden would be the only weak target left. Gotland is an obvious, concrete military goal that would be feasible target for a RU invasion from Kaliningrad.
I'm pretty sure Finland and Sweden are basically inseparable in terms of foreign policy... where one goes the other will go, and they'll discuss with each other in depth prior to any decision.
They may still forgo NATO, its absolutely their choice, and every NATO member respects that, being the primary difference between NATO and Russia. They can leave at any time too.
What disturbs me is that there is a lot of appeasement rhetoric floating around in the comment sections.
If people want to let Russia get away with wrecking Ukraine because Russia has nukes, then we may as well drop the bombs now - once you legitimize that strategy you are going to have massive nuclear proliferation, and even if appeasement worked (it simply doesn't), every other aggressor is going to view nukes as an easy win.
Sweden is not a "weak" target just because it's not part of NATO.
Invading, defending, and holding Gotland is not an easy task, especially as the Ukraine invasion has exposed the glaring deficiencies of the Russian armed forces. And Sweden's defense, attenuated as it might be from decades of budget cuts, is focused on defending Gotland.
Well, they have been bullshitting for loooong time if that is the case. I recall watching a video of Gorbachev talking to the US Congress and warning about NATO/US expansion. This was in 1997.
There is no credible threat of a NATO invasion but there is the First-Strike issue now that hypersonic missiles are being developed. Putin has been moaning about this for a while now. A security-conscious/pragmatic state models "what is possible" vs "what is probable". If it seems likely that future Finland could host hypersonic missiles pointed at St.Petersburg, well it becomes incumbent on Moscow to attempt to prevent that. It seems unwise to dismiss their concerns if said dismissal would lead to Ukraine 2.0.
Lots of people seem to think that the Russian unwillingness to flatten Kiev means they could not do it.
How many people have to die for Finns to feel like they stood up to a bully?
And yet somehow it is fine for Russia to develop its own hypersonic missiles (well at least try to) and deploy them to kalingrad where they are just as close most Central European capitals as such weapons in Finland would be to Petersburg. Also Estonia is already part of nato and the distance from its borders to Petersburg is pretty much the same so the first strike nuclear risk does not really change at all if Finland joins nato.
For some weird reason Russia is the only country in Europe that must have buffer states protecting its lands and be allowed to use force the enforce this.
It would be helpful if everyone stopped this lying and just said it how it is. Russia wants weak buffer states around its borders that it can abuse however it wants. There really is no actual military reason for any of this as nato is a defense alliance by definition and thus it will not attack first and the current situation in Ukraine has proven this to be true.
"It would be helpful if everyone stopped this lying and just said it how it is. Russia wants weak buffer states around its borders that it can abuse however it wants."
I believe the most prescient military analysis we can make is that Ukraine got invaded because it was not in NATO.
Until Russia invades any NATO
country I have a hard time to dismiss this analysis.
If NATO fails to defend any of it's members then it is nullified. Hence I have a quite high trust to the security instilled by the alliance to any of it's members.
You are pretty good at repeating Russian talking points, by the way ;)
I honestly don't get this whole nuke placement argument.
Both Russia and the US have nukes that reach around the entire planet, and vehicles to keep nukes moving and hidden so that second strike capability is always present. Russia can hide its nukes in Siberia if its worried about a first strike to remove MAD. The nukes would work just as well. Its also been bragging about its super cavitating torpedo... although I get the Russian position a bit more if its all been a bluff like what appears to be the case in Ukraine.
Hypersonic missiles aren't going to be a huge game changer here (how much of those heavy elements can you cram into them), interception technologies just aren't there yet, and by the time they really come into full swing the US won't be Russia's real problem (demographics are destiny... this applies to everyone)
In addition, I doubt Finland would allow nukes placed on its territory. NATO is a fully voluntary organization. There is no command structure that supersedes national authority.
Also fyi, no one outside of Russia believes that Russia was wasn't trying to level Kiev. They are happily continuing to level Mariupol, so its not like they had humanitarian thoughts in mind. You don't send a massive column of armor for a quick strike smart bomb operation. It boggles my mind that even Russians can believe that.
Russia has no legitimate reason to be leveling Ukraine, yet here we are. All Putin has to do is say that Gotland is critical for defending Kaliningrad from NATO to have an excuse to take it.
I wouldn't know all of Putin's reasoning, but I have to assume that his expressed regret over the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his desire to find out just how much he'd be punished for it, his anger (and need to save face) over the Maidan Revolution, all played a role.
Look at when the Ukraine revolution/coup happened, and when Putin annexed Crimea. Also, understand that after the coup, when Ukraine rewrote their Constitution they laid the ground work to drop neutrality and join NATO. Putin annexed Crimea the next day.
The only reason things didn't continue to accelerate under Trump is because he was not a fan of NATO and had no financial interests in Ukraine like Biden does, so the Ukrainians knew they had no friend in him. Once Biden won, Ukraine went back to poking the bear with obvious results.
I'm sure the Biden families financial activities in Ukraine are 100% completely unrelated though.
War crimes committed by the Russians or Ukrainians should absolutely be investigated. They're just not relevant to the discussion at hand, which is "How did we get to this point".
There is a lot of propaganda out there, but a hard and fast truth is that no country, not Russia nor the US nor China nor India nor anyone actually cares at all about normal citizens.
People can care about other people, but countries do not and cannot. Its why Putin's claims of protecting Russians are BS. (US Claims of protecting Ukrainians too, its in the US/Europe interest to do so, its not to protect Tibetans or Afghans for example, so it does not)
It's an obvious bad faith question. Parent poster has a well-rehearsed little shpiel to unload on "why Russia wants Crimea", it's in their comment history multiple times. They're not curious in the slightest, they're prompting a bogus talking point.
See above, cited and sourced. Do you think the timing in 2014 was coincidental?
Also, if the US government had nothing to do with the Russia/Ukraine tiff, then why did Crimea happen while Biden was VP, then nothing while Trump was President, then back on again after Biden becomes President. Is that also unrelated?
If that were the case, then he would have invaded while Trump was in office since by this sort of logic, Trump would have let Russia walk right in to Ukraine with no response from the US.
And yet that isn't what happened. Instead, Putin invaded while Biden was VP in 2014 and again while Biden is President now. Very curious that the exact opposite happened. Curious indeed...
> Trump would have let Russia walk right in to Ukraine with no response from the US.
Mr Trump would have done that, absolutely. Not only with no response, but with some blather about "fine people on both sides" and "I spoke to Mr Putin, he said he had to do it, he's a genius to do that".
In other words, with support from the White House in the obfuscatory propaganda; instead of having his militarily moves called out like they were in Feb 2022 - the Biden team was ahead of the game on that.
Why didn't Russia move when Mr Trump was in office? We can't know, but one theory is that he was waiting for NATO to be damaged beyond repair by Trump. Which would have happened if Mr Trump was still in office in 2022.
We know that Mr Trump was much warmer with Mr Putin than Mr Biden or any other recent US president was. Which makes your whole line of suggestion very misleading. So nothing new there. Anyway it's curious that you think this odd talking point is relevant. Curious indeed...
I'm not here for you trotting out that "poking the bear" nonsense again.
So wait, you think Putin could have easily taken Ukraine with no resistance from the US for 4 years under Trump, but instead Putin decided to wait until Trump was gone and Biden was President knowing he would get massive resistance across the board?
So Putin intentionally made things 1000x harder on himself...because reasons? I understand being blinded by Trump hatred, but how do you logically make that sort of conclusion? You have to know that makes zero sense, right?
This not a good response at all, it mostly shouts emotional phrases about "because reasons" and "zero sense" and does not engage with the parent comment.
In short: We can't know all of Mr Putin's reasons. He may have expected a second Trump term, and didn't think we was "waiting until Trump was gone" at all. You don't address the damage to NATO that a second Trump term would have done, and that Mr Putin so clearly wanted Mr Trump to do for him. Come one, engage your NATO obsession one more time?
Mr Putin also clearly didn't expect "massive resistance across the board" or that it would be "1000x harder on himself" to take Kyiv in 2022 so this argument doesn't hold up.
The words that you put in my mouth "you think Putin could have easily taken Ukraine with no resistance from the US" show a confused thinking - are you saying that "resistance from the US" is the only thing that prevents "easily take Ukraine"? I don't believe that, and in 2022, no one should. It's simplistic rubbish that forgets about the agency of the Ukrainian people. Facts on the ground have disproved it.
Finally if you want real answers, ask an expert - Fiona Hill, Molly McKew, Anne Applebaum or the like, not strangers on the internet.
I agree that Mr Putin's actions since February make "zero sense" - his speeches are unhinged and his invasion plan has failed. But an attempt to claim that the cause is in "Trump vs Biden" is ridiculous and self-obsessed. The cause is in Moscow. The answer is in Kyiv.
>are you saying that "resistance from the US" is the only thing that prevents "easily take Ukraine"?
You don't have to take my word for it, Zelensky himself has spent the last 2 months begging for more and more financial and military aid from the US/NATO. We have pumped billions into Ukraine already.
And I'm still trying to understand why you think Putin wouldn't take the opportunity to invade under Trump, while invading twice with Biden in a position of power. Especially considering all of the financial interests of the Biden family in Ukraine. You just see that as a coincidence?
> You don't have to take my word for it, Zelensky himself has spent the last 2 months begging for more and more financial and military aid from the US/NATO
And also fighting for survival, there's that. Financial and military aid from all over, after an invasion, is not the same as "resistance from the US" - the latter implies combat, from the US only. It's dishonest to conflate these.
> And I'm still trying to understand why you think Putin wouldn't take the opportunity to invade under Trump,
All the guidance that you're going to get is above, and I can not help you further.
Clearly, because there is no logical response. If Putin truly thought he could easily take Ukraine under Trump, he would have. Which means your assumption is wrong.
Meanwhile, we're back to wondering why the Biden families massive financial interests in Ukraine somehow aren't relevant...
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 because Yanukovych failed to put down popular opposition to abandoning the EU association agreement scheduled to be signed in late 2013. EU association was Ukraine's goal long before Biden was VP.
Russia and Ukraine were at war Trump's whole presidency. The Kerch Strait incident escalated it.
Do you think the invasion and annexation of Crimea, had anything to do with the coup (ahem...pro-US/NATO revolution) that had just occurred in Ukraine[1]?
Keep in mind Putin rolled his tanks into Crimea the day after the new pro-US/NATO regime in Ukraine had thrown out the democratically elected (albeit pro-Russia) government, and rewritten the Ukrainian Constitution[2] to then make it possible to drop neutrality[3] so that they could begin the process of joining NATO. A rule to join NATO is that a nation must be in control of its borders and not in active conflict, so by annexing Crimea, Russia ensured the moves to join NATO would be halted with that action.
Or is that timing coincidental? Remember, you don't have to agree with a reason to at least understand what the reason is.
How do you imagine that would work? Because it currently seems that the only way to de-escalate is to kill tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, and/or a coup and consequent total regime change in Russia.
The US needs to push Ukraine to agree to neutrality. Had we done that in the first place this war likely wouldn't be happening. Ukraine would have lost nothing by agreeing to that. Zelenskyy already said he was told in private Ukraine wouldn't be admitted to NATO anyway, making this entire war senseless.
>The US needs to push Ukraine to agree to neutrality.
Russia's version of "neutrality" is a joke.
