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Usual caveats that I'm not a diplomat, don't have all the facts, etc etc., but this doesn't seem like a rational move for Finland or NATO. The UK just yesterday

by ssl232 4y ago

Usual caveats that I'm not a diplomat, don't have all the facts, etc etc., but this doesn't seem like a rational move for Finland or NATO. The UK just yesterday agreed to protect Finland in the event of an attack, and the UK's involvement would likely bring in many other NATO powers anyway, so arguably they're getting protection they'd otherwise have to pay for for free. And actually, officially joining NATO will have consequences, as Putin has lined out. We can't just go on ignoring that Putin exists and has demonstrated he is willing to follow through with his threats, especially when it comes to NATO expansion. I'm no fan of him nor his regime, but thinking he'll back down if we just escalate the situation a little more is fantasy. It's a fact that Russia feels threatened by having NATO on their border. It's a fact that Ukraine and Finland also share borders with Russia. It's a fact that Putin is not going to allow himself to be removed from power by the West without a fight (at this point it's a case of stay in power or get killed). Can the West not have a bit more nuance in its collective foreign policy, recognising these facts and that we're far from living in a perfect world with flowers and rainbows? The former USSR states in Eastern Europe have until now (or until the early 2000s NATO expansion at least) served as a half-decent buffer zone between the West and Russia, and it's served as a relatively stable diplomatic saddle point in keeping the peace. EDIT: sigh, are we really just reddit these days, using downvotes to express disagreement? I'm not going to change my mind based on downvotes. Comment to tell me how I'm wrong.

