Which is what the expansion of NATO was always about. NATO isn't a threat to Russia itself - if Russia seriously feared NATO aggression, it wouldn't voluntarily demilitarize its NATO borders during the past 13 months.
NATO expansion just neutralizes Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors through threat of aggression (or in case like Ukraine through the use of aggression).
Yeah, but it shows the priorities - conquer more non-NATO land or protect their borders against an apparently existential threat intent on destroying Russia? This is a mask off moment.
I don't buy the idea that it was a mistake for NATO to allow former Soviet bloc countries to join, because it would supposedly encroach on Russia's sphere of influence or increase tensions with Russia.
Spheres of influence are gained through economic muscle and cultural power now, not force of arms.
Reading about what the Soviet Union did in countries like Estonia and Ukraine is pretty harrowing stuff. Wanting to join NATO for protection after is completely understandable and denying them because it would upset their former (and present) abuser is a shameful thought.
Everything that Russia is doing now it has done to countries like Poland in the past. That's why when we see news about Russia shipping Ukrainian kids to Russia to be "integrated" it makes our blood literally boil - it was the fate of many Polish families as well, my own relatives have stories of their loved ones having to walk back from Syberia after being sent there for "integration".
To me, one of the greatest feat of the EU and NATO is the integration of countries like Poland and Romania to the west. These two countries were economically and socially stunted by decades of communist mismanagement, failed socialism and outright theft and genocide from Russia.
It's been truly incredible to see them grow and prosper.
Ukraine is going to be an incredible opportunity for the west in the coming decades.
Young, educated, motivated population with western values and a strong will for democracy and freedom. An economy that can only grow and prosper. And unlike Syrian and Afghan "refugees", there's a strong desire from Ukrainian refugees to return and rebuild.
Real question: Why did you write Syrian and Afghan refugees with double quotes? In English slang, this is used to imply so-called status -- lesser or fake. Their countries were destroyed by war, and they again have repressive dictatorships. Their need to escape to a safer places seems real to me. Also, if Syria or Afghanistan graduated to democratic, free countries, I am sure many, many refugees would want to return home for cultural reasons.
Yes I agree with the previous comment. I volunteered to teach Finnish to the refugees during the last "refugee-crisis" Finland faced, when Russia opened it borders and "dumped" Central Asian asylum seekers here the year 2015. Obviously some of the young guys from Syria were just taking a fun tour. Most of these folks got the ticket back to their starting point, and accepted it.
But there were many who really wanted to learn the local language, and even if the life at the "asylum seekers centers" was not luxury, they were grateful that they had a place to stay where there was no immediate risk of death.
Some of these people had their families with them, though most of them were young, healthy males, since this segment is most likely to survive the trip. E.g. riding a bicycle in the -30 C/-22 Fahrenheit for 50 kilometres was one common way to entry Finland during this episode.
And regarding Afghanistan, for many, there is not much to be rebuilt. The country was first run over my Soviet army, then the US revenge. The minorities like Hazara have been persecuted during all the previous regimes. These people have no place to go back to.The people I know have instead build careers here, and are vocal against fundamentalist Islam.
It’s hard to predict what happens in Russia and what the peace deal will be. I can’t imagine Ukraine will accept anything that doesn’t involve something like a article 5
Yes, this was exactly the reason why I, as a Finnish person, changed my view on joining NATO by 180 degrees the day Russia launched its war against Ukraine. Before that, I wanted Finland to be independent from both the West and Russia. I had more friends in and felt closer to Russia than the USA.
But I have been grateful that Finland has been independent. As a child, I visited the Soviet Baltic countries since church choirs were allowed entry. I remember it clearly because I saw for the first time the fear of speaking about certain topics.
Defending the country’s independence took a whole generation, as all men who could be drafted were sent to war and women participated as volunteers. My other grandmother worked behind enemy lines as an underage girl, delivering messages. The other grandmother volunteered to work in prison camps.
When Finland was last attacked by Russia (formerly known as the Soviet Republic), Finland did not receive much help apart from thoughts and prayers and socks knitted by housewives in the UK and US. In the first round, Finland defended its independence but lost a significant portion of its most prosperous areas, including its second-largest and most international city, Viipuri/Vyborg. What happened in the second round of the war was not glorious for Finland, who allied with Nazi Germany since they were the only ones that offered an alliance against Soviet Union aggression.
I have not thought of myself as a nationalist, but I am concerned about the safety of my family and this thing we call Finland. And I don't want us to face again the situation as Ukraine is facing now.
The problem is that as far as I understand Russia claims to be the successor state of the USSR, meaning they want to claim all its glories (and crimes)
Which if true, means that Russian civilian victimization by the Soviet Union is something to hold Russia accountable for rather than a point of mutual past victimization for past Soviet Union states to commiserate together with Russia on.
That's never mind the fact that Russia is committing some of those same crimes now along with waging an expansionist war. The past suffering of an abuser doesn't matter while he's actively abusing someone else.
Just please flag this if you see this comment as being too political, as in this forum we are mostly spared of these wrangles.
But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really represented in the Soviet nomenklatura (номенклату́ра). At least almost every Finnish speaking representative from Karelia were "neutralized", leaving the previously most prosperious part of Finland in the state as it is now. Finland would not take it back even it was paid for it.
To be (less) political, and apologies if this comes across as insensitive - all of those discussions (of which I've read many) are post-facto. The terrible things some power structures do to dissidents are indeed terrible.
My point, I guess, is that they happened. And the power structure that did it, did it from Moscow.
Trying to perform something humans do to one another, assigning blame, to a successor state who is very much not human, is the wrong way to look at the thing.
I prefer to see the Russian invasion as the delayed violence from the Soviet Union's breakup. Russian politicians were very much in control of all of Eastern Europe, and the Moscow political class was going to build a political case to try and retake Ukraine by force. That the violence did not happen in 1989 probably prevented nuclear war, and the fact it is happening now and not in 2032 is probably also preventing nuclear war.
I can’t reply to comment under this that claimed that people in Moscow were from all across USSR so I’m replying here.
The Soviet Union was still ruled by Russians [0]… “ From 1919 until 1991, 89 members of the Politburo were Russians (which makes up 68 percent). In distant second were Ukrainians, who had 11 members in the Politburo, making up 8 percent. In third place are both ethnic Jews and Georgians, who had 4 members respectively.”
It was less than the population since by population , 80% are Russian [1], but still shows that the USSR was ruled by Russians.
Well everyone was "Russian" officially. Khrushov was Ukrainian, same can be said with Gorbachev. Many Armenians. There is a concentrated effort to erase all the contributions of other nations of USSR and make Russians as the only builders and inheritors.
And this is different from Tsarist Russia where very few non-Russains were allowed to rise in the ranks. That's why large part of Communist movement was comprised from minorities since they were the ones who suffered more from the brutal Tsarist regime.
The fact that political stars could rise to the top does not negate the point that the main ethnical actor and benefactor of the Soviet Union were the Russians. Those star Ukrainians had to please the Russians first and foremost.
It's the same thing in Communist China. Nobody can displease the Han.
Stalin was born in Georgia of course. But where did he live when he was doing his reign of terror?
Moscow.
Hitler was from Austria, but he still ran things from Berlin. And Berlin is where the power structure was, and still is.
It's always more than one man, even if the man is a dictator. The dictator is just the one who survives the power structures environment in a way to be 'the top'. And that power structure exists in a place.
The vast, vast majority of everything that actually happens under a power structure is done by everyone who ISN'T the dictator. And those folks don't just disappear when the dictator dies.
As to if a countries power structure represents a people or not, meh. It always says it does, and it draws resources, taxes, and conscripts from them. So regardless of any individuals take on if they are 'represented' or how that power is acquired, 'it is the people' near as I can tell.
And many of them are happy to murder anyone who says otherwise to prove it.
Stalin and most other dictators bring their own power structures. The capital city is just that. As an example, some roman dictators/emperors never even went to Rome, but still had strong power structures.
And just because it has to be pointed out, Stalin didn't do his reign of terror from the Kremlin in Moscow, but from his dacha in Kuntsevo.
Hitler also spent most of his reign of terror from Wolfsschanze and Obersalzberg. He definitely had his own power structure, completely independent of the city of Berlin.
Stalin used (and took over) Lenin’s power base, and built up more as time went on. He didn’t ‘bring his own’. Even despite all the purges, for instance, the Red Army was there before and after him. The NKVD, KGB, MDB all had predecessor agencies (some back to the Tsars even, but the NKVD was first formed in 1917).
And Kuntsevo is in Moscow. Literally.
And if you’re asserting that Hitler didn’t need, or use, the Wehrmacht or other organs of state power (including the Gestapo, which was consolidated out of the prior Prussian Secret Police), and didn’t spend most of his time in Berlin, then I don’t know what to say.
Yes it is, but it's not in the Kremlin, where the official seat is.
Both Stalin and Hitler were independent of their capital cities for conducting their rule. Dictators and emperors are not mere symbolic heads of state, and their network of people means much more than where they sit to conduct their business. This network is not necessarily connected to the capital.
I think we're maybe debating semantics, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the capital cities are more influential than the dictators and emperors. As in my example of Roman emperors who hardly even went to Rome.
Politics is much more about abstract human connections, than brick and stone buildings. We are a very mobile species after all.
I have trouble parsing that. However, the important thing would be to accept the facts, try to process them, and move forward. Of course that's not so easy. (It's not like the US did it. Or that Germany did it super well.)
And before the Revolution, Tsarist regime did even more horrowing things to its people. Sadly Russia never had a ruling entity that was good. Well there was hope in the 80's with Gorbachev and Krushev with his Thaw period, but these were short lived and the system went back to its stable state of terrorizing its citizens.
nonsense. it's cowardice like this that has left the current world enslaved to whatever is the current fad. there's no disgrace in death but generational disgrace in slavery. learn a little bit of history. you'll learn, for example, how the greeks would rather die on the battlefield than be enslaved. or at least try to figure out why the romans never sued for peace during the second punic war even though they were constantly battered on the battlefield.
You sound nonsensical. Russian government did enslave russian population?? Just remember that "coincidentally" the whole Romanov (that's a stage name) family are germans. And official history is even more coincidentally was (over)written by germans.
Thing to remember is the Russian Revolution of 1905 changed the structure of the Russian government to a constitutional Monarchy. That's what the communists overthrew and replaced with something far worse.
russia and soviet union are not too far apart actually. Let's not make victim of poor russians, while so many of them fight now and fought in the past to kill independent nations.
> while so many of them fight now and fought in the past to kill independent nations
Let's not pretend it's surrounding is really any better, especially if we start looking at the past.
Someone might think that Russia is opposing a genocidal culture, that had bourne fascism and nazism, enforced apartheid over the world and now breeds it elsewhere to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Russia perceives small countries bordering them having sovereignty as an encroachment on its territory. Don't they realize that they are supposed to be Russian puppet states?
The question of whether or not it was a mistake misses that NATO expansion was likely inevitable because of the democratic process.
Poland and other CEE countries lobbied aggressively to join NATO in the 90s, and by far their biggest asset was their diaspora communities in the US. The GOP had taken the House in '94 and were pushing for NATO expansion leading up to the '96 election. In order to head off this threat, Clinton promised NATO expansion eventually, to which Dole ended up promising a definite date for CEE's entry. Said Clinton at the time:
'I face a difficult campaign, but I have a reasonable chance. The Republicans are pushing NATO expansion. Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio are key; they represented a big part of my majority last time—states where I won by a narrow margin. The Republicans think they can take away those states by playing on the idea of NATO expansion.'