Russia's demand for "neutrality" means letting Russia decide Ukraine's foreign and military policies. Russia want to enforce specific limits on the size and capabilities of Ukraine's military. That will never be accepted by Ukraine.
It's interesting that we have no popular qualms about the Monroe Doctrine, which we've abused to interfere with and overthrow legitimate governments in South America for decades, but when Russia takes a Monroe-Doctrine-esque position with a country on their border it's out of the question.
I see basically 3 possibilities. Ukraine agrees to neutrality, Ukraine resists neutrality and has its country destroyed and is eventually forced to agree to it anyway (what is happening now), or the western powers start a hot war with Russia and risk WW3/nuclear holocaust. Given those options I'd go with the first.
Typical Russian whataboutism. Who, other than American right-wingers and Russian trolls, are defending the Monroe Doctrine?
- 1 is a joke which cannot be accepted.
- 3 is a bluff.
- 2 is the only option. Ukraine has already beaten you in the north. How long till it defeats you in the east and south?
Ukraine will suffer many dead civilians and hundreds of billion in damages, but Russia is losing thousands of soldiers and the economic impact will last for decades while Ukraine will be rebuilt.
It takes a special kind of dumb to criticize the mistakes of others ferociously then make the exact same mistakes yourself, with the only difference being even greater incompetence.
All of the Russian criticism was plainly self serving anyway. You can clearly tell by this war that they had no qualms with anything the US did in Iraq, excluding maybe their own geopolitical interests in the area.
It’s not even the past. Look at what the US is doing right this moment in Somalia Yemen Palestine. No one here actually believes Joe Biden cares about the Ukrainian people right?
>Ukraine resists neutrality and has its country destroyed and is eventually forced to agree to it anyway (what is happening now)
What is happening now is the Russian economy collapsing and thousands of Russian soldiers returning home in body bags in just the past few weeks. The same things that caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
It isn’t really. Even Russia itself does not believe that the current rate is “real”. If it was Russia would have used its rubles to buy euros/dollars to pay its debt instead of defaulting by trying to pay with the rubble. Basically it is currently up artificially due to Russia buying rubbles with dollars/euros/gold/etc (and 20% interest rate) and them themselves pushing it the other way by trying to buy dollars/euros with rubbles would be counterproductive.
But as we all know, it was just a pretext; the idea behind the invasion was to make Ukraine part of Russia, which is evidenced by all these talks about Ukrainians being Russian people.
Sorry, which country are you from? You're English, right? You must be since you're communicating in English. This would be consistent with the idea that every person in the world who communicates in English is actually English.
This is pure speculation. Nobody knows what would have happened, had Ukraine agreed to Russia's demands. Maybe the invasion would not have happened, or maybe Russia would have come up with more demands.
>Can we please start de-escalating this situation?
Only Russia can de-escalate the situation.
The irony is that Russia could have taken Donetsk and Luhanks and the war would have been out of the news cycle by now. The West would just have repeated the harmless 2014 targeted "sanctions" on Russian oligarchs and politicians.
Putin's and Lavrov's genocidal speeches about Ukraine being a fake nation that should be "de-nazified" and the Russian attempt at taking the capital Kyiv has escalated this conflict into its current state.
One of the biggest reasons for the Russian military offensive is to establish borders that Russia considers defensible, which always indicated that Russia would push up to the Carpathians because it vastly narrows the attack surface on the northern European plane. Ukraine anchors Russia in the Carpathians and a loss basically opens the entire south up to Volgograd and Moscow. Just conquering Donetsk and Luhansk has fairly limited military value.
to bolster its defense against NATO, Russia's largest threat which is present in Eastern Europe, these countries are not non-aligned. Taking important strategic positions gives Russia leverage, reduces defense burden and ensures access to important geographic access points (like to the Black Sea). It increases Russia's opportunities and margin for error and diminishes their opponents'.
It's kind of a weird question honestly, why do you think India, China and the United States pursue territorial interests and fight wars? History and conventional warfare hasn't ended just because countries have nukes.
> to bolster its defense against NATO, Russia's largest threat
The idea of NATO attacking Russia is bonkers. They're barely moving to defend Ukraine. "NATO is a threat" is post hoc rationalization for Russia's own revanchist behavior; even the Russian propagandists who push it don't take it seriously.
Of course NATO is a threat, or at least it is credibly perceived as one in Moscow. Do you think the US would tolerate the Warsaw pact on its own borders merely because it has nuclear weapons? (Cuba knows the answer to this question, the US does not).
There's plenty of examples like the deployment of missile defenses to Eastern Europe (which contrary to the name is strategically an aggressive move, as they're first strike enablers, diminishing strategic deterrents. The one thing Russia is supposed to rely on). The basic point is, no country on earth has stopped deploying its military in the pursuit of national security merely because it is a nuclear power.
> Do you think the US would tolerate the Warsaw pact on its own borders
NATO is a defensive treaty organization, joined by consent. Warsaw Pact was the result of USSR using military force to subjugate its neighbors. There's no comparison, and I see no reason to engage such tripe further.
There are also stable and peaceful borders, and Putin could absolutely have chosen to have one with Europe. Instead he chose instability in order to expand by force to areas that Russia used to control.
The only reason for US military presence in Europe is the Russian threat. The US would gladly move forces to the Pacific and Europe would be happy to have a peaceful and democratic Russia on their border and to see the US go.
Putin chose empire-building by force. He could have chosen peace and economic prosperity instead. Just compare the development of Russia and the former Warsaw pact countries.
You clearly don't live in a country bordering Russia. This is not an issue you will solve with de-escalation, it's a fundamental issue that stems from the fact that Russia has shown that nothing they say can be trusted. Try telling the people of Finland that Putin promises to not invade the country, and try not to get laughed out of the room.
> All other issues aside - it's not the newspaper's job to de-escalate anything. It's their job to print the news.
Unbiased, truthful news? That would be the day. Until that happens, newpapers always editorialize. They exaggerate. They clickbait. They speculate. It's fine and often harmless. But it's not harmless when sabres are rattling and people are dying.
Newspapers, more than anyone, should check, verify, and double-check before they publish anything pertaining to anything as polarized as an armed conflict. Polarized, in this case, because Russians seem to think they are on the right side of history, while the West obviously feels the same.
Should they avoid publishing true headlines? Maybe. They should at least make sure the headlines are truthful.
Newspapers often delay publication of sensitive issues. See important leaks like the Panama Papers, where many journalists coordinated publication. Same with various criminal investigations, where reports are delayed or initially partially redacted to protect the integrity of the investigation, or to protect the victims.
> Should they avoid publishing true headlines? Maybe. They should at least make sure the headlines are truthful.
I totally agree about the "making sure the headlines are truthful" part.
Not sure how I feel about not publishing truthful things because it might escalate the war. Should the press not publish anything about the war in Ukraine, because it might lead to nuclear war? I guess that's a defensible view in some sense, but I sure don't want to live in a world in which that happens.
Do you mean the risk is that Russia will invade Finland and NATO will have to get involved?
This is short term thinking.
What if Finland does not join NATO and Russia invades? What if Russia succeeds? In the next decade it will invade Sweden that’s also not in NATO. At the end of this process, Russia will still border NATO in the North. Only this time Russia will be a much bigger and a more powerful state. What’s the upside for NATO in that?
From here looks like we’re headed into the fall of the Russian Federation, and an endless series of NATO interventions in regional conflicts all over Russia. The Chinese strategy will be to trade debt for resource access, and wait for this to end. 100 years from now, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, and the rest, will all be considered one historical chapter, like the 30 or 100 years war.
Standard ** measuring between the US and Russia for one.
If Russia ever drops the corruption and becomes a strong democracy, then it could conceivably go into NATO. It would require the US to be much much more passive and a team player (as an American I view this as a good thing, provided it is by other democracies w/ good human rights)
It would also require Russia to have some reason for doing so, mainly if it couldn't defend against China, or some developed Central Asian or Islamist superpower near it. Its also likely that Russia would ally with these forces instead of NATO, or just play them off each other like India is doing with the US/Russia now.
On the NATO side, it would require additional defense commitments by NATO towards Russia (and in the Pacific, the US). I doubt there would be appetite for it in the EU (and maybe not in the US), unless something went really really bad.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadI'm more worried that Russia is gonna fuck with us (Sweden) if we join NATO. This is going to be a deciding factor for my vote, I do not want to be a part of big brother USAs extended military arm, I want us to stay true to what we've been doing for the last 200 years, staying neutral and peaceful. If we chose a side we're in the same boat as everyone else.
Good to know we can count on you Sweden if we get invaded by Russia. Glad that you also stayed neutral and peaceful during WWII. Not really sure how you managed that, seems really hard.
- Finland
- Sweden, the non-aggressive Scandinavian country...
I guess the option of joining one of the gangs has it's merits, like having military moved towards your border. Yes the article says the video is unconfirmed so I guess it's just speculation. But when the war breaks out in our countries I won't have any pleasure in the "I told you so".
Why do you think Russia picks on Ukraine (neutral) and not Lithuania (allied)?
Said millions in Kyiv, right before missiles were launched at their apartments.
I'm all with Ukraine but can we at least realize that the war didn't just fall out of the sky, that there's been some back and forth political stuff that lead up to this. Maybe something like joining NATO, the EU or maybe because he just woke up one day and said "I feel like I want Ukraine to be Russian".
It's been brewing since before Crimea, and I don't see Putin eyeing Gotland that hard yet.
Ukraine did not joined either.
> maybe because he just woke up one day and said "I feel like I want Ukraine to be Russian".
There was progression of Putin theories. He expressed some of them in written form, others in speeches. Both about Ukraine and about Russian place in a world he envisions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6946395/Russia-welc...
To his credit, he did try to set things in motion. Mere days after, ultra-nationalist right-wing militias threw violent protests, in which they tossed grenades at police, killing three, calling Zelenskiy a traitor and threatening to take his life if peace is enacted. The peace negotiator was arrested for treason. Zelenskiy backed down, reneged on his #1 campaign promise, and started ramping up the tensions. As a result, the polling results for his party dropped from ~50% to mere 17% at the onset of the war. We don't know what happened behind the doors to cause such a 180 turn, but it sure wasn't pretty
Thanks mate.
Also this is hardly an apples to apples comparison to compare current Russia to any stage of WW2.
So which side are you on?
I condemn war, I don't want there to be a war, therefore I don't want more countries to join NATO as it would be another reason for conflict.
If war broke out here because we joined NATO, what would you say then?
I also condemn war. I don't want there to be war. But given the crazy man in the east, I'd rather have people to help me shoot back if it came to that.
Furthermore, your pacifism is exactly what fuels Russia's aggression.
If you want fewer people to die and fewer nations to be subject to terrorism of the kind that Russia is subjecting Ukraine to, then you should be in favour of Russia's swift and crushing military defeat on the battlefield.
You can't appease a tyrant by singing kumbaya and cowering in the corner. Hitler and his buddies had to die for peace in Europe to be restored. The current administration of the Russian Federation is no different.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30991398
You are trying to argue that Putin is both crazy and rational in the same line.
> I condemn war, I don't want there to be a war, therefore I don't want more countries to join NATO as it would be another reason for conflict.
If someone wants conflict, anything will be a valid pretext for that conflict and if not one will be conveniently provided by a false flag operation. Standard Russian playbook since time immemorial.
