I highly doubt that any of NATO's members will veto an application from Finland (or Sweden).

Russia has a UN veto and uses it, because they can weather the consequences.

Could Hungary piss off all of its allies, trade partners, basically everyone but Russia? Doubtful. Hungary is playing a skillful, if somewhat devious, game of balancing between Russia and the West. But an outright FU to a (clearly) US-sponsored NATO expansion? I can't see them weathering this.

Signalling a veto is often rather a negotiation step.

He's not unique in this regard. Every national leader has to consider the interests and perceptions of their domestic power base when negotiating with international leaders. Very often a mismatch between their rhetoric and actual behavior indicates that they are trying to sell an unpopular but necessary international agreement to the people back home, or that they must accept an international reality that does not match their domestic political framework.

For example, Putin finds himself in a difficult position right now because he has convinced his people that the Russian military is invincible and the Ukrainians are dominated by a small number of Nazis who need to be removed from power. Meaning, his domestically acceptable "win set" only includes scenarios in which Ukraine cedes large swathes of territory and makes at least some notional concessions around governmental reform toward "de-nazification." Anything else admits the political framework he uses to justify his power is premised on falsehoods and risks destabilizing his regime.

These positions are of course not consistent with reality and therefore not within the Ukrainian win set, and so no agreement will be reached until something changes. I suspect that is why Russian journalists/propagandists have recently started recasting the war as a conflict against NATO, because that will make defeat more palatable to the Russian people. Getting beat by NATO doesn't mean the Russian military was horrifically incompetent and their government deeply corrupt, but rather that it was an unfair fight sprung upon them by evil westerners. It feeds their sense of grievance while excusing Putin and his lackeys from any personal responsibility for the widespread military failures.

There is a close enough express in English that it translates. "Do what I say, not what I do", is something parents tell kids when the parents want the kids to behave better than the parents do! For example, if a parent smokes, they may tell their kid "don't smoke, do what I say not what I do."

The question would of course be if EU/NATO want to do that. It's part of the usual political horse-trading game.

For sure, in the extreme scenario if US/EU/main partners really wanted Finland and Sweden to join and Hungary vetoed, it could be made to pay an unaffordable price.

But Sweden is already member of the Cuture Combat Air System (FCAS) initiative to create a 6th gen air war system of systems, alongside nato members. And this kind of colaboration will be even more natural when/if they join Nato.

Also the real question would be, would Hungary see it as a credible threat. Were they to go ahead with that, they'd find themselves with no airforce and unhappy allies. That sounds like a raise they couldn't afford to raise.

But even if not, in the most extreme case, everyone else could leave NATO and simultaneously join NATO++, which is just NATO without Hungary, but with Finland.

(And because that kind of process is possible in theory, I would suggest that any organisation with a voluntary exit clause might also want to have a clause that allows the unanimous vote by everyone else to expel one member. Maybe..)

This is all speculation about the most extreme consequences. Other commenters wrote more realistic things about trade in weapons being disrupted.

And, of course, you could set up 'NATO++' as an alliance between US, Finland and other willing nations, without shutting down old NATO. Just like Ukraine receives a lot of assistance from NATO countries these days without being in NATO.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220405-top-eu-body-laun...

In such a case, Nato could in principle invoke Article 60 of the Vienna convention, and if all other members agreed, they could expel Hungary from Nato. Similarly, if their conflicts with the EU continue to escalate, they may be expelled from the EU in a similar fashion.

This would be a catastrophe for Hungary.

Not that I believe that it would ever come to this. Just a hint of this from key Nato/EU countries should be enough to make Hungary back down.

More likely, if Hungary wants to buy some favour from the Kremlin, they would drag out the expansion process by a few months.

I don't think anyone wants that big hole on the alliance's border. Hungary might not be as critically positioned as Turkey, but it's still in a pretty awkward place.

But as you say, Orban could drag his feet a bit. Chances are his party enjoyed direct funding from Moscow, like others in their orbit all over Europe.

Without a shared border with Russia, Hungary's usefulness in a conflict would be relatively limited for Russia. On the other hand, for it would be highly dangerous for Hungary to willingly align with Russia, as that would make it likely that a future conflict would be fought on their territory.

As long as Sweden and Finland remain neutral, they are at risk. Putin has shown that he is willing to use military force to grab land. Should he grab Finland and Sweden, he would effectively control the Baltic sea and also have bases that can reach Western Europe much more easily than he can at the moment.

On the other hand, with Finland in the alliance, Nato has a highly defensible (for Nato) shared front with Russia, in the case of a conflict.

Also, keep in mind that Finland + Sweden together has a greater population than Hungary as well as maybe 5x the GDP, and that while Hungary is moving towards totalitarianism, Sweden and Finland both have long democratic traditions, low corruption, etc.

Very different ones.

Sweden has been independent forever and a democracy since 1921.

Finland was first a part of Sweden, later an autonomous part of Russia. In 1917 it became independent and a democracy. However, a bloody civil war followed. Although it did not last long, consequences in politics and society remained visble for generations. Between 1945 and 1990 there were limitations to the democracy. They would only do what was assumed not to annoy the Soviets too much. Party leaders and prime ministers were chosen according to that principle. Freedom of the press existed only as long it was not too negative about the Soviet Union.

While it changed with the end of the Soviet Union in 1990, they could join EU 1995, applying for NATO marks only the real end of that period that they could not freely determine the direction of their country.

But that is not what I mean when I say "democratic traditions". Especially for countries that introduce democracy gradually and (mostly) peacefully, I consider the whole transition period to be part of those traditions. A country like Sweden had more than 100 years (1809-1921) of public discussions and political manouvering to build up the institutions, culture and education that provide stability, legitimacy and public support to such a system.

Finland underwent a similar development from the end of the Civil War to 1990, which mean that in 1990 the democratic institutions and traditions had already been built.

Other Warzaw pact countries had varying amounts of democratic traditions at that point. Some (like Hungary) had seen little democracy. Others, such as Czechoslovakia had been mostly democratic in the interwar period, while most had seen some democracy and some authoritarian rule in that period.

I would argue that those traditions from 100 years ago play a part, even today. And in the case of Sweden vs Finland vs Hungary, Sweden and Finland both have very strong traditions for democracy (even if the age of those traditions are different), while for countries like Hungary and Ukraine, those traditions are still shaky.

More realistically, they could just spin up an alternative alliance between US, Finland and any other willing current NATO member (but excluding Hungary). And over time move more and more importance to this new NATO++, and perhaps even eventually drop out of old NATO.

There's no provisions for kicking countries out of NATO. But everyone else leaving the club is equivalent to kicking one country out.

Orban’s party won reëlection. Orban is popular [1]. We can crib about disinformation and this or that, but holding Hungary accountable for his decisions is perfectly acceptable.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-viktor-orban-europ...

I love the use of the diaeresis.

1. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

Co-operate is much more common than na-ive (which I've never seen). But both cooperate and naive seem reasonably well accepted.

Nobody is Putin's friend. When you join his club he send the military in to make sure it goes his way.

It's not a coincidence that von der leyen wants to change the voting system from hunanimity to majority. They don't like to lose, and the rules are fine only as long as they can do what they want.

So vetoes have more power than you would let us think.

I can imagine Finland/Sweden being very different. Who benefits/loses from Finland/Sweden joining? These countries are very well-armed, with large, well-trained armies, so they are a welcome addition for most. Baltic states must be delighted. Germany must be realising that hugging Russia for decades hasn't paid off, but it is in a clinch; its army has had decades of peacetime budgets, while they find themselves on the gas/oil hook. Hungary's own immediate neighbours, Romania and Slovakia at least, are quite wary of Russian threat and will welcome at least a diffusion of Russian targets in the area.

Would there be consequences to ruining the plans of US, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia and Romania, and many other countries? No doubt, and beyond what Hungary is prepared to pay.

But then what do I know? I'm an armchair strategist.

You can add Norway and probably Denmark to that list. With Finland and Sweden in Nato, all of Scandinavia becomes significantly more defendable. This would enable all Scandinavian countries to combine their defensive efforts, and would it make it extremely hard for Russia to attack any individual country.

And keep in mind that Stoltenberg is Norwegian....

But only one is blocking.

This may be true or not. Doesn’t matter. Those others waited. Hungary didn’t.

Erm... huh? You cannot, not in a million years, compare the democratic processes of US or EU states with what's going on in Russia. I'm not even sure where to start. How about this then: Russia's premier opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, got poisoned with deadly poison known to be used only by Russian secret services, and almost died. Did Biden or Trump or any other US politician try to kill their opponent?

I suspect given that comment, we won't find common ground, but for others' benefit:

> It paid off incredibly well actually. Why do you think Germany is the first industrial power in Europe? Who's selling them all the cheap gas that keeps the industries going?

Germany decided to wean itself off atom and onto gas/renewables. That was a political decision, which drove energy prices up. France instead doubled-down on nuclear and is doing just fine. Affordable energy is achievable without Russian gas, just not overnight. For sure the going was good for Germany for a while, but now they find they are held by the balls.

But if Navalny isn't okay, let's talk instead about Russia poisoning Yushchenko in 2004 with dioxin...

The most important mark of a democracy is the ability to get rid of unpopular leaders at the end of their term, as the US did in 2020 and may be doing in 2024.

The mark of a dictatorship, on the other hand, is that they subdue any opposition by any and all means available. When the totalitarianism is total, the leader will get 99% of the votes in elections and a similar reported approval rating. Those who do not support the regime and not already eliminated, are too scared to say so.

After all independent media got closed down, put to prison or killed. The vast majority of those 80% watch only TV, a brain washing machine telling the world is full of Nazis and NATO threatening the existence of Russia.

Everybody in Russia knows that for being against Putin you can be beaten up by the police, put to prison and whatnot. So how many dare to answer what they really think when they suddenly get a phone call from an unknown person?

I am sure both exist. The brainwashed ones who believe all the lies and those who don't dare to admit that they don't believe it. How the percentages are proably nobody has too good guesses.

Source?

> The vast majority of those 80% watch only TV, a brain washing machine telling the world is full of Nazis and NATO threatening the existence of Russia.

Source?

> Everybody in Russia knows that for being against Putin you can be beaten up by the police, put to prison and whatnot

Source?

> I am sure both exist. The brainwashed ones who believe all the lies and those who don't dare to admit that they don't believe it. How the percentages are proably nobody has too good guesses.

Source?

Btw. the ruling party - practically means Orbán himself - is more like protecting personal interest than the contry's, likely (very likely) financial interests of self while the country's interest is completely elsewhere concerning both financial and the big picture.

Edit: Here is some thoughts one it: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/on-what-g...

That is not how people of Ukraine see this.

But it doesn't change the fact that the colonies wanted to be free.

> Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.

From https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html

> Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley.

> An excerpt about GW’s wealth:

>> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King’s policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.

However, public choice theory has a--perhaps similarly--dim view of politics.

One observation I would make is that, for a social revolution to occur, you actually need a lot of people from basically every corner of society to want it to happen: even elites. So when they have occurred, it has generally been because the preceding situation was so awful that basically nobody, even the relatively privileged in it, felt it was tolerable. China and Russia both clearly qualify, but also countries like Haiti, or France. People tend to forget the mess preceding the revolution, and focus on the mess during and after.

Germany had a revolution that ushered in the Weimar Republic. Both countries had essentially just lost a war at that time.

> I guess there's a traditional division between 'really existing socialism', which is often messy, and marxism as a body of work for understanding society.

Marxisms is pretty useless for that. Useless in the technical sense that knowing just mainstream economics is as effective as knowing mainstream economics plus Marxism.

(Not useless in the more absolute sense of knowing nothing vs knowing Marxism. Basically, wherever Marxism deviates from modern mainstream economics, it's useless.)

I think there are two dimensions in which marxism, whatever your politics, will never be useless. First, a lot of it is a body of work authored by people in the midst of extremely bitter social struggles, civil wars, and revolutions. So you tend to get a pretty clear idea of how these things work, from the inside. Second, I think Marx is just a phenomenally clever and insightful thinker. I'm not particularly wedded to the economics (actually, neither was Lenin), but his thoughts on how economic and physical forces shape us as political actors are really good.

Also, I think that it does matter who started the war. Those who are fighting, those who provide support or neither of them (that is, the other party of the war).

Either way, this is a just a matter of how you choose to define the term.

The important point that I'm trying to make is that, while Ukraine is of course fighting for its own sake (not trying to claim here they are only a puppet or something - as is Palestine in the other example), it's also clear that NATO is massively involved in the conflict, with its own aims for the war which may or may not be entirely aligned with Ukraine's (or Ukrainians') best interests.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_co...

What's special is that they are really good drones for their price.

In practice, however, closing the Straits has a much more negative impact on Russia than NATO, since the major NATO naval powers (US, UK, France) were never likely to send ships near Ukraine anyway, and as non-Black Sea states the Montreux Convention subjects them to special limits to which Black Sea states are not subject. In fact (according to some sources), the Straits are still officially open for the US/UK/French/etc navies, so long as they don't directly join the conflict – although I imagine they'd be rather hesitant to exercise that right at the moment, due to the risk Russia might interpret such an act as hostile.

If it is true they allowed some Russian ships through before closing it–that could have been simply the slowness of government decision making, plus the legal complexities involved, rather than a deliberate "balancing" act.

If anything, I think this conflict has caused Turkey to turn away from the "balancing" and move more firmly into the NATO column. Reminding NATO of their value helps silence the ongoing "can we expel Turkey?" debate, refusing to do so would have given it more steam. Turkey has been selling its TB2 drones to Ukraine, which Ukraine has been using to great effect against Russia – not a very good example of "balancing". Ukraine's successful use of Turkish drones is very helpful to Turkey, because it gives them more information on how they perform in an actual conflict (which they already had to some extent with the Syrian civil war, the KPP, etc, but Russia is a very different kind of adversary from the Syrian government or the Kurds), and also helps attract potential buyers.

I don't think the Barayktar has such a significant influence, but it could be a smart move from Ukraine to have add some difficulties to the balancing part of Turkeye.

Not sure about the last part though.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57583363

Not only they were likely, they actually did that in 2020 and 2021, as a part of joint war games with Ukraine. According to what I read, some 30 ships participated.

Sail an unarmed NATO-flagged vessel to the Azovstal Steel Plant and evacuate troops?

Putting that aside, even the official parties to the war are allowed through the straits to return their ships to their home ports (unless Turkey is directly involved in the war, in which case Turkey can block all enemy vessels, even those returning to their home port). Since the only coastline and naval bases of Bulgaria and Romania are on the Black Sea, that rule covers their entire navies. It only really disadvantages Russia, since Russia is the only Black Sea state (other than Turkey) with naval bases outside of the Black Sea. It means Russia can't send reinforcements to the Black Sea from their Pacific, Baltic or Arctic fleets.

In a scenario in which Romania or Bulgaria actively joined the war, it would be a direct Russia-NATO war, including Turkey. In such a dire scenario, Turkey would likely announce the unilateral suspension of the Montreux Convention for the duration of the war, and allow NATO warships unlimited passage. Russia would consider such a unilateral suspension of the Convention to be an act of war, but in such a scenario Turkey and Russia would already be at war anyway.

> Vessels of war belonging to belligerent Powers shall not, however, pass through the Straits except in cases arising out of the application of Article 25 of the present Convention [no longer applicable] , and in cases of assistance rendered to a State victim of aggression in virtue of a treaty of mutual assistance binding Turkey, concluded within the framework of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and registered and published in accordance with the provisions of Article 18 of the Covenant. https://timinhonolulu.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/montreaux-...

So basically, if (a) Turkey declares that there's a war and (b) Turkey is not a party to that war, then (c) Turkey is authorized to close the straits to warships of belligerent parties.

There's some exceptions in there about ships returning to their base, but it'd be a pretty big loss of face for the Russians to beg Turkey to agree that a sudden rebasing of ships qualified.

