The problem with that is simple: if one side believes they are at war, 2 sides are at war.
And Russia has explained why they believe they are at war, the insane dictator at the top explained that in the 13th century it was really unfair that some army marched from Poland to what is now Chechnya (even Tucker Carlsson frowned as hard as he could and needed about 6 seconds to collect his jaw from the floor) and therefore Ukraine isn't a "real" nation and should be part of Russia. And that, in any case, Russia has the borders it chooses, as does any large country.
I was drooling each time he said Poland in that interview. Putin's got special kink for us. Its not well known fact but through weird tricks we ended up ruling Russia for a couple of years. Not a lot of folks on both side knew about it, but then Putin send money for a movie 1612, depicting their heroic retaking of motherland from polish oppressors.
since original topic was about attack aircrafts, my estimate is that NATO without US has several hundreds ready to use attack aircrafts. Specifically largest contributors: Germany, GB, France have 150-200 aircrafts each according to wiki(many of them old and outdated), with half of them likely not ready for combat.
If you put various trainer, transportation, support role aircrafts, maybe it will be few thousands.
NATO isn't a pay-to-play organisation. NATO takes no money from countries. NATO has no forces of it's own to pay for.
There is a non-binding convention that member should spend 2% of their GDP on *their* armed forces. That way when other nations call for help they can respond. It's a guideline figure though and some countries do it and some don't.
I didn't feel that strongly about this a few years ago but with the Ukraine war demonstrating how unprepared certain NATO members were (ex: Germany), despite their pledges at the 2014 Whales Summit[1], which was essentially preparing for this possibility. I can't help but view Trump's anger about this as fortelling, even if obnoxious. Still, I'm confused why this is getting re-interpreted as an attempt at disbanding NATO, from my perspective the allies who refuse to follow through with their promises are fundamentally what challenges the alliance's integrity, not the allies who call them out on it...
Its valid critics, but the point is that vast majority of NATO strength depends on current ruler in US who may not necessary decide to protect NATO coutries.
The fact that Russia, without foreign support or not, has not managed to capture one of the poorest states in Europe is a joke. Imagine the US failing to capture Mexico after 2 years, even if Mexico got weapon supplies from abroad. That would totally discredit the US military.
Russia doesn't care about pacifying Ukraine. If the US had approached Afghanistan with a mindset similar to Russia, there would be no Afghans left, except the few that swore loyalty out of fear. Any dissent would mean death. The US clearly had different goals. Ones that are much much harder to achieve than just killing everyone.
I don't necessarily share the parent commenter's sentiment towards Russia, but I'm curious about your statement - what would those goals of US in Afghanistan be? I mean except from extracting $2.26T from the taxpayers and distributing a significant portion of it to private sector and shareholders, tied to the Senate.
I think the goal was last attempt at nation building in middleeast (that started in 70s, due to oil being way more important for US than now). In order to do nation building of course you have to shake the country and its structure, but you try to shake out the bad people, install stable and reasonable government and plant seeds for democracy, try and introduce some liberalism, education, infrastructure.
It failed, yes. But it succeeded in great many places, eastern europe, large part of south east asia, some african countries.
Russia is just a sorry ass loser, their country is in downward spiral and needs to exert power over its sphere of influence, thing is that countries in that sphere some time ago decided they dont really want to be aligned. Thus Russia decided to punish Ukraine otherwise the rest will also fall out of sphere (ironically I think they accelerated that process even more).
It could be that moral of Ukrainians is deciding factor: million of civilians ready to turn into soldiers, dig into the ground and die there is very strong force.
That's a very weird way of phrasing that Russia has barely anything to gain while Ukraine has everything to loose. It's not like Russia needs any further territory, they are the largest country and haven't yet properly integrated the already invaded cultures.
But did those countries still have multiple generations that remembered what the invaders did last time they controlled them? And was what the invaders did as bad as the actions of the USSR?
I don't think USSR did anything specifically bad to Ukraine after ww2, in contrast, Ukraine gained lots of territories, soviets invested heavily in Ukraine, as result Ukraine became leading industrial and technology region of USSR, most developed and educated compared to all others parts of USSR with exception of handful key regions in Russia.
In fact it is common knowledge that before 2014 Ukraine and Russia were brotherhood nations. Ukraine couldn't imagine being attacked by Russia, that's why the army was a joke at that time and Putin took over Crimea so easily.
One thing that isn't mentioned a lot in connection to this:
Sweden and Denmark has a VERY violent history. Hundreds of years of wars. It is said to be the worst conflict in all of human history. Now we are allied and committed to defend each other. That's a huge thing for peace.
"It is said to be the worst conflict in all of human history."
No it is not, that is incorrect. I really dont know where you get that from. And I dont agree that there have been a VERY violent history. Yes there have been wars, and all war are voilent, but not anything special for that era. Between 1200-1800 there was 15 wars. From 1-10 years and the majority of them lasted just 1 or 2 years.
And fun facts: Of the 15 wars Denmark started 11 of them and Sweden won 11 of them. Sug på den danskjävlar ;) Sweden is a peaceful coutry and that contry that have lived longest in the world without war, over 200 years.
All nordic countries are very similar in so many ways and our language are almost the same so we can understand, "almost" each (except the Danish people (rest of the nordic countries understand what I mean :), maybe that why there have been conflicts ;) We, the nordic countries see ourself more like a family, like siblings that love each outer but also love to tease each other :D
I have to correct my self, the war length was not between 1-10 years, it was between 1-12 when I checked again.
And about "Hundreds of years of wars." I counted for fun how many years in total Sweden and Danmark was in war with each other between 1207 when the first war started to 1814 when the last one ended, and it was around 54 years in total, over a period of 4 centuries. (54 years are dependent how you count, if a war started 1207 and ended 1208 it could have been both 1 and 2 years long, so I counted 1,5 for all wars. So at best it was 47 years or at worst 64 with a mean time of 3,6 year per war).
Indeed, let's not forget our incredible human capacity for forgiveness. Two major peace treaties I pray to see every day is Palestine and Israel and for the Russians and Ukrainians to be brothers.
Sometimes I wonder what a unified world look like, for example what would it look for Palestine and Israel becoming a single nation? For South Korea and North Korea to merge again in brother hood? For China and Taiwan ? etc.
Like how boring would the news be in complete peace? what we wound be doing instead if we weren't busy killing each other?
While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of NATO was "to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down," a saying that has since become a common way to describe the dynamics of NATO
As opposed to what, the United States of Guatemala? It’s more or less the same story everywhere in the developed world. At least China’s not seeking to replace their extant populations with foreigners.
Really strange seeing people (often gleefully) parrot these talking points, unaware of their own malaise.
I think the United States and a India are much better positioned with respect to demographics, with like a generational lead on Europe and Asia. The U.S. has lots more millennials, with much more balanced sex ratios, than Europe or Asia, at least in proportion. Feel free to fact check me though.
Eventually, a generation or two later, the same phenomenon would hit them as well. But it's difficult to reason about what the world will be like even after it gets Europe and Asia. The world economy and geopolitical community would collapse or something, which could influence demographics in yet further weird ways. :O
> It’s more or less the same story everywhere in the developed world.
I don't think it is all the same story.
Americans don't have enough children to sustain their population, but they can make it up with immigration. So do most developed countries, with rare exceptions (consider Israel)
Compare Australia: same story, but with one fundamental difference: US is experiencing uncontrolled mass immigration over its southern land border, immigration to Australia is much more selective, with strong preference given to people like university graduates.
Uncontrolled, non-selective mass immigration is likely to cause much greater problems than controlled selective mass immigration.
And Australia isn't unique here, I think Canada and New Zealand are closer to Australia than to the US in this regard.
On top of that, there's inflation and the value-added tax, which mean that, once all the extra costs have been covered, only about €50 to €70 billion will be left over to spend on actual hardware. "The longer you have this money sit around somewhere, the longer factors like inflation and interest payments have to eat away at this pile," Loss said.[0]
There has been some criticism from European allies, and within Germany, that so many big orders have been placed in the United States.
Depriving local industry. And of what use is this anyway. Why on earth would Germany need ballistic missile defense etc.
>quickly
Two years in, the entire West still cannot outproduce Russia. Let alone Russia plus friends. For the most part, dependable large orders—necessary for expansion—aren’t coming. Overall, deindustrialization is only accelerating.
Italy just ordered 132 L2s for 2027–2037. Pathetic timeframe. These tanks will be obsolete by then.
>NATO wants America in
There is no NATO without the US. Something could conceivably carry the same name but it would not be the same thing. NATO is and has always been an instrument of American control over Europe.
>angry orange political candidate
Remember when Trump ordered a reduction of the occupation force in Germany (35k then)? Well, Serious People got Very Nervous and the military stalled the order. In fact, the generals were in a state of barely concealed mutiny then. And now there’s 50k.
So, rest assured: Germany will be Kept Down for the foreseeable future.
Two years of proxy war. Two years of stressing the necessity of defeating Russia in Ukraine—or at least denying it victory. Two years of coming to the realization that you can’t just turn money into weapons, it takes an industry. Money that they can’t really spare anyway. Two years of realizing that sanctions work both ways, and only one side came prepared. Two years of trusting the experts.
One and a half years of believing sanctions + weapons + training + the greatest ever kontrastnupol were going to do the trick. They really thought it was going to work.
> So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?
Probably not. Russian history for the last several hundred years is a series of kings, emperors, and dictators. Massacres and purges.
The entire peasantry was only freed from slavery 150 years ago. Being ruled by hereditary monarchs and dictators for so long has fundamentally changed Russian culture to be vastly different from the West.
IMO it would take a radical culture shift for Russia to join the West.
Western Europe was not too different at the start of the medieval period but then evolved in a different direction. The King's Two Bodies by Ernst Kantorowicz is a good read on this.
This is western propaganda. NATO were used to attack Yugoslavia and Libia. Attacking 2 countries that did not attack you looks offensive, not defensive, to me.
George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.
The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
You don’t need to be an expert on Russian foreign policy to conclude from nothing but that final quote that Russia (rather, Putin) never had any serious desire to join Nato in the first place.
Putins views on Russia may have been more widely broadcasted recently because of Carlsons interview, but don’t be fooled; they were no different 24 years ago.
Putin had no intention to join NATO, and knew he wouldn't get in. The only reason he would want in is to do the exact same thing that Russia does on the UN security council as a permanent member, which is to stifle and blockade. There are some current NATO members that hold things up, largely Turkey. Coincidentally a large number of smuggled items that get around sanctions to get to Russia...go through Turkey.
On the other hand, I have witnessed how the Putin's rhetoric made a U-turn over those dozens of years — from "Fukuyama-level" liberal and pro-Western (early Putin), to "geopolitical realist" and pretty much anti-Western (as of today).
I don't know how much this reflects his actual worldview transformation (if there was any), but I have reasons to believe that there is no smoke without fire.
I highly encourage you to read some well researched books about Putin, his world view hasn't changed all that much. This is a former KGB man. He has held, for a while, that the fall of the USSR was one of the biggest disasters in history. His rise in power was stemmed by a terrorist attack which he possibly had a hand in to orchestrate his rise and the eventual invasion of Chechnya.
Have you checked direct or inderect export/imports of Greece with Russia? You'll be ashamed to blame Turkiye. If you don't know Greece is also a NATO member.
> So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?
While not technically impossible, practically this is very hard to see. Unless Russia becomes a market liberal, well functioning democracy, it will not happen -- and what are the odds of that?
Russia had the chance after the collapse of the Soviet Union, instead it devolved into a plutocracy and what is essentially a one-party state in anything but name.
Regardless of what some people might think, in no small part due to many people seeing Russia as the spiritual successor to the SU combined with its vast geographical size, Russia is not a superpower, and will not become one in our lifetime.
Yes, they have nukes. So does the UK, and the UK economy is 20% larger than Russia despite is essentially being an island off Europe. How about France? They have nukes too, and their economy is 30% larger.
Russia is a failed state at the tail end of a century long brain drain, crippled by corruption and authoritarian rule, but none of these things are the most deciding factor in why they will never be part of NATO; the primary reason is that Russia quite simply has an empire complex.
What do you get if you combine economical stagnation and a dead empire inferiority complex? You get Hitler, or in this case Putin, and I very much doubt any of us will see a "rehabilitation" of the Russian people like we saw in Germany in our lifetime.
Russia will need to break up into smaller pieces before it is palatable for nato to absorb. Too geographically big right now. USA cannot tolerate anyone else in nato being big in any way that rivals them.
Geographical size means nothing and isn't a challenge to the US, Russia's economy isn't that important to the global economy. The Russian economy is smaller than Canada's and Canada is not only a NATO member but also geographically large.
Smaller than Italy's. PPP works in their favor, to some degree, but outside of natural resources and low-end manufacturing they're mostly holding on to the shadow of the USSR. It's not really a place for innovation, and not a great place to do business unless you're willing to hemorrhage cash via bribes and bureaucracy.
Good luck to those launching Sarmats too as they'll have to stop the Tridents, Minutemen, M51, etc. It's important to remember that while they don't make weekly threats, there are three NATO countries with land/sea based nuclear weapons.
Realistically, there's no defending from nuclear weapons. That's why MAD, while crazy, works.
It doesn't have to be even Sarmat; it could be Poseidon - options are plentiful. I doubt anyone would have the balls to respond to a nuclear attack. The issue is who's crazier to do the first one, and if one truly believes Russia and Putin are crazy evil, then one should act respectively! So far, I don't see intelligent behavior from the West - I see arrogance, which always has a high cost!
You expect everyone to bend over because Putin/Russia decided to go down the "I'm a mad man, give me what I want or I'll nuke you" route... that's just not how the world works. I hope you don't use this tactic yourself, because you'll end up with a broken nose (or worse) if you do it to the wrong guy.
There is certainly arrogance from the west, but what do you call what Russia is doing? They literally make threats to nuclear powers as if they're untouchable. The fact you don't see this should tell you that you're biased here.
Sarmat and Posidon are "doomsday" weapons. Use them against a small country like the UK or France and they have little to lose. Use them against the US and you're likely to be wiped out. As you've said, options are plentiful, so we should all be very careful and do our best to avoid war (all = includes Russia).
No, Putin is not a madman - he was cornered. These are the facts! The West is slowly but surely bringing us at least WWIII, if not extinction! The West is always greedy and salivates over Russia's colossal territory and resources! And always gets hurt! This time, it could hurt the entire civilization, though!
Is this the "she made me do it" excuse wife beaters use, but for international relations?