> If war broke out here because we joined NATO, what would you say then?
The chances of that are roughly just as large as the chances of war breaking out if Sweden did not join NATO. But if you did join NATO then at least you would not be in the position that Ukraine finds itself in today.
Neutrality is a great thing, right up to the point where you are attacked yourself, and then everybody remembers that you took great pains to be neutral. I assume you do expect the rest of Europe and NATO to come and aid Sweden if it does get attacked?
It's wild to me that any Swede could be proud of this part of their history.
Since banning or not banning sales of ore would have in either case not stopped rapid and raveneous Nazi acquisition of said ore, allowing it, staying neutral and uninvaded and thus harbouring thousands of refugees was the better outcome in a sea of moral greyness. One wonderful example, the smuggling of Denmark's entire Jewish population to Sweden during the early days of the war.
The principal thing here however is, Putin thinking he can rule other countries and nations is the core issue here.
Since Sweden hasn't ever been part of NATO nor felt the need to, why now all of a sudden when that was part of what triggered the conflict putting an entire country into ruins.
Anyway, the question was whether Ukraine tried diplomacy. Answer is, yes they did and it did not worked.
The context you are missing is outlined quite clearly in Timofei Sergeitsev's RIA Novosti article, What Russia should do in Ukraine.
I still don't wanna join NATO, that's a reason for Putin to take Gotland from us.
You appear to be trying to take a reasoned position after taking the Kremlin's arguments at face value, which is a pretty big mistake.
Here's the CliffsNotes version for you: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/into-the-heart-of-darkness-what-russi...
> this one article
…Are you aware that this one article was published by RIA Novosti, which means it's the Kremlin's official position?
I mean this is not even true? It is not like this one article was the only source or place where this is claimed.
Ah yeah, the crazy logic of every abusive ex. “Don’t you dare looking at anyone else or else I snap your neck” Very persuasive.
Ukraine was nowhere close to be even considered for EU or NATO membership. So what exactly “triggered” the conflict? Other than the fact that Putin decided to send in troops to grab larger and larger pieces of Ukraine?
So this just happened, apparently Russia doesn't want us to be part of NATO.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC3aeTu0N3c
How much do you think that would have helped Ukraine?
Finland's is 1.53%, also above Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Czechia, North Macedonia.
The EU average is 1.56%.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?most_...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-05/finland-a...
Maybe the United States can afford to not care, but Europe can’t.
Also curious about "strengthening diplomatic relations" with a country whose soldiers enthusiastically commit "bottom-up" mass murder and rape while its government joyfully obliterates civilian targets like apartment blocks as a matter of deliberate "top-down" policy. Like, how does it work? Do you simply ignore reality while holding said relations and focus on the positives?
John Mearsheimer made the analogy "What if China became close allies with Canada and stationed troops and missiles north of the border, how would the USA react?"
Joining NATO means millitary bases, troop exercises, and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
From that perspective, avoiding the issue of morality and legality, it seems like a terrifying step towards war between nuclear-armed powers.
Definitely not by invading Canada.
-------------------
> Joining NATO means millitary bases, troop exercises, and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
Sure. And Russia has army, millitary bases, does troop exercises and have both defensive and offensive missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility.
> From that perspective, avoiding the issue of morality and legality, it seems like a terrifying step towards war between nuclear-armed powers.
No, it is actual step towards safer world. Finland does not have to wait till Russia tries to invade them.
Stupid analogy from a stupid man. For this analogy to have any merit, the US would have to be a dictatoriship that has committed genocide against Canadians, is currently committing in occupied territories, and has declared destruction of Canada and Canadian nation as its goal. But the US is not an existential threat to Canada, hence no need for an alliance with China.
The result is that their promises about not attacking someone if "they stay out of NATO" are worthless crap and the only way for smaller European countries to stop them is with force of arms and help of a big military alliance.
Sure, in essence of fairness, US would probably be pissed if China would make Canada allies, but in all fairness, you also need to see that there's no US missiles butchering children in Mexican train stations.
> A Russian Tochka-U missile struck a civilian evacuation point at the Kramatorsk rail station on April 8, killing at least 50 and wounding around a hundred evacuees.[11] Russian attempts to deny the strike are completely false. Pro-Russian Telegram channels and the Russian Ministry of Defense initially claimed Russian forces conducted precision strikes on railway stations in Donbas before deleting the claims once heavy civilian casualties emerged.[12] Russian and DNR sources claimed both that the strike did not occur and that Ukrainian forces launched the strike as a false flag, ludicrously claiming that Russian forces do not use the Tochka-U missile—despite the fact Russia designed the Tochka, has demonstrably used it in previous strikes, and confirmed reports that Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army (operating in Donbas) is equipped with the missile.[13]
-- https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...
Other war crimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_2022_Russian...
The sequence of events: 1) Ukraine government states that it is their priority to join NATO 2) Russia amasses troops at the border, states "don't join NATO, there will be consequences" 3) NATO and Ukraine say "you are bluffing, we'll do whatever we want" 4) Russia invades.
Where is the lie?
Please go whatabout something else, people are literally getting slaughtered over the delusions of an ageing autocrat who has lost touch with reality.
Isn't it a bit contradictory? If Ukraine can't join NATO, then promising it won't is irrelevant. Rather, it was their stated goal to somehow resolve the territorial intergrity question and then join NATO. So ineligibility was just a problem to resolve, not an insurmountable obstacle. And of course increasing military cooperation can be done without joining.
I agree that "calling bluff" is not the best word. Rather, it was politically infeasible for both Ukraine (runs counter to their stated goals) and the West (looks too similar to what Chamberlain did) to enter into an agreement with Russia. So it didn't happen.
> And of course, the real lie is that Russia was going to war no matter what. Leaked conversations of Kadyrov show that Russia was prepared to go in since last year, and the negotiations asking for impossible things was just a distraction. Like the Austrians did with Serbia in WWI.
Even if the leaks are true, how does it prove that the invasion was inevitable? Yes, Russia was preparing for war to make the threat credible and this preparation included making detailed plans. Doesn't mean that Putin couldn't scrap those plans.
> Please go whatabout something else, people are literally getting slaughtered over the delusions of an ageing autocrat who has lost touch with reality.
Your comment was better without this addition.
I would say the more complete sequence of events is more like:
-2) Ukrainians are largely against joining NATO according to public polls pre-2014 (with neutrality being also a clause in the Constitution)
-1) Russia annexes Crimea and invades Eastern Ukraine
0) Ukrainians become largely pro-NATO.
...
0) Russia invades Ukraine in 2014: annexes Crimea and funds an insurgence in its 2 eastern regions.
I'll skip subject of Russia lying in general. Somehow poisoning of former spies and lying about it does not make me loose my sleep. What Russia does with its own population is disgusting though.
On this particular NATO issue I was that idiot that did not believe that Putin will really start the war. Now looking back I think the warning and the message from Putin was pretty clear and consistent. He went from wanting to join NATO, to bitching about the expansion, to annexing parts of Georgia and Ukraine when NATO had started to entertain the ideas, to starting accumulating large military presence on the border of Ukraine later on, to issuing the ultimatum and giving last warning, to finally starting the war.
>"Sure, in essence of fairness, US would probably be pissed if China would make Canada allies, but in all fairness, you also need to see that there's no US missiles butchering children in Mexican train stations."
Well. Mexico does not exactly let Russia to deploy their missiles. I am not sure what will happen if they would start the process. I think they will be given "offer they will not be able to refuse".
If we skip the Mexico and start count since say WWII you won't have much difficulties finding cohorts of children, women and civilians in general killed, maimed, starved, displaced etc. etc. All for way less reason than deploying missiles near the US. Of course it was all with good intentions and for a common benefit of humanity /s
What about shooting civilian airliners out of the sky and lying about it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-17#Russian_media_coverage
Russia still denies Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 years later.
This is a bad comparison.
The Russian government lies about everything. They lied about Crimea, Donbas, MH17 and a ton of other things. They have assasinated dissidents, journalists alongside former spies. Anything coming out of Moscow should be treated as flat out wrong, or at most indicative of what they want to do ( they're claiming Ukraine has chemical weapons? They're probably going to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian civilians).
You do not need to convince me. I know it.
As for journalists I've already said that Russia stinks when it comes to treatment of its own populace.
They even deny invading Ukraine. We can't really discuss anything with them when they're living in a parallel reality.
Russia used chemical weapons in a NATO country which harmed 3 and killed one (innocent UK civilian). The UK would have had cause for war. It should have at least responded in kind and assassinated Russians.
Sure. For some inexplicable reason they've decided to act in a rational matter and not to start WWIII.
>"It should have at least responded in kind and assassinated Russians."
Yep. And they did not. Probably to their credit they do not go down to the same level and do not for example behead people like their other enemy does.
Interestingly the UK does have a strange case of their own spy committing "suicide" and stuffing themselves in a duffel bag.
and either way, there is nothing at all that Ukraine did that justifies the murder and rape of thousands of civilians including children. Russia has forfeit their place on the stage to be treated as a rational actor. At this point its like saying all you need to do is not purchase a firearm to provoke your serial killer neighbor.
Not a great example dude. Everyone eventually hits the "Poland" moment, where you can't keep appeasing a dictator.
And from an outside perspective it's not hard to see why two states, one with a border to Russia, would join a military alliance after Russia invaded a sovereign neighbor.
Most likely by reflecting on what went so horribly wrong in the relationship with Canada that a formerly closest ally of them all has decided to turn to a different power from across the ocean for help. Then, by attempting to fix said relationship without starting a futile and criminal war of aggression that will cement multi-generational hatred of all things American north of the border.
He has no interest in fixing any relationships. This is a war of genocide. Things are only getting started, and the sooner the world realizes we are already at war, the better.
This is what is actually happening. It is a crime and I wish Putin, his close circle and other directly responsible would end their days rotting in jail.
As for Canada turning into China and hosting their nukes. Of course this will never happen and is absurd. But in pure hypothetical world I am pretty sure the situation like this will turn into invasion if all negotiations fail. As a mini example see what happened when Noriega had started switching his allegiances from the US to a Soviet block.
Hm... Not quite. Noriega began switching allegiances to the Soviets well after the relationship with the US became hostile, and well after the US made it clear they want him gone, due to Iran-Contra and other reasons. He was also a dictator who lost an election by a factor of 3 to 1 a few months before the invasion. Bush was still hesitant to invade until a group of unarmed off-duty US soldiers was attacked, one of them killed and others abused in custody. Not defending the idea of propping up dictators or invading countries to remove them, just that this is not a good example of the point you're trying to make.
Other than the San Juan islands, there are no territorial disputes between the countries. The Canadian military is utterly dwarfed by the USA's, so any aggression on their part will likely result in a total loss. And if the USA really wanted Canadian territory, they could probably ask for it and be granted some in a popular vote (at least in the south western provinces).
Even if China and Canada become besties, China still can't do anything militarily. Canada is still gigantic; protecting the east of the country is impossible. And it would be straight forward for the USA to deny access to the Atlantic.
Yeah, the US government would not at all like the idea of China stationing troops or missiles in Canada, but Canada would see the stupidity of allowing such a move long before it came to pass. And if they didn't, the USA has diplomatic options (mainly, "hey, BC/Alberta/Sas, u wanna b american? :cowboy:"). Getting one to come to the red white and blue side effectively divides the country in half.