I'm Romanian, I live in Romania (Bucharest), so as I'm geographically close to this I've been following this particular Danube issue closer than the others, but the thing is that the situation on the ground is still pretty muddled. For example, just as the war started the Romanian authorities had suspended commercial navigation on the Chilia Danube Delta Branch, the one on which the Romanian-Ukrainian border is situated, for fear of Russian bombs. Presumably the navigation has been allowed to resume, but nothing official has been made public in the Romanian mainstream press, the only related news was something about the Ukrainian authorities being unhappy with us (Romanians) asking for navigation-related customs taxes that were seen as too high, so I assumed that commercial navigation had, in fact, resumed.

There was also our prime-minister meeting with the Bulgarian side (with which we share hundreds of kms of the Danube) and making a statement afterwards about how the Danube should be made easier to navigate (i.e. a strong hint made to the European Union to send us money to do that). If that indeed were to happen (i.e. if the Danube would be made easier to navigate) then the Ukrainians would be able to send a large part of their exports to Central and even Western Europe (via the Danube-Mainz-Rhine canal) via fluvial ships, at a fraction of the cost they now have to pay doing that using rail and road-transport. That's why (among other things) the Russians have set their eyes so strongly on the Budjak region (i.e. the Ukrainian region just North of the Danube's Delta) and that's why they have bombarded this bridge [2] that leads to that region at least three times in the last few weeks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commission_for_t...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pidyomnyy+Mist/@46.0749075...

After the successful attack on Moskva I'm not even sure it's beneficial to NATO or not. Of course it is in the best interests of Ukrainians to keep these ships at bay, but from NATO's point of view this could be an excellent occasion to make some significant blows at Russian fleet.

This is kind of like seeing WW2 pre PH as a proxy war between the USA and Germany....

Ukraine is clearly a part in this war, as they have shown by their heroic ability to resist.

Nato is clearly on Ukraine's side.

You are right that NATO benefits greatly from still having Turkey on the team, though. Also, I think Turkey is not super supportive of Putins's attempts to annext territory by force and/or vassalize their neighbours through invasions.

Next time, they could annex Georgia, and I'm pretty sure that would be seen as a grave threat by Turkey.

The closest thing to kicking someone out of NATO would be all the other countries simultaneously withdrawing and forming NATO 2.0.

None of that is violated by kicking someone out before they are attacked.

I have to wonder to what extent the development of these alliances might have been influenced by the concern you raise though, you raise a good point.

Article 5 is the shield that drastically decreases the amount of nuclear weapons European nations need to deploy, because USSR / Russian inventories are balanced out by American inventories, if it comes to all-out war.

Consequently, the world as a whole is a lot safer because {flight time Russia-US} >> {flight time Europe-Russia}, which allows for additional fail-safe guarantees on weapons that there wouldn't otherwise be a time budget for.

The US stations some of its nukes in Europe, so the flight time is less than you think.

Also, it is widely believed that the US has an “understanding” with certain European countries that in extreme circumstances (aka World War III) the US will hand those nukes over to the host countries, and then the host country governments will decide for themselves what use to make of them. In part, this helps discourage nuclear proliferation-Germany or the Netherlands don’t need to make their own nuclear weapons because they know if they ever really need them, Uncle Sam will help them acquire them real real fast (“here’s the keys to the safe, good luck”)

As far as I know, the US hasn't stationed M/IRBM or nuclear cruise missiles in Europe since the early-60s Jupiter MRBM [0] and GLCM [1] were withdrawn.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-rea...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-109G_Ground_Launched_Cru...

https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-hungary-ukraine-conflict-eu/

Hungary is on the wrong side of the conflict at this point in history.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60977917

Mr Orban also said that 'do not listen to what I say, watch only what I'm doing'.

https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech...

"in this sense, the new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not deny foundational values of liberalism, as freedom, etc.. But it does not make this ideology a central element of state organization, but applies a specific, national, particular approach in its stead."

https://miniszterelnok.hu/prime-minister-viktor-orbans-speec...

"Let us confidently declare that Christian democracy is not liberal. Liberal democracy is liberal, while Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal: it is, if you like, illiberal." (Orban then stands that up on three pillars: prioritizing Christian culture, being anti-immigration, and the Christian family model.)

(There are almost assuredly more speeches.)

Worth keeping in mind that Americans and Europeans (especially Continentals/non-Anglophones) may have rather different definitions of “liberal”: “American conservatism, with its Lockean roots, is—from a Continental point of view—not really conservatism, but rather, old-school liberalism.” [0]

Similarly: what’s the difference between a “neoconservative” and a “neoliberal”? The terms have a lot of overlap, many people could be equally described by both: but if a neoconservative can also be a neoliberal, then what’s the difference between “conservative” and “liberal”?

And then I remember that I come from a country whose main “conservative” party is called the “Liberal Party of Australia” (or just “the Liberals” for short). Many of its members and leaders will defend the apparent contradiction by saying “We are conservatives, but we are also classical liberals”-a line I’ve also heard from right-of-centre Americans.

See also “conservative liberalism” [1] - which of course is obviously a very different thing from “liberal conservatism” [2]

Tis all as clear as mud

[0] https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-big...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_liberalism

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_conservatism

whereas in Europe it means anti-authoritarian

"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

"Eschew flamebait."

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hvg.hu/itthon/20110906_orban_wikileaks_ne_figyeljene...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3nfpuOoHdI

Anyway, the point is that he is unrealiable, unpredictable, misleading. Apart from the above obvious ones there are countless further examples when he pretended, lied, mislead, did not do what he told will do. It would take very long time to compile a fairly comprehensive list from throughout the years, these are just rapid and random selections. He is basically communicate and act similar to Putin.

But with zero reasonable arguments for blocking the membership, Turkeys position doesn't seem to be sustainable.

Land and resources grab is what drives russia's objectives. Has been like that since the empire times - this state is stuck in the obsolete colonialization mindset but now even without ideology to offer (no one can sanely consider the 'russification' aka 'russian world' as ideology).

The whole Western world has not been sleeping happily since the start of Cold war - the russia's nukes have not been detargeted, and now are being openly used for strike intimidation once again.

It only points out that russia simply is unable to integrate into the modern world, neither politically nor economically. The only choice (barring its own implosion) is containment, thus NATO is relevant again, as so far there are no viable options especially for the neigboring states, just as for Finland and Sweden.

Ukraine already applied to NATO. NATO's adherence to it's own acceptance rules are purely political. NATO did not accept Ukraine's application because there were lands in dispute - with Russia - which disqualifies you from membership until it's resolved. NATO obv does not want to accept new members that immediately put the whole organization in a conflict. Other countries, with similar land disputes have been accepted, but that's largely because none of the contesting countries were Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

It doesnt take decades to for NATO to accept a country. The org has been dragging it's feet because it didn't want to trigger the likely Ukraine conflict and be involved in it directly.

At the moment that means expelling Russian invaders first, because NATO will not accept countries in the middle of a territorial dispute with Russia, for obvious reasons.

What next, should I write "the bank has to give me $1M" on a piece of paper and show it to the bank teller?

The document states that the government is to work towards joining NATO. The document in question happens to be law in Ukraine. If they don't work that direction they're breaking the law. If Ukrainian's don't like that they can amend their constitution, but it is unfair to post what I replied to without recognizing the fact that this is a legal duty of government officials of Ukraine.

That might be a reasonable analogy if the constitution declared that they must be a NATO member—-asserting that it can obligate an outside entity into taking a particular action. But, it does not do that.

Humans are humans. Right now I really worry about the people in Ukraine. I really worry about the people in Russia. I really worry about the people in every other area of conflict. This is called empathy. A lack of it is pretty much the only reason these conflicts gain traction. Try to be empathetic to the other humans you share the planet with.

Brecht

I worry about people and US does not otherwise they wouldn’t be feeding it with free weapons, it’s a matter of power and influence, don’t tell me you care about The people when US killed kids in Iraq and jailed journalists reporting it, fuck US

The big questions are over Hungary and Turkey; Hungary because Orbán is somewhat pro-Russian and has opposed some EU and NATO moves already wrt Ukraine, and Erdogan for somewhat similar reasons, and because he has publicly stated that he is not in favor of Sweden and Finland joining.

OTOH, I think the general expectation is that those are surmountable issues.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/croat-p...

I mean, from TFA:

> Croatian President Zoran Milanović on Tuesday said he would block the admission of Sweden and Finland at the NATO summit in Madrid if he is the one representing Croatia

If he is representing Croatia, and the country's decisions are made by Parliament (the President "has a say" in foreign policy), then isn't his job there only to re-present what Parliament has decided?

Thankfully, Croatia doesn't have any real influence in NATO so nobody will be obliged to listen to that stupidity.

Source: I live in Croatia.

Croatia really has natural beauty. It has gorgeous beaches. Those beaches are usually overcrowded and in many places turned into concrete slabs. It has good life, unless you can't find a decent job. It has free healthcare, in which you wait a year for an urgent medical examination. It has low taxes (10% capital gains tax! 0% LTCG!) but extensive red tape and extremely inefficient bureaucracy and judicial system.

Corruption is a way of life (ask your grandma if it's decent to visit a doctor without a gift). Politics is a joke to such an extreme Boris Johnson looks like a Stoic philosopher. He partied during COVID restrictions, right? Well, our Minister of Health partied during COVID restrictions he invoked, and nothing, whatsoever, happened.

We're like that country in Tropico (the game), only in real life. Even on a map, if you squint, we look like a banana country.

Still, we've free speech, we're fairly well integrated into the EU (barring some unforseen problem, like, dunno, a war on a doorstep, maybe we'll even adopt the Euro next year), we're pretty safe. Child-care is inexpensive, schools are okay for the most part, public universities are free, and if you work in a well-paid industry (like tech, which is booming), it can be a good life.

So, a banana country with benefits?

Besides capital gains and corporate income, Croatia has some of the heaviest income taxes in the world (up to 45%), and i think the highest VAT tax in EU (25%)

Edit: Not Schengen, that is something more specific; but the Treaty of Accession from 2011?

Unfortunately, same applied when that drone with explosives fell in the middle of Zagreb. Deafening silence from NATO.

But: that was then, and this is now.

Russia escaped sanctions for a long time, for many things, because of EU countries giving it the benefit of the doubt, and because of oil and gas.

Had that happened in any other nation surrounding Ukraine that would have been the case, too; it's odd why they let that slip. Are we really to believe that if Serbia decided to attack again on some absurd notion of Russian loyalty or whatever they wouldn't defend Croatia despite being a NATO member?

It's a "good deal" for both sides.

Finland will be an asset for NATO, not a cost. We already have a credible NATO compatible military. We just don't have nukes, and in wartime materiel replenishment would be a problem.

https://www.ft.com/content/e85825af-5172-44c4-9662-f7ceca40e...

Also Finland just bough 64 F-35:s - as a Finnish tax payer for US industry - you are welcome.

64 F-35 at my calculations comes at approximately 5 Billion dollars, this is excluding spare parts and training. Finland military complete spending/defense budget for 2019 was $3.97B.

Edit: Actually it seems my calculations where off by 50%. This will cost you 10 Billion...

"Audit clears Finnish F-35 buy amid rising spending on pandemic, Ukraine"

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/03/28/audit-c...

Source: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/the-lockheed-martin-f-35a-lig...

Finnish air-force is quite professional and skilled in what it does.

As a software geek I presume they spent the money wisely and with sufficient knowledge of what they are doing. Norway has 24 F-35:s in operation so if there were obvious deficiencies those would likely have been heard over the grapevine as nordic forces are quite close.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-...

How are you qualifying whether or not this system is proven?

The reality is that the fight was not fair for the F16 that was loaded with two external fuel tanks, probably to make sure there was no way it could win.

The latest arguments are the F35 did not have yet all the latest software, but for me it's telling the fight was not re-staged again...

Can you describe what you mean by this? Are you suggesting that no F-35 has ever been used in combat operations?

> when trying to do a dogfight with a F16 lost

What's your source for this?

> but for me it's telling the fight was not re-staged again...

Be careful, we're getting close to sounding conspiratorial and we want to make sure to avoid that, because we can't have a discussion at that point.

Yes. Complete zero air superiority combat missions as with the exception of bombing a few ISIS tunnels. But as this article from 2021 mentions, its not combat if the enemy can't shoot back.

"...The United States has been at war continuously since Sept. 11, 2001, yet the F-35 has flown zero combat missions. Zero. When I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, we would say: “That dog don’t hunt.” Perhaps sensitive to the F-35’s disgraceful war record, in 2018 the Pentagon sent a few on missions in Afghanistan and Iraq to notch up combat cred. Never mind that their help comes 15 years too late; the super-expensive F-35 was not designed to take out a weapons cache or a terrorist on a moped. Also, as any grunt will tell you, it’s not “combat” if the enemy can’t shoot back. If engine failure is the biggest threat to survival, then the F-35 might as well be flying over Kansas..."

"The F-35 tells everything that’s broken in the Pentagon" https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/542412-the-f-3...

> when trying to do a dogfight with a F16 lost > What's your source for this?

My source are US F35 pilots...Note how somebody tried to undermine the F16 ( An airplane from the 80's) in the test

"Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can’t Dogfight" https://warisboring.com/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-can-t-dog...

"...The F-35 was flying “clean,” with no weapons in its bomb bay or under its wings and fuselage. The F-16, by contrast, was hauling two bulky underwing drop tanks, putting the older jet at an aerodynamic disadvantage..."

"...But the JSF’s advantage didn’t actually help in the end. The stealth fighter proved too sluggish to reliably defeat the F-16, even with the F-16 lugging extra fuel tanks. “Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement,” the pilot reported..."

"And when the pilot of the F-16 turned the tables on the F-35, maneuvering to put the stealth plane in his own gunsight, the JSF jockey found he couldn’t maneuver out of the way, owing to a “lack of nose rate.”"

"...The F-35 pilot came right out and said it — if you’re flying a JSF, there’s no point in trying to get into a sustained, close turning battle with another fighter. “There were not compelling reasons to fight in this region.” God help you if the enemy surprises you and you have no choice but to turn..."

> Be careful, we're getting close to sounding conspiratorial and we want to make sure to avoid that, because we can't have a discussion at that point.

Did they re-stage the fight? No

I provided my sources. Yeah...very conspiratorial...

As I said, you are approaching that with this idea that the F-35 is this big cover-up. It can't "fight", etc. etc. and I just do not have any interest in treading water near that discussion. It's not at all interesting or valuable in any way.

Anyway:

> Yes. Complete zero air superiority combat missions as with the exception of bombing a few ISIS tunnels. But as this article from 2021 mentions, its not combat if the enemy can't shoot back.

> "...The United States has been at war continuously since Sept. 11, 2001, yet the F-35 has flown zero combat missions. Zero. When I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, we would say: “That dog don’t hunt.” Perhaps sensitive to the F-35’s disgraceful war record, in 2018 the Pentagon sent a few on missions in Afghanistan and Iraq to notch up combat cred. Never mind that their help comes 15 years too late; the super-expensive F-35 was not designed to take out a weapons cache or a terrorist on a moped. Also, as any grunt will tell you, it’s not “combat” if the enemy can’t shoot back. If engine failure is the biggest threat to survival, then the F-35 might as well be flying over Kansas..."

Just because the F-35 hasn't flown an air-to-air combat mission doesn't mean that it hasn't been involved in combat. You're misunderstanding the role of the aircraft here and defining combat in such a way that unless there's an exact engagement that fits your criteria it can't possible be combat. That's not how anyone in the military actually understands combat. It's not binary, but a matter of degrees.

So not only has the F-35 flown combat missions, the missions it has flown which haven't been dogfights are exactly the kind of missions it was designed for. It's a multi-role fighter, there are different variants for different purposes, including battlefield C&C and target identification where the F-35 isn't even expected to engage but instead use sensors and identify enemy aircraft.

> My source are US F35 pilots...Note how somebody tried to undermine the F16 ( And airplane from the 80's) in the test

That doesn't make anyone an expert. I'm a military veteran - I just have an opinion on the systems I use. It's still an anecdote. Anyway here's another anecdote which contradicts your anecdotes.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/remember-f-16-killed-...