Three facts (not opinions) for you:
- The revolution in Ukraine, which often is blamed by Russians and tankies on the "west", happened after the then president Yanukovych decided to abandon the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement and join Russia's Eurasian Economic Union instead when most of Ukraine was getting more pro-European Union.
- Russia started a war with Ukraine in 2014 when they invaded Crimea, breaking international law and the the Budapest Memorandum they signed. Everything - from Azovs to war crimes - came after. Russia then decided to expand that war in 2022, after being warned privately and publicly that the west would help Ukraine if they did so.
- Ukraine has been trying to join NATO since the early 2000's. NATO's open door policy is there from the start and will continue to be, but Ukraine didn't join back then and [opinion ahead, based on real numbers] wouldn't be accepted in 2014 either because they were too corrupt, bloated and incompetent.
Putin invaded, not because he was cornered, but because he saw an opportunity and took it. And let's be honest, it worked. A few hundred unmarked soldiers and people with guns (eg: Igor Girkin) transporting politicians around to vote to join Russia... there were some protests, some sanctions, but nothing serious. He tried to do the same again in 2022, but it didn't work.
I don't know why people like you try to come up to excuses when even Putin himself from time to time drops the BS and just says he did it because he could. Want to support Russia? Fine, but cut the bullshit. You like seeing them attacking and stealing land from a neighbour, you just lack the balls to admit it.
My eyes rolled when you mentioned Russia's resources. We have the money to buy their resources. Europe depended on their gas and, to a lesser extent, their oil. It was fine, everyone - including Russia - was getting richer, we had strong economies, we used their gas and they used our planes and technology. No reason at all to start a war. What do we need their land for? Who was calling for an invasion/annexation/controlling of Russian land or a war with Russia (a nuclear power!)? Most countries in Europe don't even want to spend 2% of their GDP now (post invasion)... but they want a conflict with Russia?
Again, you only blame one side for that WW3 that is surely about to happen (lol). Russia, which as you've said is not governed by a madman (or a bunch of amateurs that are easily played), decided to start a war in Europe. Can't you see that they have so much power and that they could stop it all? They could also stop making threats like the ones that mention that Sarmat you talked about, but they don't. And where's the "we'll leave Ukraine if we they don't join NATO" proposal?
Anyway, while it "takes two to tango", you can only blame one side. And that's the problem with your position.
Don't forget he also raised awareness for Europe's dependency on Russian fossil fuels and accelerated there move to green energy across the world. What a guy!
It's KGB, they are the MBAs of the east. If they would capture something innovative in the wild, they would shoot the team and put the thing in a "palace of innovation" in mocowardia.
I think it would be much better if people focused downvoting on comments that go against HN guidelines rather than questions or comments they disagree with.
How would you propose a method of limiting the downvoting of comments that are salient and relevant but otherwise elicit a knee-jerk emotionally disagreeable response? Or do you consider that ability a feature? It seems to me to erode curious debate.
The question relates to how can you create a system that helps align peoples incentives with the goal of the forum.
Imagine if you could allow users to delete comments they don’t agree with. That would create the antithesis of a curious discussion, so that feature isn’t available. So, yes, a good system can constrain what users are allowed to do with intelligent guardrails.
I don't mean to kill the joke further but I think Hitler was already a dead man walking before Hitler killed Hitler, so I think his enemies (Allied Forces plus Russians) deserve most of the credit.
I don't mean to kill the joke but I think Hitler was already dead before Hitler killed Hitler, so I think his enemies (Allied Forces plus Russians) deserve most of the credit.
It's crazy how there wasn't really ANY desire to join NATO before Russia showed, once again, that you can not trust them. The full scale of Ukraine really was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Sweden has been using Nato standards and running occasional exercises with Nato for a while now. They didn’t want to be officially part of it because of their unique perspective on War and Peace (see Olof Palme, sending Blue helmets in Cyprus), but there wasn’t a lack of desire to join. I’d compare it to Switzerland and the EU: the de-facto alliance is obviously beneficial, but principles have kept things separated on paper.
Finland, that’s more complicated: unlike Baltic countries and the Kaliningrad exclave, they were not in the Soviet Union. That meant a lot of pressure to remain neutral, translated until last year into “Finlandization”: a refusal to take either side. That pressure ended with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, but Finland (like Sweden) saw no reason to change their official neutral position.
When Russia started to mess with Estonia, the need to ally with Nato, in particular on cyber-defense questions, became a lot more present for everyone nearby. I suspect that Finland wanted to be ready, adopt Nato standards, training, methods, etc., and pick the right moment to join officially. Like the Baltic trio, the Russian presence looms high in the East, and I’d be surprised if there were not regular overtures and unofficial promises of support. The USA and Canada care a lot about the Arctic, and it’s not hard to count the allies there.
So, I don’t think it was a major shift—like Italy changing sides at the end of WW2. It’s more a gradual rapprochement, matching Putin’s increasingly concerning policies, that hit a very good reason to accelerate. The process has been mostly political and official. Neither Sweden nor Finland had to change guns, tactics, or radio signals.
Finland realized that Finlandization does not work any more, by observing what happened to another country that tried to Finlandize for the last 3 decades: Ukraine.
They presumably meant in terms of popular opinion, which was always going to be de facto necessary to join (even if in the end it happened without a referendum). See the list of polls enumerated here:
The Swiss position on joining the EU follows a similar trajectory: the decision is negative, but that’s not because they think joining the alliance is a bad thing or that relations are strife, but because they thought, or think, that making things official would betray principles.
Maybe compare it to a couple who live together but aren’t married and are opposed to it because one of them sees it as an encroachment of religion.
Honestly I can understand the previous sentiment, joining would have come across as an act against Putin as that's how he always frames NATO. So keeping the status quo was fine for everyone. But then he showed he doesn't respect the status quo. Just my opinion of course.
Its funny with Hungary, Orban is such an incompetent ruler that currently Hungary is paying way above market prices for gas from Russia. So much for being friends with benefits with russia. You can see how it all is a series of really not that smart moves for Hungary for a long time, borderline treason.
And one point generally - please lets stop calling whats happening in Ukraine in any other way than War. putin's war - its a perfect name I'll keep repeating till it sticks around, or I'll die trying.
Its relatively personal to me, my home country (former Czechoslovakia) was basically enslaved by russian cough cough soviet forces for decades, people shot or electrocuted when trying to escape (around 500 recorded officially), tens of thousands murdered in other indirect ways (gulags or uranium mines with no ticket back, or just beaten to death in some cold dungeon). I see basically 0 change from that russia to modern one and how it values things like human life, freedom etc.
It looked briefly better, much better, but those times are over for good and russia is firmly back at cold/not so cold war with whole western world. Currently trying to subvert quite a few places in Africa. I hope western 3-letter agencies are few steps ahead.
This comment really illustrates the hollowness of the "NATO expanded too aggressively" claim. NATO didn't force any of these ex-Soviet countries to join. They ran to join NATO as soon as they could. They'd experienced living with the Russian boot on their neck, and they were eager to join a collective security organization to prevent it from ever happening again.
I have a different perspective. If NATO hadn't expanded to Turkey, Sweden and Finland would have had a much easier time not being blackmailed. NATO expanding to essentially-dictatorship countries was too eager.
And yes, I understand Turkey's geographical position giving it power over sea routes, and why that was desirable to NATO. But choosing to include a fickle ruler in a unanimous-decisions-only organization is just asking for trouble.
(The Baltics wanted in on NATO, and it's good that they got in. They're largely decently run small countries in a tough spot, not world stage bullies.)
To be clear, Turkey has been undergoing pretty decisive democratic backsliding since the mid 2000s. It was added to NATO at the same time as Greece, and at that time, Turkey was the more democratic of the two countries (see, e.g., the electoral democracy index for 1952 on https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/ ).
edit: note if you're trying to find Turkey by searching on that site, it uses the endonym Türkiye
Türkiye is probably the first western country to not secure its demographic dividends, with maybe Greece (hard to say because the EU mess things up with free movement of people and stuff). It did not fail hopefully, but the infrastructure gains are small compared to even ex-USSR countries. I fear the same is happening in slow motion in India (we'll see in 15 years i guess).
Turkey brings more value to NATO then Sweden and Finland combined. It has a standing army (2nd biggest after US in NATO) with combat experience, defense sector with proven capabilities. Not to mention 11th economy in the world by GDP PPP and growing.
It's better for Turkey and NATO, that Turkey is in NATO. I would say it's far more important than Sweden or Finland being in NATO.
Good lord. I was not aware of this guy before, but his position seems to be akin to suggesting a woman deserved to be raped because of how she was dressed.
Even people pretty forgiving of his essays acknowledge he's habitually at odds with basic facts and history.
Not a wingnut, per se, but on the same spectrum of people divorced from reality. It's too bad as well, because US foreign policy is deserving of more scrutiny than it gets, and it gets a fair amount.
I have mixed feelings on him. On the one hand it is a bit - woman should expect to be raped because of how she was dressed. On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.
I think he errs a bit in suggesting such behaviour is normal for all great powers. The Americans and Chinese while imperfect aren't that bad. And the EU if you can call it a great power does nothing like that - the rape pillage invade stuff. Though of course a couple of centuries ago Europe was invading all over the place. It goes to show these things can change. Probably with Russia we need to make things enough of a pain the the neck for them that they'll see the wisdom of changing eventually also.
He's said in a few different pieces that Putin 100% does not want to ingest Ukraine into Russia, that he's only interested in "lopping off its limbs" and keeping it out of NATO.
Which is at odds with what Putin has said many times, that Ukraine is not a real nation, but a part of Russia, and Kyiv historically was central to the Russian empire. It's really clear that Putin wants all of Ukraine, not just bits of it. Putin has almost (but not quite) come out and said it. It's an open question on whether Putin would stop with Ukraine (we'll find out only if he takes Ukraine), but there's things he's said which hint that he won't.
> On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.
So far. At some point, he's going to have to reckon with all the stuff Putin has said about his ambitions that he ignored.
I really never understood how this statement and "NATO expanded to aggressively" were seen as contradictory. Putin's government wants to put the boot on Russia's neighbors, and NATO was in the process of taking that option away from them, and that's why they committed to war. They're not lying about their motivations, they are phrasing them in head-of-state speak. The same goes for denazification, which is thinly veiled code for intervening in who's allowed to govern Ukraine.
This a standard Russian talking point. It's a red herring and a fairly weak justification for Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The US can make demands and so can anyone. In the case of Cuba they were met by the Soviets willingly who withdrew their missiles and made a deal with the US.
Russia objects to NATO membership because it makes bullying and invasion of those with NATO membership impractical. It doesn't threaten Russia but rather it weakens Russia's hand and that is its main complaint. It didn't have a basis for a deal with NATO or the US. Russia has had nukes adjacent to NATO countries for a long time.
There is no moral justification for invasion unless you've already been invaded by that party.
Let me do something similar to you what you did with this comment: allowing Russia to develop nukes shouldn't have been tolerated, the morally correct course of action was to prevent it.
I think the argument is, if its okay for eastern European nations to run to NATO (and we defend it as self determination), it should be fine when countries decided to run the opposite way (toward the USSR in this case). I will be honest, I agree.I believe Ukraine has the right to self determine their own relationships on the international stage, and I also believe Cuba does too. Although to me, the biggest fuck is, we didn't have like Cuba, we just needed a relationship sufficient enough for Cuba to side with us instead of the USSR. And I think that was a mistake. We do this Saudi Arabia, we should not be on as good of terms with Saudi Arabia as we are. But the reality is, if we are not, some other heavily influential country on the international stage will.
Orban and his team don't work for Hungary. They work for themselves (for a small group around Orban's family), trying to take out as much money and power from every opportunity as they can. This might explain purchasing the gas on higher price (and a huge amount of other controversial deals) and preferring partnerships with corrupt governments and politicians. It's all about business and power.
There are good meticulously researched articles about their businesses here (one of the few remaining independent, reliable sources in Hungary): https://www.direkt36.hu/en/
It is clear from listening to the podcast that Russia has always been nightmare to live in (unless you perhaps belonged to a tiny elite) or have as a neighbour. Serfdom wasn't abolished until 1861.
Putin's war isn't a useful term though, because there are so many of them.
Regarding change from "that Russia" to the modern one, I'm afraid there has been change, to the worse. The Soviet incarnation of the empire was at least nominally bound to the progressive ideas of socialism (which is completely orthogonal to wether those ideas are workable or not), whereas the current incarnation is openly worshipping the fascist ideas of strength and domination, and the struggle to get there.
When Russians claim that they don't understand why someone would willingly ally with others who don't prove worthy by actively coercing them, chances are it's genuine, they really don't understand. Sometimes I wonder if their language even has a word for friendship based on equality that is separate from an asymmetric allegiance based on status gradient. Perhaps all the non-gradient terminology was gobbled up by socialist ideology and now the very idea of peers is out, except where seeing it through the socialist lense still fits?
No, people supported them, but that is because democracy was hacked. Hungary is not a democracy anymore (it's a hibrid regime[1]).
The biggest issue is that the majority of the media is controlled by the government. Also they own jurisdiction and have been gradually rewritten the constitution. Most people who support this regime do that because they believe the propaganda. Many people I know have been bitterly trying to tell their family members that they are watching / listening propaganda (unsuccessfully, for years). Most of Orban's supporters don't know much about politics, they just want to live their lives, so they believe whatever is on TV, radio, online media, posters, etc. For many it is very hard to see what is true and what is lie.
But there are many, many people here who don't like this and want a change. The country is in a state where positive change towards democracy is really hard at the moment, many of us still want to believe it is possible.
By the way, we could see this madness around the world in the past years: Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro… many people can be led by their nose. Not just in Hungary. I really whish if people would learn from Hungary's mistakes, and don't let the same thing to happen in their countries.
Do you mean, some people just consciously agree with being used and lied to and their taxes being stolen so that the leaders can be richer and more powerful while schooling, health care and economy is in decay? I don't think so.
> Do you mean, some people just consciously agree with being used and lied to and their taxes being stolen so that the leaders can be richer and more powerful while schooling, health care and economy is in decay? I don't think so.
Many people actually do that, because in their minds alternative is "left" that will do the same but with added bonus of supporting LGBT, fight against climate change, unrestricted immigration and such. And getting traditional true patriot of country X rich is preferred to fattening this dirty commies traitors on the "left".
Also, there is 1/3 of population that don't believe in politics at all and ignore it as much as possible, because artificial culture war just distracts them.