No-one who has visited the Baltics (specifically Lithuania, my experience in the others is less extensive and less recent) could argue with a straight face that they were better off remaining under a Russian sphere of influence than as part of the European Union and the western world at large.
> Spheres of influence are gained through economic muscle and cultural power now, not force of arms.
Amusingly, that status quo is enforced via the USA’s supposed overwhelming force of arms. Which in turn suggests your analysis is deeply deficient in its consideration of higher order effects.
See also: Georgia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, Belorussian & Kazakh internal protests and revolts, or Ukraine c. 2014.
Russian arms have been used on or by all of those countries. In the case of Armenia, support meant they kicked he shit out of the Azeris before... and not the case now, where Russian can't or won't help them, but the Turks are backing the Azeris.
Force of arms has made a big difference for all of the states around Russia. And not necessarily in a good way.
> I don't buy the idea that it was a mistake for NATO to allow former Soviet bloc countries to join, because it would supposedly encroach on Russia's sphere of influence or increase tensions with Russia
It was a mistake for NATO to do it without Russia. It's not a matter of "influence", but a matter of military risks and perceived threats.
If there was a political will towards pushing Russia to NATO any similar to what has been going on with Georgia or Ukraine, we'd be living in a different world.
But now (really far more than a decade already) Russia is alienated from NATO, perceives it as a threat and a bad actor. And people will be making all kinds of moralistic arguments, but point is that all of this is a consequence of geopolitical natural laws. Fact is, politicians and leaders were clearly aware of those laws and all the cause-effects and general outcomes, but nevertheless had stirred the world towards it.
NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships, in practice mostly Russia. Unless Russia adopts democracy and human rights it's a bit impractical for it to work with or join NATO.
> NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships
This is a historically inaccurate slogan.
> Unless Russia adopts democracy and human rights it's a bit impractical for it to work with or join NATO.
Are we still talking about 1990s-2000s? Russia was no less democratic and adoptive of human rights than other ex-Soviet states pushed to NATO. Do you actually consider 2004 Georgia to be more in line with western view of human rights and democracy then 2004 Russia, really?
> NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships
One of NATO’s founding members was Portugal - under the Salazar dictatorship. Both Greece and Turkey went through periods of military dictatorship while NATO members-did NATO have any problem with that? The idea that NATO was formed to be a “club for democratic states” ignores its own history
Totally strange given that love to democracies have nothing to do with anything.
Srsly, how do the "United democracies" expect to be taken seriously when their whole attitude to literally everything is "bad guys don't like us for being good boys"?
Exactly, and in the end that's the only thing that matters: power. We in the western world can be very happy that democracies represent the biggest power.
Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.
> Exactly, and in the end that's the only thing that matters: power.
> democracies represent the biggest power.
> Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.
Eh, but that's the point: a bunch of countries with a shady history of global power dynamics (genocidal colonialism, fascism, etc) that now declared its current political establishment as a universal virtue, all while invading other countries around the globe.
I just feel like "democratic" don't notice at all how they're slipping into antagonism with almost every other culture except their own, up to labeling the forming west-skeptical alliances as "new axis of evil" or claiming everyone who doesn't politically align to them to be dysfunctional (see Hungary)
What's the coping strategy for the fact that so many diverse regions of the world that share nothing in common assess a very tight (geographically, economically and culturally) circle of countries as a threat?
Secondly, here are the values of the european union: respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law. Can you tell me which values you don't agree with?
Hungary is part of EU with all benefits and responsibilities. If they don't align with these values then they get penalized, simple as that.
I don't know about right now, but not long ago UK forces were in Syria, that Syria government never asked for. Should we call it invading? If not, what's your definition of invading?
As some dangerous warmongering entity, sure, it has to be considered: just look at Russia trying to get a better foothold for another confrontation with it.
What I am talking about is how everyone outside Europe starts rolling their eyes as Europeans claim that the mere reason why their super advanced, super civilized society has bad blood with someone else is because Europeans just too advanced and democratic and only bad boys don't like good boys.
A good politician never lets a catastrophe go to waste. U.S. may not have purposely caused the invasion of Ukraine, but it's certainly a useful tool to rake in those NATO holdouts.
The only one to blame for the invasion, or the fact that new countries are joining NATO is Putin, and his political colleagues.
Making it seem as if Finland is but a vassal for the U.S. for this move is disingenuous at best. After Georgia, Crimea, and now the rest of Ukraine, anyone would make such a decision. Out of their own will. In order to survive.
Of course that's not true. Nations can run out of at least three things required to wage war: resources, people, or will.
And the Soviets were nowhere near running out of resources or people at the end of the Winter War, as shown by their ability to defeat a much more powerful enemy a few years later.
Yes, we all know Nazi Germany was only fighting against the Soviets between '40-'45. Truly, the use of U.S. and U.K. bombers that incapacitated Berlin's war machinery production never happened. The western side of the war was dealt with promptly, leaving only in the east, the Soviets to repent the Nazis.
It was the pure will of the Soviets which led them to their, and only their victory.
I don't even know what to say. It must have been a lack of will, surely. /s
(edit)
Look, I know what you're trying to say. But if we put it that way, we're implying that they could've surpassed the will of the Finns in some way, if they wanted to. And I firmly believe that to not have been the case.
The Soviets bore the brunt of the fight against Germany. Roughly two-thirds of German casualties were on the Eastern Front, and the Soviets killed or captured about 9 million Axis soldiers, more than double the entire population of Finland in 1940.
You know you're taking out of the equation the will of the Finns to defend their country. You keep talking as if the Soviets could've done it, if they wanted to.
They didn't do it, and you know why? Because they tried, and couldn't. That's what happened.
I'm sure you mean well, but even though they killed more than 5.5 million Nazis, they couldn't kill more than 70k Finns. And that's history, not some alternative possibility.
Listen Andrey. Russia has invaded its neighboring countries repeatedly during recent history. I think that's more than enough to explain why anyone near Russia would like to be in a defensive pact.
I also don't think anyone should be concerned whether Russia finds that "weird" or "a provocation". At all.
> the ambitions are not different from the ambitions of Russia
The ambition of Russia to invade foreign countries and basically include them in the Russian state? is that the ambition of any NATO country? Which part of a country has been invaded and annexed by a NATO country?
> Which countries has Russia invaded prior to the conflict that began early 2007?
Uh, if you have to go back 15 years to find a point where a country isn't invading it's neighbors its going to be super understandable that in the past 15 years countries have wanted to join a defense alliance.
Keep in mind, the USSR only collapsed in 1991 so the question you're asking is what aggressive actions has Russia done in the first 26 years of it's existence to make other countries scared of it.
Of which you have Chechnya (~1999), Georgia (~2008), Ukraine (~2014).
Modern wars with Russian invasions are the Chechen wars, the Russo-Georgian war and the Ukrainian war. Of those all are in the 2000's. Not sure why 2007 was the important cutoff here. I'm sure Russia would have invaded two countries per year if it had the capability to actually match the massive imperialist ambitions.
Before that, it was the original WW2 formation of the Soviet union with invasions of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithunia, Czechoslovakia and so on and so forth (which was obviously the whole reason for the existence of NATO).
The WW2 and postwar period wasn enough to sway e.g. Sweden to join NATO. Nor were the Afghan, Chechen or Georgian wars. It took the Ukrainan war to really see the veil come off.
But in this entire period I don't think there is much in terms of annexations by NATO countries, or countries currently in NATO but before the formation of NATO?
Not sure what your comment above really tries to say? Is it "I don't understand how countries in Russias vincinity can be afraid of annexation by their imperialist neighbor, they only invade a country every 5-10 years that's not so bad"? Are you hearing yourself?
> the expansion of NATO gives the US ability to force its will upon NATO members and its neighbors
Last I checked countries apply to join, and the alliance is free to leave. And of course like in any organization if you want to reap the benefits you may want to also accept some of the drawbacks. The most obvious one for a country like Finland probably isn't somehow being under the spell of the US, but rather being in an alliance with Turkey and Hungary, which can be pretty problematic for democratic countries these days.
Hungary and Turkey can do whatever they want, but the effect of sabotaging the alliance is that they get cut off from US arms deals, maybe even French ones. We have seen this when Turkey bought the S400 from Russia - they got kicked out of the F-35 program. Hungary is still leasing planes from Saab. They will ratify Sweden's NATO membership.
Yeah that's completely expected though I imagine. Buying S-400 something as advanced as AA or Fighter jets is basically the same as a long term future military partnership. It's not like buying socks or trucks. And buying such complex equipment from within the alliance comes with the equivalent promise not to share that tech with those who shouldn't have it.
I think in terms of arms deals Saab will benefit a lot from joining NATO. Gripen would likely have sold a lot better the last 15 years if it had been a NATO built plane.
Don't know what to say about SAAB benefiting from Sweden joining NATO. France got their submarine deal with Australlia cancelled and instead they get to sell less subs and some corvettes to Romania. Unlike the F-16, the Rafale and Grippen programs don't have an upgrade path towards 5th gen fighters like the F-35. You need to re-train the pilots on something else emtirely different. The Gripen is very much built for and suited specifically for Sweden, being smaller and able to land on a motorway.
I think both that the US will get a 4.5-gen F-16 replacement for “cheaper” flight hours and less complex tasks than F-35. When that happens (I feel it’s when not if at this point) it’s likely some of the F-35 buyers will wonder whether they too should have had multiple tiers of craft. A really small Air Force likely can’t afford fielding and maintaining multiple types of fighter though. So they are stuck with the possibly unnecessarily high flight hour costs.
I also think that dispersed deployment and simpler operation like 20 minute turnaround with a 3 man crew like the Gripen will be something all air forces including the USAF will master. Finland has always done this with their F-18s and they’ll continue to do it with F-35. It’ll be a bit more demanding no doubt, but they’ll make it work.
> Wouldn't it be smarter to actually listen to what Russia is trying to say?
Russia says a lot of things, often contradictory, but what really speaks is their actions. Invading Ukraine wasn’t about denazification, or nato threat, or anything except naked imperialism.
There has been a civil war of Ukraine and Pro-Russia separatists in the East for 10 years now. It's not a black and white thing and although I think Russia's approach the last year has been despicable (invading and destroying lives and property in areas where there isn't a dispute between people), it isn't like it was all peace and love in the eastern areas of Ukraine.
I think it's important to bring nuance to these things and not just use a lazy label like "imperialism" to describe what's going on, even if imperialism maybe does play a part too.
Even dismissing the Nazi stuff - yes Russia has overblown it, but there were literal pro-Nazi military units of Ukraine fighting in that civil war that terrorized pro-Russian citizens.
> Invading Ukraine wasn’t about denazification, or nato threat, or anything except naked imperialism.
I agree. An additional reason AFAICS is that a slavic country, similar to Russia in many ways, making moves towards becoming a liberal democracy was seen as a threat to the domestic power of Putin and his inner circle. The Maidan revolution spreading to Moscow is surely a nightmare scenario for Putin.