"“I was at Edwards Air Force Base when the test pilots were there and they were writing that original report. It’s been the narrative ever since and I want to say a few things about that. . . . First of all, it should be noted the aircraft (F-35) was in its infancy stages and we were still just trying to learn how to fly the airplane,” Chris “Worm” Spinelli, an F-35 test pilot for Lockheed Martin, told the National Interest. “The entire CLAW [Flight Control Laws] hadn’t been delivered yet so the guys hadn’t really developed tactics, techniques, and procedures, etc. So to say that the F-35 can’t Basic Flight Maneuver [a term for dogfight], I think, is a gross overstatement. Honestly, you know I think it would be quite eye-opening to see an F-35 and an F-16 in a BFM engagement, depending on how it was managed. Certainly, the F-35 has some advantages that the F-16 does not, particularly in its helmet integration, along with its advanced weapons, which are a lot more beneficial in platforms like the F-22 or F-35.”"

The problem here is that you are thinking about aircraft in conventional terms. To the author and this pilot's point, the F-35's goal is to not even engage in a dogfight. It's like arguing that an Army Ranger is a crappy soldier because they can't beat a samurai 1-1. Can a dogfight happen? Sure. But you shoot from far away and the samurai doesn't even know what hit them.

> Did they re-stage the fight? No

Do you know of every single thing that the US military does? Do they publish all reports 100% accurately? Maybe they're publishing info like this so that rival forces feel secure in not upgrading their aircraft? There's no value in re-staging this exact scenario.

tl;dr you are implying that these is this big cover-up and the F-35 can't "beat" a 40+ year old platform and all of this stuff and basing it off of, frankly, no real evidence. You don't know what you're talking about. I don't really know either, but I'm not making strong claims here.

The article you posted was written as a first person account, by a non military Pilot, ex-FoxNews reporter, ex-CNN reporter, ex-Pentagon procurement expert. I quoted the actual F-35 pilot involved in the dogfight with the F-16.

The overall F-35 program is bigger than the PIB of some countries, so from the beginning when the bad news started to come up, there was a strong incentive to present the program on a certain way.

"U.S. Air Force instructs airmen on exactly how to praise the F-35": https://fortune.com/2015/09/25/air-force-f-35/

I think by now the US Air Force already understood the program is a failure.

"The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed": https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-...

Being incorrect or even inflammatory is not a crime. Being unable to voice your opinion just because it makes other people go "yuck" when they hear them is not something I would like to promote or support.

Regarding the nick, my guess is that the author opinions have been controversial for some time, and they probably were banned for voicing them before. After a third time I can see myself making an account with similar name - at least if I was stubborn enough to try again.

Downvote the GP and ignore them all you want - you can fold their comment along with the whole subtree below it - but don't flag the posts. As you can see, if you bothered to read, there's a lot of fact-based refutations offered by other users in this subthread. These are better weapons against disinformation (if it's that) than pretending people believing that disinformation don't exist, and moving them out of sight, and out of mind.

To be honest, I wouldn't be writing this if it was a few weeks ago. I probably wouldn't even have bothered with vouching, and definitely wouldn't spent time reviewing the comment history. I'm lazy, after all. Unfortunately, someone here linked an essay[1] by pg and it changed my mind. We need more, not less, incorrect and inflammatory voices, because sometimes, someone from the flock of crooks actually is right. And we all lose if they're right but keep it to themselves.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html

> I'm just tired of the USA paying for everything when we don't have the money.

Which seems to be one of the things that made the previous President the President.

I do believe Trump was correct to criticize the lack of defense spending by many NATO countries and I too think Europeans should largely defend themselves. Personally I favor a multi polar world and would like the U.S. to retreat so to speak.

And I want to emphasize DEFENSE. Not "invade other countries in trillion dollar regime change operations". It was US Congress that signed off on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

You should note that even Trump held Finland as a counterexample to European NATO countries that don't pull their own weight.

Finland is not a country that spends all it's money on social programs and doesn't have a military. Instead, we still have mandatory male conscription, and a very well-armed reserve.

Historically, we have trusted our defense in the principle of being strong enough that even if we knew that the Soviets/Russians could eventually beat us, the costs we could inflict on them would massively outweigh any possible benefit from conquering us. This no longer works because in Ukraine Putin has shown that he does not do cost/benefit analysis for his foreign policy.

My personal view on the matter is that I support an imperial retreat by the U.S. The EU needs to listen more to the Baltics regarding defense and foreign policy.

That being said, I understand the american feelings about this, as a lot of stuff have had the wrong priorities in the US for a long time, which I would argue is an internal matter and nothing to do with NATO (or its members).

/offtopic

I support a more isolationist U.S. policy. It’s time for America to engage in an imperial retreat.

It does not do it for free. It gets many benefits from "the rest of the world". Like buying US debt, trading oil in US dollars, access to cheap labor, bigger market etc. etc. Nothing of what it does is "free". This giant war spending also helps them to bomb other countries into oblivion when they feel like.

The people who whine about NATO members "not paying enough" seem to think all the other NATO countries have got rid of their armies and are defended only by US troops permanently stationed there. That's not how it works: They all have their own defense forces. Trump was whining that those are not big enough (and he was probably even [at least mainly] right there), but that just means that if there is a war in any NATO country, it will only be able to do "too small a part" in its own defense, and the other ones (yes, given their size, mainly the USA) will have to help more than they otherwise would. But until that happens, this "missing money" doesn't actually come out of any US budget; it's just not being spent at all.

For once, not even "just another one of Trump's lies", but certainly a huge over-simplification by / for the more naïve of his followers.

Some sized and equipped military force is required for a credible NATO defense from Russia.

The origins of that force's components is a zero sum game. If they don't come from one country, they must come from another.

The US currently spends ~3.5% of GDP on its military. The EU (in total) spends ~1.6%. I believe the UK is at ~2.5%. The NATO target is 2% of GDP. See specifically, graphs 2-4: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2021/6/pd...

If the US spent less, it's possible Europeans would not choose to make up the difference. But if they didn't, they'd certainly be less secure.

It's a complicated topic, but the idea that the US is paying for more European defense than Europeans is well-supported.

(Fyi Not American.) That seems wrong, because America does already spend so much on their Military budget to have a 'preventative' presence plus standing force ready to respond. They spend each year keeping that force built, trained, operating etc .. regardless of if it's used.

That seems pretty obvious too, I don't know if your argument was made in good faith?

That's like saying a 4WD SUV, which is much heavier because it can in theory go off road at any time, doesn't burn any extra fuel if you never take it off road. Maintaining the capability to send a huge expeditionary force to Europe at any time is mind-bendingly expensive.

>> Trump was whining that those are not big enough (and he was probably even [at least mainly] right there)

If downvotes did not affect the visibility and were called "disagree" it would be fair. Instead they serve as a mob's club in my opinion.

Ukraine is also suffering a lot from this war, even if they don't mention it much. They will feel a lot of pressure to accept a smaller Ukraine in exchange for peace.

So instead, unless Ukraine acceeds to their demands, they will get more and more bloody and bomb it to the ground. If that is the only course of action afforded to them, that is what they will do - as they have done in Afghanistan and Chechnya before.

This is monstrous and disturbing, but doing otherwise is seen as an existential threat to Russia. They have already shown they lack the power to pose any kind of threat to NATO (beyond nukes of course), so their only hope is to go all in on this.

Consequently, he must feel as though a public mobilization would have a higher risk (public opinion?) than reward (additional military manpower?).

In lieu of an influx of manpower, the existing Russian forces seem destined to grind down over time, both in terms of personnel and materiel.

IMO, he annexes Kherson-Crimea-Mariupol-Donbas, and calls it a victory.

Unfortunately, Kherson is still semi-resistant, Mariupol still (somehow!!) has active defenders, and ~1/3 of Donbas is still under Ukrainian control.

Donbas also has the misfortune of being an explicitly delineated area... so there's less wiggle room to redefine it as the portions already under Russian control.

And it's unclear that the Ukrainians would accept the above under any terms. Maybe "give us this and the rest of the country can join NATO"? But Kherson & Mariupol seem huge sticking points.

So the most likely outcome is that the war grinds on, with Russia attempting to achieve the above goals, Ukraine continuing to stubbornly resist (with NATO armaments and supply), and Russia continues to launch long-range strikes against western Ukrainian industry to increase pressure for peace. Which is to say, ugly.

> How much would it cost to continuously occupy a country of 48 million largely hostile people

If Russia limits the territorial acquisition to Russian-speaking regions, they'll be fine. Minorities are almost always strongly in support of unification with their nation-state. Some historical examples - 77% of Sudeten Germans voted for Nazi Sudetendeutsche Partei. 99.7% of Austrians voted for unification with Germany in 1938 referendum. 95.6% of Crimeans voted for unification with Russia. 95.7% of Cypriots voted for unification with Greece in 1950

And above all, right-wing kooks, useful idiots, and outright Putler trolls. Quite a few of the people you mention also seem to belong to at least one of these categories.

> Notice who is pushing the narrative of Russia bogged down - journalists, politicians and their nominees, economists, and people with an active career in the military.

> There are also some dissidents in the West pushing the opposite narrative - ex-marine, retired intelligence officer

> Which group knows more about how a modern war is waged?

Ahem...

> Which group has a better track record so far?

Well, not the ones who said "This will be over in less than a week!" eleven weeks ago.

They are strictly focusing on preventing any greater expansion than what happened prior to the invasion.

There are arguments that Mariupol and maybe even Kherson have a relatively large pro-Russian population compared to other parts but I still believe they want to protect them regardless since they aren’t nearly as large as the more eastern parts and it blocks access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea ports.

Source?

This is simply not the case, their is intense fighting in the Donbas region by both UA and Foreign legions, and places like Bucha and Kharkiv are all on the East and are all subject to the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of mainly Ethic Russian Ukrainian citizens in what are some of the worst crimes against of Humanity seen since maybe the Croatian-Serbian conflict.

These places may not be as nationalistic as Lviv, very few places are in fact, but it would be absolutely foolish to say that considering this [0] was just released last month which specifically states it's intention to de-occucpy Crimea from Russia.

And after what is seen in Bucha, Irpin, Kharviv, Mariupol etc... there are no Russian speaking regions who think they are going to be spared from the indiscriminate and needless death they have seen of women, children, men. They now see them for the violent murderers that they are. Those that remained probably left for Russia.

Even the dissenters posting on social media are being tracked down by the Ukrainian military and being arrested/detained which honestly is fucking terrifying, but consistent with it's actual intended use--State surveillance.

This isn't 2014 anymore, where it was mainly the Azov holding off things in the Donbas against Russian sponsored separatists and sympathizers, things have drastically changed and while I doubt loyalty is 100% to he Ukrainian government it's really crazy how united that country has gotten since the invasion. I had mixed feelings of Azov because of how they violently dealt with Russian-leaning supporters back in 2014, but after what they've done in Mariupol it goes to show that it's not something they tolerate any longer. They sacrificed themselves in order to protect them in the steel mill and are bravely still the only thing left from total Russian occupation of Mariupol.

People around here don't know this but Bitcoiners were some of the first non Government affiliated volunteers in Ukraine to help back in 2013 during the Maidan Revolution and then 2014 for the war in the Donbas. This is where our technology got battle tested for real, hence why it has played such a pivotal role in distribution for funds when the Ukrainian Central Bank suspended withdraws of UAH on the day of the invasion just as it did during the capital controls and hyper inflation in 2013/14.

I won't go into a tirade about it, but this is why many of us Bitcoiners get so upset when we hear some misinformed arm-chair coder in the comfort of his apartment in SV tells us why 'bitcoin doesn't matter, no one uses it' type diatribes. It's a waste of my time but all it's all there for people to see that it was critical in both 2014 and 2022 to support Ukraine.

And the fact that you can make such blatantly misinformed statements reflects the level of ignorance on all of the aforementioned topics.

0: https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/1172021-37533

Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?

Start here [0], this discusses BTC involvement in the Maidan Revolution, and then the come back alive campaign with the Azov in the Donbas region in 2014, and then touches on the Government backed initiative by the Ukrainian Ministry of digital reform in '22. Ultimately, the Zelensky government backed the creation of United24 with BTC at it's core.

It's worth doing your own research, I can assure you it's really worth your time to see how effective open source technology can boot-strap itself so quickly in conflict zones. Ultimately, it's a testament of Human ingenuity and perseverance in some of the most daunting situations.

> Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?

Sorry?

Even if you were completely lost by what I wrote, are you seriously not aware of what is happening in Crimea, Kharkiv, Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol? It's Russians killing other Ethnic Russians on the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine; then turning around and saying it's Ukrainians killing their own citizens as we see Russian soldiers shell, loot, steal, rape, murder all over Ukraine without any hesitation or regard for Human life.

0: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/ukrainians-turn-to-bitcoin-to-c...

It's not like the rest of the world is forcing USA to spend so much on military. Apparently USA just wants to be military superpower.

>We all know Russia will win.

I don't. There is no military victory in sight for Russia as long as supplies keep flowing to Ukraine. Putin can't back up but someone else can, even if they shared Putin's ideology because they can blame Putin for failure. War ends after Putin is displaced or dies.

One. Finland has not been phoning it in. There's a reason Russia has not invaded Finland after they we pushed the fuckers back during WW II. This is not remotely a case of the USA taking care of Finland's defense against russia. I invite you to participate in some of our joint military exercises to find out how things work over here.

Two. Russia cannot win. It has become painfully clear that their outdated mob-run cleptocracy of untrained looters cannot possibly win any type of war. Even with Russia's military doctrine where “send more men” is the main strategy, they cannot win. The math is clear. Russia simply does not have the power to win in any meaningful way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I can't imagine anybody vetoing Finland's membership. In fact, the more the merrier^Hstronger.

When the war is over, it may be that the new-found unity caused by the external threat will be enough for them to reinforce their institutions significantly. This could reach a point that could ensure lasting democracy while enabling them to properly fight/eliminate most corruption. At that point, combined with a peace treaty with Russia, they should be able to Join.

More likely, Ukraine after the war will be a massively destroyed country, with widespread poverty and a constant need for western powers to pour money into - and that breeds corruption. The only way forward - should they survive as a nationstate - would be some kind of grotesquely enlarged Marshall Plan - they would become in the 21th century that what Germany was between 1946 and 1990: A military bridgehead and designated battlefield should Russia get another taste for war, with modest economic growth.

Still, most countries had rebuilt their economy to pre-war levels before 1955, and in many cases around 1950.

Given the very small size of Ukraine's economy, reaching their pre-war level will not take very much. Should they, as I predict, come out of the war as a united nation, able to get rid of most of the corruption, they may be able to massively outperform their pre-war gdp fairly quickly.

If they return to pre-war levels of corruption, no amount of economic aid will bring their economy to western levels.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-05/u-s-gives...

Imagine diverting 50% of Russian troops from Ukraine, where they are already struggling, to another special operation in Finland. Can't see it happening.

They'd have to actually declare war to conscript the whole population and what nonsense could Putin say to sell that to his people at this point?

Umm ... wasn't that what people thought of the alliances and treaties[0] just before the First World War?

[0] https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-p...

If we could avoid its equivalent in the 21st century, that would be good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...

IMHO Erdogan still owes Putin a favor for being tipped off on the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.

Do you mean the war that Russia wages against Ukraine?

But they didn't. Turkey only upheld the conditions of the Montreux Convention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_...

> Around February 27–28, Turkey refused permission for 3 of 4 Russian warships to enter the Black Sea, as 3 did not have a home base in the Black Sea.

"pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Turkey cannot block Russian warships based in the Black Sea from returning to their registered base."

Turkey was under no obligation to do anything. Yet they closed the straits to Russian ships to the extent that they possibly could.

https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/62559-milanovic-...

Especially, the original core alliance was very aligned after WWII, politically. However as NATO expands east, the potential for issues down the road grows.

Look at the Ukraine. Let's imagine that this horrible war never happened, Russia never attacked, and that the Ukraine would join NATO in 2023.

Now fast forward to 2030. Russian political games, and influence, has caused the Ukraine to become more aligned with Russia.

What then? Now, the alliance has a detractor of its goals within!

And what of other geopolitical issues? Who will be China's best friend, in 2030?

With the alliance at its original members, it was more tightly aligned.

Now? NATO is becoming far more political.

Perhaps this is apparent to many, but I feel this is not as apparent as it should be. For as NATO becomes stronger physically, with more members, it becomes less strong politically/actively.