phoe-krk 4y ago
> The former USSR states in Eastern Europe have until now (or until the early 2000s NATO expansion at least) served as a half-decent buffer zone between the West and Russia, and we've had peace. I think you should go and tell Ukrainian people that their country is a buffer zone meant to act as a burnt ground, and they are not allowed to work towards joining the alliances and economic systems that they want to join in order to better their livelihoods and stop facing the former-USSR-level of poverty. Same stuff with regards to the Finnish and Swedish people and their current will to join NATO in order to defend against an unpredictable old man with a grandiose idea of reviving the old USSR. Believe me, going there and speaking directly will work better than commenting on HN. EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment.
- ssl232 4y ago
  > I think you should go and tell Ukrainian people that their country is a buffer zone meant to act as a burnt ground, and they are not allowed to work towards joining the alliances and economic systems that they want to join in order to better their livelihoods and stop facing the former-USSR-level of poverty. I didn't say we should dictate policy to Ukraine - they're a sovereign state like the rest of us. That doesn't mean we have to let them join if they want to, just like we don't have to let Russia invade a sovereign state without sanctions. I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. NATO could easily have used that as a reason to disallow the membership application from Ukraine, but I think we were too determined to quell Russia's and Putin's global influence so we let it happen. Was it even necessary? If Russia had attacked Ukraine in the 90s, would the West not have responded in a similar way to how it is doing now? Not sure what NATO has gained here. In my opinion diplomacy is all about recognising the world isn't perfect, and, when there is a need to, holding your nose and letting bad people run their countries as an alternative to something worse. Yes it's a tragedy what's happening in Ukraine right now, and yes Putin is a tyrant who would ideally not be in charge (weird that I now feel the need to have to say that, because it should be self-evident to all rational people). > EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment. Was my post low effort or malicious?
  - emteycz 4y ago
    Yes, your post is malicious. The peace you speak about is a Russian propaganda lie. Russian tanks were here - hundreds of kilometers away from their border - until the fall of the Soviet Union. We have peace now, only thanks to NATO.
  - evgen 4y ago
    >> EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment. > > Was my post low effort or malicious? No. It was just wrong. Better to have erroneous opinions buried at the bottom of the comments than to waste time debating with fools and giving them the ego pump they so desire.
  - trash8435798 4y ago
    >I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. Yes, there was a peace and Eastern Europe suffered under Soviet Union. Of course former Soviet satellite states seek military alliance to prevent that from happening ever again. If you are American and nuclear war is all you are afraid of, then it might make some sense to oppose them (or now Finland and Sweden) joining NATO.
exar0815 4y ago
It's quite simple - the last time the world woved without a binding contract to protect Finland from Russia, Finland had to cede large parts of their country in the end. And this is still very present in the minds of most finns, despite it being in the 1940s
blibble 4y ago
> The UK just yesterday agreed to protect Finland in the event of an attack, and the UK's involvement would likely bring in many other NATO powers anyway, so arguably they're getting protection they'd otherwise have to pay for for free this was likely done to fix the race condition of starting the application process vs being under the alliance umbrella
- emteycz 4y ago
  It was explicitly done for that reason. US does the same for Sweden.
benjymo 4y ago
Maybe the UK only agreed to protect Finland as part of a greater plan to join NATO. In any case joining NATO would allow them to trigger Article 5. This is a much better deterrent than some vague "would likely bring in many other NATO powers".
M2Ys4U 4y ago
>Usual caveats that I'm not a diplomat, don't have all the facts, etc etc., but this doesn't seem like a rational move for Finland or NATO. The UK just yesterday agreed to protect Finland in the event of an attack This pact is designed to protect Sweden and Finland between (deciding to) apply for NATO membership and actually becoming a NATO member.
rightbyte 4y ago
Finland should have applied for NATO 10 years ago or in 10 years, not now with the tense situation. 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.
- thraxil 4y ago
  > Finland should have applied for NATO 10 years ago or in 10 years, not now with the tense situation. 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.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    I am arguing that the risk of 'sparks' outweights the benefits of joining NATO right now.
    - thraxil 4y ago
      Then you're effectively arguing that Finland never should join NATO. That's fine. But if someone believes that Finland ought to join NATO (and many people do), now is the time to do it, sparks or not. I just think it's misleading to argue it as "they should've done it before anyone realized it might be needed or wait until it's too late".
    - baq 4y ago
      what sparks. russia is 100% committed to ukraine. there's nothing left to catch fire.
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      Yeah, and you're wrong. There could always be "sparks", so then Finland could never join. 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?)
jusssi 4y ago
From the Finnish point of view the case for NATO has become quite clear. There were a number of reasons why we used to believe Russia won't be invading us any time soon. 1. The invader would suffer a massive penalty for their reputation: didn't stop them from invading Ukraine. 2. The invader would be hit with massive economic sanctions: see 1. 3. Even unassisted, we would be able to mount a defense that can cause major losses to the invading force: see 1. 4. Even though there's no formal defense pact, surely the west would come to our aid: Putin says "serious consequences, remember we got nukes", west backs down. And as a bonus: 5. If, against all odds, they decide they still want to invade and we get no help from the west, there's no point to actually fight back because they'll crush us like a fly in the end, so we should just surrender immediately: looking at Ukraine, this is no longer obvious. Usual caveats apply, but I believe the main benefit for NATO is to prevent point 5 from happening.
- ssl232 4y ago
  Those are good points to that I hadn't considered. As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO? Surely many Finnish politicians past and present will have fought hard for that to remain the case and this will be breaking that precedent.
  - trash8435798 4y ago
    >As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO? At least for a younger generation, that isn't a big deal at all. Finnish neutrality was realpolitik after WW2 and pretty much everyone understands that Russia/Soviet Union is/was our only realistic enemy in case of war. Neutrality is bigger thing in Sweden as they managed to skip both WWs.
