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I'm curious what the main arguments against joining NATO are? A commitment to military spending? Potentially being dragged into a war?

bayesian_horse 5y ago
The main argument is that other nations have some say in your foreign policy. You can argue that this is always the case to some degree, and it's better NATO has some say rather than Putin and Russia just rolls over you.
- ghostwriter 5y ago
  on the other hand, if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too. It serves geo-political interests of the US, but whether it serves interests of Finland and Sweden is a question for their citizens to answer.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    How does NATO "get into a conflict" between China (not a NATO member, last I checked) and Taiwan (not even an UN observer)?
    - klawcode 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure a lot of people think NATO == US Empire and Interests. Its simply not true, and this is a pretty great example of how much disinformation and FUD certain "interests" have created around NATO. Hawaii isn't even covered under NATO, even if someone attacked the US: https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/ https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      The US would have to make a case to the rest of the members that it has been attacked under article 5 and the rest of the members have to agree. There are a lot of conceivable scenarios where the US would not make the case and even where the other members might disagree.
  - tsupiroti 5y ago
    Taiwan is not a member of NATO, and neither are other US allies in east Asia.
    - ghostwriter 5y ago
      Yugoslavia was not a NATO member either.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    NATO doesn't even cover Hawaii, let alone Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_... > Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
    - ghostwriter 5y ago
      Was it covering Yugoslavia back in 90s?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not. A similar scenario with Taiwan would not mean "Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too" as you asserted; they'd have the option to join in if they saw fit.
        klawcode 5y ago
        NATO also only covers the North Atlantic Area - this is explicit. https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/ https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
        ghostwriter 5y ago
        > Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not. I'm not saying it would be a verbal and written requirement to participate, and yet, they might have to for other political reasons, like a supply of additional defensive equipment or maintenance programs. For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance. All at the expense of human lives and taxpayers' money [1][2]. Before you say that the US interventions are not NATO interventions, could you name at least one instance from this list [3] where the US was not an active participant of and was actually disapproving of other members' actions? I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US is not a potent alliance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukraine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukraine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations
lalaland1125 5y ago
Historically, the main argument for Finland in particular is that joining NATO would risk a war with Russia. The Ukraine war changed this calculus by showing that Russia would invade a country that wasn't even being considered for NATO membership.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  Also, now seems like a good time to join because Russia's army is tied up and partially depleted.
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
oxff 5y ago
I believe our military is strong enough to offer deterrence from Russian military aggression without NATO, so I don't see the point of NATO based on this belief. I mean even NATO hawks believe this so its kind of a ridiculous situation.
- seanw444 5y ago
  Finland definitely seems like it could hold its own against Russia.
  - Slumberthud 5y ago
    A boy with a stick could hold his own against Russia.
- fsloth 5y ago
  Negative. Finnish defense forces, while highly capable, do not suffice. The cornerstone of Finnish defence strategy is to make sure, that the cost of invasion is for all sane parties obviously too high. The point is that anyone in Kremlin considering their next foreign adventure looking into FI would go "no way in hell, nope, need another strategy". Alone the Finnish defense are not sufficient to instill this "cost-plus" model to the adversary's calculations. Finnish defense forces would incur considerable manpower and material cost to invading army, but in a long conflict their capability would decline. Without military alliance, material transports would be questionable and attrition would soon kick in. The cost would be high to RU, but without alliance, not blatantly obviously too high. Before Ukrainian invasion the second part of this "cost plus" model of territorial defence was belief that international community would incur huge economic penalties on Russia, and the fear of this repercussion would be enough to make even the most courageous military gambler to reconsider their options. Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker. The invasion of Ukraine basically demolished this second part of the defense strategy. First a single huge blow - no, RU will invade regardless of trade sanctions - and the second blow, continuing - even though sanctions have kicked in, RU still has exports and not all countries oppose it's illegal behaviour. And it still continues the war effort. FI therefore needs something else to rebuild it's cost-plus model of deterrence. Only thing that can be used to immediately patch it, is NATO alliance. It's that, or becoming a Kremlin/Beijing puppet.