An example. If someone attacked Canada or the UK, the original NATO members would have responded instantly.

What about Croatia? Would the response be the same?

Yes, without a doubt. Perhaps a little slow, but ultimately the response would be the “same”[1]. The US and UK have existential interest in maintaining NATO.

Croatia and Hungary would be kicked out of NATO before Sweden and Finland would be prevented from joining. At the point of Finland announcing that they will apply, all of the negotiations and box checking are done beforehand. They don’t leave things like this to chance.

Some say “but there is no mechanism for kicking out a member”. It doesn’t matter. The primary NATO members will just have a vote and say you aren’t part of NATO anymore and that would be that.

[1] I’m using “same” here because an attack on the UK or Canada could never be treated as equivalent to an attack on Croatia given the circumstances needed to be attacking those countries and the kinship of the US with those countries. A better way of phrasing would be if Croatia was legitimately attacked and invoked Article 5 of NATO (the mutual defense clause) the U.S. and others would come to Croatia’s defense. There is absolutely no doubt about this.

https://www.justsecurity.org/66574/can-turkey-be-expelled-fr...

It only takes one of those to pay off at the right time.

Either they stop this now or it's all over anyway. This is reckless - we need to start a path of de-escalation - give Putin an offramp. Get to back to calm waters.

Then let diplomats do their little dances until there is a hopefully more reasonable people in power on both sides.

Nobody wants war.

This continued escalation can't help but lead to nuclear war, our leaders are playing an extremely dangerous game of chicken.

If anything, Russia's botched invasion of Ukraine should show other countries in the region that there isn't so much to fear from them, and that NATO can be counted for help even without having to risk triggering Article 5 against a nuclear power.

And make no mistake: a hot NATO-Russia war is the worse possible outcome for everyone involved. If it came to that, it would be objectively better to become a vassal of Russia than living through a nuclear war, for the vast majority of the population.

Interesting with all the down votes, wonder if Russian bots have reach even on HN? The fact is that this is happening, and Sweden is joining too, and I'm glad we are.

You need some very twisted Russian logic to see sovereign states joining of their own accord, with majority support in the population as a valid excuse for Russia to attack us.

> If steps are taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation, the delegation noted that the United States would then have significant concerns and respond accordingly.

Note that the Solomon Islands is also a sovereign nation, and that it is > 10,000km away from the US border, and >2000km away from the border of the closest US Ally, Australia.

My point is not whataboutism, it is that sovereign nations have an interest in the military alliances of other sovereign nations, and that the security of one state doesn't stop at its borders. Joining hostile military alliances or massing troops at a shared border is logically viewed as a security threat from another nation, and sovereign nations have a right to attempt to prevent such actions.

Of course, doing it by force of arms the way Russia did is entirely illegal and immoral. Even the threat of violence is considered unacceptable by the Geneva convention, though of course that is often ignored. But complaining or seeking diplomatic and even economic ways to prevent such actions is not immoral in my view, and it is certainly not unusual.

You may not be against that, but my point was that this is mostly not how world leaders think. Note that it's not just the US - Australia, New Zealand, and I'm sure other countries in the area also came out strongly against this, and similarly explained that it affects their security.

Of course, unlike Russia, they didn't literally illegally and unacceptably invade the Solomon Islands. However, if China were to participate in a revolution-coup combo (as Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine were doing 2 weeks before revolutionaries forced Yanukovich out [0][1]); and then a pro-Chinese leader (even one with popular support) started being armed by the Chinese government, and holding joint military excercises defending from an Australian invasion [2]; then the situation would perhaps change.

It's important to note not just what is morally right and wrong, but also what are the established rules of the world. It's great to fight against those rules as much as you can (and US citizens have more power to change this than any other people on Earth, as the voters in the most powerful country in history which is at least partly democratic), when they are unjust, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore them while they are in place.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 (conversation transcript published on 7 feb 2014)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#cite_note-2 (forced out by protesters on 21-22 feb 2014)

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-h...

Russia just wants Lebensraum, which would be ruined by nukes, and NATO would probably not want to seem excessively cruel to Russian civilians when their purpose is supposed to be entirely defensive.

Don't forget that there have already been numerous close calls in terms of nuclear war, without anything close to a conventional war as background.

Finland might feel safer once they're in NATO.

The rest of NATO (and non-NATO states in Western Europe), perhaps not quite so much. Surely the risk of NATO being involved in any conflict only increases as NATO grows?

No, it diminishes. NATO is a defensive alliance. The more members it has with credible military spending (which Finland has) the higher the cost for Russia to invade.

And the lines we now draw between NATO, Russia and China could well be the lines of a WW3 within a decade. Hopefully not though.

Being cut off from nearly all advanced technology and with a terrible economy doesn't sound like a recipe for improving much in that sense either.

A similar line of argument about alliances and treaties preventing war was used before the First World War. We all know how that ended.

NATO was formed with that in mind. A single treaty document publicly ratified. No secret pacts. No back-alley alliances.

It also doesn't appear to be a very accurate description of the things NATO has been getting up to since the end of the Cold War.

"[NATO] has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa"[0]

You don't have to be a spin doctor to realise that what seems like "defence" to one person is another's war of aggression.

German defence minister Peter Struck memorably said in 2004 that "Germany was also [being] defended on the Hindu Kush".[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO [1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/bulletin/rede...

Almost like "defensive weapons". Almost, because that's even worse.

What shall we give Russia this time? Then when they come for Poland or Romania, who do you suggest we offer to rape and murder?

Let's imagine we're France.

What's the actual risk of us being directly attacked by an enemy country, starting a conflict?

Now imagine we're France, obliged to join in a conflict by NATO's "collective defence" Article 5. This conflict was already started by an enemy attacking any one of the other 29 NATO members. Particularly murky that now NATO claims cyberattacks count for article 5, and since 2001 we know terrorism can count too.

What's the risk of the latter compared to the former?

I don't see Article 5 as the providor of peace that so many appear to assume it is. Now that the Cold War is long-gone, and it's no longer as simple as "NATO vs Warsaw Pact" in which is was fairly easy to see which side you'd want to be on, I also don't think Article 5 is worth the paper it's written on.

For instance, would your country's citizens be happy to join a war over Taiwan?

Thing is, Putin has boxed himself in; he's said publicly that Ukraine is not a thing, that so-called Ukrainians are in fact Russians, and that he aspires to a Peter-the-Great-style Russian empire stretching from Vladivostok to the Baltic.

The only "off-ramp" I can see being halfway-acceptable to Putin would be for Ukraine to surrender their claims to Donbas and Crimea, in exchange for Russian security "assurances". Even that would make Putin look weak; he's declared that one his goals is to "demilitarise" Ukraine. To do that he would have to conquer the whole of Ukraine.

So any promise by Putin to accept a proffered "off-ramp" would be seen with a very jaundiced eye by Balkan, Central European and Baltic states. And by me, actually.

I'm no warmonger; far from it, I've been mostly a pacifist most of my life. But any "off-ramp" plans would either be unacceptable to Putin, or they would lead to a new war.

I'm afraid it looks pretty bad.

He built the Summer Palace in St. Petersburg in emulation of the European palaces he visited on his tour of Europe. But unlike European palaces, in the Summer Palace he installed a torture chamber, in which he personally tortured then murdered his own wife. He seems to have enjoyed torture and murder.

This is the model that Putin so admires.

I don't know that it's yet possible to ascribe any war-crimes to Putin personally. The crimes that I've heard tell of are of the kind that might be carried out by low-morale troops in any army.

Of course, the Russian army in Ukraine necesssarily have low morale; they've been ordered to attack and kill people that their own leader has said are their "brothers".

Low morale in the Russian armed forces is a persistent problem; in WWII Russian assaults, Russian machine guns were positioned in the rear, to kill any Russians that thought to fall back. It's not surprising that in the fall of Berlin, there was widespread looting and rape by Russian soldiers.

All soldiers behave like this, to a greater or lesser extent. But this Russian army has been engaged in city-flattening, rape and murder to a shocking extent.

Personally, I'm not inclined to forgive. But that's not my call; I'm not Ukrainian.

Objectively, this is not true. Putin wanted war. Leadership around him wanted war too. They wanted war they will win fast, but even if that succeeded it would be war too.

I wish I believed that. His credibility depends entirely on his ability to threaten (to poison his opponents, to flatten cities). He's a strong man, and he can't afford to be seen to back down.

Here's the only off-ramp I can see working:

"Mr. Putin, you can keep your yachts and your offshore wealth; you won't be pursued for warcrimes. But you must exile yourself from Russia, and never darken the world stage again."

I don't think Putin would accept that deal; he'd rather go down with his ship. He thinks he's Peter The Great.

Anything less is appeasement.

Putin has demonstrated again and again that he will interpret any de-escalating, sensible political moves as weakness. Any attempt at appeasement or compromise will be seen by him as an invitation to dare the next aggressive step.

Hungary is also a NATO member and yet its president (Mr. Orban) has been quite chummy with Putin.

https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/germany-nuclear-powe...

There is more "evidence" that Merkel is a long-term Russian intelligence asset, recruited from her youth in East Germany,[1] than that of Trump being the same. One guess on which claim is incessantly repeated by the bien-pensants of the chattering classes.

Bonus: Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

[1] Something else never talked about is how her parents moved from West to East Germany when she was a baby

Both Finland and Sweden signed a defence agreement with the UK yesterday. Norwegian newspapers has claimed Denmark, Iceland and Norway are also going to offer Finland and Sweden military aid in case of Russian shenanigans during the application process. That leaves both Finland and Sweden fairly safe, and the only noteworthy risks would be cyber warfare and Russian psy-ops used to turn public opinion against a NATO membership.

As for the application process itself, Stoltenberg pretty much promised a swift handling in the NATO end of things, but as you mention, it has to be unanimous and there is always a chance someone with power might be in Putin's pocket, or oppose the idea for other reasons.

Some agremeents are made through the normal legislative process for each country, and are enforceable by international courts.

These promises by heads of UK and Finland are not that kind of enforceable agreements, as they have not been approved by the legislature. They are just political statements by heads of state.

By attacking Ukraine Russia wanted to "push" NATO away from its borders, but it all went backwards - now they will have a new, 1300 km long border with NATO member countries.

Russian fleet in Petersburg can be decommissioned now, as there is no merit to maintain it while Gulf of Finland can be easily blocked and is under traditional artillery control from Estonia and Finland side (it is just 80-100 km wide).

In fact in case of military conflict Petersburg is lost, can be attacked from the West and the North by land and covered by long range rocket artillery like Himmars (it is just 200 km away from Finnish and Estonian borders).

Same story with Murmansk harbor, it will be very difficult for Russia to defend it against attack from Norway and Finland given the very long and fragile supply line - a single E105 route, 1000 km long or train connection that goes along that route. Imagine famous Kiev 60 km convoy multiplied by 10 and attacked not by post-soviet era weapon that Ukraine had but by state of the art equipment.

Russia will have to put a lot of forces over there to be able to protect new attack line that they have opened by themselves. Build hell a lot of new infrastructure, provide logistic support, etc. The costs will be exorbitant.

When countries like Poland, Romania or Baltic countries became NATO members it was clear that they will need to be protected by western armies (although Poland is quickly catching up with its military potential, other countries is developing too). Right now situation is different: two very strong, well equipped, well trained armies are joining the Pact.

Another 300 modern tanks, Sweden by itself has more than 400 modern combat aircrafts of various types, Finland has just contracted 60 F-35 (with loyal wingman option that doubles the potential in future), plus artillery and other best of class equipment.

Indeed, Putin, Gerasimov and Shoygu are master strategists.

Ah...if I recall, the Germans - with a very large, experienced, and well-equipped army, at the time - assumed that St. Petersburg could be taken fairly easily back in 1941. That turned out not to be the case.

There were also somewhere on the order of 350-400 thousand Soviet soldiers killed in the battles around Leningrad.

It's pretty hard to "take" a multi-million person city if the residents are willing to accept double-digit-percentage fatality rates to prevent it... The big unknown is always whether they will be willing to accept it.

According to Wikipedia [1], the Swedish airforce has only 207 aircraft in total, only 71 of which are combat aircraft (JAS 39 Gripen).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force

They just want Russia to sink and don't really care about the fate of Europe.

In practical reality, if Russia were to attack Finland or Sweden now, the answer from NATO would be pretty much the same as if they were already members.

Really? Why is this true of Finland but not Ukraine?

Besides, Finland has been a close NATO ally for a long time, shares NATO values, our military is already 100% NATO compatible, and we are strategically and geopolitically a pretty important piece of the puzzle.

The latter is important, NATO is not a hired gun. Finland does have a stable border.

Not to mention Crimea, whose annexation by Russia is accepted by nobody.

"In response to the deteriorating situation in the Donbas, Russia abandoned its hybrid approach, and began a conventional invasion of the region. The first sign of this invasion was 25 August 2014 capture of a group of Russian paratroopers on active service in Ukrainian territory by the Ukrainian security service (SBU)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War#:~:text=In....

Sweden would probably get stronger support for other reasons, like being perceived as an established democratic western country.

That is a problem like eu that need to be handled, especially now that turkey is in the way. I think one has to rethink. The key is what are these military alliance is for. For democracy then we can have an alternative one.

A new alliance covering South Korea, japan, Taiwan, Australia, eu, Sweden, Finland, Canada …. Soviet Union is gone.

Turkey is a liability as it is not a democracy. And it is a problem.

So what? They only have themselves, or rather Putin, to blame. He's forfeited the right for them to have any meaningful input into the decision.

Announcing your firm intention to join before negotiating those parts seems like a good way to be paying over the odds forever...

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/02/27/german...

Likely must of the activity Finland can do will be around Baltics. Like sharing air space control with Estonia.

Sure, that means if some country were to pay nothing for theirs -- i.e. don't have any -- then the others would have to do all the defending of that country, and so "pay indirectly"... If that country were attacked. That's why NATO agreed that members should spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense, and it is many of them not having got up to that level yet that the USA (especially under Trump) has been complaining about.

But still, that's all within each country's own budget. There are no monetary transfers to and from countries such as "membership fees" or "subsidies" within NATO. (At least not any significant ones that I know of. Maybe some smaller stuff like, Idunno, base rentals or port fees?)

Remember, NATO is not just a defensive pact, but also command structure set up to enable the member forces to be utilized as a single cohesive force, rather than just a bunch of allied but disjointed forces. That means communication systems, and setting up unified commands to which portion of member forces can be assigned, making sure equipment and communications systems are intercompatible, etc.

This central funding money is pretty negligible compared to the 2% spending on defense commitment of members. Like the whole central funding would be around 6% of Germany's military budget, but would be fraction of a percent of the US budget. However the central funding is shared amongst all the members. Germany's actual share ends up around 1% of its military budget, UK's actually share is about 0.6% of the UK's budget, and the US share might as well be a rounding error, being my my quick calculations less than a tenth of a percent of the overall budget.

It's certainly not nothing, but is is not like we are talking about super significant portions of countries military budgets.

Thanks in a dark sense Russia basically sealed the Ukrainian identity and possibly the nato. With Ukrainian blood and theirs.

How can a chess playing nation think so badly. Just bomb others to surrender … Mongolian blood?

Yeah, pretty much. The Russian army in Ukraine apparently consists disproportionately of recruits from Dagestan, Tatarstan, Tuva, etc, etc. Ethnic Russians are under-represented.

This is the clip about Salami Tactics and the Nuclear Deterrent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4

Russia chose to try the other way. Sooner or later it will end up with them having to adjust their perception anyway.

Sooo... Which do you think needs adjusting; current geopolitical / geographical reality, or the Russian perception of national security? Are you saying he's right that the status quo ante, up to Feb 23 was an "existential threat" to Russia by NATO? Or even a variant with Ukraine in NATO -- would that have made NATO suddenly much more likely to attack Russia than without it?

___

(1): But preferably: Paris. Or, better yet, Lisbon.

NATO? For all the propaganda about evil NATO about to attack Russia, the troops that Russia normally has stationed against NATO and Finnish borders are now all in Ukraine getting their asses kicked. The NATO and Finland borders are empty. Ergo, in reality Putin is not (correctly so) afraid of any NATO attack.