  - jusssi 4y ago
    A major driving force for us is the desire to not to become Russians, which is indoctrinated into us from birth. The "neutrality" was originally forced on us at the end of WW2. Maintaining it worked ok for co-existing peacefully with our eastern neighbor. In reality it ended in 1995 when we joined the EU. Back then there was talk that the EU is going to have some sort of co-operative defense, but that hasn't materialized into anything concrete, because NATO is in reality already providing that function in Europe for most of current EU members. I suppose the main argument against us joining NATO is the perceived risk of getting pulled into some local conflict of dubious nature far away from us. Edit: Personally I would prefer an European defensive alliance without US involvement, but such an option is not available at short notice, so I'm willing to accept NATO for the time being. Edit2: I should point out, that me, and IMHO the current generation of Finns in general, don't have anything in particular against the Russians, as long as they manage to keep their tanks and missiles within their own internationally acknowledged borders. We just don't want to become them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
efxhoy 4y ago
> We can't just go on ignoring that Putin exists and has demonstrated he is willing to follow through with his threats, especially when it comes to NATO expansion. I'm no fan of him nor his regime, but thinking he'll back down if we just escalate the situation a little more is fantasy. I'm Swedish and support joining NATO. We are not ignoring anything, we are hoping for peace by preparing for war. Protecting ourselves is not an escalation, even if Putin sees it that way. I think he is much less likely to escalate against us if we are in NATO. I'm saying this also has someeone who will have to fight if it comes to that. Sweden has conscripted military service and if Puting brings us war I will have to fight it. > The former USSR states in Eastern Europe have until now (or until the early 2000s NATO expansion at least) served as a half-decent buffer zone between the West and Russia, and it's served as a relatively stable diplomatic saddle point in keeping the peace. The "buffer zone" countries are free, sovereign and independent states. Millions of people there vote in democratic elections to decide on their countries leadership. They are free to apply for NATO membership to protect them from Russian aggression and they are free to apply for membership in the EU. Denying them these rights, in the hope that Russia will just leave them alone if they aren't "threatening", is both morally wrong and naive. If the Baltic states had not been granted NATO membership when they were we could very well be looking at Russian tanks in Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius now. They were right to join when they did. In 2014 Ukraine chose its path of aligning with democracy and the west and reject Russian coercion. When Ukranians rejected Russian dominance Putin made a choice, and he chose violence. I think I understand your viewpoint though. It would be better if no-one had or needed military strength, mutually assured destruction through nuclear weapons and alliances. It would be better if an omnipotent force could just plan stuff out so we didn't need war. But the key fact is that people are willing to kill and die for their right to self determination and Russia is willing to send its young men to kill and die for historical claims to territory and conquest. I saw this in another comment of yours: > I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. I think that peace had more to do with Russia not yet being capable enough to invade anyone. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia has been scrambling to rebuild it's military, and they are unfortunately making progress. Luckily they seem to have made less progress than they hoped.
Kiro 4y ago
I'm not here to change your mind. I'm here to show other people that I and many others disagree with your opinion. Downvoting for disagreement is fine, as stated by pg himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  There are also people on that page who disagree with pg. Downmodding tends to make people disengage. That may be undesirable if you want a healthy debate.
  - ssl232 4y ago
    Correct, I rarely bother to start debates on topics I know will be controversial here any more. This one being an exception I now slightly regret. HN used to be able to debate without emotion but in the past few years it's more or less disappeared. I am still open to having my mind changed but we rarely get far enough before the downvote brigade find these threads.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      The comment I linked is from 2008. This is nothing new. You also might want to have a look at the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
      - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
        Did you mean to quote: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " And I typically agree with that, except in this instance I decided to make a brief comment, because I disagreed with you somewhat strongly. There's nothing in the actual guidelines about downvoting for disagreement; though the balance of the HN guidelines seem to be in favor of commenting in reply to a thoughtful comment. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " ... and ... "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " What can be less thoughtful, substantive, or deep than a naked downvote?
ahoka 4y ago
My main problem with these "buffer zone" arguments is that I'm from one of those countries, and I don't want my people be some kind of sacrificial second class citizens of Europe, just so other countries can have it easy.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  I am very sorry that I had only one upvote to give you.
baq 4y ago
> It's a fact that Russia feels threatened by having NATO on their border. Yes, but not in the sense they want you to think. Russia feels threatened that it won't be able to invade freely wherever and whenever it wishes. Since they can't do diplomacy without holding a gun somewhere close by, it makes them weaker.
CRConrad 4y ago
> so arguably they're getting protection they'd otherwise have to pay for for free. "Pay for..." To whom? Do you think NATO works like the EU, redistributing money from "membership fees" to "subsidy recipients"? All the NATO countries pay for their own militaries out of their own budgets. > I'm no fan of him nor his regime, but thinking he'll back down if we just escalate the situation a little more is fantasy. Whoa, resurrection! Hallelujah! But why you, of all people?!? We'd all hoped you'd stay dead, Mr Chamberlain. > EDIT: sigh, are we really just reddit these days, using downvotes to express disagreement? No, this is HN. According to a comment I got from dang some time ago -- or was it just a link to the guidelines, so it's there? -- downvotes are a legitimate expression of disagreement. > I'm not going to change my mind based on downvotes. Comment to tell me how I'm wrong. Done. Keep whining, and you can have a downvote on top.