jeltz 5y ago
That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war. There are countries in the NATO which Sweden has historically had quite big disagreements with, e.g Turkey and the US. And we do not want to be dragged into wars which we oppose. Military spending has never been an issue, during the cold war our military spending was higher than most NATO countries.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you know this, but you do realize that pretty much every decision NATO takes has to be unanimous, right? Even as little decisions as "do we want this PDW caliber or that PDW caliber as a [non-binding] NATO standard?" can be blocked by a single member (Germany, in this case).
- xdennis 5y ago
  > That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war. Is this a way of saying, like in WW2, that since Sweden doesn't share borders with aggressive neighbors you don't want to have the burden of defending the free world? What does the US and Turkey have to do with anything? Turkey only requires defending if it's being attacked, not if Turkey starts a war.
jseban 5y ago
It was also very successful to stay neutral in ww2, you get a lot of market share if your competitors destroy each other while you manage to stay out of it.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  It's only through luck and concessions that Sweden maintained their "neutrality" in WWII. Everyone had their eyes on a prize somewhere else. Had things gone differently between Germany and the Soviet Union, Sweden may have found itself divided up by both. Switzerland also made concessions to stay out of the war. Germany wanted to invade, but the risk/reward wasn't worth it at that stage of the war. Spain was in a civil war and I wouldn't call their post war situation a "success." Ireland, I guess you could say, faired okay after the war, but during the war, their ships were attacked by both sides and often received no response to distress signals.
EiZei 5y ago
Iraq war was a pretty good argument against.
- jeltz 5y ago
  Afghanistan is another, and perhaps better since article 5 was invoked, argument against.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  MNF was not a NATO operation, if you are referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
fsloth 5y ago
Regarding Finland. It's complex. There has been a pretty strong anti-US sentiment in the left leaning parts of the political establishment. Partly due to the same reasons communism enticed global intelligenzia, and partly due to the lingering effects of Finlandization. Finlandization still causes some psychological baggage on the older generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization Finland was "non-aligned" during the cold war and as silly as it sounds, most people in Finland believed this. What it actually meant was that Finland was heavily leaning towards Kremlin - politically and journalistically - even thought it's civil society existed in a nordic egalitarian bliss. But the higher you went in the society, the stronger the Kremlin corruption was. (I'm 42 and that stuff feels pretty foreign to me already). This corruption was hidden from the Finns as a people, who most part distrusted Russia - and as Ukrainian events have proven again, for a good reason. Hence - internal policy was based on blatant obfuscation of truth. After the second world war this was a strategy for survival as Stalin could have likely wiped out the whole nation if he had detected any inch of resistance. But after decades, it became an established "way the things are". Soviet Union was really successful in it's influence campaigns, and Soviet Russia was lauded as a paradise on earth by many prominent members of the intelligentsia up until it collapsed. Ideological hatred of capitalism is also a theme here. I have to point out that there was enough multipolarity in the political field that Finland never became a communist state. And could have not become - such a thing would have likely caused a civil war. But the left and center heavily colluded with Russia for decades. And Finland had the same president (Kekkonen) for 25 years. So, that's the background up to 1990's. So, Finland had a strong culture of Kremlin appeasement starting from the end of second world war, and it left the political and journalistic tradition scarred for generations. Like the victim in an abusive relationship, the subconscious tries to avoid irritating the bully with whom you live. The first time there was even a hint of honest journalism about Soviet Union was during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The political and journalistic establishment started only heal after the fall of the soviet union. For a while, though, it looked like Russia might grow up into a democratic liberal economy. There was therefore no reason for the pro-Russia sentiment to die. And no reason for the anti-US sentiment to die either. This left the political field with lots of people, who in their subconscious viewed US as "the enemy" and Russia as "the great enlightened people". I for myself cannot fathom this anti-americanism, and have not met it in my daily life as an engineer, but it seems to be a thing in the older corrupt generation of politicians, as well as among the more naive younger types. I think my generation (42 like I said) and younger recognize US as an innovative, cultural and scientific superpower and Russia as the degrading husk of a state it is. I think these "we can stand alone" and "make piece not war" sentiments are remnants of the Finlandization period. As horrible as the Ukrainian war is, I think this enables Finnish society to finally get rid of the 80 years of dishonest kowtowing to a totalitarian state and enables it to become the truly western state it needs to be and finally unleash it's full potential (even though small) in the western world.