Yes, however those people also have right to vote (in democracies) and many of them vote without being sure what they vote for. Democracies can be hacked because too many people are either not interested or not informed well enough to vote for what's really best for them and the country.
Why would they participate in system that they don't believe? Also, you need to be populist to win in democracy, which brings another pathological behavior into game by definition of system.
When Fidesz won their first election in 2010, they changed voting laws and even the constitution; now elections in Hungary are heavily gerrymandered and Fidesz routinely wins super-majorities with less than 50% of the votes.
Nonetheless, in 2014, five center-left parties formed the Unity Alliance. One center-left party (LMP) refused to join, splitting the center-left opposition vote. This cut in half the number of constituencies that the opposition would have won that year, allowing Fidesz to capture 91 percent of the constituencies with just 45 percent of the vote. Still plagued by infighting, the opposition remained fragmented in 2018, even as it gained strength in Budapest. With 49 percent of the vote in 2018, Orbán won 86 percent of the constituencies, losing in Budapest but winning almost everywhere else. The 2014 and 2018 results showed that only a unified opposition that spanned the political spectrum could defeat Orbán’s system.
Note that “Ukraine” is now preferred to “the Ukraine”; the latter term was used in Soviet times to diminish its autonomy by implying it was just a region of the USSR.
This is widely believed, and of course Ukrainians prefer no article, and I'm happy to accede to their preferences, just as with their preferred transliteration of Kyiv.
But the theory that this has any impact on how English speakers view sovereignty is also completely bunk. While English does indeed use "the" for some geographical regions and features (but not universally; English rarely is so simple), in international contexts and sub-regions, that's swamped by more salient examples. Look right there at your use of "the" USSR. We don't talk about "the Scotland" and "the England" as part of "United Kingdom", nor about "the California" and "the Texas" as purely internal regions of "United States", but quite the reverse, reserving. In keeping with groups of smaller units, there's also the EU. There are also many examples of full names that include qualifying adjectives that take "the" -- i.e. the Central African Republic, the Dominican Republic, and historically the Czech Republic (now Czechia is preferred, of course).
There are also, of course, countries named after geographical features that traditionally do have the definite article, but this is rarely taken as a slight against their sovereignty or an accusation that they're not a real country: the Ivory Coast, The Netherlands, many, many island nations.
And why would the Russians even think to use articles to make this distinction? Neither language even has a definite article! There is a history of using different prepositions in these languages ("in" vs "on", roughly) which does have this suggestion, but it really doesn't parallel English usage of articles.
Sweden and Finland came as a pack so lets talk about both of them.
Benefits:
It completely neutralizes the Russian Baltic Fleet.
The only railway line supporting Murmansk is less than 200km beyond the finnish border, which means the Nordic Fleet is also compromised.
Potential disadvantages of additional members are added political instability as can be seen with Hungary and Turkey. There is little chance of this with both countries.
Basically you dont defend members, you defend borders and adding Finland and Sweden to the pact makes for a far easier and better developed front. The Finns have been building bunkers and training their population for the next Russian invasion since WW2.
Having Finland as a member strengthens the position of the Baltics, who are threatened by the Suwalki corridor.
Basically it strengthens and stabilizes the northern border to Russia/Belarus.
EDIT: since other commenters don't know, yes it was signed into law, Sec 1250A of the 2024 NDAA:
>The President shall not suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty, done at Washington, DC, April 4, 1949, except by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur, or pursuant to an Act of Congress.
If the commander in chief says that Russia can do 'whatever the hell they want' with NATO countries, it doesn't really matter if the US is still officially in NATO.
They made it illegal for him to do so, but Trump has made it clear that he does not view himself as accountable to the law, especially for any acts while President, so...
Maybe. Countries can leave the treaty. Congress and the Senate are trying to make it impossible for the president to unilaterally do this, but I don't know if that bill has passed yet. It's a bipartisan effort believe it or not, because even the most politic Republicans are not stupid. I expect it should pass before January 2025.
But who knows, maybe he can sabotage the alliance in other ways, or find some other way out.
There is no all else equal here. If your new member is the Democratic Republic of Congo the number would go up considerably. With Sweden/Finland it might very well go down since the border is far more defensible. But the US has a global footprint and those troops in Europe are nearer to potential conflicts in the middle east and northern Afrika, so it might make logistical sense to park them there anyway.
IMO it's still not certain NATO will hold together if Putin decides to attack the Baltic states or Poland. Many NATO countries will have sizeable factions of their electorate saying to not get involved.
The fact that Ukraine hasn't been easy for him makes it less likely that Putin will attempt that, but it's clearly been on his mind.
> IMO it's still not certain NATO will hold together if Putin decides to attack the Baltic states or Poland.
There is a reason forces of core NATO states farther from the Eastern flank are deployed to Poland and the Baltic states; it is practically impossible for Russia to attack them without attacking the forces of core NATO states, not just in a "legally, under Article 5, we must treat this as an attack" way, but in a "Russian troops are killing troops of those states" way.
Yep, Putin will absolutely try to grab new land whenever he thinks he can get away with it, no matter how many young Russian men die in the process. To him it's just a game to fulfill his fantasies of being a great conquering czar, and for that reason credibility of NATO's article 5 is vital.
Even the good relations between EU and Russia pre-2014 were just theater on Russia's part. Here in Finland during those years shady Russian businessmen kept buying properties that made no financial sense, but were located close to critical infrastructure or military locations. They have never acted in good faith.
> shady Russian businessmen kept buying properties that made no financial sense, but were located close to critical infrastructure or military locations.
AFAICT this topic has been mostly avoided by the Finnish media. I guess everyone just kinda trusts that the government is on top of the situation.
I think Putin would not invade Poland, it's just as strong or even stronger than Ukraine, with less corruption, better economy and defense treaties.
Baltics have always been the biggest risk. They are very small population-wise and can be "easily" cut off (Suwalki gap). But the addition of Sweden and Finland to the alliance will significantly improve the defense posture (airfields, maritime logistics).
I think if he is successful in Ukraine, Transnistra/Moldowa are the logical next step. Then he most likely would use his stooges like Orban and radicalized Russian minorities to create problems and wait for an opportunity.
But also, a bigger alliance creates a larger amount of territory to defend.
For example if the US were to leave NATO, they miss out on all the benefits that European NATO members provide, but also would not need to defend Europe, which is where any war involving NATO members is likely to happen.
It seems to me that the US gains very little from being in NATO.
NATO is the greatest power projection project the in the history of the world, and is in no small part why the US has achieved hegemonic status. The ability for the US to wage wars on the opposite side of the globe without major logistical issues is greatly aided by NATO bases that are simultaneously in very friendly territory, and much closer to the action.
NATO membership also means NATO equipment, which the US's military-industrial complex disproportionate benefits from, but also serves as lock-in: those extremely expensive aircraft are basically scrap without the appropriate service contracts and part availability, meaning any military that aligns itself with the US's tech is far less likely to be able to wage wars we don't approve of.
NATO also brings stability: nuclear red-line borders are unlikely to be invaded, reducing the chances of conflicts that are bad for business. A peaceful world is a profitable world, and those profits disproportionately go to the US.
NATO also provides soft power projection: NATO membership is a huge boon to its members, which grants the US leverage politically to encourage member states to adopt pro-US policies.
The US benefitted from NATO because if the Soviets has overrun Western Europe, there would have been what was essentially a single country (or a country and its satellites which it dominates militarily) stretching from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific, a country that probably would have become wealthier than the US and consequently eventually stronger militarily (if it had the political will to do so, which it probably would have). It was probably worth the expense for the US to have tried hard to prevent the formation of such a wealthier peer, just as it was worth the expense to prevent Germany from uniting most of Europe under its system during WWII (even ignoring the moral reasons for getting involved): being the wealthiest country in the system with the strongest military makes it less likely the country's civilians will get hurt or killed (by e.g. an invasion or a naval blockade).
In other words, there has been a strong streak of national self-interest (correctly calculated IMHO -- at least until the end of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union) in the US's contributions to NATO.
>it seems to me that the US gains very little from being in NATO.
So far Europeans died in USA conflicts around the world , how many conflicts did Europe start and USA had to get involved so far ?
From me a Romanian, feels very shitty that our soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan for America but now if we will need help Trumpists will not help back.
>So far Europeans died in USA conflicts around the world , how many conflicts did Europe start and USA had to get involved so far ?
Setting aside for a moment the rather large conflict that ended in 1945 - if you're in your late 20s or older, both Libya and Kosovo happened within your lifetime and meet your criteria.
>Setting aside for a moment the rather large conflict that ended in 1945 - if you're in your late 20s or older, both Libya and Kosovo happened within your lifetime and meet your criteria.
1 That was not an Article 5 thing,
2 how many USA soldiers gave their life in Kosovoa?
3 1945/ww2 I think USA was attacked by Japan, americans did not enter the world to protect Europe, they were forced in the war so they had no choice then to fight their enemies wherever they are.
>3 1945/ww2 I think USA was attacked by Japan, americans did not enter the world to protect Europe, they were forced in the war so they had no choice then to fight their enemies wherever they are.
The American strategy in WWII was "Germany First" despite it having been the Japanese that attacked us.
And that strategy was somehow altruistic ? Explain? And explain why waiting to defend "Europe"
Anyway we talking about NATO, USA used Art5 and Europeans died for USA, but now Trumpists complain that we are not doing enough and USA will not return the favor
This history on this is well documented. The US was helping the allies before entering the war by providing weapons and resources. Before being attacked the US was isolationist (like “Trumpists”). It took getting punched in the mouth to muster the resolve to join the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the UK to war with Japan and solidified allied resolve.
A deterrence, to make war too difficult to undertake.
Adding additional countries around the edge of NATO does two things for the countries currently in the pact, even if they aren't economic or military powerhouses. First, those countries are less likely to be attacked, and not having your neighbors be embroiled in war is good. Germany is much happier if there is no land war going on next door in Poland, bombs occasionally falling on the wrong side of the border, civilian refugees looking to them for safety.
Second, adding someone else to the pact puts someone else on the front lines to test the defense provided by the pact, if shit hits the fan. Sure, if Russia wanted to, they could try to bypass Poland on the way to Germany, but practically speaking with Poland in NATO, Germany will get to see how NATO responds to an invasion of Poland, rather than finding out how they respond to an invasion of Germany. Poland, likewise, would be much happier seeing how NATO responded to the invasion of Ukraine-the-NATO-member, rather than watching the invasion of Ukraine and wondering how NATO will respond to the invasion of Poland if Ukraine falls.
Sweden is a country that makes their own military related stuff: https://youtu.be/d8x8ITwd4Vg?si=ye6-_fe7EJMuqdIg Archer can deploy fire and retreat so quickly, can also fire multiple rounds and have them land on the same target at the same time.
As opposed to countries that do not design and manufacture such things themselves.
It's easier to defend Denmark, Norway and Finland if Sweden is not in the way. With this, Sweden is more likely to become completely "open" to NATO operations in any conflict that involves defending those three NATO members.
By having to jump through fewer hoops to get the intelligence they already got before, and likely further restricting the field of operation for Russian forces in that area.
I wonder if they're tastier than the average MRE? Sure, you can always make better food with some effort, but next to Costco chicken bakes, Ikea meatballs probably have one of the world's highest convenience-to-deliciousness ratios.
As a kid, I used to loooooove spending the day at Ikea, bouncing around all the beds and hiding in the fake rooms, but mostly just because we'd end up at the food court at the end... mmmm.
Correction: NLAWs are only Swedish designed(SAAB defense) but are production of Thales(a French company) manufactured in Belfast, Northern Ireland(UK), using warheads made by a subsidiary of SAAB in Switzerland.
Ah yes, it's NATO that wants war, it's certainly not NATO countries being reasonably concerned about a certain neighbor that keeps invading neighboring democracies.
I'm sure without being in NATO or the EU, Estonia and Latvia would be left completely alone and unharmed by Russia, just like Ukraine! They certainly wouldn't have been a smaller and easier target.
I guess this is a reference to the joke, "no, what we know is that there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."
Unless we disbelieve what the guy said: we do know that they have at least the concept of a tank. He didn't actually say that they had any. That would have been a conversation-ending question for me to ask him.
I don't know what those sheep statisticians would say if they hadn't seen the "black sheep" themselves and had to rely on the testimony of other people. You can't only believe what you've seen for yourself.
As for all the people downvoting that: lighten up. It's a joke. Welcome to NATO.
> and had to rely on the testimony of other people
The sheep joke is not about believing people's reports or not, but about what may or may not be deduced from a report, given that it is accurate and true.
The cold war was the largest project undertaken by any civilization in human history in terms of spending. With Sweden on board with NATO, defence contractors and other NATO adjacent public private partnerships can be assured that they won't interfere with that flow of funds.
>Remember, the year before invasion all what Russian diplomacy wanted - it is to give guaranties that Ukraine won't join NATO?
"The year before the invasion" - 2013, right? That's the year you're referring to? The year in which he got a 30 year lease on Sevastopol, thereby keeping Ukraine out of NATO for decades? Because Yanukovich was still in power, and doing everything to appease him?
Why is it that the medal Shoigu got for the Crimea takeover commemorates a date a week prior to Maidan, and two weeks prior to the "official" start of the invasion? Why is it that despite the "diplomacy" they never even attempted to abide by the Minsk agreements (and if you feel like disputing this, refresh yourself on article 10 and the timeline of events at Donetsk Airport)?
Do you or do you not agree that "the invasion" started in 2014, not in 2022.
This is relevant. You said "before the invasion, all Putin wanted was diplomatic agreements to not join NATO". But that's obviously not true, was it? Because before 2022, he had already annexed Crimea. Before 2022, he had already been delivering massive supplies of weapons and "separatist volunteers" to Donetsk and Luhansk. Before 2022, he had already published "On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine". Before 2022, there was already zero chance of Ukraine being accepted into NATO.
Those are not mere diplomatic tools, that is active aggression and denying their right to exist as a nation at an ideological level. How do you negotiate with "you are Russians, your identity is fake, your language is fake, your land is Russian, prepare to be absorbed".
Watch the recent Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin.
There is a literally 2 hours long historical lecture from Putin, explaining in great detail why (to his opinion) Ukraine doesn't and shouldn't exist as a sovereign state and "in fact" never was, since the beginning of the history, LMAO. This is what really concerns him, if you listen. In his reality, Ukraine is a Russian province, not an independent state.
He goes as far as justifying Hitler's attack on Poland ("they made him to attack by not voluntarily giving away their territory, it was Poland's fault") — sic. You see where he goes?