The Maidan revolution spreading to Moscow is surely a nightmare scenario for Putin.
I doubt that, unless Putin is completely delusional. The guy has, at best, almost no time left before he either dies, due to age, or dies, due to age/decline + the perception of weakness, and therefore assassination.
If Putin is still running Russia in 6 months I'll be surprised, and if in 2 years, astonished.
I guess maybe he was concerned a decade ago, but he's all short term thought now.
It's likely why the whole Ukraine thing seems a bit nutty, but if you know you have a very short time, and you think you're the only guy to do something, caution to the wind!
IMO, this is what makes Putin dangerous. He knows he is checking out.
I would be somewhat willing to believe is Russia got rid of own Neonazi first. Which is not what happening, Russia has quite strong movement. It is also quite racist country, socially-culturally very much like nazi were - having a thing against gays, celebrating violence, all of that.
Same as in Ukraine. I'm Ukrainian and I lived there for 27 years. There are very little Ukrainians who don't have Russian relatives, because they all had sex between each other when USSR was still a thing. Many Ukrainians have one of their parents born in Russia. The culture in both countries is, more or less, the same.
By pretty much all statics and reports I have seen, Ukrainian neo-nazi problem if massively smaller then Russian one. Every single country has some neonazi ... and Russia has a lot of them and in fairly powerful positions.
Ukraine is not celebrating Stalin the way Russia is celebrating Stalin. Ukraine was not forcibly closing organizations studying communists crimes or Stalin crimes, Russia did.
Ukraine did not moved to make gay or trans materials illegal. Meanwhile, arrests and violence against gays in Russia became quite a serious thing in Russia. Practically, being gay is criminalized.
Ukraine did not started wars with countries around it the way Russia repeatedly did.
------------------
I am not saying Ukraine is country of saints, but Russia is waay worst then that.
I will just say that when I lived in Ukraine, one of the "entertainments" for teens was to go find a group of gay people and get into a fight with them. Why? Just for fun. Russia has conservative values and their government works towards the propaganda of LGBT. They do not criminalize anyone for being a gay person. In fact, the same bill was proposed in Ukraine in 2011-12. While the bill did not pass, there are obvious cultural strings.
Let's be honest, the Azov Brigade should be condemned. But have they killed as many innocent civilians as the Russians over the last couple of years?
In a morally consistent world, both the Azovs and aggressive Russian regime should be countered, without any need for loss of innocent life. No one should use the existence of Azovs as an excuse to invade a country and murder innocent people.
“Denazification and demilitarization” is a hell of a euphemism for a nationalist military invasion of a neighboring country.
When Hitler invaded Poland, at least he didn’t claim he was actually fighting fascists and stopping Polish militarization. Today’s propaganda operates on levels of post-truth that Goebbels couldn’t have imagined.
Why does russia openly support Alexey Milchakov and it's openly nazi Rusich organization then? Maybe because it's a non point and invented reason? Putin loves nazis that support him.
Call it what you will, but what Russia is doing is trying to dissolve the Ukrainian identity through genocide and terrorism. I'm looking forward to the day when Ukraine gains back its stolen territories and pushes back Russia to their borders.
> No. Nobody should care what Russia has to say about another country voluntarily wanting to (and joining) NATO
I'm sorry, but Russia's concern is not out of thin air - you can only join NATO if your membership is not a threat to your border countries. This is one of the rules of NATO itself.
Russia's concern is they will not be able to invade former Soviet countries if they join NATO, which gets in the way of their imperial ambitions. NATO is not going to invade Russia.
It would be odd to have such a rule, because NATO is a defensive alliance that is of no threat to any of the bordering countries.
Russia’s concern is out of the thin air, because if NATO really wanted it to, with how incompetent the russian army is, I estimate it’s 3 days to take Moscow.
The only people afraid of the Russian army are Russian men of military age.
Given that NATO is a defensive alliance, I don't see how such a rule would make much sense. Can you spell that rule out, and link to the official document?
NATO members states, as members of the OSCE, are expected to adhere to the OSCE's Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security.
The 3rd aspect of the document says, quote:
3. They remain convinced that security is indivisible and that the security of each of them is inseparably linked to the security of all others. *They will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States. They will pursue their own security interests in conformity with the common effort to strengthen security and stability in the CSCE area and beyond.*
My god... All the EU states and all NATO states also participate in the OSCE.
Is there no world in your head where someone other than Russia does something wrong?
I live in the US for 10+ years and give zero shits about Russian / US / Ukrainian propaganda. There are rules and I'm not seeing "good" (according to conventional wisdom) countries following these rules. But who cares, right? The United States is like the biggest, most powerful country in the whole world, hands down. And if you think we're living in a unipolar kind of world, what you're saying is that we're the only major player on the global stage. And what that means? With all that crazy amount of power we've got, we can pretty much go out and do all sorts of wild and reckless stuff, and the crazy part is, it doesn't come back to bite us in any. major. way.
There is an argument going around saying that the way Putin's been acting kinda shows that it was a smart move to try and get NATO to grow eastward and bring in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. But, what's really interesting is that before the Ukrainian crisis happened, the US didn't have any reason to believe that Putin was acting all aggressive. And there's nothing showing that the US was considering making NATO bigger just to keep the Russians in check. We just didn't see Russia as being all pushy and aggressive. But then, when the Ukrainian crisis kicked off on February 22 2014, that's when the US changed its mind. That's when the US decided, "Hey, Russia is being aggressive". And the US started thinking Russia wanted to make itself bigger, like a "greater Russia" or something. This change in perception occurred post facto.
"you can only join NATO if your membership is not a threat to your border countries"
This is, of course, complete nonsense. It is as much a fact as the oft-cited claim that NATO promised not to expand (another lie that is true only to rubes).
NATO has a requirement that you settle any ongoing border disputes before ascension: If you have a simmering feud with a neighbor country about who owns a pile of rocks, it's such an obvious flashpoint that you need to resolve it first. It has zero requirement that you don't threaten the tyrannical empire building pursuits of the neighboring madman.
Russians defending Russian aggression is something that I find just impossible to believe. Putin has sent tens of thousands of Russians into a meat grinder for a futile, ego-driven war that has zero outcome that isn't negative for Russia for decades to come. And he's going to keep grinding those bodies into corpses and you'll keep talking about deNazification or whatever nonsense you're fed.
This is not a complete nonsense simply from the fact that if a joining country has conflicts with a bordering country, then such a member would trigger the "attack on one shall be considered an attack on all".
> Putin has sent tens of thousands of Russians into a meat grinder, ego-driven war that has zero outcome that isn't negative for Russia for decades to come.
I agree that this war is stupid, but it could've been avoid entirely had the US conducted a constructive dialog with Russia.
Ukraine is grinding Ukrainian males the same way Russia is grinding theirs. People with cash has already bribed to leave the country. Those who haven't bribed yet get caught on the streets and sent to the war the very next week. Military folks don't care whether you are a software engineer who has never held a weapon in your hands or a 58 old guy who's about to retire.
Whatever is happening today is the result of something. That something has been brewing for years. The root of that something are the ambitions of NATO. Some countries simply do not want NATO to be around. And I don't get why it's so hard to understand that.
Edit: I'm a software engineer who has never fired a firearm. Had I been in Ukraine right now, they'd sent me to the war as well, because they mailed my parents all the papers. Luckily I left the country many, many years ago.
> I agree that this war is stupid, but it could've been avoid entirely had the US conducted a constructive dialog with Russia.
Stop smoking Kremlin's propaganda. The war has got NOTHING to do with NATO or the US whatsoever. It's 100% over resources. Russia simply wants to deny Ukraine the oil and natural gas rich regions of the Donbas and Black Sea.
Russia is a gas station pretending to be a country. They simply couldn't allow competition, lest Europe might choose a different supplier for their energy needs.
> The root of that something are the ambitions of NATO. Some countries simply do not want NATO to be around. And I don't get why it's so hard to understand that.
Ah yes, and this would be the reason why Russia is bullying their non-NATO neighbors and wouldn't dare to touch a NATO member state.
And yes, it was obviously NATO that forced Russia to invade Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine in 2014.
In 2014 Ukrainians simply made the democratic choice to get rid of their Russian-puppet tyrant and elect a pro-European president.
> They want to install their own people in other countries regardless of the locals choice?
Is that what they were publicly saying since 2007 or is that what you interpret it as perceiving Russia as the evil because big media pumps ad revenue on it?
Yes, dear Eastern Europe, please don't join NATO, otherwise we won't be able to invade you once we finish modernizing our army. After all we are a master race destined by God to rule over Eastern Europe. Please respect our concerns.
The conflict was almost inevitable. In January, before the war started, Russia made the last attempt to stop the expansion. The U.S. rejected it [1]. Russia made multiple hints saying that if the expansion continues, they'll invade. That's why, imho, Biden was so confident in Feb 19-20 saying the war will begin within a week. Heck, even Ukraine knew everything, but they decided to hide it from people - this was confirmed by the Ukrainian government during one of the interviews.
Russia is not targeting civilians, but since this is a war, civilians are obviously affected.
What really happens is Russia targets military objects as part of their demilitarization goal. Ukraine shots down a rocket and then debris strikes into civilians buildings. This is happening daily. Example: today's night. My family is in Ukraine right now. Russia was bombing a military base which I used to walk around when I was a kid. Not a single civilian was harmed, but the base is on fire.
> So russia tried really hard to NOT invade a sovereign country and US made it impossible?
US made it possible by declining Russia's ask. That's how I see it.
> What legitimate business russia has being in Ukraine at all?
That's a strange question. There is very little common sense when a war is in progress. What legitimate business US had in Afghanistan? Such questions make zero sense.
> Let alone you just lying about russia only targeting military.
30 minutes ago I jumped off a call with my parents in Ukraine. That's what they told me. That's what they've been telling me pretty much every day since the war began.
> That's a strange question. There is very little common sense when a war is in progress.
Ukraine did not attack russia. Russia attacked Ukraine and is killing Ukrainians. This war may just be the least morally ambiguous war out there.
Ukrainians are fighting for SURVIVAL. What are russians fighting for? So their pathetic muppet can live out his delusional fantasies? And what do you get for for trying to whitewash genocide here?
Simply don't protect yourself from invasion by Russia if you are a potential target for Russian invasion, and Russia will not be forced to invade (at least for now.)
Russia should try and use diplomatic means and soft power to hang on to their sphere of influence. If they tried to put uncomfortably positioned bases in Mexico, the US has lots of diplomatic and economic leverage to get Mexico to reconsider. We wouldn’t have a war over it.
I know this is the worst kind of whataboutism and shouldn't be awarded a response but I'll bite.
Finland joining means it becomes part of a defense pact. It's not like suddenly the "US sphere of influence" expands, or that there are somehow US military bases in Eastern Finland.
Nobody in NATO wants to invade Russia and have a nuclear war. 20% of homes there don't even have indoor plumbing. Nobody wants anything from Russia except to not be attacked by them.