bayesian_horse 5y ago

The main argument is that other nations have some say in your foreign policy. You can argue that this is always the case to some degree, and it's better NATO has some say rather than Putin and Russia just rolls over you.

ghostwriter 5y ago
on the other hand, if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too. It serves geo-political interests of the US, but whether it serves interests of Finland and Sweden is a question for their citizens to answer.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  How does NATO "get into a conflict" between China (not a NATO member, last I checked) and Taiwan (not even an UN observer)?
  - klawcode 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure a lot of people think NATO == US Empire and Interests. Its simply not true, and this is a pretty great example of how much disinformation and FUD certain "interests" have created around NATO. Hawaii isn't even covered under NATO, even if someone attacked the US: https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/ https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    The US would have to make a case to the rest of the members that it has been attacked under article 5 and the rest of the members have to agree. There are a lot of conceivable scenarios where the US would not make the case and even where the other members might disagree.
- tsupiroti 5y ago
  Taiwan is not a member of NATO, and neither are other US allies in east Asia.
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    Yugoslavia was not a NATO member either.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  NATO doesn't even cover Hawaii, let alone Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_... > Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    Was it covering Yugoslavia back in 90s?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not. A similar scenario with Taiwan would not mean "Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too" as you asserted; they'd have the option to join in if they saw fit.
      - klawcode 5y ago
        NATO also only covers the North Atlantic Area - this is explicit. https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/ https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-loophole-attack-hawaii/
      - ghostwriter 5y ago
        > Irrelevant. That was a voluntary intervention, not an invocation of the Treaty's mutual defense aspects. Individual NATO members were not required to participate; three (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) did not. I'm not saying it would be a verbal and written requirement to participate, and yet, they might have to for other political reasons, like a supply of additional defensive equipment or maintenance programs. For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance. All at the expense of human lives and taxpayers' money [1][2]. Before you say that the US interventions are not NATO interventions, could you name at least one instance from this list [3] where the US was not an active participant of and was actually disapproving of other members' actions? I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US is not a potent alliance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukraine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukraine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations

lalaland1125 5y ago

Historically, the main argument for Finland in particular is that joining NATO would risk a war with Russia. The Ukraine war changed this calculus by showing that Russia would invade a country that wasn't even being considered for NATO membership.

ahartmetz 5y ago
Also, now seems like a good time to join because Russia's army is tied up and partially depleted.
jesusofnazarath 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

oxff 5y ago

I believe our military is strong enough to offer deterrence from Russian military aggression without NATO, so I don't see the point of NATO based on this belief. I mean even NATO hawks believe this so its kind of a ridiculous situation.

seanw444 5y ago
Finland definitely seems like it could hold its own against Russia.
- Slumberthud 5y ago
  A boy with a stick could hold his own against Russia.
fsloth 5y ago
Negative. Finnish defense forces, while highly capable, do not suffice. The cornerstone of Finnish defence strategy is to make sure, that the cost of invasion is for all sane parties obviously too high. The point is that anyone in Kremlin considering their next foreign adventure looking into FI would go "no way in hell, nope, need another strategy". Alone the Finnish defense are not sufficient to instill this "cost-plus" model to the adversary's calculations. Finnish defense forces would incur considerable manpower and material cost to invading army, but in a long conflict their capability would decline. Without military alliance, material transports would be questionable and attrition would soon kick in. The cost would be high to RU, but without alliance, not blatantly obviously too high. Before Ukrainian invasion the second part of this "cost plus" model of territorial defence was belief that international community would incur huge economic penalties on Russia, and the fear of this repercussion would be enough to make even the most courageous military gambler to reconsider their options. Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker. The invasion of Ukraine basically demolished this second part of the defense strategy. First a single huge blow - no, RU will invade regardless of trade sanctions - and the second blow, continuing - even though sanctions have kicked in, RU still has exports and not all countries oppose it's illegal behaviour. And it still continues the war effort. FI therefore needs something else to rebuild it's cost-plus model of deterrence. Only thing that can be used to immediately patch it, is NATO alliance. It's that, or becoming a Kremlin/Beijing puppet.

jeltz 5y ago

That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war. There are countries in the NATO which Sweden has historically had quite big disagreements with, e.g Turkey and the US. And we do not want to be dragged into wars which we oppose. Military spending has never been an issue, during the cold war our military spending was higher than most NATO countries.