So it seems that NATO didn't bother him very much, it is just a red herring or "diplomatic speak" to express his true concerns. The real issue is Ukraine's sovereignty / independence. Joining NATO is just an act of that sovereignty, that couldn't be tolerated.
>> He goes as far as justifying Hitler's attack on Poland
And why wouldn't he. We should not forget that it was russians and nazi's that started the world war 2[0][1]. It's just that the rusians got lucky, and Germany bore all the guilt.
Since then, russians of course have been actively trying to rewrite history.
My grandfather fought russia and later its ideology in battles across the world. I did forget for a while, but his words now shine brightly in front of me: NEVER trust a russian.
Rewriting history is pretty much real — there is a head of Ministry of Culture in Russia that openly states that "our history books for students should serve the national interests" (and he is a co-author of those books), implying that the truth can be manipulated to indoctrinate young people.
> NEVER trust a russian
P.S. I am myself Russian — not saying you should trust me... (just kidding). Its just not every Russian out there likes what Russia does.
> Why isn't there a NATO base in the US where German military etc. "hang out"?
The reason there is a large US presence in Germany is that Germany lost WWII. You can make all kinds of other justifications for it like "Germany invited the US", but it all comes back to the Allies created the current German government, and all of them had troops continuously stationed in Germany from WWII until well after the cold war ended. France and the UK have withdrawn most of theirs, the US is the one that still has a sizable presence and the reason is that Germany is afraid of Russia and wants them to stay.
No? Just because Sweden is a member of NATO doesn't meant they have to just let the US do whatever they want. IF Sweden so chooses to allow US troops to be stationed there, it will be for their own benefit.
> Why isn't there a NATO base in the US where German military etc. "hang out"?
The same reason that within NATO, German troops are forward deployed to Lithuania and not vice versa; it doesn't contribute to defensive strategy to backward-deploy forces from the countries closer to the large conventional threat to the ones farther from it.
It is NATO that is fighting in Ukraine. It is they who have been active in Ukraine since 2008. Without NATO’s active involvement so many Ukrainians would not be dead.
Canada joining Warsaw pact with the prospect of Russian missiles and troops stationed there and KGB organising a coup to remove their PM to install a puppet will elicit a similar (or perhaps worse given the track record) response from the US.
Without NATO's involvement, far more Ukrainians would be dead, their children kidnapped, their possessions stolen by Putin's thugs.
If the KGB did achieve a coup in Canada, we probably would invade to put it down. The differences are 1) Euromaidan was a popular uprising, not a coup, and 2) the whole thing would have been over in a week, instead of bogging down into a stalemate and humiliating our army.
Your link is just quoting Putin complaining that Bush wouldn't help him with his coup in Georgia.
Before war in Georgia, Putin had a pretty good image in the West. Back then Putin was nowhere near bad as in the recent years. Power corrupts, long time rulers get crazier with time...
Hello, dear account dedicating all their two posts to repeating Russian talking points.
Georgia was indeed dumb enough to let themselves get provoked to fire the first rounds. It's very strange though that the peace loving defensive-only Russian forces ended up permanently occupying even more Georgian territory than before the war. That's the Russian history, Russia never attacks, it only defends itself, by advancing and annexing enemy territory.
That part of the report has been widely panned. Russia had brokered a ceasefire with separatists in that region in 1992, then placed its own troops there to act as peacekeepers. Putin's gaze lands on Georgia, and he moves more troops border, the separatists blow up a police car two days after joint American-Georgian military exercises, Georgia's military responds, and within hours, Russian tanks are rolling into Georgia. The EU report was clear that Russia's response was out of line.
> The report found no evidence to support Russian allegations that Georgia was carrying out genocide against the South Ossetian population.
> But it said there were "serious indications" of ethnic cleaning against ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia and found Russian forces "would not or could not" stop atrocities by armed groups in areas they controlled.
> We should thank people that put him there. Checks notes - The United States. Huh?!
There's nothing inherently wrong with an administration exercising soft power to help a favoured politician in another country – even if they sometimes turn out to be dictators – but in this instance I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the United States "put [Putin into power]", assuming you're referring to the United States' inaction after the FSB apartment bombings?
> Wait. Putin got voted person of the year 2007?
Time's Person of the Year Award is specifically scoped to not be an endorsement or celebration of the winner. Think of it more as a measure of outsized impact on the world in a given year.
> administration exercising soft power to help a favoured politician in another country – even if they sometimes turn out to be dictators
You know. It would be fine if it was a few times thing. But US has a long history of putting dictators into power, calling them allies, then turning against them and invading/killing them. Which only seems to benefit the military and cause chaos everywhere else.
> That the United States "put [Putin into power]" assuming you're referring to the United States' inaction after the FSB apartment bombings?
Ah, so you mean the United States' inaction in providing aid to Russia after Yeltsin and the IMF began to aggressively reform Russia's economy?
Your logic is that the United States installed Putin by not interfering more?
> You know. It would be fine if it was a few times thing. But US has a long history of putting dictators into power, calling them allies, then turning against them and invading/killing them. Which only seems to benefit the military and cause chaos everywhere else.
It's notable that your own cartoonish straw man bears no resemblance whatsoever to the specific case you're trying to illustrate, unless I'm missing the part where the US installed Putin, allied with him, and then invaded/killed him.
How many dictators has the United States installed, allied with, and then invaded or killed in your lifetime?
> US is largest contributor to IMF it would be a joke to suggest their opinion has no sway.
Russia was pursuing this strategy prior to IMF involvement. The membership of the IMF was supportive of the strategy. The United States' Treasury Department did not intervene. Tell me again how this had anything to do with Putin? You make it sound as if the US was providing weapons to Putin or something.
> Saddam in Iraq
I think you have some reading to do if you believe the United States "installed" Saddam. It was the Ba’athists.
> Russia was pursuing this strategy prior to IMF involvement.
> Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.
Jeez, wonder who gave them that idea.
> I think you have some reading to do if you believe the United States "installed" Saddam. It was the Ba’athists.
Think you are placing too much weight on installed. Installed in as in supported materially, financially, or militarily. Helped get into power or remain there.
Whilst I'm impressed with the speed of your climbdown, you have now broadened your definition of "installed" to the point where it is utterly meaningless.
Other notable winners include Hitler, Stalin (twice!), Khrushchev and Trump.
I don't think it's an indication that the west likes them. Even in recent times, I'm not sure it's even an indication that time magazine likes them (see Trump)
The exercise in team work has not been going great so far. It doesn't look like their is a path to victory in Ukraine and Europe is hesitant to commit any troops. There are some rumblings from Macron but most of Europe would prefer to send just enough weapons so Putin can't move forward and Ukraine can't push them out.
Most of Europe is in NATO. NATO nations committing troops would likely drag all of NATO into war with Russia, increasing the chance of a nuclear war. That's not something NATO wants.
1. It's really doubtful Russia will commit to nuclear war.
2. If it does, it will do that regardless of whether or not NATO enters the war or not. Russia has signalled it has no intentions of stopping its war of conquest
I'd be curious what details you're drawing on to make those conclusions.
Regarding #1, do you think this is the case if Ukraine, for example, gains enough traction to attack Russian border cities as a means of preventing a Russian regrouping and counter-attack? Or is the word "commit" doing a lot of heavy lifting here?
Regarding #2, I've heard two scenarios that would counter this. If Russia wins in Ukraine, they likely have an interest in further expansion. If they think NATO isn't really as committed as they claim, a nuclear exchange into someplace like Poland would prove that, as well as giving the US a plausible way to back out of NATO commitments. That's a huge win for Russia. The previous statement about Ukrainian success provides the other example. Both cases are conditional on NATO activities.
Too much in Russia depends on the West. I'm not even talking about its industrial capacity which can't even produce military equipment without foreign components.
Their children study and live in Europe and the US. Their families live in Europe. Their business interests are in Europe.
I really doubt any of them will risk a nuclear war.
> Regarding #2
They've been quite vocal about this for a long time: they will continue war until stopped. At least until they claim all/most of the former USSR territories. Some of those territories (the Baltic states) are in NATO.
Describing it as "convenient" does not make also make it any less true or accurate, which are the true metrics a framework should be evaluated by. We can't disregard frameworks just because we don't want one side to benefit, we must evaluate frameworks on whether they represent reality.
It has been going better than the last 30 years. Military cooperation in Europe broke down with the last Reforger of '93. It is great that Europe cooperates more, the view of the US public on NATO can be seen in any US TV series or Hollywood film - it does not exist.
> the view of the US public on NATO can be seen in any US TV series or Hollywood film - it does not exist.
I wouldn't say it doesn't exist. To me, it's always more of that "we'll let you guys muck about until it's totally obvious you're not going to fix it, then we'll ride in to save the day" attitude. Not saying that's accurate, but that's how it's portrayed by Hollywood
Other than WWII films, I can't think of any Hollywood that actively promotes NATO in anything other than a joke. Even the more common cop shows, once an investigation goes international and INTERPOL has to be brought it, it's always a big sigh as if "oh boy, here's where the wheels fall off the bus" as the member agencies that make up INTERPOL are definitely looked down upon.
The flip side of this is watching European shows, and they all feel like US law enforcement is just a bunch of gung ho gun toting cowboys. Neither view is entirely accurate, nor are they inaccurate as they are just stereotypes
I've heard that a us tv show about marines or whatever used to include European, Mexican and south American special forces as allies regularly, to add realism in conflict they're not alone in.
There's a difference between member states pulling their weight and the org itself pulling itself together to behave as a coherent entity. If Turkey (or any member) decides to veto or drags its feet prevent any action at all from occurring, it doesn't matter. In the mean time, the aggressor is taking advantage and ransacking its way through Europe. The whole time, the individual members are waiting for the Yanks to get off their arses to unilaterally come to action. Then they can later point at how the Yanks are always doing things unilaterally and turn them into the whipping boy.
The non-US members of NATO combined are larger economically, demographically and geographically than the US is. If they all pulled their weight NATO would have (slightly) more contribution from non-US countries than from the US.
The non-US members all have different views that must reach a consensus before any action which is precisely where the machine grinds to a halt. Which means a consensus is rarely reached. Contrasting that to the US which can bring all of its might with the whims of one leader and possible brow beating of congress to agree.
In this way, NATO/UN is interchangeable from the US point of view.
Because NATO (for most key decisions) works by full consensus, adding new members (a process which involved Turkey and Hungary using their leverage for concessions, especially Turkey) does not substantially reduce the leverage of existing members (this is also why Russia's bid to move to the front of the line and be admitted ahead of other Easter European applicants, without a readiness process--the real root, not the fact of expansion into Eastern Europe, of Putin's resentment against NATO--was rejected.)
Can you explain what project is unwinding? It looks to me like Europe is still coming together to resist the danger of Russian invasion. For Nuland, it looks like she had a long career, she had many good roles, she championed protecting Ukraine and there was only one other position for to be promoted to and they promoted someone else. So that seems like a perfect time to leave after a successful career.
If you think anything is defeated, you should look at the facts ( eg. Airplanes downed in the last weeks). Which seems to be more significant to me while f16's are on the way.
Oh boy, by that account Russia should be in rubbles a year ago. Putin even had to kill off his caterer turned warlord, who staged a mutiny and marched with 5k mercenaries on Moscow and the rest of the country just stood by and watched the show.
Victoria Nuland is a red flag. Conspiracy theorists are obsessed with her for some reason. Whenever she is brought up, I stop listening. She's not that important.
Depends what you call "victory". The western priority is preserving sovereign Ukraine, even if it has to concede some land. There is a path to achieve such goal.
Does being in NATO obligate you to respond militarily if another member is attacked (as is commonly believed)? I failed to find this clause in the text last time I looked.
Edit: for everyone telling me to read article 5: I already have, hence this question. It says each member "will assist [...] by taking [...] such action as it deems necessary". That very much doesn't appear to obligate a military response, or any response at all.
To put it another way, the treaty really doesn't seem to mean much, so far as I can tell? Countries could already help each other out (or not) anyway... no?
Yes? It says "will assist" and "such action as it deems necessary". That doesn't obligate them to provide a military response. What makes you believe otherwise?
Or they might calculate WWIII isn't worth it? Imagine Russia attacks Latvia. Would the US really risk getting into direct conflict with Russia over it?
Would the US really risk its name and face ignoring their biggest and most powerful military alliance? Honour and keeping your word are very important in geopolitics, especially among countries that have been allied for almost a century, and you won't remain the top dog very long if you avoid your duties at the first difficulty.
So yes, if Russia attacks Latvia, you better believe the US is gonna send everything they have against Russia. That's the whole point of NATO.
I'm pro NATO, but I don't think the support of the US is guaranteed. The US has always been an unreliable partner: it depends on who's in power.
If the republican war hawks or moderate Democrats are in power they would support Latvia, but libertarians and far leftists would say "it's not our problem".
There are no libertarians or far left politicians in the Oval Office, now or in the near future.
I cannot speak to how the US would behave in 50 years, but being true to its word it is mandatory for the US to project itself as the "world leader". The day the Oval Office is able to ignore its allies, it is the day the US is no longer a global leader.
That's simply the cost to pay to be seen as the leader of the free world. The fact that some US politicians openly want to go down the route of reneging its allies speaks volumes about how long the US empire will last.
Is Trump a libertarian or a far leftist? Because he's currently the cause of these discussions -- he's the one that people have the most doubts would agree to defending Latvia.
He's neither. He's a big State conservative populist that cozies up to the far-right cretins as they represent what a lot of the silent, dissatisfied majority thinks.
The risk is not getting involved. NATO is first and foremost a deterrent, destroying the credibility of that deterrent would destroy the rationale for NATO.
To say nothing of the fact that it'd just be an invite to Russia to invade more countries.
The seeds of WWII were sown by the appeasement of Hitler, which merely emboldened him.
If the US didn't then NATO is effectively toothless, if the US did then Russia would be destroyed. I'm sure lots of officials in Moscow have spent a lot of time thinking about it.
It doesn't obligate members to respond militarily, it obligates NATO members to consider an attack against a member as an attack against them. Retaliation and any other action needs to be discussed by NATO members and can also be vetoed.
A lot of people seem to think that if article 5 is brandished, war will result, it absolutely depends on what the council will agree upon.
While Article 5 is important, its not in a "technical legal mandate" way, and there is a lot more to the alliance than Article 5, there's integrated military command, training, defense strategy, forward deployments to threatened countries, etc.