I think we have an clear example of how this _could_ play out. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
Merely joining a defensive alliance is not provocation.
> 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility
That's not true in any meaningful way. It's a massive process to convert a silo made for anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) into one for ICMBs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) or other type of offensive missiles. It's not an easy or fast thing to do and would definitely be visible from the outside.
Could South Africa join NATO? Thailand? Russia themselves asked to join but were rejected.
OP used Mearsheimer as argument from authority. It is ok to respond to it with "nah, that man does not have authority".
"In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russian president Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to NATO, suggesting that Russia's long-term aim was to join NATO."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations#....
A lot has happened since then.
https://euobserver.com/news/27890
“‘Great powers don't join coalitions, they create coalitions. Russia considers itself a great power’, the Russian ambassador stressed."
Here's an extract from a NATO report[0] in 2000. The whole chapter is genuinely worth a read:
> Nevertheless, in August 1994, Boris Yeltsin again said to the reporters, that Russia could join NATO in due course. Then, during 6-7 years, this question was not raised by the Russian political elite and the mass media. The main reason for that was NATO’s expansion to the East...
Russia actually has a long history of wanting to join [1]
[0] https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/98-00/davydov.pdf
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/17/russia.iantray...
"You talked about Putin targeting civilians, or the Russians targeting civilians. It’s obviously very hard to tell what’s exactly happened here."
This was just four days ago, in a closing rebuttal to another speaker, during a panel hosted by Katrina vanden Heuvel - yeah I'm thinking the civilians shot in the head with hands tied behind their backs show he is no real authority: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/11/world/europe/...
>‘They shot my son. I was next to him. It would be better if it had been me.’
>Russian soldiers set up in this school. A sniper in a high-rise fired at anybody who moved. Other soldiers tortured, raped and executed civilians in basements or backyards.
>A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks.
South Africa or Thailand are not in the area covered by the treaty so no. Hell even an attack in Hawaii would be outside the treaty according the the US department of defense.
This is also why Australia and New Zealand are not part of NATO.
> Russia themselves asked to join but were rejected.
Except they were not. They were told to apply like any other nation and they did and were in the program but their constant threatening (and actual use) of force against their various neighbor countries slowed and eventually stopped the process with a final severing of official relationships due to the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Again the treaty is quite clear in this as a requirement to join nato.
So for the analogy of Canada-China alliance, you'd need, hmm, East China Sea to be already teaming with US or NATO weaponry. Not just an aircraft carrier here and there, but sizeable army ready to attack. (clearly doesn't work so very well with a maritime border, but that's where China's fragile bits are. US troops in Kyrgyzstan clearly stir far less emotions. Indeed Americans were in Afghanistan which borders China and they didn't seem to mind).
But more broadly: We have excellent relations with Canada. If we step back, what would we be doing to Canada that would make them think "Holy crap, we need to join a defensive alliance with China to prevent a possible US attack!"?
Is the US entitled to treat its neighbors so poorly they seek defensive alliances elsewhere?
Especially now, when non-NATO neighbour of Russia was attacked by Russia?
What if USA invaded Mexico and Canada became close allies with China? I do not know this is hardly going to happen like ever.
Between my country and Russia is one country: Ukraine. If Ukraine was in NATO there would be peace today. I'm so glad that my country is in NATO. And what you are trying to say seems to me like you do not consider us as sovereign nation.
Side note: it is not "whatabboutism" more appropriate term is "Putinversteher"
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was no NATO military presence in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Norway, the only defensive missile base was in Romania, with another under construction in Poland and both Finnland and Sweden already extensively train and cooperate with NATO troops. Troop deployments were token-sized in the order of low five digits in total. (1) All troop presence in the Baltic states is at the explicit request of those states - it ensures that if any of those states is invaded, other NATO members are immediately directly involved: Attacking any of those states means attacking US, British, French, German soldiers. Unsurprisingly, countries on the eastern border have requested and received more troop deployments, for example German air defense batteries have moved to Slovakia as part of a new NATO battle group.
(1)Pre-Invasion Situation, early February https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/europe/nato-troops-easter...
I don't know what you mean with whataboutism in this context, but traditionally non-allied European countries considering their defensive options when Russia has invaded a sovereign nation is certainly not a provocation.
> Joining NATO means millitary bases
Not automatically. Not all NATO member countries have e.g. American military bases [1]. The Baltic countries have a small NATO military presence, but not a large enough one that it could pose any offensive threat towards Russia.
It's entirely possible for a NATO member country to say "no thanks" to foreign military bases. That might even be likely at least in case of Finland which has maintained its own credible defensive capability.
If Sweden or Finland consider joining NATO, it's because they'd like to have someone's back in case of a crisis, not because they'd want to host someone else's offensive capability.
> troop exercises
All military forces conduct exercises.
> and 'defensive' missile installations that can be easily converted to offensive missiles without any visibility
Again, that's up to the individual member countries. Also, I'm not an expert on missile tech, but I don't think e.g. anti-air missiles can be easily turned into cruise missiles or other kinds of offensive weapons.
--
Russia would likely consider Sweden or Finland joining NATO as a provocation. But it's not really possible in good faith to believe it would actually be one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...
is a well known supporter of Russia and China and of their whole imperial way of thinking.
Unless you want wherever you live to look more like China or Russia do, I would recommend not listening to him, and definitely not spreading his disgusting ideas.
It all looks rosy now, but remember just a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border and almost led to NATO involvement?
Has anything... happened, since then?
While the biggest party still hasn't voiced their support, they aren't completely against it and there seems to be hectic discussion behind closed doors.
Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and it didn't lead to NATO involvement? We have direct evidence that a European country can be attacked without NATO immediately jumping in to help. If Russia "only" wanted the Eastern "wilderness" of Finland, do you think the other European powers would immediately send in their own troops?
There's a reason that the smaller European countries that border Russia haven't been attacked and absorbed yet, and that's because they're NATO members.
Being a NATO member clearly has more upsides than downsides.
Well, there is the Mutual Defence Clause (article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/mutual_defence.ht...
So while the exact action is not specified there, an attack on Finland might already very well mean that some NATO states (and by implication all of NATO) would get involved in the situation you're describing.
That depends where you send them, as Article 5 has geographical constraints specified in Article 6 (there is no general exceptions for troops being attacked after being voluntarily sent “somewhere”.)
Moreover, even without triggering Article 5, an attack on NATO member troops in the Euro-Atlantic region but outside the territory specified in Article 6 would probably be a trigger for regional security consultations under Article 4, which have produced more NATO interventions than Article 5.
Article 42.7 “leaves more room for interpretation than one might expect for a clause in a legally binding text” [1].
If Finland and Sweden turned down NATO membership and then suffered territorial degradation, I doubt the U.S. would step in. That, in turn, might motivate EU members to exercise their opt outs or neutrality caveats, or find that all that can be done within their power is send non-lethal aid.
[1] https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-op...
I suspect that when the rubber hits the road nothing would happen, are Western European countries going to get into a potential nuclear exchange with Russia defending an EU member that's got a carve-out allowing them not to do the same for them?
That doesn't apply for Finland in the same way, but I'd still expect more of a "thoughts and prayers" response from the EU than anything else.
1. https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_article_427_an_explainer5...
Invasion would become way to costly for a demographically challenged country.
In reality of course the the non-EU NATO members will probably decide to get involved one way or the other, but they are not legally bound to it.
This is true, but there are no limitations on the circumstances of the attack. For instance, if the US was fighting a low-grade global war with an Afghanistan-based terrorist network that has not previously attacked the US anywhere covered by Article 5 because of the geographic constraints of Article 6, and in retaliation for the acts of the US in that war that global terrorist network attacked, say, New York and D.C., then Article 5 would apply, there is no “well, you chose to fight them for other reasons before they attacked you” exclusion.
Now, if Russia only retaliated against French troops in Finland, Article 6 would geographically exclude Article 5 applicability.
There's an argument that EU is the aggressor for the purposes of Article 5 if it comes to the aid of a non-NATO member. The USA and other non-EU members would have the option to sit that one out, if they wanted. Alternatively, they could offer support to only NATO members.
This is probably part of what's spurring NATO membership. I bet most Fins and Swedes thought that the USA would deploy forces the event of a conflict. Now they see that American policy will be aid only, regardless of the death and destruction.
There is no such thing as “an aggressor for purpose of Article 5“; and the only case to be made for an “aggressor” status that would obviate Article 5 commitments is an aggressor under international law (that is, someone engaging in aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter, North Atlantic Treaty, and customary international law.)
Participating in individual or mutual self-defense action outside the scope of NATO doesn't void Article 5 (we know, because it didn't, despite definitely being part of the scenario, in the only actual Article 5 invocation in history.)
Finland probably doesn't want to find out the hard way how the USA is going to decide to roll here. Being a NATO member removes all doubt as to what happens.
I think US right now, especially if this announcement is true is the main european Enemy, US is expanding it's world oversight by expanding NATO on European borders at expense of European stability, this is due to the shallowness of european leaders
It's US wagering European lives for its interests
No.
I remember when Ukraine tossed out a Russian puppet and Russia nearly immediately invaded and has been continuously at war with Ukraine since.
When was this time that Russia wasn't a threat and Ukraine was having trainings with NATO?
Sept 2021: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-h... https://www.army.mil/article/250444/us_nato_ukraine_enhance_...
But one training can still be seen as a threat on the border of a superpower? IS Army.mil news credible enough for US people outside the reach of russian propaganda? Does it reply your question when was US training on the border of Russia? Can we accept US as a enemy of europe? Or better, can we accept the fact that US is only giving important to ITS own interests without care of the safety of anyone else? (makes sense, it should be european leaders representing europeans interests), but someone should be able to say, european leaders currently suck, damaging their people in order to represent US interests in ukraine
It does not count as a time when Russia was not a threat.
Yes, NATO conducted trainings with Ukraine during the ongoing war started by Russia.
I think the issue is that US has been involved in the political environment of a EU bordering country, without any opposition from European leaders.
No, I asked, and I will quote directly, “When was this time that Russia wasn't a threat and Ukraine was having trainings with NATO?”
That was the claim: that NATO conducted multiple trainings with Ukraine when Russia was not a threat, and that this was the casus belli for Russian aggression. Leaving aside that this would not be legitimate casus belli in any case, it is simply factually false: all the NATO trainings occurred during the war, after Russian aggression against Ukraine began. There cannot retroactively justify the aggression.
Wrong. NATO had at least one Partnership for Peace exercise in Ukraine in October 2002, a few hours drive from L'Viv.[1]
And just to be specific; this doesn't justify any aggression on Russia's behalf, sovereign nations are free to decide who to ally with.
[1] - https://www.nato.int/ims/2002/p021007e.htm
This is absurd. US has been the guarantor of European peace and indenpendence after the second world war.
European union basically started as a Washington think tank project.
Yes, US wants to advance it's own interests. No, it does not make US enemy of "Europe". Which is a silly way to put it. "Europe" is not a single polity or a state (not yet at least). It is still a collection of independent nation states. Most of which want to be aligned with US.
Nobody is forcing them to be aligned with US.
China or Russia would be happy to welcome them into their fold of corrupt autocracy.
Europe and US are strongly aligned economically, culturally and politically, while the world around them turns authoritarian.
Sure, they sometimes play against each other.