Only time I've seen Nato bombing was with UNSC approval to combat genocide. In I'm fairly sure the bombing in Serbia was supported by at least some of the ethnic Albanians being attacked by the government, which would nullify the claim "Nobody in my country wanted to be bombed by NATO"
"NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council to use force in Yugoslavia. Further, NATO did not claim that an armed attack occurred against another state. However, its advocates contend that NATO actions were consistent with the United Nations Charter because the UN Charter prohibits unprovoked attacks only by individual states. The principal legal issue remains, however, since NATO as such is not a member state of the UN, whether the member states of NATO, the United States and the European powers that sent armed forces to attack as part of the NATO bombing campaign, violated the UN Charter by attacking a fellow UN member state: (1) in the absence of UN Security Council authorization, and (2) in the absence of an attack or a threat of imminent attack on them. "
Probably somewhere in Beijing and Moscow on the same day when bombing started, they were opening bottle of champagne because they got "excuse" to do same later when they need it.
I think that even one single human loss is disaster and hate to go along this road but please inform yourself more on "evidence" of those claims and heavy exaggeration of victim numbers.
If you truly believe that every human life is worth alot, then it must be hard to accept what happened and I sincerely empathize with that. But denying it won't really solve anything, and furthermore it enables history to repeat itself.
Yeah, your country just wanted to be left alone to conduct a bit of ethnic cleaning and some light genocide in peace, but NATO just wouldn't mind its own business.
The March 2003 campaign against Iraq was conducted by a coalition of forces from different countries, some of which were NATO member countries and some were not. NATO as an organization had no role in the decision to undertake the campaign or to conduct it.
No. NATO deployed some forces in Afghanistan as a result of the triggering of Article 5 in response to the 9/11 attacks, though it wasn't an all-out action and wasn't carried out through NATO's command structures.
NATO did not deploy offensive forces into Iraq as an organisation. Some NATO members did on their own accord outside of NATO, but the organisation itself only ever had a non-combat training and advisory mission.
Both wars were coalitions that happened to involve many NATO countries. Finland participated in both wars even before joining NATO, so it's not clear that the risk of them joining offensive wars is higher now.
NATO in Afghanistan was because of article 5 after 9/11. Also NATO was not in Iraq. There were some NATO member countries in Iraq as part of a coalition the Bush administration put together. But Iraq was not a NATO operation.
They did, and that started a much larger discussion about what was the role of NATO in the 21st century. Before Russia's aggression NATO was heading towards irrelevance, Iraq and Afghanistan were a major point on opposition to NATO in Europe.
Putin's decision lit a fire on that, now NATO has a purpose again.
Hah, yeah, that's not a big deal at all, neutralizing Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors, through threats of aggression. Like, who's scared of Russia these days? They're just empty threats. I'd like totally bet my life on it, just empty threats.
Russia doesn't have to win in order to be scary to their neighbors—they just have to persuade their neighbors that they're irrational and have no sense of self preservation.
Just because Russia is not an existential threat to the vast majority of NATO countries except perhaps the Baltics, doesn't mean there's not a recognition of the amount of damage they could inflict in the process of a "failed" invasion.
Yes, we in Finland are not scared. But it is only rational to ally with forces that can protect our sovereignty. I would not bet my life on it, as I live in a country which has the longest border with Russia after Ukraine.
In my view, to say that Russia’s actions are just empty threats is an undervaluation of the price the Ukrainian people and military are paying now. Whole cities have been wiped out of existence, and both the military and civilian population have faced extensive casualties as Russia has resorted to “brute force” attacks, showering bombs wherever in Ukrainian land.
We in Finland have been building bomb shelters for the population that can withstand even nuclear attacks, and we have universal male conscription and voluntary female drafting. About 80% of Finnish male citizens complete the service, which makes Finland have military resources unlike any other European country. This tradition is more than a hundred years old. If someone wonders why, just search for the term “The Great Wrath.”
Sorry for failing to understand the sarcasm and taking your comment personally. During the Cold War plenty of the "Western" countries were truly afraid of the Communist powers, and we in the between were afraid of being bombed to dust in a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR.
Also,I felt your comment was not nice towards all the minorities and "divergents" in the Russia and elsewhere. Just Google Grozny, Aleppo, or Anna Politkovskaya if you want to know why your comment could have been interpreted as something else than just a joke.
As General Adolf Ehrnrooth aptly put it ”Ei enää koskaan yksin”, ”We should never again defend ourselves alone” as the lesson of the Winter War. Glad that we finally acted on that lesson and got allied. Another nail in the coffin of finlandization, albeit with a heavy price the Ukrainians continue to pay every day.
This is as much a defense policy decision as it is an economic one. Hard for us to get foreign investment living next to a dictatorial warstate unless there's some risk mitigation in place.
Not that I don't trust the FDF, pound-for-pound one of the better military organizations out there. (and a happy member of it myself.)
> Dugin proposes that Finland be combined together with the Karelian Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation into a single ethnoterritorial formation "with maximal cultural autonomy, but with strategic integration into the Eurasian bloc.” The northern regions of Finland, Dugin adds, should be excised and donated to Murmansk oblast'
The last part of this comment makes me realize you have no idea what the Finnish people want. Support for NATO went from 20% to 80% overnight on February 24th.
It is actually the exact opposite - the Finnish foreign policy establishment still had traces of Finlandization and “friendship and cooperation treaty” support that was shaken out by the general public.
In one sentence you say: muscovy has no interest in Finland and in the next: now Finland is threatened because they are in NATO. Because now muscovy is interested in them? Because something else?
There are no gymnastics - previously Finland and Russia had a diplomatic relationship.
Now if Russia has a conflict with one of the Baltic states, Finland is dragged into it.
Before a war between Lithuania and Russia would not involve Finland necessarily. Now Finland has pledged a war between Lithuania and Russia would involve Finland.
Not many mental gymnastics are needed - to a person who reaches the level of average intelligence any how.
You cannot have a diplomatic relationship with a warmonger on a quest to restore the pre-1917 Russian empire - which Finland was a part of. Simple risk management. I suggest you tone down your smug tone of voice as clearly you have an incomplete view of the crisis
You conveniently omit the part where russia should not have a conflict with any of the states you mentioned.
You are just doing the genocidal russia crocodile tears: why can't I invade all the countries? Why everyone so mean that they gang up against me to protect each other?
The Continuation War ran from 1941 through 1944. Soviet offensives in 1944 had essentially fully exhausted Finnish reserves; although Finland had managed to withstand the final one, they judged that they couldn't withstand one more. At that point, the Finns sued for peace (the peace terms being a slightly upgraded (for the Soviets) version of the treaty at the end of the Winter War).
So Russia almost certainly could have rolled into Finland in 1945.
The war hawks here think Russia fully mobilized, Russia which pushed the Wehrmacht back to Berlin in 1945 would have had more than minor difficulty taking over Finland in 1945. Perhaps they should read some history books, even US history books. The present may be cloudy, but the 1940s are less so - listen to their hawkish views, then consider how clear their view of history is.
This is not just great news for a Finland, but also for my own Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia. Even before this was finalized there was already work on closer cooperation and integration between our air forces. Give it some time and we will see all of us getting more out of defense spending, by not having to duplicate everything and combine buying contracts. When Sweden finally joins later is going to get even better. Attacking any state in Scandinavia just got a lot harder, and was imo. the whole point of this.
As a Polish guy, this is the best international policy news I got in a while. Finland is a great ally and definitely will up the security in the region.
Countries with similar civilized values should not be naïve and be ready to stand up to barbarians including being aggressive when needed, and yes, EXPAND!
And certainly the West should not be ashamed for standing for its values and what is right, otherwise there is a wide range of ambitious nations who think that their way is unique and the only way to deal with others is power, while despising fundamental human values.
While power may beat everything in some cases, but for some reason citizens of those barbarian countries want to move to the West rather than enjoy their countries' glory in a concentration camp.
I have a friend from Donetsk too who grew up there, don't worry. He was making molotov's cocktail when there was a threat that russia would capture Kyiv.
> He was making molotov's cocktail when there was a threat that russia would capture Kyiv.
Oh please don't pose.
People don't make fancy distinguished name awful reeking dangerous incendiary so far from the frontline. Their whole memorability comes from their immediate production efficiency, when you don't care about anything else and need a weapon like RIGHT now. People who don't joke around are occupied with a completely different set of things.
Meanwhile, Sweden's NATO application is blocked by Turkey because former Peshmerga fighter Amineh Kakabaveh happened to become very powerful in the chaotic Swedish parliament a few years ago.
And appear like a strong and mighty leader in the May elections. Distract from tanking the economy and encouraging corruption. I could be arrested for saying such things, if I was in Turkey.
Which the US would have been willing to give... if they didn't cozy up to the Russians for S-300 and S-400s.
They also wanted F-35s, not just F-16s. That's not one to sell unless you're 100% confident they won't copy it for their own domestic production, or sell it to, say, the Russians. And modern Turkey is looking a little shaky in that regard (no, not an earthquake joke).
So you are telling Turkey bought s-400 out of nowhere? US never become true ally of Turkey. And your F-35s reasoning is not right as well. From the beginning Turkey is a part of alliance. But now they afraid Turkey to sell f-35 to Russia?
There are other factors for sure, but without Sweden's recent pro kurdish policy swing, my guess is that both Sweden and Finland would have joined today.
As a Swede this makes me happy, partially because Finland shares a lot of their border with Russia and can now feel safe knowing they have the might of 30 nations behind them, but also because we're now surrounded by NATO countries. So no need for us to join, right? Right?!
Let's remain neutral and a free haven for political dissidents and potential refugees of the future, right?!!
As a Swede I disgree on the strongest. What do you want to be neutral about? That time is past us. We belong in the company of European democracies that stand together against authoritarian aggressions.
The US is obviously the global Big Dog, but NATO's got three other top-ten-by-expenditure militaries in it, plus two more of the very-small count of global nuclear powers (Britain, France), and three of maybe a half-dozen countries with notable navies that aren't the US (Britain, France, Italy). Expanding to look at the top-20 by expenditure, you pick up another five entries that are NATO members.
The rest of NATO gives you basically another China's worth of military (they're #2 by spending), so it's not nothing, to put it mildly.
The geography controlled by and the economic power of the bloc is also important, for logistical reasons. Having not just open trade and maybe some donations in wartime but outright military support for your supply lines is huge, plus intel sharing and such.
Like all things such as this, it's controversial and there is no such thing as a unified vision.
For some people, yes... In fact US involvement is largely a controversial topic because joining NATO, to some people and politicians, is tantamount to putting US military bases in your country.
The reality is, when people talk about the benefits of NATO they will strongly lean on the fact that it's many countries in a pact together. Decidedly not hiding behind the coat-tails of the US- in fact the US involvement, at least in political circles, is generally seen as a net-negative.
> Decidedly not hiding behind the coat-tails of the US- in fact the US involvement, at least in political circles, is generally seen as a net-negative.
Too bad their funding didn't match that rhetoric until after Russia was already invading Ukraine. It'll be years yet before Germany's military will be up to snuff, and outside of France, the UK, and Poland, most of the NATO armies would struggle if they encountered any resistance on-par with what the Russians are putting out.
Nor are their logistics and production capable of keeping up w/ the high-intensity peer/near-peer fight that we're seeing in UKR.
2% of GDP is the recommended amount, Ukraine managed to hold them back before financial aid came to bear with around 3%.
UK spends 2.2% (an all time low!), France just under 2%. These are much larger economies so expenditure is definitely greater than Ukraines in absolute terms.
Are you suggesting that they should pay more? Why? Seems like the current amount is effective.