I though Ezra Klein’s interview with Masha Gressen and some of his other interviews were quite good at helping inform: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

The Finnish border isn’t that much closer to any important parts of Russia than the Baltic states already were. The strategic difference is perhaps mostly in how difficult it might be for Russia to attempt what they did to Ukraine on a Baltic state. The scenario is a swift invasion and an annexation being fait accompli and a threat of Nuclear use if any NATO countries come to their defense under Article 5. That would have been a sticky situation for NATO in the past (at least we thought so until we saw their military performance lately) but will be less so with Finland in the alliance.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

Good info, but keep is frankly weird perspective in mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...

I think Serbs may disagree on that. In the end, NATO is the US and it's dependent vassal states. With neighbors like these, I can sympathize with Russia not being too comfortable.

I personally would have preferred, if the operation had not been carried out under the label of NATO, but instead in the names of the participating countries or something else. Anyway, in later conflicts where NATO was involved it avoided to participate directly under its own name. For instance the operations in Afghanistan, though under offcial NATO leadership, was carried out by an "International Security Assistance Force" (ISAF).

Nevertheless, I still hold that NATO is, at its core, a defensive alliance, since there is no obligation for the members to assist each other in anything else than an unprovoked attack on their territories. Beyond that, NATO structures have been used for various missions, often including non-members -- even Russia itself, as in the NATO-led "Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina" (SFOR) in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Such mission had always been case-by-case decisions, not imposed by the NATO treaty. Furthermore, there have been numerous examples where individual NATO members have been extremely critical of US missions or certain measures. For this reason in particular, I consider the talk of "vassal states" to be quite unobjective.

Yeah... I guess if you are convinced you're on the side of the good guys(tm), you really can't do wrong.

[1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/09/07/UN-court-rules-no-ge...

And Romania in 1940.

Why doesn't it make sense? I'm not for Russia nor for NATO, but what is the purpose of the alliance if not against Russia as a remnant of the cold war?

Wasn't the same kind of reasoning used by the USA for Cuba resulting in its ~blockade~ "quarantine" and almost war/invasion?

It seems to me there's a certain rhetoric meant to cast Putin as a crazy warmongering dictator who foolishly wishes to revive the Soviet Union. In part this may be true, but it seems to me that these arguments are meant to distract our gaze away from the US (and NATO in extension) as the global superpower it is, how historically it has moved against the USSR and Russia and its part in the world stage.

*Obviously Putin/Russia is to blame for invading Ukraine.

edit: Adding a few words because I think I have not been clear. I'm not arguing for Russia or against NATO. I'm arguing that from Putin's perspective it makes sense; an alliance historically against the USSR, now expanding near Russia's borders can be seen as a potential threat.

The rhetoric is "I was watering my garden and some crazy guy attacked me", but that is removing the context. And that context exists even if you believe that NATO=good & Russia=bad.

2) Cuba was "allowed" to stay in the Eastern block (but not to host nuclear weapons). Ukraine was not "allowed" to join NATO, by comparison

3) Russia has nuclear/nuclear capable weapons inside NATO (Kaliningrad), not the other way around. EDIT: Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave surrounded by NATO members + bordered by the Baltic

You could run the same analysis for the US involvement in Vietnam.

1) The US was anti colonial after WW2 (the US assumed colonial holdings would foment communist uprisings), and had given the Philippines it independence.

2) The US had no real strategic interest in Vietnam beyond a non-communist aligned country. it had negotiated a neutral policy towards Laos with the communist bloc. It wasn’t interested in resources or territory, at least not in anyway similar to what France had done.

Why on earth would North Vietnam think that US was just replacing France as a colonial power? That’s absurd! No way they think that, it’s just rhetoric!

——-

Of course after decades of being under the colonial yoke of France, Vietnam had a very different perspective. It was clear post-WW2 France was hell bent on restoring the colonial structure. And the only thing France understood was military defeat.

So the North, very reasonably, thought the US was lying about any sort of “neutrality in IndoChina” and that Vietnam would have any sort of independence. So they held to a hardline and were willing to sacrifice 2M+ Vietnamese for the goal of total victory and independence.

Think about it from Russia’s perspective. They had warned in 2015 about their "red line" for NATO expansion.

On territory, Russia can have a different view and they are entitled to it - but doesn't change that it is a wrong perception. Not sure, if Russia's perspective should then guide policy "in the West".

I understand you think that perception is wrong, but remember, global geopolitics is not about "who is right", it's about "how do we find the least violent solution to this conflict".

If you read MacNamara's book on Vietnam, he actually goes back and talks through the war with the North Vietnamese leaders at the time. The big takeaway was there were plenty of opportunities to de-escalate the conflict (acknowledged by both sides), but each side was so sure they were right that there was no backing down.

It's a tough pill to swallow to realize you could have gotten the same thing as you have today without killing a few million of your own citizens.

Edit: Your reply "If Russia wants to go nuclear over this, then so be it" is the most horrifying thing I've read in a while. But regardless there is a lot of evidence to show if Hitler had been restrained early in the lead up to WW2, before Germany had rearmed, it could have prevent WW2.

Also not sure it is always about "least violent solution", was WWII the least violent solution or what would have been the least violent one and how could it have been reached?

The argument is "if the US could be so wrong about the best path forward in Vietnam and Iraq, why are we so sure we're right about Ukraine"?

Instead of viewing everything from a US/Western European/NATO lens, take a step back and ask "If I were Russia how would I view this?".

The idea is that if not expanding NATO stops Russia from invading Eastern European countries, then that seems like a good trade off versus what we have now.

Of course the criticism is "Russia would have invaded anyways even if NATO hadn't expanded". And maybe that's right, but we'll never know at this point since that decision was never made.

Like I said, the US was wrong to invade Vietnam and Iraq, and Russia is just as wrong to invade Ukraine.

> take a step back and ask "If I were Russia how would I view this?"

As a big mistake. Russia is not getting anything out of this that's going to help Russia in any way. Russia has made itself the enemy of everybody around them. They've completely alienated all Ukrainians, nearly half of which used to be friendly towards Russia.

> The idea is that if not expanding NATO stops Russia from invading Eastern European countries

"Expanding NATO" is the wrong way to look at this. NATO doesn't expand itself, it accepts new members who apply to join NATO. NATO hasn't conquered anyone. Membership is entirely voluntary.

NATO membership has shown itself to be the best protection against Russian aggression; Georgia and Ukraine have been invaded, but Estonia has not. Refusing membership to Estonia in a faint hope that Russia would not attack is a dangerous game to play with an entire country.

And maybe a better analogy is if your next door neighbor was blasting music at 2am.

They’re wrong but you have a choice:1) call the cops and now you have a pissed of neighbor you get to live with forever or 2) go over and nicely ask them to turn it down.

The neighbor is wrong and your right to call the cops but you may just screw yourself over rather than just nicely asking them to turn it down.

That's how Russia gained it's land area. Pure fucking violence. I have no idea while western colonialism has been judged harshly no-one in the west has spent much effort lamenting the fates of the people subjugated by Russia.

This is not you neighbour blasting music. This is a narcist psycho terrorizing the neighbourhood by wanton burglary and murder. For years. The war in Ukraine is this psycho once again breaking in, shooting your grandmother, raping your son, stealing your washing machine and then telling everyone proudly how rightfull he was to do so.

They went in with the full intent to end Ukrainian identity once and for all. Pure genocide. The last time they tried this was by manufacturing a famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

What's the best analogue to think about this? While Germany was effectively de-nazified after ww2 Russia never de-stalinized or made amends for it's imperial stance. You really have to think of the Russian state you would think about Germany if it was run by third reich institutions.

The statement I was making was "everyone benefits when problems are resolved with minimal bloodshed".

Do you disagree with that?

I believe Ukraine needs all the weapons and support so the war can end in a clear Ukrainian victory.

My current view is pretty much aligned with PM of Estonia Mrs. Kallas: “I think what everybody has to understand is that peace is not an ultimate goal if it means that the aggression pays off”

https://www.newstatesman.com/international-content/2022/05/e...

NATO members are more than willing to "fight Russia to the last Ukrainian", but I guarantee that if things really heat up, they'll throw Ukraine under the bus just like they did South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.

The best outcomes for everyone involved is some settlement where Ukraine continues to exist and NATO and Russia both agree to not interfere. See the agreement over Laos in the 1960's - neutrality.

The difference with Vietnam couldn't be bigger: in Vietnam, the US was fighting other people's war, most of whom didn't want it. The US was fighting the local population much of the time. This is pretty much the most generous way to interpret Russia's position in the war. Ukraine is fighting for itself, for their country and their freedom, because they know what will happen if Russia wins.

It's not NATO that's demanding that Ukraine fights; it's Ukrainians themselves who want to fight, because they know they can't afford to lose. And Ukraine has the people, they just need the weapons.

> The best outcomes for everyone involved is some settlement where Ukraine continues to exist and NATO and Russia both agree to not interfere.

That's what everybody thought, but Russian promises not to interfere turned out to be worthless. This agreement existed, but Putin broke it. He wants to control Ukraine, and made that very clear. He denies that Ukraine has any right to determine its own fate.

Asking NATO not to interfere is asking NATO to allow Russia to take over Ukraine.

Again, you’re making the same mistake nations make when they get into wars.

I guarantee when the shooting stops - 1) Ukraine will have lost strategic territory, 2) Ukraine will not be a part of NATO and 3) NATO will disengage.

That’s a full on win for Russia. That’s exactly what they stated they wanted back in 2015.

The simple fact is that Russia can't force a victory, and neither can Ukraine. So the issue becomes who can hold out the longest, and with the support it's getting, that's probably Ukraine.

The only way to stop Ukraine from joining NATO, by the way, is to keep the war going. As soon as there's a peace deal, Ukraine will apply to join NATO and will probably be accepted this time. If Russia wants to prevent that, it has to offer security guarantees to Ukraine that are a lot harder than the ones they broke last time, and that will include returning all occupied land. I think that's very unlikely to happen.

Russia will probably keep Crimea, because that's impossible for Ukraine to take back. Even so, they might be stuck with sanctions.

And I'm not sure why you think Ukraine can outlast Russia? Russia has 10x the GDP and 3x the population. They're also holding oil and gas over Western Europes heads.

Take a look at the exchange rate for the ruble. It's higher than before the war. Russia is forcing people to buy their gas with rubbles. They have way more leverage than you think they do.

No NATO country will provide anything more than arms. Hell, Germany had to be pressed to provide anything remotely useful.

Russia will grind it out, and once Ukraine realizes their victory will destroy the country and NATO won’t swoop in to save the day, they’ll compromise.

Keep dreaming. There's no way Russia can possible get everything it wants. They'll have to compromise, and so will Ukraine.

That's awkward language. Who gets to grant permission for the invasion of a foreign country?

The question is whether it's legitimate to go to war against the invader. NATO is not a schoolmaster, issuing invasion passes. Unfortunately NATO doesn't have clean hands (Libya, and arguably Iraq).

Though in this particular case, the demands Putin made before the invasion, that NATO should promise never to allow Ukraine in, and should abandon eastern Europe entirely, sounded a lot to me like Putin was basically demanding permission to invade those countries.

Because while NATO can't give permission to invade, it can most certainly enforce a denial of that permission by defending the target of the invasion. And that's what Putin was asking from NATO: a promise not to defend Ukraine or any other country in eastern Europe.

Could it? Isn't that in direct opposition to the declared purpose of the UN?

NATO is now trying to prevent escalation while still trying to help Ukraine and prevent it from being conquered. The problem is that now there's a violent and bloody stalemate. It needs to stop, but the only way to stop is for Putin to pull his forces out of Ukraine, and he's not going to do that without some very strong arguments.

2) "Allowed" yes, disregarding the sanctions/embargo in place these last 60 years.

3) My geography knowledge is a bit spotty, but isn't Kaliningrad part of the Russian Federation (even if an exclave, between Lithuania & Poland)? Also I don't know if indeed there are nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.

I am not arguing that NATO is worse, my point is that NATO is the West's/USA's tool and regardless of whether you see it as an instrument for justice/good, historically it very much has been against Russia's interests and arguably still is. You may consider NATO a force for good and Putin/Russia evil, thus giving legitimacy to NATO's existence & operations, that does not mean that Putin/Russia perceiving NATO as a threat "makes no sense".

It was annexed by Russian in 1945 and had its entire population forcibly moved (a war crime even at the time).

I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it certainly isn't true.

For example, a defense alliance that included all nations, would defend against aliens.

I repeat, a defense alliance must be, by definition, protecting the members from external threats. I don't think it's a very difficult concept to grasp.

So, for NATO there _was_ a _defined threat_ it sought to protect against. In general, all alliances are made against perceived present or future threats, if you are _actually_ aware of an alliance being made with no external threat in mind, please let me know.

NATO was flexible for these purposes because it was not defined or structured around any particular threat, but as a general-purpose regional security organization with a mutual defense commitment adaptable to changing threat circumstances.

And yes, a defense alliance can be flexible and change its objectives with the times, that's not counter to the point I was making. I'm not sure how to better express myself, I really think it is obvious that a defense alliance must be defending its members from _external_ threats.

If there is no possible threat (real or perceived, present or future) then no alliance is formed. That is the whole purpose, _the definition_ of a defense alliance.

I don't know how to express this notion with more clarity.

2) But still Cuba was permitted to stay within the Eastern block. Why did Russia not choose to just sanction Ukraine then but allow NATO membership (that would the comparison)

3) Yes, of course, but really surrounded by NATO members. Could you imagine Russia permitting a NATO exclave inside Russia? And Russia certainly makes it sound like they have nuclear weapons there (see their latest drill last? week)

Russia/Russian government is allowed to perceive it any way he wants, but that might not dictate NATO policy.

Also, picking this from a comment of yours further below:

>In the end, not sure it really matters how Russia sees the situation to be honest or what Russia thinks is relevant to them in.

Obviously Russia wanted Ukraine under their influence and NATO stood against that. It really _does_ matter how Russia sees things, now there's a war in Ukraine.

2) Probably because Russia sanctioning Ukraine would not be as debilitating for the country as the embargo against Cuba has been for Cuba.

3) You're talking about land that is part of the Russian Federation since 1945, is very close to Moscow and the mainland and is surrounded by NATO members because Poland and Lithuania joined NATO in 1999 & 2004. I'm not sure you're making any sense in this. Also, it's nowhere near the USA, Russia's main adversary.

At the end of the day, yes NATO and the USA may do as they wish, will removing Ukraine from Russia's influence lead to better lives for the Ukrainian people? Will this war that has already caused so many deaths and so much pain, be worth it? I don't know, and I don't think anyone can answer with much certainty.

1. NATO isn't a country, and can't annexe anything.

2. Former Soviet states are states that are no longer Soviet. NATO didn't ccoerce Poland and Lithuania into joining.

Your notion of what annexation means is at odds with mine.

2. I said nothing about coercion.

Care to speak to the point I made, which I'll repeat for clarity:

> Arguing that this somehow means that NATO is more tolerant of having Russian forces "within its borders" is absurd

or would you prefer to find issue with other irrelevant or imagined details?

This was not yet the case during Cuban missile crisis BTW.

> Why doesn't it make sense?

Because Moscow has been in range of missiles for decades, Baltics and Finland and Ukraine in NATO or not.

Having a state that you don't trust on your borders is not a justification for invasion. Hell, the UK trusts neither France nor Germany; both have attacked the UK, and planned to invade it, in the last 200 years. Lots of countries have neighbours they don't trust, but (on the whole) they don't launch unprovoked wars.

There's one problem with that statement above when I said this:

>zero political support in the west for aggression against Russia or the acquisition of Russian territory

The problem is the west and Russia have very different ideas about what constitutes Russian territory. Putin has been crystal clear, in numerous speeches and written statements, that he considers several other countries 'Russian territory' including Belarus, Georgia, the 'stans' and Ukraine.