But, US and the nations of Europe are first and foremost allies.
Nor would they get denazified™ if they decide to align closer to another power.
But the current EU started after the second world war.
The entity considered the progenitor of EU is the European Coal and Steel community
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...
This was peak cold war and US influence in Europe was non-neglible to say the least.
While the reporting around the subject is a bit hyperbolical, strong Washington backing was always a cornerstone of the project
https://web.archive.org/web/20220130132451/https://www.teleg...
Oh. My. God.
I've had enough HN for today.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLl0aGQEPw
The simple truth is that Russia is currently engaged in a genocidal war with the intent of erasing Ukrainian people, which utilizes intentional terror on the civilian population. Everything else can be approximated based on that information.
This is one of the few clear cut conflicts between unspeakable evil and a distinct people who are being eradicated real time.
The ethics of the situation are exactly as clear cut as a Hollywood movie. Russia is the big bad. The Ukraine are the hero. And they are dying by the thousands.
If that were true then Melitopol would be the first erased Ukrainian city, but we see that's not true [1]. Perhaps it's because Azov battalion didn't have a chance to position their artillery on the backyards of civilian flat blocks in that city.
> This is one of the few clear cut conflicts between unspeakable evil and a distinct people who are being eradicated real time.
No it's not, there are far fewer civilian casualties in Ukraine than in Iraq during active months of 2003 alone [2]. Neither NATO nor UN nor the western world in general identifies civilian casualties in Iraq as victims of a genocide.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MCqAERksT8
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ira...
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
The reported mass deportations of Ukrainian children are included in this definition.
The definition says nothing about Iraq war.
Intent? Documented:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220405204214/https://www.washi...
But a “substantial part of the populace” is “also guilty” and would require “reeducation” and “ideological repressions” lasting “at least a generation” and would “inevitably mean de-Ukrainization.”
The intent to destroy Ukrainian identity, and the actions taken so far, is what makes this look like a genocide. Not the relative number of victims.
Of course until "an official body" declares this a genocide - which is not 100% sure - we can always pretend it's just "a normal war".
Are Russians that stupid? They think a serial number is some kind of authenticator? Heck from the pictures I saw it was spray painted on.
Please don't insult our intelligence.
And you, as a machinist, know it as a matter of fact that this particular serial number on that particular engine block was fabricated? What are your proofs of the claim? Could you name a single media outlet or a single investigative journalist who is collecting evidence of that potential fabrication at the moment?
Everyone is of course free to express their opinion on this forum and that's why I cherish this site so much.
Not the only one. Look into the back history of accounts that have been pushing this flimsy "Ukrainian coup" taking point for a long while now, .e.g.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=yucky
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=crateless
Not undefined. Ukrainians. Some of whom died for their convictions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
Thank you. So a group of Ukrainians organised a coup against a legitimately elected president instead of substituting him with another legitimately elected individual at the next election cycle. This is a valuable insight for everyone who claims that Ukraine is a democratic state.
First.
I think my words matter very little. What matters is the unquestionable sacrifice, dedication and love the Ukrainians are showing to their country.
This war is a war of genocide and as such an unspeakable, heinous act.
Secondly.
Nonsense. Who else would control Ukraine except Ukrainians themselves?
Please read the Wikipedia link on Maidan above.
Ukrainians are proving with their blood and dedication they wish to be a single democratic people aligned with the west.
Ukraine was turning to an authoritarian dictatorship strongly aligned with Kremlin at the cost of civil society and political rights of her citizens.
Maidan was a color revolution expressing the outrage of people who wanted to be politically aligned with the west, not with Russia.
The opposition leaders were jailed (much like Navalny now in Russia).
The EU trade agreement was depending on structural changes, among them the release of the political opposition.
Yes, it was part of political struggle.
It was a part of struggle of open society versus autocracy.
Much like the war in Ukraine continues to be.
Was there a referendum for joining the EU or was it a political program? You know, at least something that would resemble the UK referendum for leaving the EU. Otherwise how else do you know what the majority of Ukrainians want long-term as a nation?
> It was a part of struggle of open society versus autocracy.
oh yes, the open society of the Panama and Pandora papers [1][2]. Two consecutive presidents that can't help themselves from being anti-autocracy.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-u...
[2] https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-r...
Western institutions stand firm. The fact that you have even heard of panama papers is a proof of this fact.
Democracy is not a joke, it is standing fast. Regardless of the attempts of the autocracies to claim otherwise, or sow dissent by nefarious "whataboutism".
Nobody is "good", everyone does mistakes. They key to understand in the west is the belief of the people in the institutions, and the self correcting dynamic a western style of government instills into a nation.
To get a high level understanding of the situation I recommend Darren Acemoglus "why nations fail" which tries (and in my mind succeeds) in explaining what distinguishes western style of government from more closed autocracies (and how and why it's better in many ways, even though not perfect).
In a parallel universe where Trudeau promised closer ties to the EU and pivoted mid-term to get closer to the USA, would the USA be entitled to invade and annex us should we decide to throw him out?
Could you at least answer this single question: what did Ukraine have to do with Iraq in 2003-2004?
> would the USA be entitled to invade and annex us should we decide to throw him out?
You should ask Panama and Grenada about this possibility instead, not Canada [1] [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Gren...
If Canada was to get wrecked for joining the Schengen Area (or somehow the EU or China's RCEP), which FWIW I don't see happening, it in no way would justify one or the other superpower pre-emptively crushing sovereign countries. Just like other cases of the US encroaching on foreign countries for dubious reasons don't excuse or justify Ukraine in any way.
People died there. 67 of the protesters died after being shot. They were killed. However, 18 police officers died, too - and probably not to friendly fire. That seems to suggest there was violence involved. Most of that violence was done by the police. Still, that death toll on the police side cannot be just an accident. There was fighting happening there. The police used violence, but the protesters reciprocated in kind.
I'm not saying who was right or wrong. Obviously, 750 people with gunshot wounds is too much for any police action. The officers evidently failed to get the situation under control, and, of course, they are paid to do just that, so the large part of responsibility lies with them. They shouldn't have needed to shot to kill. But, the protesters also could have gone home. Or they could have stayed there, but without resorting to violence (though they would be tortured and some of them would get killed anyway). What actually happened, though, resembled regular urban warfare, if Wikipedia description is to be trusted. One side was out-armed, the other outnumbered, but there definitely were two opposing forces, fighting for territory, taking and re-taking important points, moving wounded to the rear, making surprise attacks or night raids, and fighting them off, involving third parties, and so on.
Again, none of that justifies the invasion by Russia. Annexation of territory, and the war that ensued are both Russia's responsibility and crime. Obviously, Russia is an aggressor here, and it violated sovereignty of Ukraine, no matter the reasons. I'm writing this much about the obvious, because last time I pointed this out I got into a lengthy, very frustrating, discussion with someone who accused me of being on Moscow's payroll. I'm not. I'm not justifying any action of Russia, and I'm not endorsing their aggression, and I don't feel (at very least) like I advance their agenda.
But. More than hundred dead and more than a thousand wounded is not, in my opinion, (EDIT: just a) "civil protest".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_during_t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
> The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي) was a series of anti-government protests [...]
Yanukovych left Kyiv on Feb 21nd 2014, was ousted as president by the 22d and fled to Russia by the 26th. [0, 1]
Russia invaded Crimea with boots on the ground by Feb 22-23d. [2]
I wager people who still accept the NATO pretense never checked the timelines of how this started in the first place.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War#2014_Russi...
This is about Russia attempting a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
This is not the first time Russian state attempted such a thing. Holodomor was an engineered famine with the intent of destroying Ukraine. And now they are at it again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Generally as a state Russia is just horrible to all of the nations at it's borders it feels it has enough force to subjugate.
They are not idiots - they realize NATO would never invade Russia.
However, what NATO would have done, is give Ukrainian so much force projection capability within their territory Russia could never threaten them militarily again.
This about a narcissistic bully wanting to subjugate as many people by fear under it's thumb as possible.
Not everything is a US plot. Countries join NATO by their own volition. Because they want to.
East European countries wished to join NATO. Exactly because they knew what Russia is - like we all do now, based on the events in Ukraine.
Finland would be in more danger if it joined NATO, not less.
What nonsense is this.
Russians respect force. The more the better. NATO gives Finnish Defense Forces enough credibility to deter any Russian aggression specifically targeting Finland for the next 50 years at least by making the cost of invasion psychologically and analytically too high.
Yes, because Turkey is in NATO and Ukraine isn't. It has nothing to do with Ukraine being in Europe. Not all of Europe is in NATO, and not all of NATO is in Europe.
What about the NATO planes above Ukraine..?
That's not the same situation at all. Turkey is a member of NATO. Ukraine is not.
It led to nothing, Turkey asked for Patriot missile systems (to protect from attacks from Syria, not Russia or Black Sea), which were hastily provided. Russia started cutting economical ties with Turkey, Erdoğan wrote a personal apology letter to Putin, and after that things got better.
Then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Andrei_Karlov happened, which is still a mystery in itself, and yet, nothing happened that's interesting NATO wise.
You can argue that this is always the case to some degree, and it's better NATO has some say rather than Putin and Russia just rolls over you.
Hawaii isn't even covered under NATO, even if someone attacked the US:
https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
There are a lot of conceivable scenarios where the US would not make the case and even where the other members might disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_...
> Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
A similar scenario with Taiwan would not mean "Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too" as you asserted; they'd have the option to join in if they saw fit.
https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
I'm not saying it would be a verbal and written requirement to participate, and yet, they might have to for other political reasons, like a supply of additional defensive equipment or maintenance programs. For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance. All at the expense of human lives and taxpayers' money [1][2].
Before you say that the US interventions are not NATO interventions, could you name at least one instance from this list [3] where the US was not an active participant of and was actually disapproving of other members' actions? I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US is not a potent alliance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations
Well, now you're arguing something entirely different - that NATO will rope you in without being a member. Hard to say it's a downside of joining if it happens anyways.
> if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too
Nothing in NATO's organization or the Treaty itself supports that assertion; in fact, it explicitly says otherwise.
Yugoslavia was not an Article 5 action, it arose out of Article 4 regional security consultations. It is important to remember that NATO is not, even in theory, a “defensive alliance” it is a regional security organization with a mutual defense commitment.
The Ukraine war changed this calculus by showing that Russia would invade a country that wasn't even being considered for NATO membership.
I mean even NATO hawks believe this so its kind of a ridiculous situation.
The cornerstone of Finnish defence strategy is to make sure, that the cost of invasion is for all sane parties obviously too high. The point is that anyone in Kremlin considering their next foreign adventure looking into FI would go "no way in hell, nope, need another strategy".
Alone the Finnish defense are not sufficient to instill this "cost-plus" model to the adversary's calculations.
Finnish defense forces would incur considerable manpower and material cost to invading army, but in a long conflict their capability would decline. Without military alliance, material transports would be questionable and attrition would soon kick in.
The cost would be high to RU, but without alliance, not blatantly obviously too high.
Before Ukrainian invasion the second part of this "cost plus" model of territorial defence was belief that international community would incur huge economic penalties on Russia, and the fear of this repercussion would be enough to make even the most courageous military gambler to reconsider their options.
Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker.