If US backs from NATO expect nukes in every country.
It's already bad for us in Poland to not have nukes and capability to nuke Moscov at will. We were developing nukes in 80s but guy got assasinated (either RU or US).
The US may be the bulk of the military might backing NATO, but it’s the collectiveness of the alliance is a pretty important piece IMO. If the US were to some way be compromised, say, through a debilitating first strike (unlikely), or Trump-esque domestic factors making them unreliable, you still have a huge, powerful coalition.
It would be very hard to pull off tho. Seeing as our neighbors would supply intel and equipment, while they have to cross the baltic sea in plain view. I mean they can barely take southern Ukraine.
Yeah but then it's game over. I used to worry about nukes, especially with all the suicidal people in the world, but then I realized that it's not worth worrying about because there's no way out. Anyone launches a nuke and it's game over, MAD.
Realistically, if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, they would completely lose Indian and Chinese support, the last two nuclear powers currently playing nice with them. So long as something debilitating is the consequence of nuclear weapons, Russia will abstain.
So, this is mostly a US-centric forum, but I wonder what is the take on this from the perspective of a Finnish person.
Is there any controversy or concerns of becoming a foothold for future conflicts?
This whole thing has been dragging on for sometime now, had the opinions shifted over time?
The decision to join NATO has had overwhelming support among the general population throughout the process. Over 80% of the population were in favor of joining when we applied for membership last year and the opinions have stayed around the same. According to a poll conducted in early february this year, 82% were in favor, 10% undecided and 8% against. Parliament votes were 184-7 last month when they approved the membership.
Joining NATO is widely regarded as the safe and rational choice. Russia already saw Finland as part of "the west" and Russia's attack on Ukraine meant that our international relations with them were pretty much destroyed. Staying out of NATO made no sense from that point onward. Why try to stay "neutral" with no formal defense pact, when Russia viewed us as hostile anyway?
So yeah, I would say that the vast majority of Finns feel safer now, and becoming a NATO member has been seen as a positive thing overall.
I was born when the Soviet Union fell. All my childhood I watched media like James Bond and played games like Command & Conquer about Russian invasion, saw my extended family suffer the generational trauma of war, and being male, am forced by threat of imprisonment to personally accept social responsibility for sacrificing my life defending our country from Russian invasion,
I'm pretty fucking relieved the nightmare is over.
Just hoping we can prevent WW3, or at the very least win it together.
I think you forgot the only Bond movies who dealt with direct Soviet threats were :
- From Russia With Love (Rosa Klebb secretly works for SPECTRE but is a KGB operative so let's count it)
- Octopussy (vilain's a defector)
- The Living Daylights (defector also)
It's in Goldeneye that is created the idea that James Bond constantly fought the Soviets. I don't fault you for thinking that it's an easy thing to illustrate your point, but I like my James Bond and I like him because he's always fighting weirdo rich assholes, not the Soviets.
> I'm pretty fucking relieved the nightmare is over.
Ouch. Genuinely hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everything I know about politics (especially from Russian perspective) tells me that this is only the beginning and uncorking of a potential conflict.
I assume, you do not expect that NATO membership would put Finland into a direct hot confrontation with Russia, thus turning into a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
> WW3, or at the very least win it together.
Eh, there will be no winner in WWIII - only how much everyone loses before they decide to strike some kind of eventual deal. And IMO the WWIII had already started by the modern military standards of multi-domain operations.
> I assume, you do not expect that NATO membership would put Finland into a direct hot confrontation with Russia, thus turning into a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Neutrality is no protection against aggression. Vienna was famously one of the first targets for Soviet nuclear strike.
> Vienna was famously one of the first targets for Soviet nuclear strike.
According to your link in the other thread, that is assuming it was "ruthlessly" occupied by NATO.
In any case, the "end the game for everyone button" example seems like a poor choice. How did Austria actually fare during the Cold War? I honestly don't know too much about Austrian-Soviet relationships except for a few trade deals.
>I assume, you do not expect that NATO membership would put Finland into a direct hot confrontation with Russia, thus turning into a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Moldova, invaded (1990) and occupied. Georgia, invaded (2008) and occupied. Ukraine, invaded (2014, 2022) and occupied.
Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland: Not invaded, not occupied.
Finns always agree with government decisions. If government policy is to stay out of NATO, finns will think that's the sound and rational way. If the government policy is to get into NATO, they will ask the media to support the idea and finns will change their opinion and think it's a splendid idea. Finns think as they are told to, like their neighbours in Russia.
It is not background but U.S. centric perspective, that results in tunnel world view and bubble info diet, and man in question is analyst for Stratfor from 2000. Zeihan spent 12 years at Stratfor, eventually rising to vice-president.
For anyone hailing from russia to be taken seriously, can you please answer these basic questions first: 1) Is Ukraine a sovereign country that belongs to the free people of Ukraine?, 2) Who does Crimea belong to?, 3) is russian army committing war crimes in Ukraine, and 4) are you personally supporting the russians war of genocide on Ukraine?
It is worrying that in a supposedly informed forum the simple, and factual, matter of there being distinct perspectives on the geopolitical order post USSR's collapse requires any further elaboration. Wow. Are you actually denying that others, quite a few billion of them not Russians btw (they go by "Global South" these days), view US behavior post Soviet collapse as aggressive and motivated by a desire for lasting hegemony? That clearly is not a view that would be addressed by the content in question, so GP's point stands.
Since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there have been a significant number of commenters here who have, for whatever reasons, advanced opinions that align very closely with Russian propaganda.
Some of these seem very reasonable—things like "shouldn't we try to push for peace?" "Should we really be arming the people of another country?"—and others might seem reasonable if you don't know a lot about the recent history and politics of the region—like "the main reason Russia invaded was because they were scared of Ukraine joining NATO".
I would not seek to impute specific intent to any particular commenters here; while it's entirely possible that a forum like this has some genuine Russian propagandists on it, I would say it's just as possible that they either don't know or don't care about HackerNews. Either way, it's clear that a lot of this propaganda has made it into the general conversation, and some people believe it and spread it for various reasons of their own.
> and others might seem reasonable if you don't know a lot about the recent history and politics of the region—like "the main reason Russia invaded was because they were scared of Ukraine joining NATO".
Eh, I live in the region and feel like this is a (somewhat) fair point, though somewhat misquoted and misrepresented (not in the least that there is no really ever a single specific reason for war, but rather a cascade of them). Not implying that war isn't a disaster or whatever.
Anyhoo...
> there have been a significant number of commenters here who have, for whatever reasons, advanced opinions that align very closely with Russian propaganda.
"Russian propaganda" is merely aligned to the perspective of a huge-enough chunk of the it & engineering world, just as well as "Western propaganda" is.
I think a lot of people are just very bad at articulating their points so that they don't sound like shallow slogans or whatever, but I don't suppose it's fair to label them as propagandists. Most are just sharing their perspectives, however they may be. Pity that forums like that aren't really suitable for people sharing different and opposing views, which should be pretty natural state of things in times like these.
Indeed, it's a thin line and I as the OP am surprised it generated so much (also productive) discussion. I saw this post was hidden from the front page at some point and I guess it's for the better. It's a "so-so".
Score a win for the US, NATO, and the west. Putin is a weak fraud who has been exposed…can’t wait for his regime to collapse, all without the west lifting a finger.
When you meet a mad paranoid dog like Putin, the best thing is to bait them and let them eat themselves just like Putin has done.
I might be talking to deaf ears here, but have you considered reading something written by Putin, Biden, Trump or Obama? Or the rulers of other large nations? They are all highly intelligent people even if they are responsible for horrible things. Thinking that Putin is a "mad paranoid dog", speaks to me that you have become the victim of propagandized media made for very simple minded people, and I doubt anybody frequenting this forum belong to that class. You won't be rewarded by your government or anybody else for blindly hating the enemy, so why not try to understand deeper what is happening in the world?
I've read enough from Trump to come to the conclusion that he is not highly intelligent. At least not in the way intelligence is usually thought of. He is a very talented leader though.
>"can’t wait for his regime to collapse, all without the west lifting a finger"
I believe and hope that Putin's regime will collapse. After that the West will be very busy "lifting fingers" figuring out what to do with the huge country in disarray and full of nukes.
China and Russia have terminal age demographics and HATE each other, Brazil helps define "middle income trap" for nations, South Africa is small, Saudi Arabia and Iran HATE each other, Argentina is the posterchild for rampant inflation, and India can't compensate for all of this.
Never mind that none of these nations, particularly the export-driven ones, can long survive economically without access to Western markets.
They're welcome to try and form a poorer, less coordinated market of antagonistic lesser economies who's sole defining feature is "we aren't competent or unified enough to compete with the West and that threatens our generally corrupt and authoritarian political classes!" If there's any shitshow it'll be watching it tear itself apart, presumably after Ray Dalio writes a best-selling book about how the decadent West is in decline and BRICS is inevitably the future.
That is definitely 100% untrue, I have enough empirical evidence that there are no practical solid grounds for that claim.
> Saudi Arabia and Iran HATE each other
They've recently reestablished political relations, did they? Don't know much about their day-to-day feelings, but there is a clear political will towards predictable coexistence.
India has enormous challenges of its own, one of them being that their export industry is weak outside pharmaceutical products. They also are not in the best of terms with China, especially on border disputes, and their GDP per capita is the lowest by far among BRICS.
I'm honestly surprised when anyone suggests that India may be put in the same group as China. Other than population and WMD, the gap is unlikely to be closed in the next three decades.
Maybe. Its hard to be sure when autocratic countries lie about their economic data.
edit: for those two with their "everybody lies and are awful" argument (one of the oldest and most beloved Russian tactics whataboutism). You will properly not get it if you don't already understand it - but issues with accuracy has nothing to with doctoring all your numbers to keep the gravy train going. Transparent liberal countries can have issues too, but compared to authoritarian ones the issues a trivial.
Institutions in democratic countries are much more independent of political pressure.
It might still happen, but there's a high chance that it will come to light sooner rather than later. Whistle-blowers don't have to fear the same repercussions as in autocratic states.
> Whistle-blowers don't have to fear the same repercussions as in autocratic states.
Its amazing that you parot that nonsence while Assange rots in prison and Snowden is hiding for a full decade.
Those that fire "whataboutism cannon" arguments etc. are equally bad. Nobody is honest (or rational) here, lets not pretend otherwise, even little kids understand better. It is what it is, its human nature I guess. I don't have a solution, except that you have to accept and adapt to that sort of game, nothing more or less, especially not thinking you have some sort of moral higher ground.
US Inflation data is famously understated, and the number of methodology changes we've had in the last year should alarm everyone. We actually saw disinflation in healthcare insurance costs at one point last year, after one particularly criminal adjustment in the calculation by the BLS caused the lowest negative print in decades.
The EIA reports since Biden have also been a disaster, to the point where they are "vowing" to work on the accuracy[1]. I highlight this one in particular because of Biden's catastrophic mishandling of the Saudis and the de-facto war on oil his administration is leading.
> the BRICS surpassed the G7 in terms of GDP and more countries are seeking to join.
Is "the BRICS" something besides a joint meeting that happens every now and then? What's the point in joining a joint meeting that happens every now and then?
Its not that, its more the general feeling of an american decline and an obsession on knowing how it will end.