And there is Article 4 collective regional security, which has ultimately resulted in more NATO combat operations than Article 5, which has been invoked exactly once, even though the former has even less explicit obligation than Article 5.
Thanks for asking this question. In reading the links to Article 5 I discovered that Ireland is not a member of NATO in an attempt to have a Swiss type of military neutrality.
The F-16 training and delivery is already public, but it has been hinted at for a while that Ukrainians were being trained on Gripen also and that once Sweden was in NATO they'd be able to send some jets.
Oh interesting, I guess I just haven't been keeping up. I'm no military dude, but from what little I've read that it is hard to coordinate between different kinds of fighter jets in the same air force, so it would have been preferable to get more f16s.
The parent comment is referring to the US pressuring all European NATO members to abandon plans to acquire Saab or Dassault jets in favour of its own F35.
Most of the European nations with F-35 currently either joined the program from the beginning decades ago, or want to participate in nuclear deterrent and have no other option (unless France decides to share their nukes, but that hasn't happened yet, and you can bet they'll want you to buy Rafale for the privilege if they do), or want stealth capabilities which nobody else can offer right now, or want greater compatibility with the US munitions stockpile which is vastly larger than what Europe has available... etc.
Jets take a long time to develop, the time for Europe to get serious about "strategic autonomy" in that respect was 2 decades ago. That didn't happen, so now the F-35 is the only option if they want the capability to penetrate Russian ground-based air defenses and consistently beat the Su-57 (cough all 8 of them, but it's possible they scale up eventually).
The F-35 is better and cheaper than Gripen or Rafale. Everyone who can buy F-35 is doing so. There were countries that switched when allowed to buy F-35.
The Gripen's problem is that it is expensive for a light fighter. The other problem is that uses an American engine and US can control export. There aren't many countries that can't buy F-35 but can buy Gripen. Brazil is the big one.
The French Rafale is having more success because it isn't export limited. It is better than Gripen and same price.
Sweden's problem is that we insist on only selling to the "good guys" (for domestic policy reasons), but everyone who is considered a good guy (e.g. Norway) is already in the F-35 program. So we sell to no-so-good-but-not-terrible guys like Brazil, South Africa, Hungary and Thailand.
FYI
"The head of the Russian General Staff Academy announced the threat of a “large-scale war in Europe”
The state agency RIA Novosti on Thursday reported on an article by Vladimir Zarudnitsky, head of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The article was written in the departmental magazine “Military Thought” and was “at the disposal” of the agency.
The possibility of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine into a large-scale war in Europe cannot be ruled out; the likelihood of Russia being drawn into new military conflicts is increasing, the main idea of the RIA Novosti article is retold.
“The possibility of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine cannot be ruled out - from the expansion of participants in the ‘proxy forces’ used for military confrontation with Russia to a large-scale war in Europe,” wrote General Zarudnitsky.
“The main source of military threats to our state is the anti-Russian policy of the United States and its allies, waging a new type of hybrid war in order to completely weaken Russia, limit its sovereignty and destroy territorial integrity,” the general was quoted by Reuters, which also noted that a high-ranking A Russian military officer warned of the threat of the conflict in Ukraine escalating into a full-scale war in Europe.
Zarudnitsky's comments come as the West struggles to help Ukraine with more weapons and money after a failed counteroffensive, Reuters noted."
We have representative democracy in Sweden and something like 88% of representatives wanted Sweden to join NATO. There were debates but it gets a bit pointless when such a huge majority agree on it.
In what forum would you want to see more debates on the topic? Hearing a debate between two guys who wants the same thing seems pointless.
There was no debate because everyone was on board. I'm so sick and tired about people lying about this online. There was an election! And many, many polls! ALL OF THEM SHOWED LIKE 80% SUPPORT!
But the anti-Nato people are butthurt and feel the need to rewrite history to foreigners.
"NATO standards" is a meaningless technicality. NATO is more like a political suicide pact. The parade troops are just a side show. There is no public meta-discussion about the issue at all except among greens and socialists.
Try talking to some good friends about the prospect of actually fighting in a war. The difference between the public facade of the elite pretending stuff and my "experienced reality" is psychosis inducing. The cheering in this thread is really suspicious. It's one of those things that only seems to exist on the internets.
I got this feeling that the elite just waited for the right moment to push for joining NATO. They have been wanting this for a long time.
Do you think there is a general "pro-war psyops" ongoing or are these internet people real? I don't get where they all came from. Like, from nowhere. I mean, most of the gov. parties want to send weapons to Netanyahu. It is like they pretended to not be insane to suddenly rip their shirts off. And all these people with insane ideas on the internet. But I don't see almost any around me.
There was almost no debate. The elite made it a fait accompli and labeled nay sayers as traitors.
There is this major pretend that they have popular backing of joining NATO eventhough the sentiment against it is really strong. There was some demands for a referendum, but it was shut down in fear of "fake news" etc.
I'm my view, with the recent events, Sweden would need to spend at least 2% with or without NATO. Now we can spend 2% but get a lot more value out of it.
> I know Ukraine will not and cannot do this, but writing off it's East and Crimea would enable NATO membership and EU ascension.
No, it wouldn't.
NATO deciding it was willing to piss off Russia (which is why, without those active conflicts, Ukraine and Georgia were denied MAPs in 2008) would allow NATO membership. There's no actual rule that would prevent Ukraine from joining during the invasion (and even if there was, any NATO rule can be changed, either in a general way or to add a sui generis exception, by the same group -- all NATO members agreeing together -- required to admit a new member under the existing rule, so the rule would not actually be an additional barrier.)
"But," you might object, "even if there is not a rule preventing it, Ukraine joining while the Russian invasion continues would be impractical because it would immediately trigger Article 5, as long as Russian forces were engaging Ukrainian forces anywhere in the country, or even occupying any part of the country."
That could be managed, though, by admitting Ukraine while adopting either a general (for later review) or temporary with explicit time limits or other terminating conditions exclusion of some parts of its territory from Article 5 (not all the territory of all NATO members is covered by Article 5 now.)
NATO could even allow Ukraine to join as a indirect declaration of war. If Russia attacks Finland (or any NATO country) today, Ukraine will probably be invited to join instantly - NATO would already be at war and expanding the scope help NATO (giving some place else to attack from) far more than the need to defend an additional country would hurt.
The entire purpose of joining NATO is to defend against russian imperialism (Something Sweden has a ton experience with, for hundreds of years) Always has been. There is not much point in joining if you exclude that bit.
Certainly the main purpose, but I think over the last 70+ years there are some other benefits to members.
For example, fostering trade of military goods and technologies between members (especially for the USA as a major exporter) and smoothing out their national budgeting since it's kind of like buying insurance.
What practical difference would joining NATO make in the short term though?
Ukraines problems are logistical and attrition and they have very strong NATO support. The red lines about prodding Russia will still exist and the supply shortages across the EU will as well.
Joining NATO makes sense in peace time and so diplomats can hang out at conferences and get formally connected to intelligence data. But how different is that to the data feeds Ukraine gets today?
> What practical difference would joining NATO make in the short term though?
Depends on the terms.
If, say, Article 5 excluded defined territories whose control was actively contested at the time or which were occupied by Russia with an explicit time limit, and applied fully to the rest of the country (including places Russia likes to lob missiles but cannot yet effectively contest for control of), that would pretty substantially change the Russian calculus of the war.
And especially if it also came with the kind of forward deployment (to the covered part of Ukraine) of NATO troops made to other eastern-flank countries, it would free up Ukrainian forces to deal with the contested and currently-occupied areas.
All indications suggest that Russia also wants Odessa and the rest of the black sea coastline, which would probably never be acceptable even with NATO membership.
According to NDI(Movember 2023):
42% say that Ukraine should engage in negotiations, but
84% do not find it acceptable to end the war if it means letting Russia have the territory it controls currently. Even if Russia leaves all territory occupied since the 2022 invasion, 73% won't agree to such peace deal, they want pre-2014 borders.
https://www.ndi.org/publications/opportunities-and-challenge...
If there are any newer poll results, please share.
Even if they did, NATO can't accept new members that are in active conflict. Putin doesn't believe Ukraine is a real country, real ethnic group, or real culture. Ukraine could give up those entire regions and Russia would not be satisfied, only pushing the war front farther up closer to the West. The war could be smaller at that point, but it would still be active, and Putin/Russia would make sure that they conflict were hot enough to not allow membership.
This doesn't sit well with me, even with the disclaimer. I think it's because:
1. It suggests that there's a distinct objective/legalistic blocker to Ukraine's membership, when in reality the bar is "whatever existing NATO members want."
2. Even if #1 and Ukraine tried it, the benchmark is fundamentally unfair/unrealistic/unworkable. In this particular case, Putin would instantly declare-ownership over more Ukrainian territory, over and over, indefinitely.
I still don't understand why you think I'm "worried" about someone "provoking" Putin.
If anything it's the opposite: There's no point trying to avoid provoking Putin because (A) he's a dishonest actor and has/will feign a grievance for any reason that benefits him and (B) Ukraine from forming alliances with its neighbors is one of his primary goals, so it's impossible to get that with land-deals or conciliatory gestures.
I think it's a matter of changing the rules, just like Russia does so freely, I think it's about time NATO does the same thing.
Even if that meant that NATO would be in direct conflict with Russia, then it would be solved between NATO and Russia.
>2. Even if #1 and Ukraine tried it, the benchmark is fundamentally unfair/unrealistic/unworkable. In this particular case, Putin would instantly declare-ownership over more Ukrainian territory, over and over, indefinitely.
If sovereign countries' security depends on what delusional dictators write on a piece of paper, then this isn't much of a world worth living in.
Long story short, Putin can claim whatever it wants, in the eyes of the UN, Ukraine has its 1991 borders and that's where they should remain no matter what - even if it means a direct conflict with NATO. Enough with this bluff bullsht.
Are Russians, who live in one of the largest countries in the world filled with resources, going to commit collective suicide because of Ukraine?
And here I was thinking that "arrogant" was expecting a neighboring country, whose nation, identity and language you claim "aren't real", whose people you call "little Russians", would fall at your feet within days.
And flagrantly violating every agreement that has ever been made w/r/t Ukraine. And killing political opposition with impunity. And giving medals to every soldier in the units stationed in Bucha a few days after of the massacres were uncovered. And "annexing" regions of Ukraine where your soldiers haven't even reached, and putting them on official maps of Russia.
And using chemical and radiological weapons to conduct assassinations on UK soil. And blowing up Czech ammo depots.
And telling the world that if there were any Russian soldiers amongst the "little green men" in Crimea, they were merely on vacation.
How is the west being arrogant if the new member states want to join? It's not the west who invaded Georgia in 2008 or Crimea in 2014. It's not the west that invaded Ukraine in 2022. Countries bordering Russia have, for decades, known the threat that Russian imperialism is to them and it's their choice to protect themselves from an extremely aggressive, brutal neighbour.
Never understood people who believe the narrative of an expanding NATO. The baltics, Poland and other Eastern countries want to join NATO because they have been invaded several times by Russia, women raped, cities plundered, people tortured and killed. That is the reason those countries want to join NATO.
The west is arrogant because everyone else is trying to bring back feudalism lol
There's a reason non-western aligned countries are a bunch of corrupt shitholes, they want more serfs to do their bidding and the west is showing their population what their life could be and ruining their plans.
Study great power politics and you will understand what I mean. Russia is a nuclear power. That means no matter how much you dislike them for whatever reasons you don't go giving them the finger. That's like giving the Mafia boss the finger when he has a gun pointed at your head. You might think that's brave defiance but inarguably that will get you killed.
Study the outrage in the USA when Russia put nuclear missiles in Cuba, when Cuba, a sovereign country asked for those missiles (aka The Cuban Missile Crisis). Substitute Cuba for Ukraine and USA for Russia and you will be begin to understand the Russian point of view. But hey the West is Right, We are the Good Guys, always on the side of Freedom and Democracy so we can't be wrong. Just ask the Palestinians in Gaza.
Ukraine hasn't even been formally offered membership in NATO. They've never had any realistic prospect to join. Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation. Stop pretending otherwise.
> That means no matter how much you dislike them for whatever reasons you don't go giving them the finger.
You haven't considered the consequences of folding to nuclear blackmail. That increases the chances bad actors will use nuclear blackmail again (because you've shown it works), and it increases nuclear proliferation because small states start feeling unsafe if larger states refuse to help them defend themselves out of fear.
Russia: signed the memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine's borders, sovereignty and independence.
Also Russia: "NATO pinky promised in a discussion between two people no one remembers that it wouldn't expand East, so we're invading Ukraine and threatening you with nuclear war"
They signed when they were weak. That's Great Power Politics. The USA was sole Hegemon. It could do whatever it wanted. The West continued to provoke Russia because the West knew Russia was too weak to do anything about it. The West's arrogance was in underestimating how Russia would react as they continued to provoke them. (By "provoke" I mean doing things that the West knew that the Russians wouldn't like). The neocons in Washington were quite happy to see Russia invade Ukraine. They thought it was Afghanistan 2.0 (Soviet invasion, I'm referring too). The neocons thought they could bleed Russia dry using Ukraine as a proxy to bring down the Putin regime. A huge miscalculation. Now Russia and China a friends. In Great Power Politics that is a huge blunder. Why do you think Nixon, a staunch anti-communist, would do a deal with China? Answer is: Great Power Politics.
From a purely realpolitik standpoint, this war is going very well for the US. Russia is bogged down in a stalemate, with 100,000 soldiers dead already. (vs 10,000 over 10 years in Afghanistan). They've destroyed the idea that Russia is the second-strongest army in the world. NATO is now stronger and larger than ever, and haven't taken a single casualty.
My heart goes out to the Ukrainians, who are fighting determinedly not to be liquidated by Putin's mafia state. But the Dick Cheneys of the world couldn't be happier that Putin decided to invade.
I was about to say that it'd beat a bottle of wine from Sweden, anyway, but felt the need to fact-check my joke, and apparently Swedish wine is a thing!
Looking at the weather averages for Duluth (chosen at random), no, that actually looks probably colder than the heavily populated bits of Sweden, certainly in the winter.
The wine region is the little corner of Michigan just north of Indiana. They also do apples and cheese. I’m not sure how far north the region extends, but I’ve been there a few times. So that’s quite a bit farther south than the Swedish peninsula.
So, _London_ is further north than anywhere in the contiguous United States. But obviously much warmer than a lot of it, particularly in winter (London rarely gets far below 0 Celsius). Latitude very much isn’t everything.