The invasion of Ukraine basically demolished this second part of the defense strategy. First a single huge blow - no, RU will invade regardless of trade sanctions - and the second blow, continuing - even though sanctions have kicked in, RU still has exports and not all countries oppose it's illegal behaviour. And it still continues the war effort.
FI therefore needs something else to rebuild it's cost-plus model of deterrence. Only thing that can be used to immediately patch it, is NATO alliance.
It's that, or becoming a Kremlin/Beijing puppet.
Let's not exaggerate. There is a large middle ground where Finland bets on that the EU defence clause will deter Russia, that we can build an EU army or that the war in Ukraine will cripple Russia.
But yes, your main point is correct. The Finnish and Swedish defence strategies have been primarily based on knowning that we will lose to Russia but making the invasion too costly for a sane Russian leader to consider an invasion. And Putin's stupid invasion of Ukraine just reduced confidence in the idea that we can rely on a sane cost benefit analysis from the Russian leadership. Which does increase the appeal of a NATO membership.
It's a plausible scenario, but not a sure one.
Finland is capital poor country, it needs foreign investment or else it will stagnate.
Without NATO after Ukraine the investment environment in Finland will likely be perceived as highly unstable.
China, OTOH, is happy to continue investing vast amount of capital in it's Eurasian project / Belt&Road initiative.
Without NATO, Russia being a loyal subject of the CCP after being sanctioned out of the western sphere of trade, Beijing alliance would be irresistible by guaranteeing both capital and security.
Would that be bad? If you like free speech, then yes. If you like high quality institutions then yes.
This is of course again a bit hyperbolic - western capital flight might not happen.
I mean, something has to guarantee that we have no conflicts between now and being an actual member AFAICT. There's talk of "safety guarantees IF we start membership procession" or something, but then there's still a gap where we need to guarantee territorial integrity / "no conflict".
The point being, if we can deter them from attacking us between now and being a member (when attacking us would have higher ROI for Russia, stopping our NATO track) ... we have the deterrence to stop them from attacking us without NATO membership too (since it would be costlier for them in that case relatively speaking, the ROI would be lower).
The Russian military being bogged down in Ukraine. So the trick is having something else in place by the time it extricates itself from Ukraine and starts looking for ways to rebuild it's credibility in the aftermath.
Which is why some previously NATO hesitant places that have shifted are likely to seek to act quickly.
The impacts of those sanctions are frequently not immediate. 3-6 months from now, some of them may have a lot more impact than they're having by now.
If I were Russia, my difficulty with the Ukrainian armed forces might give me pause with the idea that Finland's - with a comparable military budget and similar conscription - would be manageable.
The problem is, 3-6 months of Russia heavy bombing of civilian targets would likely level several major cities in Finland (most smaller than Mariupol) to rubble.
As would the fact that Ukraine's military stood their ground quite successfully.
Switzerland also made concessions to stay out of the war. Germany wanted to invade, but the risk/reward wasn't worth it at that stage of the war.
Spain was in a civil war and I wouldn't call their post war situation a "success."
Ireland, I guess you could say, faired okay after the war, but during the war, their ships were attacked by both sides and often received no response to distress signals.
Is this a way of saying, like in WW2, that since Sweden doesn't share borders with aggressive neighbors you don't want to have the burden of defending the free world?
What does the US and Turkey have to do with anything? Turkey only requires defending if it's being attacked, not if Turkey starts a war.
There has been a pretty strong anti-US sentiment in the left leaning parts of the political establishment. Partly due to the same reasons communism enticed global intelligenzia, and partly due to the lingering effects of Finlandization.
Finlandization still causes some psychological baggage on the older generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
Finland was "non-aligned" during the cold war and as silly as it sounds, most people in Finland believed this. What it actually meant was that Finland was heavily leaning towards Kremlin - politically and journalistically - even thought it's civil society existed in a nordic egalitarian bliss. But the higher you went in the society, the stronger the Kremlin corruption was.
(I'm 42 and that stuff feels pretty foreign to me already).
This corruption was hidden from the Finns as a people, who most part distrusted Russia - and as Ukrainian events have proven again, for a good reason. Hence - internal policy was based on blatant obfuscation of truth. After the second world war this was a strategy for survival as Stalin could have likely wiped out the whole nation if he had detected any inch of resistance. But after decades, it became an established "way the things are".
Soviet Union was really successful in it's influence campaigns, and Soviet Russia was lauded as a paradise on earth by many prominent members of the intelligentsia up until it collapsed. Ideological hatred of capitalism is also a theme here.
I have to point out that there was enough multipolarity in the political field that Finland never became a communist state. And could have not become - such a thing would have likely caused a civil war. But the left and center heavily colluded with Russia for decades. And Finland had the same president (Kekkonen) for 25 years.
So, that's the background up to 1990's.
So, Finland had a strong culture of Kremlin appeasement starting from the end of second world war, and it left the political and journalistic tradition scarred for generations. Like the victim in an abusive relationship, the subconscious tries to avoid irritating the bully with whom you live. The first time there was even a hint of honest journalism about Soviet Union was during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The political and journalistic establishment started only heal after the fall of the soviet union.
For a while, though, it looked like Russia might grow up into a democratic liberal economy. There was therefore no reason for the pro-Russia sentiment to die. And no reason for the anti-US sentiment to die either.
This left the political field with lots of people, who in their subconscious viewed US as "the enemy" and Russia as "the great enlightened people".
I for myself cannot fathom this anti-americanism, and have not met it in my daily life as an engineer, but it seems to be a thing in the older corrupt generation of politicians, as well as among the more naive younger types.
I think my generation (42 like I said) and younger recognize US as an innovative, cultural and scientific superpower and Russia as the degrading husk of a state it is.
I think these "we can stand alone" and "make piece not war" sentiments are remnants of the Finlandization period.
As horrible as the Ukrainian war is, I think this enables Finnish society to finally get rid of the 80 years of dishonest kowtowing to a totalitarian state and enables it to become the truly western state it needs to be and finally unleash it's full potential (even though small) in the western world.
Also: If Russia tries anything with the baltic states, it will almost inevitably attack parts of Sweden and Finland just to safeguard its flanks.
There is no upside to appeasing Putin anymore.
The left wing parties in Sweden do not like the idea of a military alliance with Turkey or the US, but this invasion might make it the least bad option to them.
On the long haul, friends of the US have a much better time than "friends" of Russia, especially those with a border to their "empire".
I don't think a lot of people like being allied to Erdogan. Turkey itself is not so much the problem, it is actually a valuable member due to location and contribution.
As I said, non-membership makes involvement of Finland and Sweden in any future wars between Russia and its neighbors more likely, not less likely.
The upside is to avoid nuclear war. Believe it or not, prior to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian peoples wanted peace, too. Joining NATO wouldn't have done so.
The idea that disputes between countries all over the map should lead to NATO involvement is dangerous. It's astounding how so many people don't seem to understand this. Of course, if you say, "How would we react?" it's "whataboutism".
You label the invasion of Ukraine a "dispute"? It's a war of unilateral aggression involving war crimes and genocide.
The point of NATO membership of Finland and Sweden is to avoid military conflicts. Putin proved to the world that he does not abide by any norm or treaty, so not joining NATO will give those countries no security from his forces should he decide attacking them is in his best interests.
I also saw it as long-term detrimental to its role as an energy exporter because this would inspire Europe to quickly migrate to more renewables, though this take is more of a western perspective and probably wasn't a priority for Putin.
Russia made concessions to NATO for 30 years and got nothing but NATO expansion Eastward.
I don't see any other explanation except that allowing NATO rockets in Ukraine is suicidal for Russia, therefore there is no choice: it is a fight for survival.
Think what US would do if Russia were to put its rockets in Mexico and/or Canada. Or just remember Cuba/Turkey situation in 60s.
(it is funny how socialism was replaced by capitalism long ago but it didn't affect the cultivated hatred to / dehumanization of Russian people on the West).
> Think what US would do if Russia were to put its rockets in Mexico and/or Canada. Or just remember Cuba/Turkey situation in 60s.
If it is just a defense pact and not first strike nukes, I wouldn't care. AFAIK, the US hasn't expanded nuclear weapons eastword since the cuban missile crises so I'm not sure what your point is. Estonia is part of NATO but we don't host nukes there because we don't want to trigger the Cuban missile crises again.
Anytime you tell Russians that the US basically just wants out of Europe and to focus on China (Remember the pivot to Asia? This doesn't even paint the US in a good light, just a self interested one), they insist that Russia is the US's greatest enemy and that China is basically just a minor member of the team Russia built to destroy the west.
Are there any nuclear weapons in previous Warsaw pact countries? From everything I can read it seems like there are not.
This is the ridiculous Russian twist of facts that makes absolutely no sense. I can't even bother debunking it now. Just as credible as the de-nazification.
It's just Russia losing its sphere of influence and Putin can't take it in his delirious dreams of imagined Russian supremacy. In truth there's no threat except of losing some influence as all Russia's neighbors naturally want to get as far away them as possible.
The atrocities done by Russians in Ukraine might be new to people of the West, but are the same old Russians for us in Eastern Europe, or everywhere else bordering Russia.
Russians aren't really treating Ukraine any differently than they were treating whole Europe but especially Poland in WW2, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and of course Afghanistan. And the fall of Soviet Union didn't change anything - since 1990, Russians managed to fight war in Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, Dagestan, Chechnya again, Georgia again, Ukraine, Syria, and now Ukraine again in full force. All of these places have felt the Russian touch.
Nobody in the world is doing more to make sure Russians are hated than the Russian soldiers and government themselves.
Nobody outside of ex-Soviet Union countrys hated Russians before the war.
If you really want to invoke and analogue from US history then the only example that comes to my mind is the US war of independence and I'm pretty sure on which side of that fight US would like to be.
Russia wants to keep it's power by force in it's self claimed sphere of influence in old Soviet countries.
That motivation for military intervention for influence is widely documented through the similarities in Russia's last 25 military interventions since 1991 - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA444-3.html .
Additionally, gas was found in Crimea which would make moving away from Russian gas much easier and they tried to reference the invasion of Ukraine to the decline of the west. Russia ( or better: Putin) obviously still lives in the USSR past, which collapsed without any military action of the west.
The invasion of Ukraine has as much to do with NATO as the invasion of Chechen and Servia had to do with NATO. The only thing NATO caused was they waited longer to actually invade and tried a gray zone invasion first ( without much success), but NATO is not the reason for invasion.
Russia's self claimed sphere of influence is, while they are losing influence constantly, just look at their military interventions in their CSTO allies. Even Orban isn't yelling to loud about preferring Russia over EU countries, although he would want to.
Post soviet countries aren't getting invaded by NATO and annexed by force. They are choosing to move away from Russia and choosing for closer ties with western countries.
For Russia, the choice is: war now or war later?
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.
Edit: There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what I am saying. The headline (as of this writing: "Finland and Sweden set to join Nato as soon as summer") is not true. Lots of people wish it were true. It may even become true in the future. But as of today, it is not true, and I take issue with that.
Let's just say that the traffic to certain subreddits stirring up the west dropped off a cliff when the Russian invasion started. It _was_ worse than Facebook, but the troll farms are no longer pumping nearly as much division.
If Russia had been in the middle of a war during the Brexit vote, there's no way they could have swung the influence they did.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-finland-nat...
I don't know if it's true or not - but if it's false, the real issue would be a credible news source, The Times, got it wrong, not reddit.