Doomer feelings are growing more prevalent as out population becomes more divided and our monetary situation grows worse.
Many americans feel that our "American Empire" that dominated world politics is losing ground fast and there is a need to cope by being "smart" and swearing you know how it will happen.
Its pure copium, but it feels good to cope and feel an illusion of control.
TL;DR: its a need for control in worsening times, not hatred, that drives the doomer theories of an American collapse.
Interesting. Will the term "self fulfilling prophecy" apply here? I mean, that's how the stock market work, right? Something or someone introduce fear (impending war, possible crash of the dollar, etc.), get people talking about it causing more uncertainty, and the cycle continues, thus fulfilling the original premise.
I'm not a geopolitical expert by any means, but if there was a time to make a move against the US, this would be it for sure.
I mean, by the looks of it, the Western doesn't "feel" that hopeful. Just look at the US alone:
- Patriotism is on an all time low (per NYT);
- Social divide is on an all time high;
- Highest inflation in +30 years;
- Afghanistan's debacle;
- Proxy war with Russia got the American people basically divided between spending that money at home and striking a deal between RU & UA. vs helping Ukraine defeating Russia;
- US culture is getting a pushback from other countries (mainly in the African continent) that think the US is trying to impose their morals upon them (it's not that far fetched if you think about it). This is affecting US relations with those countries to the extent that they prefer to align with US "frenemies" instead of the US per se;
- US foreign policies pushing together countries that were/are still enemies, bringing forward the old saying `the enemy of my enemy is my "friend"`.
This decade will be really interesting, to say the least.
That's the thing, isn't it? Fear sells, everyone (at least MSM) is stating negative views. "Independent" outlets are stating we're approaching to a global conflict, major economic shifts, etc...
What you stated is interesting since you have to dig deeper to look for these news and even doing that, you'll have the majority of people disagreeing with you. Reality is 99% of the world atm is only looking the bad things and forming their conclusions based on that. We're literally watching the power dynamics being "shuffle" and the general perception of the US being shifted right before our eyes. These news have embolden part of the world to take action and move against the US (which is scary if you think about it since the ramifications will affect everyone) and we can say it makes sense since no country can fight all fronts at once (US and Africa, US vs EMEA, US vs China/Russia, etc..).
I'm hopeful things will get better and the western world will get its "things" together.
Yes, members are collaborating closer with each other and also members are a part of BRICS Development Bank which is basically a international bank for all members. I guess you could consider BRICS the closest thing to a rival of G7, but that's of course a simplification, the structures are different.
People and countries collaborate on things all the time, not necessarily because of a consultative organization they happen to be in.
It's more likely that those countries, they collaborate with each other "despite BRICS", or "despite G7" that because of it.
> BRICS Development Bank
But the same countries are also part of the International Monetary Fund, a kind-of-bank that is more or less the "G7 Bank" (G7 countries usually hold large ammounts of XDR votes in the IMF) and much more important.
No need. It seems you're already awake and it IS happening.
The BRICS's attempt to overtake the US is due to the race to incompetence at the top. For them, to compete with the likes of China, they're copying the worst parts of China or the rest of the other countries part of the BRICS.
This site skews fairly liberal/progressive and the progressives are "The System" today so of course they jealously defend it from criticism on any front. It's a bit disorienting because traditionally the left has been the critic/counter culture, but they've won the meaningful and influential cultural and economic institutions (universities, media, tech, etc) over the last 50 years.
Sure, they aren't the flag waving (well, not American flags anyways) patriots we see on the other side. Those guys live in a make believe place that will never come back. The left however has won bigger prizes - not just American institutions but globally across Europe, parts of Asia, and South America. So yes, criticizing this machine is an afront on what's right according to hegemonic power.
It's not questionable at all. For five percent of the annual US defense budget it has destroyed approximately half the total warmaking capacity of Russia. That's a damn good return on investment.
Russia is the one getting ruined over this war. You really think they do this on purpose? Western economies also suffer to some degree, but at the same time have also great benefits from it.
Ah, the perennial Russian line that Western militaries are just too expensive to operate for long, and cheap Russian pragmatism will win in the long run. If we can just force them to waste all those expensive missiles on cheap Iranian drones, eventually they'll run out of money!
Yeah, maybe if Russia could sustain the effort for 30 years or something, which they can't. We're just that rich.
It's a funny jump of logic a lot of people make. Sometimes people profit off of war, therefore all wars are secretly arranged by a cabal of war profiteers in back room deals. There's lots of variations but there's often a core true statement that is then used to leap to wild theories without any evidence.
But a big part of the expense is buying arms. That means that someone is making and selling those arms. And the seller is doing really good business.
I completely disagree with sprash, but you're going too far in the opposite direction. War profits are in fact a thing. It's good business for at least some. Where I disagree with sprash is that I don't believe that those people are the tail that is wagging the dog.
They've been trying for ~13months already and haven't done so, why do you think they could do it now? Especially after losing 150,000+ soldiers (dead and/or wounded), and thousands of tanks and other armored vehicles? They've lost tens of thousands of troops and dozens/hundreds of vehicles just trying to take one town since August (Bakhmut).
They could push more soldiers and machines to war, make a zerg-rush on Ukraine with everything they have, going in an all-out war. Going by the known numbers, Russia's army should have/had(?) 4-5 times the size of Ukraine's army, or something like that.
Of course, this would be very expensive to bring back their army from all around the world. They would lose all strategic positions they have, and would probably still suffer great loses... But they could (maybe) conquer that single country, or relevant parts of it.
Fog of war. You can't know what is happening. The only numbers I believe is the additional cost in $ and € the western taxpayer is burdened with. Because that is guaranteed.
This is the least foggy war of all time. There is a constant barrage of tiktok and telegram videos of exactly what is going on in this war. Every video is geolocated to show where battles are taking place. We don't know what is going to happen, but we pretty well know what is happening.
While the GP is obviously wrong now, that was the common take among analysts prior to the invasion. The underperformance of the Russian military has been stunning to say the least.
At this point, I'm moderately confident that their corruption has sold off the uranium (in most of their arsenal) to the power stations and many of the important aircraft parts to whoever wants them, while any tritium (or non-nuclear maintenance) involved has only been done on paper.
Also, if they used that, there wouldn't be a county left to take over. Look where Chernobyl is, and its fallout zone, and ask how many other similar would happen as a result of using nukes to try to win.
Maybe, but this was in response to a commenter claiming that Russia could take over Ukraine in a week if they really wanted to. Which is something very different than what you’re claiming.
How many NATO countries has Russia attacked in the history of NATO? How many non-NATO countries? Moreover, Finland’s military and diplomatic bureaucracy was already well-integrated into NATO, so there isn’t a _lot_ of additional organization (at least as far as these things go).
During the time period that NATO existed, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Expanding back a few years before the creation of NATO (which I'd argue is a reasonable allowance because a a defensive pact it was formed directly in response to some of these events), you can also include the invasions of Poland and the Baltic states
To be clear, you're emphasizing my point. None of those countries invaded by the USSR were admitted to NATO at the time, and no country has ever been invaded by Russia (or anyone else) while being part of NATO.
These questions are irrelevant. The tactical significance of Finland to Russia is small compared to the resources required to invade it as is. Due to bad cost/benefit ratio it is therefore unlikely for Russia to attack Finland. But now that Finland is part of NATO it has to bear the cost when some other country gets attacked. It's a bad deal.
The point is that Finland matters a lot to Russia. The border with Finland is huge, geographically hard to defend, and right next to Russia's capitol. Finland's maritime zones join with existing NATO states to block Russia from operating in much of the Baltic (a process that would be completed when Sweden joins). Finland joining NATO is more than a shrug for Russia.
Oops, fair enough—I had just been thinking of older history and forgot that the Bolsheviks moved the capitol. St. Petersburg is still the second-largest city and a major strategic location, but you're right that it's not the capitol.
>Yes, and for the same reasons they are invading Ukraine now! They feared German attacks through Finland and decided it was better to invade first, just as they fear American attacks through Ukraine and decided to invade first.
Next you'll argue that they feared German attacks through Poland, and that's why they invaded Poland alongside the Germans.
Of course yes. The Soviets and the Nazis were preparing for war with each other long before they jointly attacked Poland. This is a widely known historical fact. Stalin wasn't ready for the war with Germany just yet and bought some time. Invading Poland gave him a buffer zone, instead of having the Germans closer.
As for the Finno-Russian war in WWII, just take a look at the map and see how close Finland is to Russia's largest city.
Modern wars work like this. Rulers will invade to get a buffer zone between themselves and the enemy. Putin felt cornered by perceived US advances towards Russia and lashed out.
Russia has nukes, they don't need to invade other countries for land buffers, and excusing that behavior (much less the rape, torture, murder of civilians, etc.) is appalling.
Moreover it doesn't even mesh with Putin's own stated rationale for the war, which doesn't have much to do with NATO at all.
Your way of expressing yourself is disgusting. I haven't excused any of those horrible things, so don't accuse me of that. There is a real person here on the other side of the screen.
I don't support war. Understanding why war happens and why it happened in the past is not excusing anything. There must be room for deeper debate and exchange than "I hate the enemy!".
Putin fears American anti-air missiles that neutralizes the threat of Russian nukes. He has been saying that since he came to power. If he believes those kind of missile systems are coming to his doorstep, he will try to stop it - using any rationale.
>Putin fears American anti-air missiles that neutralizes the threat of Russian nukes.
The trajectory of ICBMs crosses over the North Pole, and most of Russia's launch facilities are too far North or East for Ukraine to be remotely relevant to intercepting them.
It is a garbage, nonsensical excuse. And there is no reason to admit that into evidence while rejecting the idea that Putin's constant chauvanistic refrains about how Russians and Ukrainians are one people, that Ukrainians are just "little Russians" who've been convinced they're something different by the evil West, an idea which he has been pushing for years, have anything to do with the invasion.
Exactly one[0] NATO country has ever been attacked and that wasn’t even in Europe but in the Falkland Islands. Being a member state is a pretty good bet on not being invaded.
[0] not counting non-nation state terrorist attacks on various members
Russia has invaded Finland multiple times over the last few hundred years. The Finns have never perceived the risk as non-existent, and the invasion of Ukraine (coming on the heels of Georgia) makes them understandably increase their estimate of its likelihood.
Which is irrelevant to what I wrote. And the decision wasn’t made on a whim, it was made because the opportunity had arisen. Popular support was secondary. Not like they held a plebiscite or called an election over the matter.
They're literally (edit: just had their) elections on Sunday. If the polling is wrong and some significant portion of Finns oppose NATO membership, I'm sure they made themselves known.
Russia invaded under pretext of "we are afraid of NATO".
NATO in Ukraine wasn’t a pretext it was (part of) the text. People in the West really seem to think Russia invaded to satisfy some vague desire for evil and villainy. People in the West really seem to think NATO and the EU being in a (proxy) war now with Russia over Ukraine disproves Russian concerns.
It prevents Russia from attacking Finland
Which was never going to happen. Zero reason. Impossible to sell to Russia’s allies on which it so depends, if we believe Western media. (Except now, of course, Finland has gained some nuclear targets on its map, in the event of. That’s the real 5D chess.) So there must be some other punitive quality to a country on the border of Russia becoming part of NATO.
