9 ms·

Just a few points: - The Budapest Memorandum was, unfortunately, not legally binding. Not justifying the lack of support from the West, but just pointing out a

• MagnumOpus 5y ago
  Anything in international treaties is only as legally binding as the enforcement measures behind them. As a small country, no international treaties are ever legally binding. After all, what could the government-in-exile of Latvia do after a Russian invasion if the US president or UK PM decided after a focus group session that going to war with Russia over the Baltics is not a vote winner?
  • bingohbangoh 5y ago
    NATO troops being actively stationed in the Baltics is a little different. Ukraine doesn’t have anything that I’m aware of.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      20K troops or thereabouts. No tanks, no planes, just some artillery.
      • qwytw 5y ago
        That's irrelevant, their purpose is to act as a deterrent. By invading Russia would also directly attack American, British, German, Canadian etc. soldiers which not something their governments can just ignore. Anyway it's not the 1930's, considering the current political and economical environment there is absolutely no rational reason for Russia to invade the Baltic states (unlike eastern Ukraine or Crimea). What would they gain by doing that, 5 million people none of whom want to be a part of Russia and a shitload more sanctions (assuming if it does not escalate into a full-scale war with the west which is again something Russia has nothing to gain from).
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          Last I heard the Americans had left. Is there something I have missed?
          • qwytw 5y ago
            True, currently Americans seems to be only stationed in Poland (while Germans are mainly in Lithuania, Canadians in Latvia and the UK in Estonia) but I don't see how that fundamentally changes anything.
            • bingohbangoh 5y ago
              I was just in Kaunas and ran into American soldiers -- or what I thought were American soldiers? We chatted and they implied this.
              • jacquesm 5y ago
                I know there are some Canadians stationed in that region.
              • qwytw 5y ago
                I'm not really sure, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence they don't have a permanent presence there, but I assume there should still be some fluctuating number of American soldiers in Lithuania due to some temporary reasons of the time.
      • wayoutthere 5y ago
        Armored ground vehicles in a frontline role are largely worthless against a modern military; it’s too easy to take them out with drone-fired missiles or kamikaze drones. NATO doesn’t need to position planes in the Baltics when they’re within range of its air bases in Germany (airbases should be well behind the front lines anyway).
        • varjag 5y ago
          People often have no appreciation of scale. Russia has more armor than NATO has Javelins and loitering munitions.
          • deleted 5y ago
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          • wayoutthere 5y ago
            Most of which are pushing 50 years old. Russia has a lot of military assets, and has developed some advanced capabilities, but has not been able to field them in any meaningful quantity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The same story is true with their air superiority / denial capabilities. They have advanced weapons, but not enough of them to go toe-to-toe with NATO and the bulk of their military is obsolete Soviet-era hardware.
            • varjag 5y ago
              Most of NATO equipment is not exactly sparkling new either, am not sure what that proves. Does it not count if the battletank that runs you over is from 1980s?
            • jacquesm 5y ago
              Yes, but they run just fine. Russia can field massive amounts of heavy materials, far more than any other Western European country, and they have plenty of mobile launchers and other annoying hardware that can throw a spanner in the works for a fairly large surface area, and the number of airplanes they can field is quite impressive. It may not be the latest and the greatest, but it's not as if F35s are thick on the ground (or in the skies) in Europe either (less than 100 in total, most for training purposes). I really would not see this put to the test, not only because of the potential outcome but because such an exchange has the potential to spiral out of control really fast.
      • afarrell 5y ago
        20K troops are people's sons and daughters. Those are real people with personal stories that can credibly threaten to move votes and enlistments.
        • Mountain_Skies 5y ago
          Being the US politician responsible for using those sons and daughters as human shields is something that could backfire spectacularly. It's not a given that the US can dump soldiers into any conflict and then use their deaths as a tool for support. It's possible, and I suspect quite likely, that the politicians will bear the brunt of the damage from creating the situation where those sons and daughters were killed.
  • ridiculous_leke 5y ago
    It's not just about votes. Modern wars can be endless as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Russia is not foolish enough to do a full scale invasion. They will just send in proxies. No nation wants to commit resources to such wars.
    • underscore_ku 5y ago
      russia's economy is smaller than Italy's, Russia can't afford long wars. in 10 years Poland alone would be able to take on Russia.
      • kingcharles 5y ago
        People never realize how broke Russia really is because Russia plays such a good marketing game.
        • ghostwriter 5y ago
          Some other people also never realise that "broke on paper" means nothing when you are an energy-independent state with arms and a nuclear capacity to protect its territory.
      • Bayart 5y ago
        Russia's development and production costs for military hardware is also much smaller than any Western nation's. They get much more for their money in that respect.
  • undergrowth54 5y ago
    They could publicly shame the US, UK, and France about abandoning an ally without putting up a fight. This humiliation would threaten 1. Those nations' ability to sell military hardware to the leaders of resource-rich nations. 2. Those nations' politicians ability to avoid a governing coalition between the radical far right and newly-angry moderate conservatives.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  And therein lies the rub: the EU would not be able to do much of anything without the rest of NATO to back them up. And in spite of Europe being dragged along in many American adventures in the middle east I wouldn't count on NATO sticking together either. Way too much 'realpolitik' going on to count on that for long term stability.