Edit: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-sweden-set-join...
The real question is why? There have been no definitive announcements from Finland and Sweden, nor even rumors of upcoming announcements. It's all speculation.
So either someone is coordinating to feed this story to US/UK outlets, OR some idiot published this incorrectly and all the copycat content factories are playing a deadly game of telephone seeing who can re-write this headline in the most inflammatory way to get clicks.
My guess is the latter.
I would not be surprised if this headline turns out the be true.
now: 68% in favor, 12% against
if gov were to recommend: 77% in favor, 11% against
We finns are in general quite confident with our military, but war in Ukraine has shown that potential conflict may not be ”a fair fight” between armies. In Ukraine there has been attacks against civilians and soft targets with missiles. This is not something you can easily defend yourself against. There’s strong feeling that we need some backup to reduce the likelihood of such attacks.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31015962
what is a framework to distinguish NATO and non-NATO intervention? Let's say a conflict is small enough for a single country like the US to handle it. Is it still NATO or is it only the US with other members not objecting to it?
Many NATO interventions happen because the UN Security Council asked the NATO to take leadership on them, others without UN involvement, but all of them require that there’s a political decision before the intervention happens.
Of important note: there is currently no NATO support for Ukraine - many NATO member states do support Ukraine, but others are very reluctant- Hungary for example. NATO certainly is a body that acts as coordinator and supports states that feel threatened by Russia at the moment, even backfilling for capabilities that they’re handing over to Ukraine, so that distinction is mostly political - but it has real effects. Should any of Ukraines neighbors decide to unilaterally send troops into Ukraine and they get attacked there, it’s not an automatic trigger for Article 5 either.
The defensive clause of the treaty has only been invoked once, by the United States after the September 11 attacks.
https://www.socialdemokraterna.se/nyheter/nyheter/2022-04-11...
In other words, the submitted article is just bullshit.
There's an article in the most-respected British newspaper, articles in English-language Swedish newspapers and an original press release providing a primary source for part of the news (I assume there were interviews or similar as it was announced).
> The Social Democrat general secretary, Tobias Baudin, said the security review would be complete “before the summer”.
(From another article as I'm not a Times subscriber.)
If you won't believe quotes from senior politicians in major newspapers I can't help you.
I read an article a few months back about a Swedish town that prepares itself as a place for storing nuclear waste for the next 10000 years. The one thing I remember from that article is that it took 18 years to start building the facility. I get that desperate times and so on, but I think deciding something huge on a timeline this tight is not very probable.
EDIT: actually, storage meant for 100_000 years! Here: https://www.dw.com/en/sweden-approves-plans-for-forsmark-nuc...
I would be very careful making statements like this as if you knew how to interpret that quote from that exact person and party he represents.
Nothing is decided yet, and although it is a lot more likely to happen now than a week ago the foreign sources make it sound like a decision has been made. If that was the case it would be headline news in all the swedish newspapers.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/s-drar-i-gang-natodebatt-...
Will we join NATO? Still not decided but moves from S and SD has made it seem quite likely. Before summer? Very unlikely, discussions in Sweden have just started.
Not trying to call you ignorant (I don't know you), but I don't know that Swedish citizenship is a source in itself.
EDIT: Corrected "would" with "wouldn't".
You should trust SWE and FI journalism on this matter first and foremost before external sources.
Of course there are discussions that are not public. But it would be quite the outrage if the official information was made public in a non SWE or FI source.
Generally Nordic societies are fairly egalitarian. NATO membership would be a major shift and it would be discussed in public as soon as the definitive decision was done. Of course this is they way the wind is blowing but it's not official until SWE and FI state officials say it's so.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...
NATO has requirements for membership, and Russia is too corrupt and undemocratic to meet them ( this is also why full membership for Ukraine was always in the future).
NATOs main purpose is to project American power and influence foreign policy. Russia being in NATO would make this more difficult.
The main reason is that the reason Russia wanted to join changed from cooperative regional security (which was at least plausibly the motivation early on) to “NATO works by consensus not majoritarianism, so if we can get in we can screw everything up“, which it firmly was when Putin demanded immediate admission without the onboarding other ex-Warsaw Pact states were getting.
> NATO has requirements for membership
To be fair, NATO decides those on a case-by-case basis, not like they are common binding rules (I mean, there are the latter, too, but that's not usually the main issue.)
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/russia-could-have-joined-n...
also on Wikipedia too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–NATO_relations#Suggesti...
All NATO members have allied troops stationed within their borders, so non-involvement isn't even possible.
So what happens if they decided to go town on each other someday? A5 invocation, first come first served? I really don't know what that would imply.
Stability in Europe. The west doesn't want refugees from whatever country Russia decided to invade this week to show up on their doorstep all the time, or the supply chain interruptions that happen when war constantly breaks out. You might remember that NATO arose almost immediately after World War 2 which had a rather negative effect on Europe and European influence in the world.
> Obviously, Russia has nothing more to lose given the sanctions, so, the only thing left is a direct NATO conforntation,
Russia has plenty more to lose. Namely every major European power and the US unloading all their armaments on Russian cities that are very close to the border.
> but it seems that the West is more afraid of such conflict than Putin, who believes that this is inevitable and that if you're faced with an inevitable flight, it's better to strike first.
This is an absolutely unrealistic take. Russia _can not_ win major combat against NATO in any shape or form. They couldn't do it with their made up propaganda army and they certainly can't do it with their actual army.
Finland has one of the bigger armies in Europe (way bigger then many of the existing european NATO members). At least for the baltic NATO members Finland being a member is a huge boon basically blocking Russian fleet into the bay where Saint Petersburg is as the Gulf of Finland is rather narrow (you can literally see from Helsinki to Tallin if you go top of a tall building) completing the encirclement of Russia on its western border.
Sweden also helps with controlling the Baltic sea due to Gotland.
[0]: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-16/f-16-bulg...
> Also, should I mention that Article 5 has never been tested yet
It has, the US invoked it after 9/11
As for you presumptions about NATO and Russia, you're just guessing, same as anybody. However seeing Russian atrocities across the world, I'm very happy there's an alliance containing them. They can't use NATO's existence as an excuse for their war crimes in Ukraine and you shouldn't be using that excuse for them. Their narrative has been that Ukraine isn't a real country. Without NATO, do you think they wouldn't have said the Baltics, Poland, and who knows who else also aren't real countries?
If I were Finland I'd join NATO ASAP, while Russia is distracted and before a bunch of mysterious "border disputes" arise.
All things considered, I’d rather not get into a fight at all than get into fight I win.
I'm not sure how both can be seen as anything but Soviet victories?
"we brought them to stalemate"
In the continuation war of Finland and Germany against Soviet Union, German troops formed a large part of the front.
"had enough deterrent to stop them from conquering us later."
Without allied pressure Soviet Union could have steamrolled over Finland after Germany receded.
Instead Finland got the bitter pill of being in Kremlin leash for decades - but still much preferable to death or rule by communist junta.
However only 50% of Swedes want to join NATO and the current ruling government is anti-NATO.
If I was a betting person I would put the likelihood of Finland joining NATO at 99% and the likelihood of Sweden joining NATO at 0%.
And it’s extremely selfish by the self proclaimed humanitarian super power to not step in and help if some of our Baltic neighbors were attacked.
The cost of a strong enough military outside NATO is higher than inside. 4-5% of GDP vs 2%.
Not to mention to secure against a Russian invasion of the mainland, of course…
But if Finland joins NATO, Sweden either must yield to RU or join NATO itself.
The key here is Sweden's the island of Gotland sitting at the middle of the Baltic sea.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gotland/@58.8670134,17.054...
In most scenarios it would serve as a most advantageous base for RU operations, including serving as an unsinkable airplane carrier / missile platform.
If SWE was the only non-NATO country in Northern Europe it would be quite open for an attack.
In case RU decided to invade Gotland from it's base in Kaliningrad, there is very little anyone could do to stop it.
The current conflict has taught that NATO forces will not engage with RU forces. If FI joins NATO, it effectively blocks FI from helping SWE to defend itself.
Basically, if FI joins NATO Gotland is open for picking for RU.
Why? Russia has made no mention of any issues with Sweden. And in this scenario, the only reason Finland would find themselves in conflict is if they joined NATO. Not saying that is a valid reason for Russia to go on the offensive, but it is a well known and documented policy.
No, Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
I don't understand where this logic "if Finland joins NATO then Russia will invade it". That is backward logic. Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.
The balance of fear due to nuclear weapons if nothing else guarantees this.
Russia is opposed to the fact it can't bully it's weaker neighbours on a whim if they are in NATO. That is the cause for their irritation.
If Finland and Sweden remained neutral throughout the entire cold war and yet now are openly considering NATO membership, it means something.
Now Russia has more or less proclaimed it's "back to the empire" agenda which implies subjugation of all of the former states of the russian empire.
Which includes Finland.
The weird thing is, even though Russians lie constantly, when they declare foreign policy targets, they are surprisingly honest and consistent about that.
This implies 1) Finland needs to join NATO asap.
2) After that sweden would be the only weak target left. Gotland is an obvious, concrete military goal that would be feasible target for a RU invasion from Kaliningrad.
They may still forgo NATO, its absolutely their choice, and every NATO member respects that, being the primary difference between NATO and Russia. They can leave at any time too.
What disturbs me is that there is a lot of appeasement rhetoric floating around in the comment sections.
If people want to let Russia get away with wrecking Ukraine because Russia has nukes, then we may as well drop the bombs now - once you legitimize that strategy you are going to have massive nuclear proliferation, and even if appeasement worked (it simply doesn't), every other aggressor is going to view nukes as an easy win.
Invading, defending, and holding Gotland is not an easy task, especially as the Ukraine invasion has exposed the glaring deficiencies of the Russian armed forces. And Sweden's defense, attenuated as it might be from decades of budget cuts, is focused on defending Gotland.
There is no credible threat of a NATO invasion but there is the First-Strike issue now that hypersonic missiles are being developed. Putin has been moaning about this for a while now. A security-conscious/pragmatic state models "what is possible" vs "what is probable". If it seems likely that future Finland could host hypersonic missiles pointed at St.Petersburg, well it becomes incumbent on Moscow to attempt to prevent that. It seems unwise to dismiss their concerns if said dismissal would lead to Ukraine 2.0.
Lots of people seem to think that the Russian unwillingness to flatten Kiev means they could not do it.
How many people have to die for Finns to feel like they stood up to a bully?
For some weird reason Russia is the only country in Europe that must have buffer states protecting its lands and be allowed to use force the enforce this.
It would be helpful if everyone stopped this lying and just said it how it is. Russia wants weak buffer states around its borders that it can abuse however it wants. There really is no actual military reason for any of this as nato is a defense alliance by definition and thus it will not attack first and the current situation in Ukraine has proven this to be true.
This 100%
Until Russia invades any NATO country I have a hard time to dismiss this analysis.
If NATO fails to defend any of it's members then it is nullified. Hence I have a quite high trust to the security instilled by the alliance to any of it's members.
You are pretty good at repeating Russian talking points, by the way ;)
Both Russia and the US have nukes that reach around the entire planet, and vehicles to keep nukes moving and hidden so that second strike capability is always present. Russia can hide its nukes in Siberia if its worried about a first strike to remove MAD. The nukes would work just as well. Its also been bragging about its super cavitating torpedo... although I get the Russian position a bit more if its all been a bluff like what appears to be the case in Ukraine.