> … and Western support turned his last-minute coercive expedition into full-blown war.
His what?
Massing a hundred thousand troops on the border isn’t “last minute” and they had their sights set on a (quick) regime change after a shock and awe campaign to force surrender.
Another thing people in the West seem to earnestly believe is that this story begins on 2022-02-24 and that the use of military force renders historical context irrelevant. This standard is, of course, never applied to the military adventures of the West.
From a Russian perspective, Putin gave Ukraine 8 years to build a competitive army, with extensive NATO help. Back then, Russia could have forced a more serious settlement or regime change fairly easily. Maybe it was necessary to wait, to prepare Russian economy for the inevitable wave of sanctions. (Which, I might add, have failed spectacularly in their original, stated intent of bringing Russia to its knees.)
However, it appears that Putin really did hope for the qualified success of settlements as weak as Minsk I/II, or a possible third iteration. Coerced, if necessary. Either way, all that failed and now war is raging and hundreds of thousands of slavs (most of them from Ukraine) are dead, with many more to follow.
This is obviously not an outcome that Putin desired. This is, however, an outcome that seems to make some people in the West very happy indeed. “Weakening Russia” is what they call it, gleefully. And they keep pushing, keep stoking the fire. War is peace.
However, they deeply, fundamentally miscalculated. That will become very apparent over the next decade.
More just that he wouldn't be so stupid. People just listed all the reasons it was a dumb, short-sighted idea. Which, turns out they were right, except about how stupid Russian leadership was. They seem to have honestly believed it would be a three day war, that Ukrainians were going to welcome them as liberators, and that they actually had all the equipment that they did on paper.
The “three day war” and the other stuff have always been American talking points that have been regurgitated uncritcally a million times. Yeah, people in the West have been sold the idea that Ukraine is winning (talking about the real Ukrainian losses (not the fantasy numbers you sometimes hear) is strictly forbidded tho), I noticed. Let’s wait till it’s over I say...
I guess you don't watch Russian TV? I'm lucky (or maybe unlucky) enough to speak Russian so I have access. They say much more bombastic things than just these points all the time. They have their own reality distortion field over there and it leads them to make terrible decisions.
I'm quite certain that Russia is not secretly winning the war, but it's just that nobody can tell because of how great it's going.
Can’t watch Russian TV because the wise rulers of the superstate I reside in prevent me from doing that, for my safety. Not that I’d want to, because I don’t expect good information there either. Thankfully, there are other ways to inform oneself of the course of the war.
Well, sounds like the Ukrainian side is about to start it’s much-anticipated Decisive Battle offensive. The overall picture should become clearer once the dust from that has settled.
Talking heads on political TV shows are not politicians or affiliated with the government. Them having an intense belief in something does not mean that government officials do.
You sure seem to think you know a lot about the odds of Russia invading Finland. But unless you're privy to Putin's actual strategic plans, I'm going to trust Finland's assessment of the risk more than I'm going to trust yours.
It's rather the opposite? It prevents NATO attacks from Finland; given how piss poor of a deterrent the Russian army is now, the nukes will most likely fly in this case.
The smart view of that is that regardless of whatever ridiculous arguments for Russian imperialism people want to engage in Russia is not physically capable of conquering the Baltic states.
Well, not since they joined NATO in 2004. I'm not sure I would have bet entirely on "not able to", either, prior to 2022: the advancing forces in Ukraine crossed a distance greater than the width of the Balkans before being stopped. It's quite possible a single overnight push to the capitals of Estonia and Latvia would have worked. Turning it into a grinding air war while NATO ground forces were brought into position to retake it.
Even as NATO members, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania provide key sea ports. Putin is already in a thinly veiled proxy war with NATO in Ukraine anyway. The risk I'm asking about is whether this current defacto-war-with-NATO-factor may neutralize the deterrent effect of mutual defense treaty mechanisms from his perspective.
It's debatable whether there is anyone in office in a NATO country who is prepared to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, or who has sufficient democratic political support to manage or sustain a land war. If China takes Taiwan at the same time, it's mutally beneficial for both Putin and Xi. What leader in NATO can persuasively threaten either Xi or Putin right now, let alone if they acted together?
The responses on this thread haven't really shown a capability for reasoning about the conflicts in economic or abstract terms, which is concerning because as a sample, if an inability to be clear eyed and unblinking about these things is consistent with the view of people in media policy circles, not only is there is a real risk of being blindsided, but it's evidence of a culturally held bias that creates the incentive for these powers to act.
I'm not sure that's true. Operating in a radioactive environment makes every single task so much harder. When Russia can barely afford the time to teach its recruits how to shoot, how could they possibly spare the time to teach them how to manage radioactive contamination?
In this case "nobody can have it" is effectively the same as "we have it" in terms of keeping NATO at a further distance from the important parts of the federation. Or whatever the Kremlin justification is these days.
In the hypothetical of them using nukes, we'd probably be past the point of there being any reason other than to wipe out the other side and show force to the rest of the world. That they control/own it by might sheerly for the sake of doing so and not by any other rationale.
That's a stretch. Imagine Russia could use their nukes without retaliation. They could have completely destroyed every military base and city in Ukraine before the invasion, along with the people's will to fight.
Or just used the threat of doing so to take Ukraine piece by piece.
The consequences of using nukes are an inherent part of using them. We might as well imagine they could use their tanks without maintenance or supply lines, or use their infantry without providing any training.
This seems to be the case, but no one knows for sure. It's likely that there are people in power who think they can gain an advantage using tactical nukes. Some weapons are specifically designed for this purpose, such as the American ER weapons (PDF) https://www.llnl.gov/sites/www/files/1975.pdf
Today's nukes can be very "clean". Even the old Hiroshima/Nagasaki did not cause that terrible residual radioactivity (neither city stopped being continuously inhabited).
Chernobyl released ~400 times as much radioactive material into the environment as the Hiroshima bomb. The nuke isotopes are also much shorter lived than what Chernobyl released.
> If the nations on its borders are forming a military pact that mitigates its sovereignty
Whose soverignty? Russias? What on earth does the dealings of Estonia or Finland have to do with the sovereignty of Russia? Or did you mean something else?
> what incentive or assurance does Russia have for leaving its former territories exposed to being absorbed by it
What do you mean assurance or incentive? If they want to join a defensive pact they are sovereign and can do so (please, talk about Canada or Mexico joining China/Russia in a military alliance it would really lift the quality of discourse)
Invading the Baltics is generally a bad idea since it risks starting WWIII. I think you are overlooking the sovereignty of those former territories. Russia’s sovereignty is only mitigated in so far is it includes the right to stage military interventions in its neighbors.
Given that the Baltics are part of NATO, and NATO maintains a multinational advance force in the Baltics (to give the non-Baltic NATO countries some skin in the game), invading the Baltics wouldn't risk starting WWIII, it would be WWIII.
(Depending on the surrounding circumstances, it might not be the "start" of WWIII. If Russia invaded Estonia tomorrow, WWIII would probably be seen as starting with the Russo-Ukrainian invasion of 2022.)
The problem there is that you (and Putin) are viewing NATO's expansion as a curtailing of "Russia's sovereignty". Doing this probably means you take the view that the Spheres of Influence concept was correct: big blocs (Russia, China, US, EU) have an area of political/military/ideological influence that extends past their physical borders, and any other country exerting influence over the countries within those boundaries is de-facto threatening them, even if this influence is by and large the will of the people living in those regions.
The problem with this view is that you are completely alienating the sovereignty of countries within those buffer regions. As an example, take the Baltics: they were under Soviet influence (and actual control, at some points), fought it off, and never felt safe in their independence, because they were within Russia's sphere of influence, even if they weren't within Russia's borders. Within these people's minds, they weren't truly sovereign - the actions of their governments had to appease Russia, or otherwise risk military conflict with a major power, which they would very likely lose, losing what little sovereignty they had. You can certainly see why this would be undesirable for these buffer regions, I hope?
NATO (and later, to a lesser extent militarily but a larger extent economically and culturally, the EU) gave these countries a way out, a hope to get out of the "Russkiy Mir" - Russian World. While Russia was weakened and unwilling to engage in military conflict, they joined NATO, which meant that they no longer needed to pay any mind to Russian influence and sensibilities: if Russia wanted them back, they'd have a fighting chance, instead of being rolled over.
I agree spheres of influence is a worrying idea. But couldn’t you argue the same thing is happening to Ukraine under a US sphere of influence? Isn’t that bad too?
Ukrainians want to be a part of free world with so much that civilians fought traitor snipers with homemade shields, with 0 US or NATO troops supporting them.
>But couldn’t you argue the same thing is happening to Ukraine under a US sphere of influence? Isn’t that bad too?
I fully agree with you - NATO -is- the US Sphere of Influence made manifest. The difference (in my view, anyway) is that the US is a better master than Russia or China, at least at this moment in time. The US tries to keep appearances at least by treating its partners as, well, partners. And the NATO military officials do believe we're all peers, at least all the ones I've had personal dealings with. Russia does no such thing (see Belarus).
But an even bigger difference, and the most important one, is this: Ukraine seems to want the EU and NATO. Sure, there's the oft-used argument that Euromaidan had US hand in it, but the US does not by itself mobilize nearly one million people (by Russian sources - so they'd have reason to diminish those numbers). Besides, Ukraine has been moving towards the EU as a country (even if not accompanied by Russian-aligned politicians) for years before Euromaidan. There's the more realistic complication that Eastern Ukraine is far more Euro and NATO skeptical than Western Ukraine. But those are internal Ukrainian problems, and not something neither the US, the EU, nor the Russian Federation should meddle in except for calling for peace, negotiations, and compromise.
If by "the same thing" you mean that Ukraine has requested the assistance of its allies to avoid being being coerced by Russia, then yes the same thing is happening. Why exactly would that be bad?
I'm not saying we should discount Putin's viewpoint and others like him, it is after all one of the very few tools we've got to analyse what he'll do. But just because we acknowledge Putin's viewpoint doesn't mean we agree with him, or that we should allow him to act unchallenged. It is his viewpoint that Ukraine is not a real nation without Russia, and thus has no right to making their own choices for their own country. It is our (including Ukraine's) viewpoint that Ukraine is an independent and sovereign nation with the right to enter economic and military alliances if it so desires. And what's happening in Ukraine at the moment is the result of the clash of those viewpoints. Ukrainians are dying for their nation, and the West is assisting Ukraine while hoping Putin isn't too far gone to just press the button.
Putin said that Russia does not need a world if Russia is not in it. The West is saying they're not okay with a militaristic expansionist nuclear-threatening Russia in the world. I tend to agree with the West's viewpoint, even knowing what may ultimately come from it.
This comment has been downvoted into oblivion. Why? It asks an honest question and provides some realpolitik judgement on how Russia could react. What is the issue?
No, it asks a nonsensical question from bizarre premises and provides an unreal assessment that Russia might invade the Balkans when all its available conventional forces are tied up in Ukraine.
There's no obligation to engage in bad takes. Just downvote and move on.
Finnish sovereignty isn’t a threat to Russian sovereignty. It’s only a threat to Russian sovereignty over Finland. The calculus does not change if you replace Finland with a former USSR territory—Ukrainian sovereignty doesn’t threaten Russian sovereignty, for example. Russia knows that NATO isn’t a real threat to Russian sovereignty and we know it knows because Russia demilitarized its NATO borders—NATO is only a threat to Russian imperialism, and Russia acting on its imperialist interests only persuades more countries to apply to NATO (thereby further degrading its imperial potential).