Ukraine joining the EU or NATO would forever take it out of the political and economic domination of Russia, and that's what he can't tolerate. In his mind that's a hostile takeover of territory that rightfully belongs to Russia and that's why he went to war. It's why in his opinion he had to go to war. He's not actually lying when he tells Russians that the west forced his hand and this is about the defence of Russia, because in his mind Ukraine is Russian territory in the same way that China considers Taiwan Chinese territory. When he says Russia, he doesn't mean the same thing that NATO leaders say when they use the same word.

So those who say they agree with Putin or agree that NATO forced his hand, are signing up to the same view of the status of Ukraine and therefore the Ukrainian people.

I think that bombing Serbia was probably the rupture that has led us to the terrible situation we have in Ukraine now.

The fact that you call it "the issue of Kosovo" is telling.

The problem here is that when you give a defensive alliance a mandate to defend entities that are not covered by it's mandate it becomes a de-facto offensive alliance.

There's a question of semantics here of course. We're contrasting aggressive and defensive military action. I don't see how characterising military action in defence of others as aggressive is a useful or meaningful characterisation. It's defensive, just not defensive of yourself.

Also let's look at the objectives. The intention in Kosovo wasn't to invade Serbia but to end ethnic cleansing. The fact it took force to achieve that was a means to and end, not an end in itself. Without the ethnic cleansing there would have been no military action, so it wasn't about territory or aggression.

If the way you choose to prevent genocide is by marching an army into a foreign country, that's called "offense". Your argument is sophistical.

Actually, it does. Kosovo and Iraq are clear evidence that NATO is not a defensive pact. Neither attack was preceded by a judicial ruling that genocide was occurring (and genocide is very difficult to prove).

I'm afraid those attacks seriously undermined NATO's moral authority as a "defensive pact".

NATO was defending Kosovo from a war of aggression and ongoing genocide.

Except that Kosovo was not a part of NATO so you can't say that NATO is a defensive alliance unless you are going the Roman way of pre-emptive defence[1].

[1] All Roman wars were officially defensive because they believed gods would not support an offensive war

I don't have to agree with Putin to say that I can understand Russia's issues with Ukraine. Saying that Putin's/Russia's attitude makes sense, does not mean I agree with it. It's in Russia's interests that Ukraine should be under Russia's influence, and in USA's interests that Ukraine be away from this influence and under their own, NATO serving as a tool for this.

Now would the Ukrainian people's lives be better if under the EU's/NATO's influence, instead of Russia's? Maybe. Right now though, there's a war. Would a pro-Russia regime in Ukraine (& not trying to join NATO) have resulted in no war? Is the war worth it? Time will tell.

It's not just about whether the Ukrainian's lives would be better from any observer's opinion. Nor is it a matter of them 'being under ... influence' as though they have no agency and are simply chaff blown in the wind. This conflict is fundamentally not about influence over Ukrainians, but about the Ukrainian people's right to self determination.

This whole situation is often framed as the power and influence of great powers over regional pawns. That is not at all what this is about. Until February this year the USA as a nation barely even registered that Ukraine existed, let alone whether they had any influence over it. Ukraine was a patch of land along the route of a Russian gas pipeline, and that's the only reason it was important at all. The USA couldn't have cared less. It was an addendum to a footnote in their foreign policy, hence the feeble and deliberately ineffectual response to the annexation of Crimea.

What triggered the Russian annexation of Crimea, was it US foreign policy shifts? A buildup of NATO forces? No, it was the Maidan protests in Kyiv bringing down a pro-Kremlin regime, and free and fair elections in Ukraine clearly indicating the Ukrainian people wanted to turn west. It was action by the Ukrainian people that triggered that response, not NATO. They are the ones driving this shift, and that's why all of this is even more maddening for Putin because he sees this as a traitorous betrayal of Russia by Ukrainians, by daring to think that they have any right to do so.

This is why I talked about "signing up to the same view of the status of Ukraine and therefore the Ukrainian people"

For one, I think you are seriously misrepresenting USA's position. It's the biggest military power in the West and possibly the world, a country with military bases and operations all around the world. That the USA does not concern itself with other countries' matters is, sorry to say, laughable.

I also don't agree with your position that this is about the Ukrainian people's right to self determination. I think it's much closer to civil war, with "pro-Russia" Ukrainians, especially in the Donbas region, against "pro-Ukraine" Ukrainians. In 2014 that the pro-Kremlin regime fell, I remember some 50 people were killed in a burning building in Odessa. And the pro-Russia separatists of Donetsk & Luhansk were persecuted by the (corrupt) governments of Yatsenyuk & Poroshenko. Leading among those fighting against the pro-Russia "terrorists" was the Azov battalion, with several ties with neo-Nazis. It received military aid from the US up until 2018. And Ukraine has been receiving significant military aid from the US since 2014.

So to me, what you define as "right to self determination" seems more like nationalism in Ukraine backed by the USA to squash pro-Russia movements and separatists.

Lastly, I don't think that recognizing that big players like the USA, China, Russia can, and do, exert their power and influence to meddle in other countries, means that the peoples of those countries are "regional pawns". But framing it in a way that excludes their influence means you miss the big picture.

Either you know shit about Ukraine 2013-2014 or you are just a Russian propaganda tool.

Social media and the news is full of Russian speaking Ukrainians describing the killing of their family members, destruction of their homes, abuse by Russian troops.

Don't know why you've been downvoted; Putin's MO is to openly support dissidents in neighbouring countries; declare that the dissidents are being persecuted or "genocided"; encourage the dissidents to declare a republic; and then move an army in, to defend the bogus republic.

Declaring that Ukraine is part of Russia doesn't make it so.

Is not confined to neighbors. It seems that Putin secretly offered 10.000 soldiers to the crooks in Cataluña to "defend" the new republic after the independence declaration. Has been playing the amoeba game for a long time:

"During his visit (2017), Medoyev drew parallels between Catalonia and pro-Russian, theoretically independent republics such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia"

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2017/10/26/inenglish/15090...

Puigdemont talked with Russia the day before declaring the independence of Catalonia.

https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/putins-envoy-allegedly-of...

I didn't know that Russia had offered troops to support Catalunya; it doesn't surprise me. Part of his approach has been to interfere anywhere he can, whatever the ideological situation is, to stir up chaos. I think his goal is to create dissent between western peoples and nations, and undermine their unity.

It's not working very well just now. It's having the opposite effect.

I've long thought that his "create as much chaos as possible" approach was childish - like, I don't like school, so I think I'll set fire to it. Or, you don't show me enough respect, so I'll throw stones through your windows.

He wants to be treated as a serious world leader; but he behaves like an 8-year-old having a tantrum. Any parent knows that you don't negotiate with an enraged 8-year-old. It's a waste of time, if not counter-productive.

Its not so obvious if you've been paying attention to NATO expansion, as compared to NATO promises.

NATO bases have been being used to launch crimes against humanity and war crimes (with seeming impunity) for decades - the Russians have good reasons to want NATO to stand down.

The West has a long and sordid history of committing war crimes, and then ignoring their war criminals - indeed, leaving them in charge with cart blanche to commit yet more wars.

This fact seems easily ignored by those rooting for NATO's triumph, but for those of us who have been paying attention to the Wests' war crimes - for decades - the argument that 'there is nothing to worry about because NATO are innocent' falls very, very flat.

A lot of countries bordering Russia have been invaded in the past 30 years by Russia. Always leaving a trail of warcrimes, poverty, rapes, murdered and tortured civilians etc.

None of these countries were NATO members. No wonder Eastern Europe were eager to join NATO.

NATO is not perfect, neither are the member countries, but compared to Russia, it is pretty much sparkles and rainbows.

(edit: typos)

The CIA has entered the chat.

>A lot of countries bordering Russia have been invaded in the past 30 years by Russia.

I assure you, the West has invaded - and left in utter ruin - far more sovereign democratic nations than Russia has. It was only able to do that due to NATO support, from which bases many crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed.

The Russians know this about NATO, even if Americans don't.

If you are not a Ruzzian troll go to a subrredit for n eastern country and ask the people there what they think about NATO and Russia, like go to r/romania . I assure you we don't need CIA propaganda to understand the danger Russia was and is for our freedom and unfortunetly for our brothers in Moldova that got screwed hard and might get cewed more in future but the Russians.

Though I can understand if you have no idea about the history in Easter Europe and only follow the conflicts where US and their friends get involved you might have a big bias.

There are as many states in this region who want to ally against NATO because of its war crimes and crimes against humanity - however I wager those states are not on your radar since you clearly live inside the media bubble created for you by the literal makers of bombs to be dropped by NATO forces in future wars.

Living in eastern Europe does not guarantee a balanced view of the situation, though. Russia is a very large part of eastern Europe, and balanced views of the situation will get you thrown in prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St...

The thing is, even within the CIS, Russia is the biggest threat to CIS members, not NATO. That's why Georgia left after it was invaded by Russia.

And this is the big problem with Russia: Russia has always invaded its allies. It also invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary when they were Russian allies. There's no value in allying with Russia, whereas NATO members don't get invaded.

A CIS aligned with the EU would be a superpower even China couldn't match. Imagine that ..

It's dictatorships and countries governed by corruption instead of rule of law that will always make the EU jump into bed with the US. If Russia and China want to weaken the relationship between the EU and US, they should embrace democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of information (no censorship) and respect human rights. Once that happens, the EU can afford to be critical of the US' many, many flaws.

China has no elections at all, Russia has elections, but they're not remotely fair; any credible opposition tends to have "accidents". In both countries, criticism of the leader will be punished, though in different ways.

Neither has freedom of speech or a free press. It's much more structural in China, but in Russia you can still go to prison for years simply for calling the war a war. Any attempt at independent media gets harassed in various ways.

The main difference is in corruption and rule of law: Russia is pretty much entirely a mafia state now. Any assets you have are easily stolen by someone with better connections. Any of those rich oligarchs (who generally got wealthy through corruption and connections) who speaks out against Putin, is likely to lose what they have. In China, investments are safer, because China wants to attract business. And China does make real effort to fight corruption.

China's oppression of the Uyghurs is well documented, and is a process to destroy Uyghurs as a people: a form of genocide. I don't think Russia is doing anything remotely like that domestically, but both Putin and Russian state media do argue in various ways for genocide against Ukrainians.

China is a dictatorship through rule of law; they officially deny people their rights, but at least you know what to expect. Russia is a dictatorship through extreme corruption; you might nominally have rights, but you're likely to get an "accident" if you try to exercise those rights.

Russia is (obviously) far more aggressive and expansionist. China is more interested in soft power, expanding their economy, and influencing other countries through their economic expansion; much more in line with how the EU works, for example.

But no matter how you turn it, both really hate modern liberal values like democracy, free speech, free press, and don't care much for human and civil rights.

And sure, the US has a flawed democracy and has had its share of civil and human rights violations, some of which have still not been prosecuted (Guantanamo Bay), but at least nominally they do care about those issues, many of the people care about those issues, and demand improvement on those issues. Admittedly, there's also a very vocal minority that seems to prefer turning the US into an authoritarian dictatorship (more likely Russian-style and China-style), but they're a minority and they failed at their coup.

Like I said, the US is far from perfect, but if the EU needs an ally, the US is still the only real choice. The EU should probably learn to stand on its own feet and become more independent from the US, but it should not be naive about Russia and China (which it absolutely has been).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

>China's oppression of the Uyghurs is well documented, and is a process to destroy Uyghurs as a people

It’s easy to demonstrate it’s not true: Uighurs, like other minorities, have certain privileges, like teaching kids their own language, or not being subject to one child policy. The oppression is a way to combat terrorism; essentially China is fighting the same problem US did, but in a more humanitarian fashion instead of bombing and droning.

Have you noticed that just from your description above Russia is much closer to US than to China? From unfair elections, to systemic oppression of racial minorities, to invading other countries.

What China does well, though, is to get capable people in positions of power. I guess that's partially because the people don't get a direct say. Someone like Trump would never have been able to rise to power there.

> Uighurs, like other minorities, have certain privileges, like teaching kids their own language, or not being subject to one child policy.

And also to forced sterilisation and forced labour, I guess. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

> Have you noticed that just from your description above Russia is much closer to US than to China? From unfair elections, to systemic oppression of racial minorities, to invading other countries.

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, the US has more than its fair share of problems. These need to be addressed. But it's not a dictatorship yet, and while there are people who want to end US democracy, there are also a lot of people who want to strengthen it and address its problems. But it's absolutely true that under Trump, the US moved to become closer to Putin and more like Russia. And that is not a good direction to be moving in.

It's called "indirect elections", and is also used in US for presidential elections.

>There's only a single party

Which is fundamentally different from a two party system, right? :->

>And also to forced sterilisation and forced labour

Which also happen in American prisons.

See, here's the problem: I know precisely what you're trying to say, I used to believe it myself. But then I realised that this belief simply isn't backed by facts.

But this is kind of besides the point. What matters is what “real life” looks like. Are Chinese scared to call an ambulance, because it would bankrupt them? Are random black people being shot on the street?

But for sure Russians should look at China and think something like "WTF we are not like China and we are a dump like North Korea, if Putin screws us at least if we got some better level of living".

Not sure if you are from China, I don't care about who is president there or to impose my country values on your culture, I was just explaining the big dangers of one party one man political system, there is corruption, misreporting, backstabbing, paranoia that eventually screws the population over. If the Chinese people decide freely to support the current political system(one party, no freedom of thinking and expression) then I respect their choice.

Also I don't know as much about China, Russia is here our neighbor so I know more about them, their politics, their mentality and their history so correct me if I got any factual thing wrong.

Let me tell you a joke/story from communist Romania, at a farm a pig gives birth to 2 piglets, the engineer there thinks "shit, this is bad only 2, the local communist party guy will replace me so he writes in the papers 4 piglets and submits the report, his superior seens 4 piblets and thinks is bad and he updats the report to 6, the reports is sent up and up until it reaches Ceausescu - the Romanian for life president, father of the nation and smartest dude in the country in his opinion , he reads the report and sees 12 piglets, so he decides "send 2 to export and 10 will be used to feed out people" . We were super poor, there was not enough food, fuel and stuff ... with the democarcy we get corrupted politicians that we change them and a president can at most stay for 8 years, on top of that ex prime ministers, politicians were put in prison for corruption eventually so things started to work.

China is doing good economically in present but I saying there is a danger of things going wrong if the leadership is not refreshed and some dude ass gets glued to the chair, like why would only 1 dude can be president, can't be that he is the only competent person.

Thanks for chatting, because of the language difference and distance there is not much we can know about China, but remember in this case Ukraine is my neighbor and Russia also was and kind of is our neighbor too (I had to learn Russian in school too) so we the people in East Europe we know and understand things better , there is no CIA or US media that influenced our opinion and for sure "What about USA" arguments won't work on Europeans or especially Easter Europeans. So if you don't trust american media I can provide you links to local papers and maybe Google translate can help you read them, we have many policial parties so there is no excuse that some group controls all the media, and for sure we have our idiots that would prefer not to upset Putin because there are scared of what the mad man will do.

I am old enough that I have heard direct reports from people that fought in the war and meet the Russian soldiers and people that lived under communist regime , so GTFO with your shity claim that who does not agree with you is an idiot that media corupted his mind not to live Russia.

Let me tell you, I don't love USA and I don't like the shit they done in Afganista,Iraq , I don't like what they did with the nuclear bombs in Japan, I don't like what they are doing with Assange but the fact is Russia is a bigger danger for my country and we were begging to enter NATO not because of love for USA but because we are fucking scared of Russia, and we are scared of them because we know not from media but from our direct experience what they are capable of.

Neighbours of Russia want to join NATO to prevent Russia invading them. And for good reason. No "mysterious" CIA-manipulation needed.

Also, Iraq was not a NATO war. It was just the US and UK, and many NATO members opposed it. I would certainly still like to see the US war crimes in Iraq prosecuted. But that does not in any way justify the Russian invasion or war crimes. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Both statements are valid, and have just as much evidence supporting them.

I did once have to sit through a Finn slaughtering a karaoke version of "Sweet Caroline", but I would hardly consider it a war-crime.

NATO can be a vile alliance of war criminals, AND an alliance that protects Russian neighbours against invasion.

No, they join NATO because it provides security against Russia, a neighbour they fear. And they have plenty of reasons for such fear.

Yup. And with you as the xeno, that's no wonder.