by ssl232 4y ago

phoe-krk 4y ago

> The former USSR states in Eastern Europe have until now (or until the early 2000s NATO expansion at least) served as a half-decent buffer zone between the West and Russia, and we've had peace. I think you should go and tell Ukrainian people that their country is a buffer zone meant to act as a burnt ground, and they are not allowed to work towards joining the alliances and economic systems that they want to join in order to better their livelihoods and stop facing the former-USSR-level of poverty. Same stuff with regards to the Finnish and Swedish people and their current will to join NATO in order to defend against an unpredictable old man with a grandiose idea of reviving the old USSR. Believe me, going there and speaking directly will work better than commenting on HN. EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment.

ssl232 4y ago
> I think you should go and tell Ukrainian people that their country is a buffer zone meant to act as a burnt ground, and they are not allowed to work towards joining the alliances and economic systems that they want to join in order to better their livelihoods and stop facing the former-USSR-level of poverty. I didn't say we should dictate policy to Ukraine - they're a sovereign state like the rest of us. That doesn't mean we have to let them join if they want to, just like we don't have to let Russia invade a sovereign state without sanctions. I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. NATO could easily have used that as a reason to disallow the membership application from Ukraine, but I think we were too determined to quell Russia's and Putin's global influence so we let it happen. Was it even necessary? If Russia had attacked Ukraine in the 90s, would the West not have responded in a similar way to how it is doing now? Not sure what NATO has gained here. In my opinion diplomacy is all about recognising the world isn't perfect, and, when there is a need to, holding your nose and letting bad people run their countries as an alternative to something worse. Yes it's a tragedy what's happening in Ukraine right now, and yes Putin is a tyrant who would ideally not be in charge (weird that I now feel the need to have to say that, because it should be self-evident to all rational people). > EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment. Was my post low effort or malicious?
- emteycz 4y ago
  Yes, your post is malicious. The peace you speak about is a Russian propaganda lie. Russian tanks were here - hundreds of kilometers away from their border - until the fall of the Soviet Union. We have peace now, only thanks to NATO.
- evgen 4y ago
  >> EDIT: yes, I downvoted, and here's my share of a comment. > > Was my post low effort or malicious? No. It was just wrong. Better to have erroneous opinions buried at the bottom of the comments than to waste time debating with fools and giving them the ego pump they so desire.
- trash8435798 4y ago
  >I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. Yes, there was a peace and Eastern Europe suffered under Soviet Union. Of course former Soviet satellite states seek military alliance to prevent that from happening ever again. If you are American and nuclear war is all you are afraid of, then it might make some sense to oppose them (or now Finland and Sweden) joining NATO.

exar0815 4y ago

It's quite simple - the last time the world woved without a binding contract to protect Finland from Russia, Finland had to cede large parts of their country in the end. And this is still very present in the minds of most finns, despite it being in the 1940s

blibble 4y ago

> The UK just yesterday agreed to protect Finland in the event of an attack, and the UK's involvement would likely bring in many other NATO powers anyway, so arguably they're getting protection they'd otherwise have to pay for for free this was likely done to fix the race condition of starting the application process vs being under the alliance umbrella

emteycz 4y ago
It was explicitly done for that reason. US does the same for Sweden.

benjymo 4y ago

Maybe the UK only agreed to protect Finland as part of a greater plan to join NATO. In any case joining NATO would allow them to trigger Article 5. This is a much better deterrent than some vague "would likely bring in many other NATO powers".