Hypersonic missiles aren't going to be a huge game changer here (how much of those heavy elements can you cram into them), interception technologies just aren't there yet, and by the time they really come into full swing the US won't be Russia's real problem (demographics are destiny... this applies to everyone)
In addition, I doubt Finland would allow nukes placed on its territory. NATO is a fully voluntary organization. There is no command structure that supersedes national authority.
Also fyi, no one outside of Russia believes that Russia was wasn't trying to level Kiev. They are happily continuing to level Mariupol, so its not like they had humanitarian thoughts in mind. You don't send a massive column of armor for a quick strike smart bomb operation. It boggles my mind that even Russians can believe that.
The only reason things didn't continue to accelerate under Trump is because he was not a fan of NATO and had no financial interests in Ukraine like Biden does, so the Ukrainians knew they had no friend in him. Once Biden won, Ukraine went back to poking the bear with obvious results.
I'm sure the Biden families financial activities in Ukraine are 100% completely unrelated though.
War crimes committed by the Russians or Ukrainians should absolutely be investigated. They're just not relevant to the discussion at hand, which is "How did we get to this point".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
There is a lot of propaganda out there, but a hard and fast truth is that no country, not Russia nor the US nor China nor India nor anyone actually cares at all about normal citizens.
People can care about other people, but countries do not and cannot. Its why Putin's claims of protecting Russians are BS. (US Claims of protecting Ukrainians too, its in the US/Europe interest to do so, its not to protect Tibetans or Afghans for example, so it does not)
Also, if the US government had nothing to do with the Russia/Ukraine tiff, then why did Crimea happen while Biden was VP, then nothing while Trump was President, then back on again after Biden becomes President. Is that also unrelated?
Just spitballing.
And yet that isn't what happened. Instead, Putin invaded while Biden was VP in 2014 and again while Biden is President now. Very curious that the exact opposite happened. Curious indeed...
Mr Trump would have done that, absolutely. Not only with no response, but with some blather about "fine people on both sides" and "I spoke to Mr Putin, he said he had to do it, he's a genius to do that".
In other words, with support from the White House in the obfuscatory propaganda; instead of having his militarily moves called out like they were in Feb 2022 - the Biden team was ahead of the game on that.
Why didn't Russia move when Mr Trump was in office? We can't know, but one theory is that he was waiting for NATO to be damaged beyond repair by Trump. Which would have happened if Mr Trump was still in office in 2022.
We know that Mr Trump was much warmer with Mr Putin than Mr Biden or any other recent US president was. Which makes your whole line of suggestion very misleading. So nothing new there. Anyway it's curious that you think this odd talking point is relevant. Curious indeed...
I'm not here for you trotting out that "poking the bear" nonsense again.
So Putin intentionally made things 1000x harder on himself...because reasons? I understand being blinded by Trump hatred, but how do you logically make that sort of conclusion? You have to know that makes zero sense, right?
In short: We can't know all of Mr Putin's reasons. He may have expected a second Trump term, and didn't think we was "waiting until Trump was gone" at all. You don't address the damage to NATO that a second Trump term would have done, and that Mr Putin so clearly wanted Mr Trump to do for him. Come one, engage your NATO obsession one more time?
Mr Putin also clearly didn't expect "massive resistance across the board" or that it would be "1000x harder on himself" to take Kyiv in 2022 so this argument doesn't hold up.
The words that you put in my mouth "you think Putin could have easily taken Ukraine with no resistance from the US" show a confused thinking - are you saying that "resistance from the US" is the only thing that prevents "easily take Ukraine"? I don't believe that, and in 2022, no one should. It's simplistic rubbish that forgets about the agency of the Ukrainian people. Facts on the ground have disproved it.
Finally if you want real answers, ask an expert - Fiona Hill, Molly McKew, Anne Applebaum or the like, not strangers on the internet.
I agree that Mr Putin's actions since February make "zero sense" - his speeches are unhinged and his invasion plan has failed. But an attempt to claim that the cause is in "Trump vs Biden" is ridiculous and self-obsessed. The cause is in Moscow. The answer is in Kyiv.
You don't have to take my word for it, Zelensky himself has spent the last 2 months begging for more and more financial and military aid from the US/NATO. We have pumped billions into Ukraine already.
And I'm still trying to understand why you think Putin wouldn't take the opportunity to invade under Trump, while invading twice with Biden in a position of power. Especially considering all of the financial interests of the Biden family in Ukraine. You just see that as a coincidence?
And also fighting for survival, there's that. Financial and military aid from all over, after an invasion, is not the same as "resistance from the US" - the latter implies combat, from the US only. It's dishonest to conflate these.
> And I'm still trying to understand why you think Putin wouldn't take the opportunity to invade under Trump,
All the guidance that you're going to get is above, and I can not help you further.
Clearly, because there is no logical response. If Putin truly thought he could easily take Ukraine under Trump, he would have. Which means your assumption is wrong.
Meanwhile, we're back to wondering why the Biden families massive financial interests in Ukraine somehow aren't relevant...
I'm not wondering at at all, I see it clearly. You're right, this rubbish is a distraction.
Russia and Ukraine were at war Trump's whole presidency. The Kerch Strait incident escalated it.
Keep in mind Putin rolled his tanks into Crimea the day after the new pro-US/NATO regime in Ukraine had thrown out the democratically elected (albeit pro-Russia) government, and rewritten the Ukrainian Constitution[2] to then make it possible to drop neutrality[3] so that they could begin the process of joining NATO. A rule to join NATO is that a nation must be in control of its borders and not in active conflict, so by annexing Crimea, Russia ensured the moves to join NATO would be halted with that action.
Or is that timing coincidental? Remember, you don't have to agree with a reason to at least understand what the reason is.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-constituti...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-30594763
EU has a mutual defense clause [0]
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/...
Sweden set to join NATO: https://mobile.twitter.com/shashj/status/1514181898456555531
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31016003
Russia's version of "neutrality" is a joke.
Russia's demand for "neutrality" means letting Russia decide Ukraine's foreign and military policies. Russia want to enforce specific limits on the size and capabilities of Ukraine's military. That will never be accepted by Ukraine.
I see basically 3 possibilities. Ukraine agrees to neutrality, Ukraine resists neutrality and has its country destroyed and is eventually forced to agree to it anyway (what is happening now), or the western powers start a hot war with Russia and risk WW3/nuclear holocaust. Given those options I'd go with the first.
- 1 is a joke which cannot be accepted.
- 3 is a bluff.
- 2 is the only option. Ukraine has already beaten you in the north. How long till it defeats you in the east and south?
Ukraine will suffer many dead civilians and hundreds of billion in damages, but Russia is losing thousands of soldiers and the economic impact will last for decades while Ukraine will be rebuilt.
All of the Russian criticism was plainly self serving anyway. You can clearly tell by this war that they had no qualms with anything the US did in Iraq, excluding maybe their own geopolitical interests in the area.
Whatever was done in the past, is something you have to allow everyone else to do?
Surely you see how that is morally untenable?
Errors of the past do not need to be repeated or allowed. (Even though they likely will be as human life is complex and fallible).
What is happening now is the Russian economy collapsing and thousands of Russian soldiers returning home in body bags in just the past few weeks. The same things that caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
[0]: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/into-the-heart-of-darkness-what-russi...
Why would the US willfully feed countries to Russia?
Ukraine is being attacked exactly because it's not allied with major powers.
> Zelenskyy already said he was told in private Ukraine wouldn't be admitted to NATO anyway, making this entire war senseless.
You're living in a parallel reality. Ukraine is fighting for its right to exist. The war is senseless, but that's something you need to tell Putin.
Only Russia can de-escalate the situation.
The irony is that Russia could have taken Donetsk and Luhanks and the war would have been out of the news cycle by now. The West would just have repeated the harmless 2014 targeted "sanctions" on Russian oligarchs and politicians.
Putin's and Lavrov's genocidal speeches about Ukraine being a fake nation that should be "de-nazified" and the Russian attempt at taking the capital Kyiv has escalated this conflict into its current state.
It's kind of a weird question honestly, why do you think India, China and the United States pursue territorial interests and fight wars? History and conventional warfare hasn't ended just because countries have nukes.
The idea of NATO attacking Russia is bonkers. They're barely moving to defend Ukraine. "NATO is a threat" is post hoc rationalization for Russia's own revanchist behavior; even the Russian propagandists who push it don't take it seriously.
There's plenty of examples like the deployment of missile defenses to Eastern Europe (which contrary to the name is strategically an aggressive move, as they're first strike enablers, diminishing strategic deterrents. The one thing Russia is supposed to rely on). The basic point is, no country on earth has stopped deploying its military in the pursuit of national security merely because it is a nuclear power.
NATO is a defensive treaty organization, joined by consent. Warsaw Pact was the result of USSR using military force to subjugate its neighbors. There's no comparison, and I see no reason to engage such tripe further.
The only reason for US military presence in Europe is the Russian threat. The US would gladly move forces to the Pacific and Europe would be happy to have a peaceful and democratic Russia on their border and to see the US go.
Putin chose empire-building by force. He could have chosen peace and economic prosperity instead. Just compare the development of Russia and the former Warsaw pact countries.
Should they avoid true headlines that are actually important, because of the perceived effect on politics / international relations?
Unbiased, truthful news? That would be the day. Until that happens, newpapers always editorialize. They exaggerate. They clickbait. They speculate. It's fine and often harmless. But it's not harmless when sabres are rattling and people are dying.
Newspapers, more than anyone, should check, verify, and double-check before they publish anything pertaining to anything as polarized as an armed conflict. Polarized, in this case, because Russians seem to think they are on the right side of history, while the West obviously feels the same.
Should they avoid publishing true headlines? Maybe. They should at least make sure the headlines are truthful.
Newspapers often delay publication of sensitive issues. See important leaks like the Panama Papers, where many journalists coordinated publication. Same with various criminal investigations, where reports are delayed or initially partially redacted to protect the integrity of the investigation, or to protect the victims.
I totally agree about the "making sure the headlines are truthful" part.
Not sure how I feel about not publishing truthful things because it might escalate the war. Should the press not publish anything about the war in Ukraine, because it might lead to nuclear war? I guess that's a defensible view in some sense, but I sure don't want to live in a world in which that happens.
This is short term thinking.
What if Finland does not join NATO and Russia invades? What if Russia succeeds? In the next decade it will invade Sweden that’s also not in NATO. At the end of this process, Russia will still border NATO in the North. Only this time Russia will be a much bigger and a more powerful state. What’s the upside for NATO in that?
Most minority republics in the Russian Federation have been fully Russianized.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–NATO_relations#Suggesti...
If Russia ever drops the corruption and becomes a strong democracy, then it could conceivably go into NATO. It would require the US to be much much more passive and a team player (as an American I view this as a good thing, provided it is by other democracies w/ good human rights)
It would also require Russia to have some reason for doing so, mainly if it couldn't defend against China, or some developed Central Asian or Islamist superpower near it. Its also likely that Russia would ally with these forces instead of NATO, or just play them off each other like India is doing with the US/Russia now.
On the NATO side, it would require additional defense commitments by NATO towards Russia (and in the Pacific, the US). I doubt there would be appetite for it in the EU (and maybe not in the US), unless something went really really bad.