10 years ago, it was reasonable to believe that Russia would never invade a neighboring country, so joining NATO wasn't seen as necessary or preferable to maintaining neutrality.
10 years in the future, based on what we're seeing now, Russia may have already invaded/attacked Finland and it would be too late to join NATO.
Honestly, feels a bit suspicious with all these "only well-meaning" comments from various people... Comments that just "coincidentally" seem to further Putler's agenda.
(Yeah, I may be being a bit paranoid here. But this page has some pretty obvious trolls [and at least one total tinfoil-helmet kook]. So even if I'm wrong, maybe think about whether your comments are actually all that well-thought-out, when that's what they come off as?)
NATO's main members has been involved in multiple bloody and failed wars since 1991 and is no beacon of light and humanism when it comes to war to put it lightly.
And I don't think actual government shills would bother discussing on HN. But I might be wrong.
russia is 100% committed to ukraine. there's nothing left to catch fire.
I think so too. The West would tolerate invasion by Russia of Finland even less than it is doing for Ukraine, with or without NATO membership (notably, Ukraine is not part of NATO either). All this seems to be doing is escalating the situation with a man who is perhaps more interested in holding onto power and his own life than killing a few hundred thousand in a conflict. I really think we've dropped the ball diplomatically on this one. There are surely better ways of ridding Russia of Putin than this, if that's the end game for the West.
That's not saying much. Ukraine isn't receiving military support from NATO countries. It only gets weapons, and western politicians (mostly US) keep making sure that they do not get the big guns (regarding e.g. airplanes). Initially Germany blocked Estonia from giving weapons to Ukraine, and English airplanes carrying weapons for Ukraine had to make a detour not to cross German airspace. If Ukraine was a NATO state, none of that could happen, even with some politicians being cozy with Russia, as was evident now.
US has directly supplied them with airplanes of the same type they use (not operational as is, but enabling them to return 20 of their existing aircraft to service through parts.)
"US"? Must be a typo for "Germany".
They are essentially stating that Russian gov. is aggressive enough to be a threat to them in the future but not agressive enough right now to create a "border dispute" to prevent NATO membership.
My take is that they should just have stayed out of the Russia US power game completely.