M2Ys4U 4y ago

>Usual caveats that I'm not a diplomat, don't have all the facts, etc etc., but this doesn't seem like a rational move for Finland or NATO. The UK just yesterday agreed to protect Finland in the event of an attack This pact is designed to protect Sweden and Finland between (deciding to) apply for NATO membership and actually becoming a NATO member.

rightbyte 4y ago

Finland should have applied for NATO 10 years ago or in 10 years, not now with the tense situation. 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.

thraxil 4y ago
> Finland should have applied for NATO 10 years ago or in 10 years, not now with the tense situation. 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.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I am arguing that the risk of 'sparks' outweights the benefits of joining NATO right now.
  - thraxil 4y ago
    Then you're effectively arguing that Finland never should join NATO. That's fine. But if someone believes that Finland ought to join NATO (and many people do), now is the time to do it, sparks or not. I just think it's misleading to argue it as "they should've done it before anyone realized it might be needed or wait until it's too late".
  - baq 4y ago
    what sparks. russia is 100% committed to ukraine. there's nothing left to catch fire.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    Yeah, and you're wrong. There could always be "sparks", so then Finland could never join. 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?)

jusssi 4y ago

From the Finnish point of view the case for NATO has become quite clear. There were a number of reasons why we used to believe Russia won't be invading us any time soon. 1. The invader would suffer a massive penalty for their reputation: didn't stop them from invading Ukraine. 2. The invader would be hit with massive economic sanctions: see 1. 3. Even unassisted, we would be able to mount a defense that can cause major losses to the invading force: see 1. 4. Even though there's no formal defense pact, surely the west would come to our aid: Putin says "serious consequences, remember we got nukes", west backs down. And as a bonus: 5. If, against all odds, they decide they still want to invade and we get no help from the west, there's no point to actually fight back because they'll crush us like a fly in the end, so we should just surrender immediately: looking at Ukraine, this is no longer obvious. Usual caveats apply, but I believe the main benefit for NATO is to prevent point 5 from happening.

ssl232 4y ago
Those are good points to that I hadn't considered. As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO? Surely many Finnish politicians past and present will have fought hard for that to remain the case and this will be breaking that precedent.
- trash8435798 4y ago
  >As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO? At least for a younger generation, that isn't a big deal at all. Finnish neutrality was realpolitik after WW2 and pretty much everyone understands that Russia/Soviet Union is/was our only realistic enemy in case of war. Neutrality is bigger thing in Sweden as they managed to skip both WWs.
- jusssi 4y ago
  A major driving force for us is the desire to not to become Russians, which is indoctrinated into us from birth. The "neutrality" was originally forced on us at the end of WW2. Maintaining it worked ok for co-existing peacefully with our eastern neighbor. In reality it ended in 1995 when we joined the EU. Back then there was talk that the EU is going to have some sort of co-operative defense, but that hasn't materialized into anything concrete, because NATO is in reality already providing that function in Europe for most of current EU members. I suppose the main argument against us joining NATO is the perceived risk of getting pulled into some local conflict of dubious nature far away from us. Edit: Personally I would prefer an European defensive alliance without US involvement, but such an option is not available at short notice, so I'm willing to accept NATO for the time being. Edit2: I should point out, that me, and IMHO the current generation of Finns in general, don't have anything in particular against the Russians, as long as they manage to keep their tanks and missiles within their own internationally acknowledged borders. We just don't want to become them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