If you look at the prevailing winds off of the eastern atlantic, it looks a lot like Southern Sweden gets the same air that London does. Plus there's a couple of considerable lakes along that path, so grapes do seem plausible.
How exactly do you think Ukraine would look under Russian occupation? If someone were to break in and occupy your home would you be accepting of the invasion to avoid conflict?
Something's missing in your comment, like which country is attacking Ukraine for example. That might sounds like a small detail but it has its importance on how the war can end.
The majority of Ukrainians wanted to defend themselves against the invasion so I assume they would answer yes. Yet you act as if they were somehow forced to defend themselves by outsiders. It's bizarre. You should critically review your information diet, you sound unhinged.
What? It's Putin & Russia that's destroying Ukraine. Sweden is joining Nato to deter Putin. And now Sweden will send JAS 39 Gripen to Ukraine. A fighter aircraft designed to bonk Russians.
On the one hand, Ukrainians are being killed (although GP is incorrect -- Ukraine has specifically been drafting older, non-youth people) and their industry is being bombed.
On the other hand, they're still a sovereign, free state.
Opinions may vary on which of those is more important.
As historical context, I would point out that the last time ethnic Russians controlled Ukraine, they killed 3M+ of them via starvation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
>Opinions may vary on which of those is more important.
Survey data from last October suggests that 60% of Ukranians want to keep fighting until Ukraine wins and 31% are in favour of negotiating an end to the war ASAP.
> Stockholm introduced a new anti-terrorism bill that makes being a member of a terrorist organisation illegal. Sweden, Finland, Canada and the Netherlands also took steps to relax policies on arms exports to Turkey. [...] Erdogan, who had sent Sweden's bid to parliament in October, linked the ratification to U.S. approval of sales of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.
This law was a response to the terror attacks of 2017, and was mostly already done when Putin invaded. As a political thing, Sweden and Turkey informally agreed to pretend this was a concession so that Erdogan could look good for his election.
The problem was then that this lie was just a bit too credible, so people started to believe in it.
The largest country on Earth murders people for merely expression an opinion and a massive chunk of our planet's geological wealth is funneled to fund wars of aggression.
This sovereign decision is in perfect alignment with Sweden's value and security needs. Yet, that the decision involved kissing the rings of other no-good men (Erdogan and Orban) tells me we need a paradigm shift.
Is it legal to crowdfund Putin's early retirement? I'm sure there's a number that will guarantee getting him out of office. Asking for a friend. ;-)
The EU is independent of the US. There's a difference between alliance and dependency (and EU isn't coextensive with European NATO, but they are pretty close.)
In most ways yes, but militarily there's definitely some dependence on the US. A lot of European militaries were found to have relatively bare cupboards when the time to donate things to Ukraine came. Germany's Army Chief straight up said the army wasn't capable of fulfilling its mission.
(And yeah the US struggled with artillery shells too, the difference is that the US has so much airpower it had a legit reason to believe it wouldn't need them very much)
Militarily the USA has always had the need to keep stockpiles: it's been in many, many wars or performing larger military maneuvers for the past 70+ years.
European militaries didn't have to consider a large production capacity, neither stockpiling weapons since mostly weren't involved in large military actions (exceptions probably are France and the UK). In terms of efficiency that is what is expected, why waste taxes for stockpiling unused weapons?
Europe dropped the ball after 2014 on not taking note that Russia was going in a new direction, Georgia 2008 was an early warning but Ukraine 2014 should've been a massive alarm that at least some production capacity was needed. Still, it wasn't at all politically viable at the time, it'd be political suicide for any politician outside of Eastern Europe to spend more money on the military and its industry rather than education, healthcare, etc.
Since 2022 everything has changed, the change is slow but steady and will only keep happening, Rheinmetall is steadily growing production, and many other military industries are expanding across the continent, Putin made politically viable for Europe to spend on its military again.
You're just explaining why it got there, and you even acknowledge there should've been wake up calls in 2008 and 2014, but Europe collectively ignored them.
Of course I'm explaining it, because there's a reason why European countries haven't been stockpiling weapons for decades and have been dependent on the USA.
You brought up the dependence on the USA first, I explained why that is:
> In most ways yes, but militarily there's definitely some dependence on the US. A lot of European militaries were found to have relatively bare cupboards when the time to donate things to Ukraine came.
Europe ignored it because it was politically untenable to push for military spending until 2022 when it became very clear there is a threat escalating conflicts in the continent.
I really don't understand what else I should've done with my comment... Give a solution? What else did you expect?
The German armed forcea are really capabale of doing, or fielding, anything in meaningfull numbers ever since the end of the cold war. No big surprise here.
Military it's inter-dependency, that' why we're allies. The whole point of an ally is to be inter-dependency of one another. I, for one, as a citizen of a NATO country, I am very happy with this arrangement.
The principle is interdependency, but in practice many European militaries don't have a ton to give. Since the cold war ended, many just sort of coasted on military spending.
Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them. There's renewed interest in taking the defense budget seriously.
> Since the cold war ended, many just sort of coasted on military spending.
So did the US until the 2001 (and, actually, the free fall in US military spending relative to GDP started well before the end of the cold war), and by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.
> Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them.
It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)
Yeah, no. The US reduced spending, that's true, but it never dropped nearly as low as so many European countries.
> by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.
Because of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan winding down, no?
> It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)
Not really, no. The US took Russia's 2014 invasion more seriously than most of Western Europe did.
That only works if you are filling your side of the bargain. If you depend on the US and don't have your own army equipped, and the US depends on your army and isn't equipped to rescue you it all fails.
European defense contractors completely skipped making fifth gen fighters (other than some partnerships with the US on theirs), so there are literally no European fifth gen options on the table to even consider. This makes it pretty easy for the F-35 to cruise to victory in competitive selection processes, it's simply more advanced.
Hopefully this changes for sixth gen, with the two different European programs there. While I'm American myself, I think things work out better if there's some friendly competition.
There's money to be had, but also a lot of money that has to be spent. Which is presumably why European countries/companies didn't develop a fifth gen fighter in the wake of the Cold War ending. Made some sense then, but now it's left them totally reliant on the US if they want a fifth gen (or better) fighter anytime soon.
What does that practically mean though? Europe could stop Russia today, independent of the US. The first 18 months of ramping up production would be painful, but there is no question who would win.
Does Europe want to project force around the world? If so, why? It's much more cost-efficient to let the US taxpayer foot the majority of the bill for navigable seas.
The first thing a war usually uncovers is that a large part of the peacetime commanders, soldiery, equipment, and military industry is completely incompetent.
I can't think of a war following a long peace where this hasn't been the case.
And unfortunately, incompetence is difficult to quickly discover and replace.
Yes, but what is the threat to Europe that might cause war? Russia can't even project force to the Polish border. Certainly no military threats coming from North Africa.
I don't necessarily disagree as IMHO a diverse world that more accurately reflects the desires of local populations is a good thing, but I'd be curious to know why you would like the EU to seek independency from the US. What do you mean by that? Economic or more? Do you mean more home-grown tech companies for example?
Not the person you responded to, but I agree that the EU needs a bit more independence from the US.
To me, it's mostly about being able to stand up for ourselves on a world stage - ideally through a common EU military that is strong enough to deter adversaries even without US support.
My main reason is the instability of the American political climate and the way every four years there's an election between a centrist and an extremist. Trump has already threatened to invite Putin to invade other NATO countries [0]. We can't risk being dependent on this madman.
I think many in the US would also be happy with a stronger Europe. A friendly peer competitor to call us out if we decided to go to war to ostensibly “spread democracy” would probably be good, for example.
We temporarily renamed some fast food that wasn’t even correctly named after them, and made a bunch of juvenile jokes about their performance in WW2 for a couple decades. I dunno, I was just a kid at the time, but I didn’t get the impression that we were taking their complaints very seriously.
I was a little bit older, and I do remember the hostility we had towards them (I was studying French at the time). But yeah, it was more like the way you'd boo the opposing sports team, not like we are at risk at war with them or anything...
Speaking as an American I want this for the EU as well. I liked the prior world order, but I think the dream of keeping it alive died when our current dumbass-in-chief pulled out of Afghanistan in the stupidest way possible. The previous dumbass-in-chief who may well be the next dumbass-in-chief if the current one loses also abandoned our Kurdish allies and is promising to do worse than that.
Also, I like Europe. I don’t want to see it falter.
That's probably a complicated slicing of "stateless state". Racial? Ethnic? Linguistic? Religious?
I'm guessing it would be something approaching "associated peoples who are part of a state, but who have collectively demonstrated a desire for an independent state"?
There are ~40M Kurds.
Off the top of my head, Palestinians, Uyghurs, Basques, but I'm sure I'm missing a ton.
Not the OP, but in context, the US is a huge part of NATO's overall defense (and offense/force projection) capabilities. The EU on its own would have a harder time defending itself against aggression.
It's effectively impossible to invade a country that has nuclear weapons. There might be small scale border skirmishes, but large scale organized invasions are essentially a nonstarter. The main purpose of conventional weaponry, for nuclear nations, is to invade non-nuclear nations, or to engage in proxy skirmishes to try to expand one's geopolitical power.
We're rapidly approaching a century with 0 major and unrestrained wars between two nuclear powers. That's completely unprecedented in the entirety of our history, and it's not a coincidence.
This could be a good place to
Post a reminder that in 1995, Ukraine agreed to hand over all its nuclear weapons to Russia in return of a promise to not threaten or use military force against Ukraine.
Maybe because these were radically different times, and the "we've always been at war with X or Y" is just a narrative? No, of course not, what a nonsense.
Do you think UK or France would use nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear Russian attack on other NATO members (e.g. Germany)? Are they obligated to do so?
>> The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
>> such action as it seems necessary, including the use of armed force
There's no mandatory requirement to deploy specific weapons, but I believe all NATO forces would be subordinate to CMC (rotating) and SACEUR (has always been a US leader)? Inasmuch as multinational command structures work.
Right but OP said it’s “effectively impossible to invade a country that has nuclear weapons” and I’m curious how that is relevant to non nuclear NATO members like Germany.
I don’t see how it helps Germany (or Finland, Poland etc etc) that France and UK have nuclear weapons, apart from deterrence against specifically nuclear Russian attacks. A conventional land invasion against a non nuclear NATO power would likely be very difficult to stop without US support, at current defense levels, or without UK or France threatening a universal nuclear defense of other nato members.
It's ambiguous (or I haven't seen it written) under what conditions NATO would retaliate with NATO-controlled nuclear weapons to an attack on a NATO member.
But it's definitely shy of 'never'
I know during the 80s there were detailed plans to tactically nuke the larg(er) Soviet armored formations in eastern Germany et al. in the event of hostilities. I believe even before Soviet nuclear escalation.
I'm unaware of those, but I do know that US nuclear targets from the 50s were relatively recently declassified [1], and they were far more macabre.
We focused on taking out Soviet air forces (to eliminate their ability to deliver nukes of their own - as this was before the USSR had developed ICBMs), but also focused on targets marked simply as "population" as well as medical production facilities. The goal was not to just defeat the military, but to literally destroy the nation. And I'm certain the USSR had, more or less, identical plans. And I suspect those still remain the plans for both sides to this day.
Nukes aren't going to falling out in the middle of nowhere trying to take out military bases, they're going to be falling in NYC, San Francisco, Moscow, and St. Petersburg - to try to completely take out the other country's population and economy. Nuclear war is do or die. The goal is going to be to eliminate the enemy's country from the face of this Earth, so that they can't just recover to become a threat 10 years down the line.
There are always a menu of pre-built reaction plans, because even in the days of strategic bombers over the arctic there wouldn't have been enough reaction time for anything custom + dissemination to combat commands.
Much less once ICBMs become common.
And at that point, the only requirement for a total war / civilian+industry apocalypse plan is that your potential opponent might also have such a plan.
It's tremendously unlikely to be used except in a "like for like" response scenario (absent an insane president), but if the US saw the Soviets throwing everything they had up with population centers targeted... there'd better be a ready to go plan to respond similarly.
And, as Dr Strangelove memorably quips, indeed the most effective deterrence effect of such a plan is to loudly tell everyone you have such a plan -- so they will have to consider that's one of your response options, and thus be disincentivized from starting a nuclear exchange.
By which it makes a lot of sense that even if the US didn't have such a plan, they fabricated one and announced they did!
(Not that I think they didn't. The Cold War was way too real to bet on a 0% chance that superpowers weren't going to escalate to total war)
That was not a reaction plan, it was an offensive plan. That's why they even bothered with targeting Soviet airfields. At the time the USSR had not yet developed an ICBM and so nukes would have been delivered by air. If it was a response plan, then targeting those airfields would have been wastes of nukes. The idea was to destroy their entire country and nuclear capability, before they could do anything.
Remember, there's only one country that's ever nuked another country.
I think the most likely scenario is that they would transfer control of a number of nuclear weapons to Germany in such a scenario. And that would be more than enough to end the war, or to end the world.
Which is why everyone bordering any empire currently looks for nukes or nuke eqivalents,as the American reliability falls apart. Must be fun to work at the iaa nowadays.
For what? EU is plenty powerful enough to do that, but for what end. What would they do different that is significant. Sure there are minor differences in various policies and lots of disagreements, but overall our high level aims are too close and so the EU is better off not having to.
Have you ever heard of the military-industrial complex? If the EU wants to be independent they need to develop their own at great cost. (note that the US is already depending on EU's military industrial complex for various things, so you would also force the US to take those in-house) Which is why despite differences the US and EU are likely to remain allies for a long time - you cannot afford to go alone.
You're confused. The US doesn't control the EU in any way.
Or maybe you're not confused and you just object to the US and/or EU, but that's your problem, not theirs.
Terminology note: 'independency' is an archaic form of 'independence' which in this context means a self-governing state as opposed to being controlled by another state. This might be confused with 'interdependence' which is a natural reality of almost everything on earth, but especially those who cooperate and work and trade together.
If you define "control" narrowly enough, nothing controls anything. But if you use a plain reading of "control" as in "can and will influence the actions of", it seems like "doesn't control in any way" is trivially false.
In this context 'control' means having power over. If you're not independent then another country has power over your actions. Mere influence is insufficient since the influence runs two ways, which is the case between the EU and US.
Yes, a marriage is unequal if one party has more strength, money, guns, technology, etc. Actual equality is a really rare thing in nature. Someone always has more, whether they are currently using that against the other party or not.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the US is still the leading superpower by quite a margin. It may not be brought up explicitly in negotiations, but that fact is always there.