  • wongarsu 5y ago
    Russia has a military budget of 60bn, Germany and France spend 52bn each. Within the EU they are on home turf, with existing rail and road infrastructure. The EU isn't equipped to fight in Russia or to fight a nuclear war (even though France has nukes), but I don't see why the EU shouldn't be able to defend it's own territory in a conventional war.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Well, let's just hope that that will never be put to the test. As they say: Europe is the battlefield of the world, and Poland is the battlefield of Europe. Russia is as unpredictable as they ever were at the moment and there is a fair chance of this leading to some kind of escalation in the near future.
      • drran 5y ago
        RF is extremely predictable. Its behavior was well predicted two decades ago. If you are predicting «happy path» only, then anything that deviates from «happy path» will surprise you. Peace time job for military headquarters is to predict «unhappy path» and prepare for it. Russian tactic is well known among former USSR and Eastern Block countries, so it was easy to predict what they will do: Will try to return post-soviet countries back to «USSR 2.0». Will capture Belarus somewhat. Will station army across Ukrainian border. Will try to circumvent Kyiv, while distracting Ukrainian army at the South.
        • ivan_gammel 5y ago
          This is just fearmongering based on XIX century thinking. There is no expansion drive by default, however there are couple strategic "red lines", which, when crossed make Russia react aggressively. 1. Hostile military block on the borders (expansion of NATO or any moves that may be treated as towards the expansion or challenging the status quo, as in Ukraine with Crimea). 2. Status of Russian population and Russian language (Georgia in 2008, Ukraine - Donbass, Baltics - low intensity information war). For the neighboring states they are the keys to their own security: addressing those fears of Russia by diplomatic means, those countries can bring more peace than arming themselves against the invasion.
• drran 5y ago
  > The Budapest Memorandum was, unfortunately, not legally binding. Not justifying the lack of support from the West, but just pointing out an important aspect. Yep, nobody will be sued when Ukraine will nuke RF in violation of Budapest memorandum. So what?
  • bitcharmer 5y ago
    Since when does Ukraine have nukes? They gave it up for empty promises from the west, no?
    • throw1234651234 5y ago
      They gave them up for empty promises from Russia and the West*. I like how you conveniently "forgot" that Russia signed that too. "The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents. The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan."
      • atlasunshrugged 5y ago
        Just a comment, while the west's lack of support here angers me to no end (Russia I don't blame because how could you trust Russia, especially at that moment when so much was changing) while Ukraine had nukes physically, the actual control capabilities were all in Russia and it would have cost Ukraine a lot (money they didn't have at the time) to convert/maintain them to something usable anyways. Not that this is an excuse, but the situation isn't as clear cut as 'they had nukes and could have used them for their own defense if only the west hadn't taken them away'
        • throw1234651234 5y ago
          1. You can absolutely blame Russia. When the nukes were taken away, new launch facilities were dismembered, and TU-160s (Jet strategic bombers, very large ones, which are always a serious threat for people who don't know) were cut OR TRANSFERRED to Russia. Russia knew exactly what it was doing. 2. Hitting Moscow from across the border with a real late 80s ICBM isn't exactly complicated for a country like Ukraine. Especially in this day and age. You drastically overstate the role of centralized C&C here. I want to stress that Ukraine demilitarized MODERN facilities. These aren't 60s hold overs. The West, of course, lied too. That doesn't absolve Russia however.
• refurb 5y ago
  “Legally binding” makes me chuckle. “Legally binding” makes sense within a system where a mechanism of enforcement exists. Once you rise above the state, nothing exists, at least on a permanent basis. Ukraine is basically in a situation of “you don’t own what you cant defend through violence”. The Ukraine will lose another chunk of territory. Western nations will “decry this violation of sovereignty” and the UN will condemn it, but Russia will own it. People don’t like it, but in the end the US motto of “might makes right” is correct. If you cant defend it, it’s not yours.
  • treeman79 5y ago
    Is simple. You conquer country. Appoint lawmakers who will say invasion is legal. No legal problems anymore.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • oneplane 5y ago
    That US war-motto doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the rest of the developed world. They haven't actually had any battles at home, except for the ones where they attack themselves. It's a relatively young country anyway, so it's hard to pin any value on any war-motto that's not about a far-from-home war (which is what they do have experience with).
    • d883kd8 5y ago
      The US motto is "E Pluribus Unum"
      • oneplane 5y ago
        I thought they changed it to a religious one because they thought it sounded too much like communism or something like that?
• bee_rider 5y ago
  People are jumping on your phrase "legally binding" for some reason, but I think they are missing the point. The Budapest Memorandum has no enforcement mechanism. It has no obligation on the part of the other signatories to defend Ukraine, other than the requirement to bring it up at the UN security council should Ukraine be threatened by nukes.