efxhoy 4y ago

> We can't just go on ignoring that Putin exists and has demonstrated he is willing to follow through with his threats, especially when it comes to NATO expansion. I'm no fan of him nor his regime, but thinking he'll back down if we just escalate the situation a little more is fantasy. I'm Swedish and support joining NATO. We are not ignoring anything, we are hoping for peace by preparing for war. Protecting ourselves is not an escalation, even if Putin sees it that way. I think he is much less likely to escalate against us if we are in NATO. I'm saying this also has someeone who will have to fight if it comes to that. Sweden has conscripted military service and if Puting brings us war I will have to fight it. > The former USSR states in Eastern Europe have until now (or until the early 2000s NATO expansion at least) served as a half-decent buffer zone between the West and Russia, and it's served as a relatively stable diplomatic saddle point in keeping the peace. The "buffer zone" countries are free, sovereign and independent states. Millions of people there vote in democratic elections to decide on their countries leadership. They are free to apply for NATO membership to protect them from Russian aggression and they are free to apply for membership in the EU. Denying them these rights, in the hope that Russia will just leave them alone if they aren't "threatening", is both morally wrong and naive. If the Baltic states had not been granted NATO membership when they were we could very well be looking at Russian tanks in Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius now. They were right to join when they did. In 2014 Ukraine chose its path of aligning with democracy and the west and reject Russian coercion. When Ukranians rejected Russian dominance Putin made a choice, and he chose violence. I think I understand your viewpoint though. It would be better if no-one had or needed military strength, mutually assured destruction through nuclear weapons and alliances. It would be better if an omnipotent force could just plan stuff out so we didn't need war. But the key fact is that people are willing to kill and die for their right to self determination and Russia is willing to send its young men to kill and die for historical claims to territory and conquest. I saw this in another comment of yours: > I noted in my comment that there was actually peace in Eastern Europe before NATO expansion. I think that peace had more to do with Russia not yet being capable enough to invade anyone. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia has been scrambling to rebuild it's military, and they are unfortunately making progress. Luckily they seem to have made less progress than they hoped.

Kiro 4y ago

I'm not here to change your mind. I'm here to show other people that I and many others disagree with your opinion. Downvoting for disagreement is fine, as stated by pg himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
There are also people on that page who disagree with pg. Downmodding tends to make people disengage. That may be undesirable if you want a healthy debate.
- ssl232 4y ago
  Correct, I rarely bother to start debates on topics I know will be controversial here any more. This one being an exception I now slightly regret. HN used to be able to debate without emotion but in the past few years it's more or less disappeared. I am still open to having my mind changed but we rarely get far enough before the downvote brigade find these threads.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    The comment I linked is from 2008. This is nothing new. You also might want to have a look at the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      Did you mean to quote: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " And I typically agree with that, except in this instance I decided to make a brief comment, because I disagreed with you somewhat strongly. There's nothing in the actual guidelines about downvoting for disagreement; though the balance of the HN guidelines seem to be in favor of commenting in reply to a thoughtful comment. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " ... and ... "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " What can be less thoughtful, substantive, or deep than a naked downvote?

ahoka 4y ago

My main problem with these "buffer zone" arguments is that I'm from one of those countries, and I don't want my people be some kind of sacrificial second class citizens of Europe, just so other countries can have it easy.

CRConrad 4y ago
I am very sorry that I had only one upvote to give you.

baq 4y ago

> It's a fact that Russia feels threatened by having NATO on their border. Yes, but not in the sense they want you to think. Russia feels threatened that it won't be able to invade freely wherever and whenever it wishes. Since they can't do diplomacy without holding a gun somewhere close by, it makes them weaker.

CRConrad 4y ago

> so arguably they're getting protection they'd otherwise have to pay for for free. "Pay for..." To whom? Do you think NATO works like the EU, redistributing money from "membership fees" to "subsidy recipients"? All the NATO countries pay for their own militaries out of their own budgets. > I'm no fan of him nor his regime, but thinking he'll back down if we just escalate the situation a little more is fantasy. Whoa, resurrection! Hallelujah! But why you, of all people?!? We'd all hoped you'd stay dead, Mr Chamberlain. > EDIT: sigh, are we really just reddit these days, using downvotes to express disagreement? No, this is HN. According to a comment I got from dang some time ago -- or was it just a link to the guidelines, so it's there? -- downvotes are a legitimate expression of disagreement. > I'm not going to change my mind based on downvotes. Comment to tell me how I'm wrong. Done. Keep whining, and you can have a downvote on top.