Wut? Which politicians?

The truth is, that countries want to join NATO so that Russia does not invade them. That's the sole reason.

You might want to start your journey of enlightenment here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Operations_in...

Also, you have not provided any sources on the dismissal of reasons for joining NATO. Please do link to them if you have any evidence.

As is, it looks like you're parroting anti-NATO propaganda - it seems you're acting in bad faith. Are you paid for by the Russians?

The "Ma' Russians!" claim is not worth responding to, but I'm an Australian, have lived for decades in the US and in Eastern Europe, and I no longer play the nationalist game. I've been following the Wests' war crimes and crimes against humanity since 9/11, which has led me to the conclusion that yes indeed, we are the bad guys for starting World War 3 in 2003 with the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Nice try though.

Also, you're mischaracterizing the purpose of Operation Gladio.

States join NATO in order to participate in NATO's war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to be a part of the refactoring of the sovereign states of the world that NATO is engaged in. It is literally the #1 usurper of sovereign democracy.

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio

See also:

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/9446...

Do you have any sources that support any of your other claims?

The statements made in the article is that the CIA worked with their relevant counterparts (direct financing is unconfirmed) to establish a network of stay-behind organizations in Western Europe, that was supposed to resist the potential Warsaw Pact invasion. It peaked in late 60s at the height of the Cold War, has been substantially cut down since 70s and finally dismantled in 1990, being deemed harmful as the weapon caches it made were often plundered by criminals and domestic terrorists. Details differ from country to country but it was similar in principle everywhere.

That organization seems very typical for the Cold War, but I absolutely don't see how it supports your claim that CIA instigated the post-Cold War NATO expansion with this operation, could you please point me at the specific part?

Please leave lazy, youtube-comments-style memes out of HN.

It actively engages in repressive counter-measures against any politician that calls for NATO war crimes to be investigated.

It has a long, sordid history of defeating sovereign democracies that do not toe the NATO line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Operations_in...

I assume you do not recognize the polls in for example Finland, which indicates ~22% support for joining NATO before the Russian invasion of Ukraine - to ~75% now (only 12% against)? This is all CIA manipulation?

But, I've been paying attention to NATO's war crimes over the last two decades, as well as the immensely evil crimes against humanity committed by the Wests' 5-eyes nations in their disgusting wars. Why haven't you?

I actually am well aware of the crimes committed by NATO members (I would argue that they were not under NATO mandate though, except maybe Serbia, but that's a different argument). BTW the most atrocious crimes go back way more than 20 years. I also know that many western nations have been very nonchalant about violations of international law by their own allies, and I seriously hope that one of the outcomes of this crisis is that the Europeans in particular realize that to be believable you can't close your eyes just because it's your "friends".

All the above is true, but that doesn't change the fact that the motivation of the former eastern block countries is driven by a deep skepticism/fear of Russia and their politics of invading and repressing their neighbors. There is a reason why the Baltic states and Poland are the largest supporters of Ukraine, there is very strong opposition towards the Russian state, despite all countries having large Russian minorities.

Also with the (certainly justified) complaints about the "aggressive west", lets not act like Russia is some sort of innocent victim instead of being wannabe imperialists that are worse by pretty much any standard (and China is a completely different discussion).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

It is not as if NATO randomly invaded Serbia.

I simply meant it as an example were NATO as an "entity" arguably broke international law. I say "arguably" because there is some debate about this.

That's how you troll. You reply to everything by pointing out something bad about NATO/USA/The West without answering anything.

Serious people assume good intentions on your part and waste their time with thoughtful replies only creating more opportunities for your drive-by replies.

I, in fact, answered it.

YES, I believe NATO will commit further war crimes and continued crimes against humanity in its lust to demolish Russia. It has a long history of doing so already and shows no signs that it will stop its criminal behaviours in the near future.

>Yes, I do believe that NATO is a war-crime committing, human-rights abusing entity that is bringing much death and destruction and turmoil to the world for the sake of special interests - political and commercial - who stand to gain billions in profit from every single NATO base built.

>But, I've been paying attention to NATO's war crimes over the last two decades, as well as the immensely evil crimes against humanity committed by the Wests' 5-eyes nations in their disgusting wars. Why haven't you?

So no you did not answer the question.

Now I have a question for you, how did NATO force Russia to invade Ukraine, considering it is somehow part of their plan of "continued crimes against humanity in its lust to demolish Russia".

Second question, do you think what Russia is doing in Ukraine are crimes against humanity? If not why?

"do you think any of said war crimes would actually be committed against Russia directly?"

And the answer is YES, because NATO has already set a heinous precedent for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, with seeming impunity, for decades and shows no signs of stopping its criminal war regime.

So yes, I did answer the question. You maybe don't like the answer, though.

>NATO force Russia

NATO brought weapons of mass destruction to Russias borders. Unfortunately, this has now escalated into a war where, indeed, crimes against humanity are being committed. This is not unexpected, given the nature of war as a whole. It is inexcusable whether Russians or Americans are doing it, and that is entirely the point: the worlds' powers have already set a precedent, which Russia is clearly following.

Now here is a question for you: Why is it okay for Americans to support genocide in Yemen yet call for the end of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine?

> And the answer is YES, because NATO has already set a heinous precedent for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, with seeming impunity, for decades and shows no signs of stopping its criminal war regime.

> So yes, I did answer the question. You maybe don't like the answer, though.

You seriously need to work on how you argue, because in every discussion I see here you answer in generalities, instead of specific answers. Yes now you have answered the question, but you definitely did not before.

Regarding your argument, by the same argument I could say that Russia will commit war crimes against NATO, because Russia has already set a heinous precedent for committing ware crimes for decades with no signs of stopping. That's not how this works.

> NATO brought weapons of mass destruction to Russias borders.

Which weapons of mass destruction?

Also you are saying NATO brought weapons of mass destruction to Russias borders. Let's not forget that Russia invaded and annexed Ukrainian territories in direct violation of the Budapest agreement, and that was all done for oil and gas nothing else. That triggered a massive change of public opinion about joining NATO in Ukraine, before there was only 20% support after it was well over 50%.

Also Russia already has weapons of mass destruction on NATO borders, there are already nuclear weapons in Kalingrad.

I am neither American nor do I support the war in Yemen. I actually believe the propping up of the regime in Saudi Arabia by western governments is outrageous and one of the primary reasons for instability in the region. That does not mean I defend Russia's invasion in Ukraine, nor their behavior in e.g. Syria.

Um, who called for "the end of Russia"?

And no, "do your own research" is not a valid answer.

Your claim was: "NATO is a war-crime committing, human-rights abusing entity."

The first seems to be a link collecting data points for civilian casualties. I don't see any NATO actions on there; and in any case it's missing the further evidence that war crimes and human rights abuse occurred.

The second page, on the front page anyway, has nothing about NATO whatsoever as far as I could tell.

Clearly, you're not asking for this information in good faith, or else you'd have discerned this already, even with a casual look at the Airwars reports, which details quite descriptively the nature of NATO involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As far as your glib understanding of Wikileaks, I suggest you really, really study the material.

That's not the same as committed by NATO.

Broken window fallacy [0]. That money spent on bases is a cost we'd rather not spend because it could be spent on other things or just saved with reduced taxes giving us citizens more of our money back.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

So do many, many others - thankfully:

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-soaring-prof...

Notice the constant careful weasel-wording.

They have proved that unless they are invading a much less militarily capable neighbour (being the local bully) they do not have the resources or ability to worry a NATO force. Hence the reason Sweden and Finland will now join.

Only the nuclear threat remains, which would mean the annihilation of Russia to save one mans ego if it was ever used.

Any sources, or hints at what you are referring to? I have no clue what you might be hinting at. Normally (whether I believe that statement or not) I at least have some idea what is being referred to with allegations like this.

http://airwars.org/

That's a question on everyone's mind about this whole invasion. I guess I should have said “idiotic justification as portrayed by Russian propaganda” instead of “plan”.

don't americans/west see their media/actions as what it is, propaganda aganinst russia? blocking RT across america/EU is seen as protecting free speech but god forbid if russia reciprocates with banning american companies? then its an action against free speech, again?

There is a slight difference between de-platforming Russian propaganda channels in the West, and Russia jailing anybody speaking about the war in any other terms than those approved by Kremlin.

It's worth considering that the former is probably more effective, and certainly makes fewer people upset.

Of course, we don't have evidence of a thousand Russian secret torture sites, like we do for the CIA (thanks Julian, thanks Edward), so there is some validity to the position that in fact the Wests' oppression apparatus is factually worse than Russia's, since those torture sites are spread across the globe, repressing, literally, dozens of other lesser sovereign states deemed unworthy by America's own utterly fascist military junta ..

There is a difference between "the west persecutes" and "the west is just as bad as Russia". I think just because the west does something bad does not immediately put them on the same level as Russia. Yes, both sides claim they are nigh-perfect and the other side is the worst ever. Just because both sides aren't near perfect doesn't mean that therefore both sides are equally bad.

As a side-note. One of the sides has unilaterally invaded another country with intention to annex the last year. Whilst the other countries latest invasion is 20 years old, and now generally admitted to have been a bad and illegal invasion.

Genocide is happening under NATO's watchful gaze, from its bases, with its resources.

Again: the moral authority you claim, simply does not exist.

With all due respect which is none, I don't think you personally know someone who was persecuted in some way or another. I do know several. (Assuming you're in the US)

> Of course, we don't have evidence of a thousand Russian secret torture sites

https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/12/20/human-rights-project-gu...

Also, you're exhibiting survivor bias: Russia had no Assange of its own, but this does not mean it doesn't have this kind of dirty secrets.

If you prefer the Russian system - move there. If you are totally indifferent, maybe make a coin toss.

And yes I have left my 5-eyes birth nation, and abandoned any and all ties to nationalist mental disease, over this particular issue. You should, too.

manning/assange anyone? oh they are terrorists right? for giving sensitive information to enemies but russian or chinese defectors are given "protection" because they do the same for america but if russia/china goes after them, well..... you know

But that is of course exactly what you'd say if you were a Russian troll.

I noticed the clue "Kashmiri" in your name only after my previous reply to a comment of yours. So, if that means your "third world country far away" is India... Yeah, pretty goddamn Russia-aligned. Maybe consider whether your own "neutral" media environment is really that neutral at all?

Yeah, third world countries far away have their own perspective, and it's usually at least as weird as the other two. Well, in many it's of course just a copy of he Russian propaganda; don't know about yours.

> don't americans/west see their media/actions as what it is, propaganda aganinst russia?

No. Because it isn't. Because we have free speech, with media of different persuasions all allowed to spread their own versions of the truth.

To people from dictatorships -- like Russia, or many places in the third world -- this seems impossible, because they're not used to it. So when they -- you, apparently -- see that most media in the West on the whole agree on the basic facts, the "obvious" conclusion to them (you) becomes that "This must be just their side's propaganda!". Please try, in Occam's spirit, to consider the simpler explanation: The reason they all seem to more or less agree is that they've all done their own research, and what they're reporting is the truth they've found. You hear the same from them all, because the truth is the same for everyone.

> blocking RT across america/EU is seen as protecting free speech but god forbid if russia reciprocates with banning american companies? then its an action against free speech, again?

Yes, because what the West is blocking is a state-owned and -controlled Russian propaganda channel, and what Russia is blocking are free independent media. (Well, except for the VoA perhaps.)

The Speech Putin did had some etnonationalism BS and claims of defending the land agains the threat of NATO. In most bordering NATO countries what you have is SAMs (anti-air missiles), and honestly pretty much any NATO country could claim that they feel threatened by Russian nukes.

And there's apprently plenty of gas just about the Dombass region and to the west of Crimea, such a coincidence.

So yeah, propaganda all around, but if you cut through it there isn't much left for russian sympathy.

if ukraine is fighting tooth and nail against russia(with or without help) they are equals so non-participants should abstain from taking sides. otherwise they are essentially joining the fight

Every tank Ukrainians blow up is to defend their families for rape, murder and torture.

Nobody forced the Russians to invade. Any claim to such end is a deluded fabrication.

Pacifism is simply not a morally viable stance when a country is invaded by such a brutal force. We should not cheer the loss of life. But we should support 100% Ukrainian heroism and their efforts to defend their country.

Propaganda is one of the theaters of modern war. Ukrainians seem to be quite adept at it. But this does not make their position any more suspect.

Laughable. When an armed robber enters your house and tries to kill you and you hit them back that doesn't make you and the robber equals.

The land they are standing on is Ukrainian, the russian troops standing there have no business being there.

i am not sympathizing with anyone for that matter. i am pointing out what i observe....

you know when america invaded iraq for "WMDs" and they turned out to be nothing and literally nothing happened? "strong anger" does not equate to waging a war against america like its being done against russia.

let me ask you, you and me are neither americans nor russians. did the world care when america invaded afghanistan, iraq, libya, syria and razed those nations to the ground? but god forbid russia does the same to ukraine. then its a matter of world peace. last i knew in afghanistan there were many countries whose soldiers fought along americans so all those countries were equally complicit in the crime against citizens of those nations.

why?

As for Iraq, yes people did care, there were large protests in London and Tony Blair is still hated by the general public in the UK. I don't know the real feeling in the US. The UK government didn't listen because Tony wanted his ego boost on the world stage.

The only NATO backed war of that era which had any grounds was in Afghanistan, Bin Laden attacked the US, and the US had to do something. It was executed terribly in the beginning (from what I understand the Afghans wanted to help get rid of Bin Laden) but in the end there was justification.

Iraq was illegal and only gave Russia cover for its actions against it's neighbours rich up until the Ukraine invasion.

About half of us called bullshit the instant "WMDs" were paraded as the reason to go to war.

And I think the other half have, over time, come to see the whole operation as a regretful waste of time, money, and lives.

So, no, I don't think there are any fans of the U.S. invasion of Iraq still around. Some of us are still incensed by the lies that were trotted out though.

this is the only point i'm trying to make. suppose tomorrow biden comes up and wants to invade iran for example. will american public lap it up like they have for the last so many decades, thats there but what about the rest of the world community? how many will arm IRAN against USA when they know USA to be the one who is invading? who will fight alongside USA?

USA or for that matter, "Allies" do not have the moral upper hand in the world, no one has. every nation is the same so why not accept that as a reality and move on?

russia may indeed be the bad guy here. heck, putin might be personally responsible for murder of thousands but so is bush and obama so how does that give usa the right ?

one commenter said "after 9/11 usa had to do something" and they invaded a soverign nation, destroyed it because a single person was responsible? its fine when usa takes revenge but russia cant defend its borders?

i am not a troll, i am not a paid/unpaid actor. i just want to point out that there is propaganda on both sides, thats all

> this is the only point i'm trying to make.

And it's a bad one. Because:

> suppose tomorrow biden comes up and wants to invade iran for example. will american public lap it up like they have for the last so many decades,

The very line you quoted told you that many (most?) of them didn't "lap it up" then either.

You're really not very good at this, are you?

> its fine when usa takes revenge but russia cant defend its borders?

Russia ISN'T "defend[ing] its borders"! Holy shit, how often do people have to explain this so you Putin-Versteher will get it?!? NOBODY WAS ABOUT TO ATTACK RUSSIA.

> i am not a troll

Even if you think you aren't, you're walking and quacking like one. Which in the end means you are one.

I think Putin's reasoning is that Ukraine's very independence amounts to seizing Russian sovereign territory.

What I find remarkable is the rarity of reports of Ukrainian attacks behind Russian lines (i.e. in Russian territory). As far as I can tell, they've blown up two fuel dumps and an arms dump. Given the dependence of Russia on what appear to be thin logistics lines, I'd have expected loads of missile attacks on bridges and rail junctions.

Of course, there's propaganda everywhere; perhaps Ukraine has been attacking Russian supply lines, and we're not being told, because that would serve neither Ukraainian nor Russian interests. I guess we'll have to wait until historians get their hands on the records.

The Baykratar TB-2 drone from Turkey apparently has a 4,000km range. Clearly, Ukraine has the ability to strike behind Russian lines.

If Ukraine is really trying to avoid Russian civilian casualties by declining to attack Russian supply lines, that seems foolish, and I don't believe it. I do believe that they have not deliberately attacked Russian population centres.