Maybe I'm wrong and the EU wields an equal amount of influence over the US. It certainly sounds a little odd saying it though.
OK I'll spell it out: they're friendly nations who respect each others sovereignty. Actual power is irrelevant because it's not used. Claims to the contrary tend to be political and sometimes conspiracy theories motivated by animus. A reasonable person would readily agree they're friendly nations.
The US doesn't threaten or intimidate the EU or vica versa (Trump is an aberration).
To further make the point: NATO membership means they've undertaken to fight and die for each other's protection, how much more friendly can you get?
> A reasonable person would readily agree they're friendly nations.
Sure (although a reasonable person might quibble that the EU is not a nation). It's just that friendly nations doesn't mean what you think it means.
Relevant terms are things like "realpolitik" and "realism". Basically, countries don't do things out of the good of their hearts, because they don't have hearts, they're not people.
> It would be nice if EU seek independency from US eventually.
That would require European countries to actually fund their militaries at a level where they could realistically have independence. Which isn't going to happen over the long term.
The only reason for the current surge in funding is the active war in Europe. Once that is settled, however it happens, European countries will go back to their old ways (with the possible exception of countries that actually border Russia/Belarus).
The funding is less of a problem. European countries spend a lot. It's just very diverse. The US has one army and one commander. Europe has 20+ armies and as much commanders. Around 250 billion a year is for example a lot more than what Russia spends. There are France and UK with nuclear weapons. Each of them has their own nuclear weapons and their own technology. Their nuclear weapons are not EU weapons, they are not designed to defend the EU. The UK isn't even anymore in the EU. The Brexit was also fueled by the UK not wanting to be part of an EU Army.
There is simply no EU army, the EU is not a nation, the EU is not a defense union. Several EU countries are neutral, several countries make their own military decisions, based on the constitutional law, etc.
For most purposes, NATO is the main international military organization for European countries, not the EU.
> The funding is less of a problem. European countries spend a lot.
Not really.
> The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, is almost equal to that of the United States. ... The volume of US defence expenditure represents approximately two thirds of the defence spending of the Alliance as a whole.
> If Trump withdraws the US from NATO going back to the old ways is not an option, at least EU doesn't want to lose its Eastern half to Russia.
The tricky thing with politics is that there are always way more hungry stomachs than seats at the table. And people learned a long time ago to frame their pet issue as critical.
And the trouble with military spending is that it's never critical. Until it is. But at that point, it's way too late.
I just don't think that the Ukraine war is a big enough deal to act as a catalyst for permanent change. People have remarkably short memories when it comes to things like that - most European countries were on their way to completely normalized relations with Russia around 2020/2021; not that long after the annexation of Crimea.
I don't expect the exact same thing to happen - trade with Russia will probably be severely restricted for a very long time. But it's really easy to chip away at the military budget in favor of social programs. Especially since the benefit of the latter is obvious and immediate. And those programs will always be strained.
In a way, sure. But it would also be nice if we were more codependent, in a way?
For example, it's wild to me that there's no bilateral trade agreement between the US and EU. It seems like the most obvious no-brainer you can imagine.
If the US could just stop swinging wildly between two parties who hate each other being in control every couple of years, that might get done.
These sorts of big complex trade agreements take _ages_ to negotiate and require a certain degree of stability; given the US's current hyper-partisanship it's probably not happening any time soon. Realistically TTIP was dead the day Trump was elected.
Irony: NATO maybe was considered of questionable necessity before Putin invaded Ukraine to supposedly contain NATO, which ended up being a gigantic ad for NATO. Now it's on track to become the de-facto EU military.
Putin is yet another fabulous counterexample for the anti-democracy crowd. He spent hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, hundreds of billions, tons of military hardware, and incurred sanctions to earn... a massive increase in the strength and prestige of one of his (again supposed) major adversaries. Not only is NATO growing but the EU is ramping up its own domestic military industries. Absolutely massive own-goal. Even if he "wins" in Ukraine to some extent it's a strategic net loss at this point.
Starting to wonder if China is going to do the same thing with Taiwan: invade and set gigantic amounts of money on fire and implode their economy. Even if they "win" the damage might far exceed the gain.
"Instrument of accession" is the document that says Sweden is now in NATO. "Deposited with the US government" means physically deposited, within the continental US.
Just in time for Trump to do the rug pull he agreed with Putin back in 2018, when they met in Helsinki and Trump took care to even destroy translator’s notes.
If he wins the election, NATO is toast and Putin has carte blanche over East Europe.
Poland defended Western Europe from a Russian invasion in 1920 and will do so again.
Reagan was the last defender of Europe (you can like him or not, having grown up in a left political climate in the 70s of Germany, I didn't), and Reforger '93 was the last time the US seriously considered defending Western Europe. It's clear that at least from Clinton on, the defense of Europe as a necessity for balancing world power was no longer on the table, "It's the economy, stupid!".
Putin will create a crisis in the baltics and invade Poland over the Suwałki Gap, gets his ass kicked, troops getting stuck, there will be negotiations and that's that. Putin couldn't get weak Ukraine (Crimea was a coup) - Russia has 3.5x times the people and 100x the money - it's funny how people in the West still believe in the Soviet Union and the Red Army, against all evidence. The best troops of the Warsaw Pact were East Germanys NVA, and losing that and all other satelite states like Poland, there is no more Red Army.
US has given money to Ukraine which is in Europe for many years, even before the current war, and has troops stationed in Poland and Germany and trains with a lot of European militaries (for example Finland even before it joined NATO). It is certainly possible that the US has given up on defending Europe just as anything is possible but I don't see any evidence for that. No NATO country has ever been attacked AFAIK so it doesn't seem reasonable to make such a certainly stated assertion about what would happen if that occurred, unless I am misunderstanding your point.
That is very true. If by "defending Western Europe" you really meant "defending Eastern Europe with US troops" then this would be a relevant data point.
I think from Clinton's point of view, at least for a large portion of his term, there was no one to defend europe _from_. Russia was in shambles and retreating everywhere.
In hindsight we know that was wrong. However I'll fully admit that if he has assassinated Putin I would have called him out on it even though we now wish he had.
He wasn't wrong. It was in a shambles and retreating everywhere. I think the actual failure was the US doing too much to exploit that and not enough to support democracy there. Russia really needed a Marshall plan from the west to stabilize them, and not western companies going in and helping kleptocrats loot the country. By the time Putin took over, the situation was already irreparable..
Swedes would then be stupid to join nato knowing that Trump is more likely to win, and swedes are not stupid. The US foreign policy seems to have a continuity regardless of president or rhetoric-du-jour. Just look at china
He (and/or his people) have talked a lot about annexing at least part of Poland. Less sure about the Baltics, but I think there's been some yapping about them too.
So, yeah, if you listen to what he and his people say, his motivations are not in doubt...
I'd like to see one as well. I've heard that claim so often but apart from some Russian TV propagandists who have as much impact on Russian politicians as Tucker Carlson on US policy there's nothing official.
Not offhand, no. I'm going by memory from remarks by... might have been Medvedev, might have been the defense chief or somebody like that. Not officially Putin, but pretty close to a Putin mouthpiece. This would have been within the last two or three months.
It's a close Putin ally in the legislature, saying that Poland is next after Ukraine. This is in January 2024.
(Of course, my same search turns up Putin saying that Russia will not invade Poland. But he also said that they wouldn't invade Ukraine, so I don't think we should believe him. But now I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, because I said that we should believe him when he said he would invade.
But, in short, yes, at least some of Putin's close allies have at least sometimes said that Russia will invade Poland.)
EU countries including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and eastern Poland have been part of the Russian nation at some point since “ancient Rus”. What makes you think Putin doesn’t want them back?
Kaliningrad sits there right in the middle of EU and NATO. That’s got to sting him. Trump’s second term will be his ticket to take a stab at fixing this geopolitical blemish, the mote in the Eastern god’s eye.
Wait, first you claimed Putin said many times that he wants to conquer eastern Europe, and now you say the Russians are (falsely) claiming they don't want to conquer eastern Europe, and that I am repeating this lie of theirs. Which is it? Do they claim to want to conquer eastern Europe, or not?
Putin is not lying when he fabricates historic claims and of howls about how Russia has been victimized - this delusion is his honest believe. But Russians lie when they say that they don't want to attack any other countries. Just how Putin lied when they said that they are not going to violently attack Ukraine.
However; strategic ambiguity is part of Russian hybrid warfare. Just see how it went in Ukraine.
First they said they don't have any interest in Ukraine, that Ukraine is sovereign. Then the Russians invade Crimea, while claiming that the "green men" are not Russian soldiers. Then they tacitly admit that some Russian soldiers might have been involved. Then they brag about how they took Crimea.
Same same in the Donbas.
Meanwhile Putin is playing the victim card and making claims on all and every territory that once was the Rus' dominion, even though the "Russian Federation" itself has little to do with the Rus' of Kyiv or Ruritania or Galicia.
All the while his mouthpieces are both threatening the whole of Europe with nuclear fire and "de-nazification".
I don't what Russia is aiming at. In my eyes the whole country has gone mad with a fatal case of imperial delusion that will only end with the nation itself, similar to how the 3rd Reich only died with Nazi Germany.
What I do know is that anyone repeating any Russian claims is an imperialistic useful idiot.
This ridiculous hysteria serves no purpose. People said all these same things before his first election, and if anything Trump just accelerated aggression with Russia, just like every president before him and Biden after him.
Apologies for our Trump Derangement Syndrome. When he said that he will pull the US out of NATO and that Putin can do "whatever he wants", we will just pretend he is a comedian doing a bit.
Hysterics will spend all day talking about what a liar Trump is right up until the moment he says something he's going to do that they think is bad, then all of a sudden he's telling the absolute truth.
Trump lies, postures, hyperbolizes, boasts and self-promotes. More shamelessly than most politicians. We all know this.
Trump isn't going to pull the U.S. out of NATO. He probably couldn't, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. He just wants to force other countries to pay more, that's all. Stop with this nonsense already.
Not vouching for him, but Trump did alert the Germans about the risk of over relying on Russian energy [1]. He wanted Europe to become independent of Putin years before this crisis. He did not say these things in the most appropriate way, like everything he says, but it didn't seem like he wanted to weaken Europe before Russia, quite the opposite.
He wanted to sell US LNG. Not more and not less. Russia delivered gas to Western Europe for 60 years, the US could not guarantee LNG deliveries for 2 years [0]
Hopefully the traffic through the Panama canal goes down so Europe can still get US LNG that would otherwise end up in Asia.
And now US LNG exports to Germany are booming: ~30x (!!!) from 2022 to 2023 [1].
Seems like there wasn't a better other option anyway, was there?
Before invading Ukraine, Putin was arguably banking on the fact that he had Europe on his hands, not only for economic activity, but for survival during winter. He clearly didn't expect the way Europe responded.
Maybe the invasion wouldn't have happened in the first place if Europe would have already demonstrated strength and energy independence in the first place?
It has been quite common knowledge that one of the US' biggest fears has always been a strong German industry paired with cheap Russian energy. It's not like Trump or anyone else had to raise some kind of alert here. The dependency was quite obvious and a choice by Germany.
Unfortunately they're nothing but a vassal NATO outpost by now so the deindustrialization is probably going to continue until some far right party takes over.
When, not if, and that's a good thing. I don't share your alarmist view. I think the other members of NATO will just start doing their fair share, as they should.
So you'd prefer countless of people getting raped and murdered... To make the point that other countries aren't also spending ludicrous amounts of money on the military?
I imagine that the actual truth to the situation is far more complicated than either of us understand and that NATO provides substantial benefits to the United States.
NATO membership enables the US to have air bases in the UK and Turkey, Navy bases in Spain and Italy, and in other parts of Europe with overflight rights for military planes.
Most of the air traffic for the US wars in the middle east goes through Germany, and most injured soldiers go back through Germany [0] Many US soldiers survive because they get through Landstuhl.
Ramstein is also rumored to be the primary operation center for drone strikes, although the US military denies this.
NATO is obsolete for whom? And have you seen the numbers of visually confirmed destroyed equipment and the drone shots of dead Russians, because that makes Afghanistan look good in comparison.
You're 15 years out of date and likely wrong about any lie re:
Sweden had a policy of neutrality in armed conflicts from the early 19th century, until 2009, when it entered into various mutual defence treaties with the European Union (EU), and other Nordic countries.
The details appear to have been open and declared as policy in public.
The destruction, death and injuries seen in occupied Ukraine are already absolutely equivalent to nuclear war, minus the radiation. Also, I imagine the next nuclear weapons to be used in conflict will try to minimize their lingering "dirty" nature. So the added threat of nuclear annihilation is inconsequential.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 200,000 - almost entirely civilians. And those were tiny little bombs relative to what exists now a days. The biggest nuke ever tested, Tsar Bomba, is more than 3,000 more powerful than those.
And many don't seem to realize what nuclear war will be like. It's not going to be two sides launching little tactical nukes at each other's armies. If nuclear war breaks out, the involved countries are going to try to eliminate the other country. Not their army or their military, which can be rebuilt, but literally completely destroy the other country. US nuclear targets were declassified some time back. [1] While we did of course focus on trying to eliminate Soviet air capability, we were also planning to extensively bomb civilian population centers, medical production centers, industry, and more. And it's 100% guaranteed that the Soviet target list looked pretty similar.
Conventional war is nothing even remotely comparable to what nuclear war will entail.
There's no russophobia except in Kremlin's propaganda.
European nations just can't take any chances with aggression and untrustworthiness of the current Russian leadership. That's just common sense. This is nothing against Russian population.
Oh, there indeed is! I'm not Russian, but I've experienced it since I came to the States! Most Russophobes are Democrats, neocons, and people from the former Soviet bloc!
You have Putin making claims about borders based on his own and very selective version of history, high ranking politicians (and their media) making threats about invading or nuking other countries, and of course there's their invasion of Ukraine... Obviously people and countries will reconsider their position and act.
This is a reaction to Russia's behaviour. We can't behave like dicks and then cry when people that don't like our behaviour are not our friends or try to protect themselves.
How about the agreement not to expand NATO? Or Minsk agreements? It's so funny that people talk about Article 5, but don't really know what it really says! If Russia attacks Poland, let's say, because Poland gets into Ukraine, you think America will start a WWIII, because of Poland? Get real!
Please show me the document of the agreement not to expand NATO.
While you try to find that, it would be great if you could explain why countries want to give away some of their military freedom and risk being dragged to other wars and join NATO. Why did the baltic countries join? Why did Sweden and Finland - two typically anti-NATO countries - recently changed their mind without public opposition?