That's why I said „Baltic states, Poland and Finland“. As in, Baltic states + Poland + Finland.
Although historically Finland was considered one of 4 Baltic states. The 4 states that escaped Russian empire after WW1. It shrunk to 3 after WW2 and (re-)occupation of 3 of 4 of them.
"If his former exes asked for a restraining order against him, what incentive or assurance does he have for allowing them to break up with him?"
The problem is Russia. Russia could be a normal country like its neighbors and make money from trading goods while wooing foreign investors, but Putin took the history books he read too seriously and thinks he can pull another round of territorial conquests.
I don't see how other countries joining a defensive pact "mitigates" Russian sovereignty. No one is encroaching on Russia's borders.
Many were optimistic after the fall of the USSR ("end of history" and all that) that Russia would develop into a liberal democracy that would concentrate on improving the lives of its citizens, and engage in mutually beneficial peaceful trade with other countries, while respecting their sovereignty. But, the Russian leadership chose differently, aggression and imperialism, and are now reaping what they sowed. Whining over Finland choosing to take steps to protect it from Russian aggression is the whine of sad, small, and entitled men.
Wow. Well, I can share that quite a lot of Russians share mutual perspective these days.
Kinda makes one wonder how come the privileged part of the world that lead us after "the end of history" now seems to have strained or even terrible relations with Russia, China, India, most of the Middle East (even Saudis are super grumpy at this point), half of Africa, and even souther parts of Americas.
All this talk of "mutually beneficial peaceful trade" and "respect for sovereignty" is cheap and empty - systemically confirmed in practice in many parts of the world, in different environments, tested against one constant.
> The problem is Russia. Russia could be a normal country like its neighbors and make money from trading goods
> No one is encroaching on Russia's borders.
This is really horrifying how the perspectives on the current directly oppose each other, completely Orwellian.
It's not like it's some ancient history, all of this is following the lessons learned from interactions in the 2000s - when the US had been violating the INF treaty with missile "defence" system in Poland and had uncorked local ethnic conflict with arms supply.
From Russia's point of view the events of 2013 in Ukraine along with the previous grievances (the Second Chechen War, Georgia, NATO missile systems, etc), along with the denial of its pleads of new security agreements - were all a consecutive persistent strategy against it.
And sorry, sue me, downvote me and tell me I'm brainwashed all you want, but this is a fair point - let's not pretend that NATO is a strictly defensive organization and nothing ever more than that.
Why put up with NATO expansion? Russia's expansion is also totally defensive! wink-wink
> It's funny how Russia always pretend to be a victim
It's ironic how Russia is always assumed to be a passive unresponsive corpse with no concerns or perspective and memory of its own.
I wonder if it's even hypothetically possible for people to try to fairly grasp that perspective, otherwise Europe (and yeah, that includes Russia) would be an "interesting" place to be in the upcoming years.
> It's ironic how Russia is always assumed to be a passive unresponsive corpse with no concerns or perspective and memory of its own.
Indeed, and apologists of Russia often take this position: in their mind, Russia has no will and no ambitions, and only reacts to what the US is doing. Whatever they do is always the fault of americans and never a manifestation of their own will.
Here in Eastern Europe the perspective is a bit different: Russia is a failed state that never developed a free and open civil society, and instead fluctuates between soft and hard authoritarianism. Their dictators tend to develop imperialist delusions from time to time and that makes them a direct threat to their neighbors and that's why everyone is so keen on building international cooperation to set up an unified front against Russian invasions. The ground under my feet has seen Russian invasions, raping, pillaging every 1-2 generations for as long as Russians have existed.
> Indeed, and apologists of Russia often take this position: in their mind, Russia has no will and no ambitions, and only reacts to what the US is doing. Whatever they do is always the fault of americans and never a manifestation of their own will.
Thank you for that perspective, but isn't it similar to the mindset of north-atlantics? "Russia is acting totally unprovoked, we hoped for totally good neighborhood trade and whatnot"
> Here in Eastern Europe the perspective is a bit different: Russia is a failed state that never developed a free and open civil society
I've been to Eastern Europe and my experience with it makes me feel like this is a European chauvinism mentality bit and a patting thyselves on the back.
> Their dictators tend to develop imperialist delusions from time to time and that makes them a direct threat to their neighbors and that's why everyone is so keen on building international cooperation to set up an unified front against Russian invasions.
Eh, Russia is fighting against imperialism (at least from its perspective) and that "international cooperation" largely consists of countries that had historical struggles with Russia, as you say.
> The ground under my feet has seen Russian invasions, raping, pillaging every 1-2 generations for as long as Russians have existed.
I always chuckle when Europeans try to do some historical moral grandstanding. Yo, man, Europe is the source of the most of genocides and is the birthplace of fascism and nazism. The people that had lived on the ground under your feet had been doing the same to everyone around, including Russians, all while being awfully proud of themselves. Even more so when spoken of Baltic states, but whatever, by all accounts, the historical perception of Europeans is that of pompous brutal animals.
> I've been to Eastern Europe and my experience with it makes me feel like this is a European chauvinism mentality bit and a patting thyselves on the back.
Eastern european anti-Russian stance is chauvinism, but Russian imperialism worth defending? Niiice.
> I always chuckle when Europeans try to do some historical moral grandstanding. Yo, man, Europe is the source of the most of genocides and is the birthplace of fascism and nazism.
Really?
You may want to look into Golden Horde, Mongolians, Khmers, Chinese commies, Japanese empire, all sorts of shit in subsaharan Africa.. Not to mention pre-european Americas history.
> The people that had lived on the ground under your feet had been doing the same to everyone around, including Russians, all while being awfully proud of themselves.
If you want to play this game... Muscovites are a wee of a special crowd around here. Yes, people here are no saints. But some people take it a wee further. Everybody did wage war here and there. But not everybody went this far with „rape & pillage“ part.
And, despite victimhood card they love to play, modern Russia is mostly just a cruel expansion of duchy of Moscow. Rather than trying to defend from surrounding people. Unfortunately their tactics seem to work pretty well.
> Even more so when spoken of Baltic states
Alright, bring it on :) What are you going to throw at us? Nazi or Soviet war crimes where our local collaborators gave them a helping hand?
> Why put up with NATO expansion? Russia's expansion is also totally defensive! wink-wink
The difference between NATO's expansion and Russia's expansion is that Finland is not under a threat of violence from NATO. Quite clearly Russia is threatening Ukraine with violence if it doesn't become part of Russia.
That would be why Russia's expansion isn't totally defensive. I mean, it's defensive for Russia sure. Just not for Ukraine.
Similar to the old joke. A man from American tells his Soviet friend; freedom is being able to criticize Regan from outside the White House without being arrested. His Soviet friend tells him; we have freedom too! You can criticize Regan from outside the Kremlin as well!
> The difference between NATO's expansion and Russia's expansion is that Finland is not under a threat of violence from NATO.
But Finland isn't technically under a threat of violence from Russia. "Wasn't" at least, as there had been no warm grievances that anyone really cared about.
You'll say that Finland has to assume threat and mitigate risks, but this is hardly any different from Russia's perspective against NATO.
> Quite clearly Russia is threatening Ukraine with violence if it doesn't become part of Russia.
Eh, methinks this is an overestimation of Russia's ambition. One could realistically argue that Russia merely "defends" east-leaning loyalish "Russian-speaking" regions. Realistically, even action towards Odessa would automatically involve Prednisone and then no one would be handle that Genie without major clusterfuck.
> I mean, it's defensive for Russia sure. Just not for Ukraine.
Sure, but that's exactly the point I am trying to convey: enemy military can talk about "defense" all it wants, but at the end of the day their job is to kill people and that might as well include you.
> You'll say that Finland has to assume threat and mitigate risks, but this is hardly any different from Russia's perspective against NATO.
Finland is considered by Russia to be an unfriendly country. That's an escalation towards violence and the USSR and Finland have fought several wars. No reason to wait a decade to get invaded like Ukraine; just join NATO now while you can.
The difference is how Finland and Russia are mitigating their threats. Finland is mitigating the threat of Russia by joining a defense alliance. Russia is mitigating the threat of NATO's power expansion by invading countries that might join.
Russia could create their own defense alliance, lets call it the Warsaw Pact. And then it could allow Ukraine to join their Warsaw Pact. If NATO invaded Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from joining the Warsaw pact I'd say NATO was in the wrong.
> Eh, methinks this is an overestimation of Russia's ambition. One could realistically argue that Russia merely "defends" east-leaning loyalish "Russian-speaking" regions. Realistically, even action towards Odessa would automatically involve Prednisone and then no one would be handle that Genie without major clusterfuck.
The problem is the phrase "regions". Nobody cares when you kill people within your own borders. Ukraine is outside of Russia's borders and so we care.
I never assumed Russia was a passive unresponsive corpse with no concerns or perspective and memory of its own.
In fact, I am very concerned about its death-worshipping perspective and distorted memory.
You still have to stand up to a bully, or you encourage them. A strategic mistake was not putting severe sanctions on Russia in 2014 when they annexed Crimea.
> death-worshipping perspective and distorted memory
Elaborate? The point of distorted memories and elective outlooks on the past event had been on my mind for some time now.
> bully
Anthropomorphizing countries distorts reality, but do you honestly don't see how every narrative of Russian imperialism and so on could be just as well applied to western post-Cold War totally never-ever threatened very polite expansionism?
Death-worshipping - the ever more insane Great Patriotic war rememberance.
Anthropomorphizing coutries - yes it distorts, but much less so in dictatorships, because so few (actual!) people hold the reigns. Putin is a bully, let's rephrase it like that. Not kicking his balls encourages him and others like him.
During the second Chechen war Western countries had supported radical islamists (like Isis, Taliban, you know the type). This was taken really badly in Russia as something completely unfair.
Georgia was one of the thirst countries of that were pushed to NATO where things went badly. The US had been slowly supplying Georgia with NATO equipment and this shifted the balance of power and "status quo" and uncorked a local ethnic conflict - president Saakashvili attempted to score patriotism points, hoping that NATO would back him and that Russia would not act on Sochi agreement. NATO obviously didn't back his invasion.
Point is, there is no much trust in western military branch from the perspective of those outside it's protection.
The comments are pretty hard to read here given that any comment not cheering this on is immediately downvoted to death. Many are legitimate comments - I see why some might disagree with them but it’s not even possible to learn from them if they are silenced.
I'd normally agree with you, but we're in a situation right now where Russia is waging a brutal war of aggression that has already killed more people than the US did in Afghanistan over 20 years (which, to be clear, is a war we never should have started). That same Russia has a well-developed propaganda arm that has been very active since long before the war in trying to draw favorable comparisons between their behavior and the US's. In this context, I'll take the potentially-unearned downvotes over letting Russian propaganda have its say.
Which is what the expansion of NATO was always about. NATO isn't a threat to Russia itself - if Russia seriously feared NATO aggression, it wouldn't voluntarily demilitarize its NATO borders during the past 13 months.
NATO expansion just neutralizes Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors through threat of aggression (or in case like Ukraine through the use of aggression).