Russia will not want to publicise successful attacks by Ukraine on Russian military positions in Russia. They are still pretending that Russia is not at war. And Ukraine will not want to tell the world that they have hit Russian civilians, or even targets in Russia; it's advantageous for Ukraine if everyone believes this is 100% a defensive action.

But you can't defend effectively just by sitting there in your trenches; you have to strike enemy supply lines. And Russia's supply lines are vulnerable. So I assume they are being attacked. We're just not being told about it.

But only since Russia started invading. When news about Ukraine were still all about their corrupt government, breaking human rights, their horrible prisons and more like that nobody thought Ukraine to to 'close' or anything.

It's obvious the whole perception of Ukraine just suddenly changed because Russia is the bad guy.

They are European and they did not deserve this invasion and as far as I'm concerned deserve all the help and compassion the rest of us can offer.

"European" is a rather loose term. When I was a kid, Europe stopped at the border with East Germany. Later, a bunch of former soviet countries became "european" countries. Then Ukraine. For a while, Russia was acclaimed as a european country (it's still often described that way in the UK press).

Call me an old fogey, but I'm still doubtful that the former East Germany is really european yet. Being "european" is a question of culture, not of political alliances and borders.

My Ukrainian coworkers were easy to work with, easy to communicate with, hardworking and an equal to any of us in ability.

I've never made the acquaintance of a Ukrainian; I'm sure they're lovely (and familiar). I have worked with Russians; they were also charming (and familiar).

I'll ask you to clarify because it sounds, to me, like you are saying something I hope you are not.

> I've never made the acquaintance of a Ukrainian; I'm sure they're lovely (and familiar). I have worked with Russians; they were also charming (and familiar).

I'd be more than happy to embrace Russians living, abiding and supporting their nation with their labor as sisters and brothers when their country stops assaulting sovereign nations. Unfortunately, there is no one else who can stop the invasion but its own people.

I dislike jingoistic nationalism. "Historic wrongs" tends to be associated with things like revanchism and irredentism, which are political forces that lead to wars. Talk of "bravery" in warfare is normally about the glorious deeds of "our side". Nobody talks about the bravery of their enemy.

I've heard stories about despicable actions by Russian troops, which I'm inclined to believe - actions not compatible with any claim of bravery. But it seems to me undeniable that Putin, at least, has acted bravely. Perhaps "courageously" would be a better word, in the Sir Humphrey, Yes, Minister sense.

I think it is brave of Ukrainians to defend their homeland from an invading nation. It was very easy in the beginning to simply run to the nearest EU country and be taken in with open arms. It is brave of Ukrainians to say, "No, we are not yours, we are our own" and to defend that declaration when tested.

When talk of historic wrongs makes you uncomfortable I wonder what you think of Denmark celebrating its liberation from the Nazis and if talk of the historic wrong of the Nazis also makes you uncomfortable i.e. do you believe the historic wrong of enslaving our nation was wrong or do you believe it a blameless act? One can extrapolate this question to other historic wrongs such as the Holodomor.

I can't reply to your comment, so I'll reply to my own.

Bravery as virtue: virtue is a value judgement; your example about throwing children is rather reductionist, and I can't address it. If you want to argue from analogy, it's helpful to choose an analogy that isn't as extreme as throwing your own child at the enemy, and then running away.

Brave Ukrainians defending their homeland: I think most people will defend their homeland against an invader, if they have the capacity. It's normal for invaders to destroy culture, families, and cities. I'm impressed by the Ukrainian resistance; I wasn't expecting it. It's hard to deny that their resistance is brave. My surprise is mainly because I didn't think they had the capacity; after all, they gave no resistance to the invasion of Crimea.

Historic wrongs, and Denmark: I only know a little of Danish history. I am familiar with some of what happened in WWII. I think it's a terrible mistake for someone from country A to get tangled up in the "historic wrongs" committed against country B by country C. More generally, as a peace-lover, my preference is to put the past in the past, and respect current boundaries. If someone is violating current boundaries, I'm against them; but nobody is violating, nor even threatening Denmark's boundaries.

Please bear in mind that Mr. Putin's rationalisation of his invasion of Ukraine is explicitly based on "historic wrongs", specifically what he considers mistakes made by the bolsheviks in setting up the state of Ukraine. If historic wrongs is an OK inspiration for Danish nationalists, then why not for Russian nationalists? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

So I think Putin's invasion is a clear example of why making a stand on "historic wrongs" is likely to lead to misery and destruction.

I just struggle with the idea of sending weapons to a country that has a well recorded near history of human right violations. In my opinion the public voice is less about the actual people but about political fears.

But you do realize that a large part of these problems stem from the corruption and the main source of that in Ukraine was (is?) ungodly amounts of money coming in from Putins regime to bribe the shit out of everyone (mainly in the form of selling gas/oil to some local oligarch way under market price and which they then sell at market price). This whole conflict started when the Ukraine people decided to say fuck this and kicked out Putins friend out from power and Russia retaliated by taking over Crimea and give money/weapons to the seperatist in Donetsk and Luhansk.

1. Ukraine is in Europe, now that should not make a difference, but it does. Historically conflicts in Europe (in contrast to other parts of the world) have a much higher tendency to escalate into world-wide conflicts.

2. Ukraine, in contrast to Iraq, Libya and Syria is a reasonably functioning democracy (although with many issues).

3. The rhetoric out of Russia (and this is from Russian TV channels etc. not western propaganda) towards annihilation of Ukrainians is quite different to any of the things being said from the west in the other wars. There is also no evidence that in any of the other conflicts the US or its allies were using rapes as a systematic weapon against the civil population.

I also take issue with a couple of your points, you mention Afghanistan and Syria as being razed by America and its allies, you conveniently forgot the role of Russia in the destruction of those countries (Aleppo was destroyed by Russian mercenaries and Syrian troops for example). You also didn't mention Georgia, or Chechnya, were essentially nobody said anything either although it was Russia who invaded. In fact I believe most of the west was hoping for a quick win for the Russians in Ukraine as well, so they could just go back to "normal".

You say: > does not equate to waging a war against america like its being done against russia.

That is a very weird interpretation of what is going on, no matter if you believe that there is propaganda on both sides, lets not forget Russia invaded Ukraine. It is Russian soldiers fighting Ukrainian soldiers, so far no "Western" soldiers are involved so how is anyone waging war against Russia?

Finally, I find this sort of argument highly suspect. You argue that Iraq, Libya, Syria were unjust and lament the fact that there was not enough being done, but now you argue we should ignore Ukraine because it's Russia who is doing it? Is your argument, as long as the people I like do it it is ok? Were you not the one who were complaining about exactly this earlier?

For someone who is neutral, when Russia is committing war crimes, you spend a lot of your time talking about the US.

So yes there's a gregarian component to it, yet it also have a huge impact for us. Russia did this because they know we're dependent on their energy and there's little the EU can do without stomaching huge economic losses.

It's not about peace, It's about interests,a power struggle. Russia also invaded Georgia, and Azerbaijan had a war with Armenia yet the EU did almost nothing about it.

I'd really like to have a paceful relationship with Russia, as it's on our best interests, but it seems they don't think the same about us.

If I go down the street in Baramulla or Bijbehara (assuming no forces around) and ask what people think about Pak getting involved or not involved in Yemen what do you think they would say? Or about what Saudi Arabia doing? More to the point, do they think BD were traitors for leaving Pak in 1971? Or Muslims can never commit war crimes against other Muslims? Afghans never occupied Kashmir?

The invasion of Ukraine is an illegal genocidal war.

That puts all the blame on this particular conflict 100% on Moscow, and the treatment of the civilian populations underlines the lack of decency, morals and respect for human life in the Russian institutions.

The genocidal illegal nature of the war immediately bins Russian state to the level of regimes like North-Korea, Pol-Pots cambodia or Nazi-Germany. You simply to do not allow propaganda from such entities to broadcast freely when they are obviously state entities. Free speech from individuals is different.

Until recently Ukraine was only in media for their gov breaking human rights and stuff like this, and now it's suddenly the long lost brother we all love so much.

Sure RT was full of bullshit, but so are many local papers, Facebook and everything else.

People taking clear sides when all they know is very filtered propaganda is sadening at least.

No, this is incorrect. You can definitely get a pretty good picture. Saying that “you can only get a cloudy view” is a common Russian propaganda tactic aiming to neutralize the target.

Citation needed.

Coup! Coup! Remember, never call it the "Maidan Revolution", it was a coup! Oh, wait, sorry, you're not trying to prove you're a Russian troll, are you? ;-)

But honestly, I've found that's the easiest heuristic, at least on Twitter: Whenever someone talks about the 2014 "coup" (or "Putsch") in Ukraine, they're a Putler RToll (<-- tpyoed that at first, noticed how fitting it was, so capitalised it).

[1]Here I am quoting one of the articles in the image [2]https://i.imgur.com/tfJ7PtX.jpg

I think this kind of view is the default interpretation for a majority of people, since it is a tempting conclusion to draw for people who aren't well versed in the actual details they're evaluating: to the ignorant, it does look like both sides are just slinging mud at eachother, and it's inherent cynicism seems "realistic".

I think to solve this, we need to educate people on the idea of "false equivalance" (that just because two parties are engaged in conflict, does not mean they are equally to blame) and to force them to state the details of what exactly both parties are doing in order to hopefully push them to recognize there is a meaningful difference between actions.

Are you even trying? You do understand that you aren’t talking to three years old? Anyone with half a brain will understand why this rhetoric is wrong.

This only means that you're misinformed and haven't really followed the situation.

I dislike bankrupt moral equivalency arguments.

"Russia says it's blocking Facebook in alarming new censorship push" blocking facebook is censorship but blocking RT is defending free speech? nice

Well... If nothing else, both are huge spreaders of Russian propaganda. But yeah, you're right, it is funny: Maybe both should be banned in the West.

Edit: for the record I don't like the government blocking anything, but trying to point out the "hypocrisy" of the West like this isn't really very convincing to me. Looking after your own interests is not hypocrisy. Trolls need better ammo than this for the HN audience I think. You have to convince us that invading other countries and torturing PWOs is okay.

The oneupmanship rarely works out well between major powers.

It adds a lot of nuance actually. They can't say to the public that NATO proactively wants a country to join, as that would sound as an expansionistic move, so what more probably happens is that NATO first reaches out to countries that are considered strategically useful offering them a deal. Then the public is sold the narrative of the free country wanting to join NATO, that generously welcomes them under their protective wing against the evil villains. There is no other way to sell to your electorate joining NATO.

Sure there is. "Look at what happened to Ukraine".

This is a very generous description of what happened.

There has been air of forced consensus in the "discussion" between media, politicians and people on social media. People have been branded as "putinist" or "playing into Putin's hand" for merely suggesting that the decision shouldn't be rushed, and that there needs to be thorough analysis before making a decision.

Media hasn't covered Nato's history as an aggressive force, or the war profiteering. The "risks of Nato membership" have been reduced to a framing of "what will Russia do during the application process", which implies that Finland is going to join Nato anyway.

There have been a few critical voices interviewed in the media, mainly Anna Kontula. The response to this has been between "I see your points, but I don't agree with your conclusions" to "you are playing into Putin's hands" to nitpicking and taking her statements out of context in order to get a "gotcha" on her. Not any real engagement or discussion on the arguments.

Whether you agree with Finland joining Nato or not, I think there are good arguments to be made on either side. But to say that there has been any real discussion is a stretch at best. This process was rushed.

The root of the matter is that without NATO membership conscription would have become morally untenable. And hence the backbone of Finnish defence would have collapsed leading to need to kowtow to Moscow for all eternity.

Before invasion of Ukraine the economic costs on top of Finnish defence forces were considered to be sufficient deterrent to Russian agression, on top of the material and personnel costs such an invasion would cause.

Ukraine demonstrated that with political impetus, Russia does not care about either economic costs, nor about materiel or personnel costs in it's mad imperialist fantasies.

IMO The cost of NOT joining NATO would have been de facto loss of sovereignty.

Furthermore, due to the closeness of the Russian border, without NATO membership Finland would likely have been perceived as a not very good target for capital investments, killing the economy. While Finland has advanced technology, it is very capital poor - hence needs healthy injections of capital from the global market.

This to me as a Finn is the most important part. The moment your neighbor country says "you can't join alliance X" and you actually take their opinion seriously and don't due to their pressure means you just lost your sovereignty as a nation.

And Finland has experience of that from the years after WW2 under YYA[1]. While we were lucky to not be fully take into the soviet union shit just sucked. Press was heavily censored "voluntarily", got a god king president for decades (this is why the President has 0 power in internal politics now), etc. After the fall of soviet union we got rid of the bullshit of licking Russias ass and are never going back.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Soviet_Treaty_of_1948

I suggest reading on Manufacturing Consent.

People living in liberal democracies are swayed all the time. It has happened over and over again. Probably the most notable example being USA after 9/11. Bush approval rating spiked from 60% to 92%. When scary things happen, media coverage and politicians can together make drastic changes to public opinion.

There are wars and crises going on in the world all the time, and media's coverage of them or the lack thereof do change peoples minds on whether they matter or what should be done about them.

But Chomsky does not really understand the world outside US.

I am a Finn and I can guarantee Chomsky does not help you in understanding what happened here. We share 1500km border of Russia. We feel the geopolitic shifts in our backbones.

Almost every finnish male regardless of wealth or class would be up in arms as a combatant in the military if Russia was to invade. You can't have more skin in the game than that.

He does not start from the position that an individual voter would have skin in the game, or understand the consequences of political and economic actions.

Ukrainians feel in their guts their country is being invaded by an genocidal adversary. They are not driven from their homes by US capitalist fed propaganda, but by russain missiles and tanks, they take up arms not because the conscription service ran it's ad targeting the poor and the unemployed, but because their home is invaded.

Chomsky simply does not comprehend a situation where he himself would wake up one morning, take his rifle and go defend his country with the local banker, the baker and the taxi driver.

I.e. he does not understand when masses actually act out of their own volition to do something. Political events to him seem always to be a "nefarious game programmed by US capitalists to oppress the ploretariat" unless it's something directly hurting US corporate interests and then it's always universally good.

In US this view is likely more correct than not as the financial oligarchy is pretty savvy there and does play it's own game. The world and the rules can be quite different outside US.

I am in no position to estimate how well Chomskyist analysis is applicable to HK. It's just not very good tool in understanding the war in Ukraine or Finland joining NATO.

There might be some cultural context missing which would make this very hard to communicate.

Oh right, that they are a blank slate that one can just write things on? Except that’s a thesis about human beings that he has specifically argued against.

Typical “ignorant masses” projection by some vulgar Marxist interpretation.

Speaking of skin in the game: Chomsky protested against the Vietnam War. A war fought in part by conscripts on the American side. How does that jive with your condescending theory that Americans have no skin in the game?

That because those complains come from people who do know about history and politics of countries he talks about. And he has really hard time to admit that something like genocide can happen for reasons that are not caused by Americans. I mean, he has hard time to call genocide the one when it happens (unless done by Americans).

Specifically with Ukraine issue, he is one of those people who cant even hint toward non-Americans having agency or own ideas about future. If you talk about Eastern Europe as if only Russia and America existed, as if no one else was even involved and could not had ability to make own decisions, then you are the one trying to create false worldview ignoring reality.

I'm happy we are joining NATO. I'm mostly sure I was not brainwashed into it by media. I just knew intuitively the second Russian tanks crossed Ukrainian border NATO would be the best option in Finland. I can't prove it but I'm guessing lots of finns felt the same. And it was this collective feeling that spread out through the population spontaneously.

There are very few books beyond physics and mathematics with universal truths. And even those need savvy application to real world problems. Problem with chomskyism is that it sees everything through the lense of chomskyism which filters out everything else. It's like a high pass filter attuned to the detection of US human rights violations.

Finnish consent was not manufactured. It was caused by the explicit invasion of Ukraine.

As a people that has always bordered Russia and has been invaded by Russia for centuries we are quite sensitive to things affecting our relationship with it.

You feel it in your bones the weather has changed.

That's an weird assertion. People genuinly liked his first reaction.