NATO should send Putin a "salesman of the year 2022" award. The guy managed to give a new life to the organisation and made both countries join, creating a "east expands to NATO" (and not a "NATO expands east") situation. This wouldn't have happened before Feb 2022... are we sure he isn't working for the "west"?
If you want to talk about agreements, we can start by talking about the Budapest Memorandum from 1994 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum ). It's only 6 points and very easy to understand, I recommend reading it.
I don't know who's talking about Article 5 being used when a member of NATO starts an offensive war against someone else. I also didn't read anything about Poland joining Ukraine to fight Russia (which, let's not forget, decided to wage war). Maybe you replied to the wrong person?
Not going to continue this discussion with you though. Not that the west is blameless, but I have no time to discuss with someone that blames everyone but the country that willingly started the war in Ukraine.
When Trumps get elected soon, NATO won't be such a freebie anymore! I won't be surprised if it gets dismanteled. I can accept an EU army, but NATO is a thing from the past that needs to be revisited!
"Myth," Gorbachev said in 2014 interview to ZDF. He added that there is nothing in writing because there was no agreement. Had there been an agreement, they would've written it down. Clip: https://twitter.com/splendid_pete/status/1650735533826375680
And as a bonus feature, in the same clip, USSR's Minister of Defense (1987-1991) says that he's never even heard about it. USSR's Minister of Foreign Affairs gave a similar interview in 2014 too and also called the story BS, adding that he finds nothing wrong with the way Eastern Europe joined NATO.
So there's no proper agreement, just a verbal one, something those that came after could easily ignore, assuming they were even aware about it. And we have to take their word for it because there's no proof. Very smart!
I can point you to the Budapest Memorandum and explain how Russia broke it and why countries like the UK and US have to support Ukraine because 1) the points are very easy to understand and 2) they all signed it.
In any case, one very important question remains. Why do countries want to join NATO? You blame everyone but Russia, but what do you expect to happen when everyone around them has "russians" in need of "protection", their media explains how these small countries could be easily invaded or nuked, Putin starts babbling about what happened 500 years ago and Peter the Great, and so on?
Russia is a pain in the ass for everyone that is unfortunate to have a border with them. From Finland and Ukraine to Kazakhstan and China, they have problems with everyone. Their own behaviour is their main enemy.
I had the same question and I don’t think I can squint enough to make this post make sense. I really enjoy coming here for the tech/hacker concentration, though I do miss the general audience topics you’d find on old Reddit. While I don’t use Reddit any more, I’m concerned that allowing general audience topics like this is a path toward diluting the best thing about HN.
Sweden joining means they have lost the Baltic Sea as the only entrance is now controlled by two NATO countries.
Finland Joining has helped lock down the Baltic sea but most importantly is a staging ground for cutting logistics to the largest military complex on the Kola peninsula.
This war is not just about Russias energy politics, it's also very much about their need for more maritime access.
THis map shows where Russia has their ports, and now 4 important ports are pretty much neutralised. Kaliningrad, St Peterburg, and the Krimean Naval Complex are all locked in by NATO countries which means a naval blocade of Russia is very very easy and would completely render their navy's impotent. THe fourth one is on the Kola peninsula and this is why Finland is important as a staging ground to attack the railways to make the Murmansk complex isolated and within medium range missile range from Nelim and Kirkenes.
THis leaves Petrapavlovsk-Kamchatskiyiv (North of Japan) and Valdivodstock (Next to North Korea) the only Free Water ports that are not affected by NATO.
Interesting. You seem to know your stuff and have thought this through.
So, I was hoping to solicit your opinion on where you think Kaliningrad will be in a couple of years? (Say 5)
It probably won't be called "Koningsberg", but would you say it's probable it will become independent? Part of Lithuania, Poland? Or will it remain firmly Russian and (economically) isolated?
Many [though not enough] people in K̶a̶l̶i̶n̶i̶n̶g̶r̶a̶d̶ Królewiec consider themselves more European than russian. The optimistic view is that sooner or later they'll get their way. Perhaps with putler's death they might.
>a naval blocade of Russia is very very easy and would completely render their navy's impotent.
I think that may be okay in theory but is a bit of an over simplification for any real life scenario that deals with the wildcard dictator of Russia. Nothing is very very easy.
NATO is a defensive pact, if there was a NATO naval blockade there would already be war with NATO which almost certainly means escalation to nuclear war. that's my take anyway.
Surprised I had to scroll down to see this. Collective defense means expanded nuclear umbrella from the nuke powers in NATO. TFCMA/WP/Russian doctrine has always allowed a free hand for local commanders to use tactical weapons - a very tempting option to deal with Sweden[1] in the event of a Baltic/Kaliningrad land grab. Admission to NATO is a barrier to that, since the West doesn't exactly believe in small bites when it comes to nuclear weapons. Tactical nuclear weapon usage against member states would very likely have a strategic response.
So long as the Russian decision makers believe they will be hit with nukes if they use nukes themselves, it doesn't matter precisely which target — the point of MAD is a deterrent that prevents the nukes getting used in the first place.
If the decision makers think "we can use as many nukes as we want because we have a huge stockpile and can level anyone who even tries to respond in kind", we're already on borrowed time.
Strategic reaction doesn’t necessarily mean a capital atomic strike. It can be a range of responses that have been off the table during the Ukraine war so far. Switching the entire economic output to a wartime posture for example, is just as strategic.
I think it is in Russian elites’ and Putin’s self interest to continue the status quo and grind down the West in Ukraine, plunder it, and leave the long-term consequences to Russia in someone else’s hands. I’m doubtful they’ll actually use atomics unless the walls are violently closing in. Even China backed way off when Putin loosely waved around nuclear rhetoric in the opening months of the war, and asked in nervous diplomatic speak, “chill, broseph”.
If you look at the Baltic Sea before and after the invasion of Ukraine, that was largely a neutral space (before) that has since turned into a NATO one -- excluding only the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
I would argue this makes any further move by Russia in that space quite problematic.
The EU is not a military alliance, NATO is. There is a substantial difference between countries being in the EU only and being in NATO (either only or along with the EU.)
EU is economical/societal effort (or war prevention), NATO is military (and doesn't prevent members from fighting, ie Greece vs Turkey). Ever heard of actual EU army? Doesn't exist out there in the world, maybe on paper.
Well, there's Eurocorps for the last few decades, but that's not an army, just a corps-level HQ unit under which component-state forces can be slotted.
OTOH, that's not a particularly poor model for a fairly loose multi-state federation.
On the other other hand, its not actually an EU force, its a force of a particular group of EU states that is made available to both the EU and NATO, and has conducted operations on behalf of each.
Of course it does. Sweden and Finland being members of the EU had absolutely 0 bearing on the US getting involved in a war with Russia. Do you honestly think Russia would've tried to invade Ukraine if they were NATO members?
Given that we (Sweden) have been the preferred partner with Norway for NATO winter training exercises since the 1980s and our entire military strategy was based on "Nato will protect us if Putin invades" you are not wrong.
What changed was USA having people like Trump and the Republican party talk about not protecting NATO countries anymore. It made us realize that we can't continue to count on US help as the premise is based on the US having absolute control of the nuclear weapons, but loading them on NATO ally dual capable airplanes to launch the nukes.
If Europe is not convinced that the US will not share the nukes as agreed, then Europe has to actually rearm and might even casue a nuclear proliferation with France and UK restarting their nuclear programs.
so yeah it changes and not changes the geopolitics.
This is why Sholtz and Marcon are having a bit of a public disagreement.
Germany really do not want to send soldiers to Ukraine. For a whole lot of internal very German reasons their military is not in a good position for armed conflict.
And this one on Germany's very cumbersome procurement tgat is part of why Germany is not keen on rearmament (apart from the obvious: they know what they did) https://youtu.be/8jDUVtUA7rg?si=Du6Rrq2TolbIIaw5
that said Macron is at the moment the only European leader outside of the Baltics that is keen on sending people to Ukraine.
This is what we have to deal with. People believing that when our enemies are arming themselves, it is somehow problematic to respond? This attitude is fading in Europe (thankfully) but I still see this far too often.
Considering the invasion of Ukraine for the second time in 10 years, and the official threats of using nuclear weapons, rearming doesn't sound as bad as before.
> and the official threats of using nuclear weapons
"Why are we shocked? Of course if a country has a weapon it also conceives a situation where it would use it. If a country would never under no circumstance use a weapon it would not have the weapon at all. Every country who has a weapon also conceives a scenario when to use it. Even if they don't issue reminders"
-- My own translation from an interview to Alessandro Barbero
To decomission a weapon is to weaken the army. Rulers must be very careful about taking power from the army, as army officials are wary of being stripped of power. A ruler must be in the good grace of the army.
For that reason, it is difficult to get rid of inherited weapons. A plausible justification is required.
With Putin, however, Russia is strenghtening an army. It is correct in this case, I think, to verbally remind your enemies of the threat they represent. E.g.Trump, in the US, has a strong discourse position to pull the US from conflict, because his supporters want "To make America great again", the world be damned.
NATO doesn't have "revenue". It has a little to run offices and stuff but it is tiny. The big gain from NATO's perspective is another member and its military capacity, and the terrority. Which is a huge thing, just look at a map.
An anecdote about the maps: When Swedish diplomats were meeting with members of congress before the vote to convince them to admit Sweden they just brought a map. Literally just "here is a map of the baltic sea, this is why you should let us in". And it worked.
Germany and France, both NATO members, did bot participate in the Iraq war. Also NATO itself did not as there was no consensus among the members to be involved.
In Afghanistan there was the necessary consensus (and Article 5 was invoked) so NATO took an active role and ran ISAF - to which Sweden contributed quite significant troops.
The only way that would happen, is if a NATO member was attacked first, on a territory in the North Atlantic. A NATO member who goes off on their own and starts a war isn't entitled to calling NATO to its defense.
It's important to remember that NATO wasn't involved in the invasion of Iraq. That was a US/UK invasion, with a small contribution from Poland and Australia.
NATO countries only have to react if other member countries are attacked. NATO did not participate in Iraq; some members did but as a coalition they did not. They did participate in some operations in Afghanistan post-911 however, because that was a direct attack on a NATO member. Also saying the US or NATO are remotely similar to Putin is both-sides-ing nonsense.
Well Sweden could later leave the alliance if it no longer fit its interests. I doubt they would leave just to get out of being "dragged into another Iraq-like war" since well supporting your allies is the whole point of NATO, but if the US or the rest of NATO took the place of Putin, then maybe Sweden really would leave the alliance.
edit: Also wasn't article 5 invoked by the US against Afghanistan and not Iraq? (Maybe I'm not remembering right.)
Lemme be the guy who farts in the elevator. Sweden has managed to avoid entangling itself in military conflicts around the world for centuries and by joining NATO it’s got itself security but at the expense of potentially involving itself in conflicts regardless if Swedes want to be involved or not. Anyways it seems popular in Sweden but the naive lefty in me still thinks it’s a shame at the collective high-fiving
> potentially involving itself in conflicts regardless if Swedes want to be involved or not
The Riksdag voted 269–37 to pass the NATO accession bill, and my understanding is that this is representative of the majority of the Swedish population.
Since NATO’s rules regarding military conflict are a rather conspicuous part of NATO membership, I’d hazard to say the Swedes are being quite explicit about the sort of involvement they desire.
Article 5 only says every other member "will assist" with "such action as it deems necessary"
International law is in many ways a ghost of what we think of as law. There are no enforcement mechanisms. If Sweden failed to involve itself and the USA/NATO wanted to push the point, we'd just apply trade pressure & sanctions to them. But we could and would do that same thing without Sweden being in NATO. (That's how we established the 'coalition of the willing' for the Iraq invasion, and how UN votes are organized)
Why should we celebrate neutrality in the face of evil? Surely Sweden would be more proud of its history if it had fought against the Nazis rather than helping them. WW2 would have been shorter as well.
If the Russian empire didn’t expand west under the guise of communist brotherhood, then proceeded to make every aspect of life miserable to those they controlled (not talking about purely macroeconomics here), Nato would have never been invited east.
I get that we've decided 'NATO Good' now -- but are people really so sure that it's sphere of influence is geopolitically stabilizing?
I don't see how it could be. If I were Russia, or an ally of Russia, an expansionist NATO would be galvanizing for me and would accelerate a counterbalance alliance. Creating a potentially entrenched conflict in countries that have surface-to-surface access to Moscow would be in my benefit. Ukraine falls into that category.
The border isn't demarcated and you need to consider the larger context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict where Armenian armed forces helped ethnic Armenians create unrecognized state on the territory of Azerbaijan. [0] You don't get to claim that you are a victim when you have created a pseudo-state on the territory of your neighbor.
You do realize that Russia invading a peaceful country that was turning more towards democracy and away from dictatorships like Russia is what pushed Sweden and Finland into NATO, in fear of Russia invading and terror bombing them?
Not protecting yourself, and letting Russia do whatever they want, is what countries did to Nazi Germany for years. Have we learned nothing from history?
Adding another western European country that's under no threat from anyone to NATO isn't going to do anything. We should be adding backwards countries that share borders with or are targets of major enemies, like Georgia and Taiwan. You can't control the world if all you're doing is protecting yourself and your buddies from yourself and your buddies. We need to get Israel in NATO so that the next time Hezbollah fires a missile into an Israeli town we can finally invade Iran. We need to antagonize the other major powers by putting military bases in small countries all around their borders.
It's a bit of a big ask to demand that slovenian soldiers to die for Taiwan , or the portuguese to kill more palestinians. international relations dont disappear by joining NATO, and the more it expands the more likely it is to increase discord.
While there are a dozen+ similarly named and functioning arrangements between states, I think with NATO's current expansion the name of "North Atlantic" means less of a geographical limiter and more of a euphemism for "Western Aligned" countries.
For example, Georgia is a candidate member, and it's technically in both Asia & Europe.
I'm told by maps that Crimea, Donbas and Donetsk regions are part of a nation called Ukraine, and Russia sent tanks, jets and bombs to destroy cities against the wishes of the government of Ukraine.
That's what is known in international diplomacy as a "dick move".
I have residence in Odesa, Ukraine. As do most of my friends. I have spent countless nights sheltering from missiles and drones launched by the terrorist state of russia.
Nuclear states can and HAVE gone to wars - but no one wants to mess with the devastating conventional power of NATO.
After the recent gutting, Russia has a few dozen SU-34s that can fly. NATO has thousands of planes.