formerly_proven 5y ago
I'm not sure if you know this, but you do realize that pretty much every decision NATO takes has to be unanimous, right? Even as little decisions as "do we want this PDW caliber or that PDW caliber as a [non-binding] NATO standard?" can be blocked by a single member (Germany, in this case).
xdennis 5y ago
> That Sweden does not want to be dragged into a war. Is this a way of saying, like in WW2, that since Sweden doesn't share borders with aggressive neighbors you don't want to have the burden of defending the free world? What does the US and Turkey have to do with anything? Turkey only requires defending if it's being attacked, not if Turkey starts a war.

jseban 5y ago

It was also very successful to stay neutral in ww2, you get a lot of market share if your competitors destroy each other while you manage to stay out of it.

mywittyname 5y ago
It's only through luck and concessions that Sweden maintained their "neutrality" in WWII. Everyone had their eyes on a prize somewhere else. Had things gone differently between Germany and the Soviet Union, Sweden may have found itself divided up by both. Switzerland also made concessions to stay out of the war. Germany wanted to invade, but the risk/reward wasn't worth it at that stage of the war. Spain was in a civil war and I wouldn't call their post war situation a "success." Ireland, I guess you could say, faired okay after the war, but during the war, their ships were attacked by both sides and often received no response to distress signals.

EiZei 5y ago

Iraq war was a pretty good argument against.

jeltz 5y ago
Afghanistan is another, and perhaps better since article 5 was invoked, argument against.
formerly_proven 5y ago
MNF was not a NATO operation, if you are referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

fsloth 5y ago

Regarding Finland. It's complex. There has been a pretty strong anti-US sentiment in the left leaning parts of the political establishment. Partly due to the same reasons communism enticed global intelligenzia, and partly due to the lingering effects of Finlandization. Finlandization still causes some psychological baggage on the older generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization Finland was "non-aligned" during the cold war and as silly as it sounds, most people in Finland believed this. What it actually meant was that Finland was heavily leaning towards Kremlin - politically and journalistically - even thought it's civil society existed in a nordic egalitarian bliss. But the higher you went in the society, the stronger the Kremlin corruption was. (I'm 42 and that stuff feels pretty foreign to me already). This corruption was hidden from the Finns as a people, who most part distrusted Russia - and as Ukrainian events have proven again, for a good reason. Hence - internal policy was based on blatant obfuscation of truth. After the second world war this was a strategy for survival as Stalin could have likely wiped out the whole nation if he had detected any inch of resistance. But after decades, it became an established "way the things are". Soviet Union was really successful in it's influence campaigns, and Soviet Russia was lauded as a paradise on earth by many prominent members of the intelligentsia up until it collapsed. Ideological hatred of capitalism is also a theme here. I have to point out that there was enough multipolarity in the political field that Finland never became a communist state. And could have not become - such a thing would have likely caused a civil war. But the left and center heavily colluded with Russia for decades. And Finland had the same president (Kekkonen) for 25 years. So, that's the background up to 1990's. So, Finland had a strong culture of Kremlin appeasement starting from the end of second world war, and it left the political and journalistic tradition scarred for generations. Like the victim in an abusive relationship, the subconscious tries to avoid irritating the bully with whom you live. The first time there was even a hint of honest journalism about Soviet Union was during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The political and journalistic establishment started only heal after the fall of the soviet union. For a while, though, it looked like Russia might grow up into a democratic liberal economy. There was therefore no reason for the pro-Russia sentiment to die. And no reason for the anti-US sentiment to die either. This left the political field with lots of people, who in their subconscious viewed US as "the enemy" and Russia as "the great enlightened people". I for myself cannot fathom this anti-americanism, and have not met it in my daily life as an engineer, but it seems to be a thing in the older corrupt generation of politicians, as well as among the more naive younger types. I think my generation (42 like I said) and younger recognize US as an innovative, cultural and scientific superpower and Russia as the degrading husk of a state it is. I think these "we can stand alone" and "make piece not war" sentiments are remnants of the Finlandization period. As horrible as the Ukrainian war is, I think this enables Finnish society to finally get rid of the 80 years of dishonest kowtowing to a totalitarian state and enables it to become the truly western state it needs to be and finally unleash it's full potential (even though small) in the western world.