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80s? NATO expands. 90s? NATO expands. 00s? NATO Expands. 10s? NATO expands. 20s? NATO expands. Russia at peace? NATO expands. Russia at war? NATO expands. Russi

by roenxi 2y ago

80s? NATO expands. 90s? NATO expands. 00s? NATO Expands. 10s? NATO expands. 20s? NATO expands. Russia at peace? NATO expands. Russia at war? NATO expands. Russia tries anything, including diplomacy? NATO expands. Only the neutrality of Switzerland prevents me from drawing a line through NATO from the Russian border to Spain. The pattern here is not "oh Ukraine wasn't going to join up until the Russians invaded". The pattern is NATO expands. The preponderance of evidence in the NATO response to the Ukraine invasion - and the flow of history - suggests that the US has its sights on integrating Ukraine into NATO and was probably in the process of it. > Yes, the coalition attack on Iraq in 1991 to repel its forces from Kuwait is one example The audacity. You spend a thread whinging about Russia panicking because the US is organising all of Europe against them [0], then as a counterexample you pick one of the US's invasions of the Middle East (of Iraq no less, those poor people) as your example of a justified war? What is the criteria here? US aggression is OK? A quorum of European interests justifies any invasion? It is OK if we do it to brown Muslims but not white Christians? There is no jus ad bellum to be found in the US expeditions into the Middle East; they've been a disaster for the region and the world. And any time you end up siding with the Saudis it is bad news for any sort of principled approach. [0] Which, I mean, fair enough what Russia is doing is awful but let's aim for some consistency here.

mopsi 2y ago
> The pattern is NATO expands. NATO is not a loaf of rising bread that expands on its own when left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because I voted for successive governments that set it as their top priority, because I believed then and I believe now that tight cooperation with likeminded countries is the best way to deter another Russian invasion (we've had 40+ of them in recorded history). And this is the universal view in Europe as of 2024. No country in Europe can afford on their own what Ukraine has been through, and this makes military alliances essential for national security. Even Sweden with its 200+ years of neutrality ditched it as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is by now a cautionary tale of naive belief in diplomacy (Helsinki Accords; Budapest memorandum; etc) without a big stick to back it up. Conspiracy theories about the US turning Europe against Russia are completely redundant. When it comes to national security, no responsible government in parts of Europe closest to Russia can afford to stay out of NATO. If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine? For a very long time, both Finland and Sweden had a deep belief that skillful diplomacy could prevent a war with Russia, but what do you do when Russia starts blasting that your country doesn't exist?
- roenxi 2y ago
  > If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine? Yes. My whole position in this thread has been that countries tend to do things for the obvious reason, I'm not sure why people keep expecting me to disagree on points like that. Everyone wants to be in NATO. Even Russia probably wants to join NATO. But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.
  - mopsi 2y ago
    > But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war. ??? But that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Ukraine and Georgia desired to join the NATO like everyone else. The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. This lowered the risk for Russia and they immediately invaded Georgia, and a few years later Ukraine, and expanded the invasion in 2022 after they saw the shameful retreat from Afghanistan as a further sign of US' weakness and unwillingness to support their allies. Not American expansionist urge, but the utterly short-sighted belief in "we must not provoke Russia" is how we got here. Russians are not provoked by strength, but by weakness. Belief in enemy's weakness enables dangerous illusions like "3 days to Kyiv".
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. That is a ruse on the part of the US and I don't know why anyone expects it to be taken seriously given what we see post 2022. NATO considers Ukraine to be part of their strategic territory. They're dumping 10s to 100s of billions of dollars into Ukraine's defence. They've claimed to have been a part of killing something like 300,000 Russian soldiers. They're explaining to anyone who'll listen that the relationship will be formalised as soon as possible. It looks like they've been working on this for years prior to the invasion in fact - unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine. There is even the obvious pattern of behaviour on the part of the US here regarding NATO expansion. The hopes of Ukraine were never dashed.

by roenxi 2y ago

mopsi 2y ago

> The pattern is NATO expands. NATO is not a loaf of rising bread that expands on its own when left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because I voted for successive governments that set it as their top priority, because I believed then and I believe now that tight cooperation with likeminded countries is the best way to deter another Russian invasion (we've had 40+ of them in recorded history). And this is the universal view in Europe as of 2024. No country in Europe can afford on their own what Ukraine has been through, and this makes military alliances essential for national security. Even Sweden with its 200+ years of neutrality ditched it as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is by now a cautionary tale of naive belief in diplomacy (Helsinki Accords; Budapest memorandum; etc) without a big stick to back it up. Conspiracy theories about the US turning Europe against Russia are completely redundant. When it comes to national security, no responsible government in parts of Europe closest to Russia can afford to stay out of NATO. If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine? For a very long time, both Finland and Sweden had a deep belief that skillful diplomacy could prevent a war with Russia, but what do you do when Russia starts blasting that your country doesn't exist?

roenxi 2y ago
> If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine? Yes. My whole position in this thread has been that countries tend to do things for the obvious reason, I'm not sure why people keep expecting me to disagree on points like that. Everyone wants to be in NATO. Even Russia probably wants to join NATO. But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.
- mopsi 2y ago
  > But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war. ??? But that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Ukraine and Georgia desired to join the NATO like everyone else. The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. This lowered the risk for Russia and they immediately invaded Georgia, and a few years later Ukraine, and expanded the invasion in 2022 after they saw the shameful retreat from Afghanistan as a further sign of US' weakness and unwillingness to support their allies. Not American expansionist urge, but the utterly short-sighted belief in "we must not provoke Russia" is how we got here. Russians are not provoked by strength, but by weakness. Belief in enemy's weakness enables dangerous illusions like "3 days to Kyiv".
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. That is a ruse on the part of the US and I don't know why anyone expects it to be taken seriously given what we see post 2022. NATO considers Ukraine to be part of their strategic territory. They're dumping 10s to 100s of billions of dollars into Ukraine's defence. They've claimed to have been a part of killing something like 300,000 Russian soldiers. They're explaining to anyone who'll listen that the relationship will be formalised as soon as possible. It looks like they've been working on this for years prior to the invasion in fact - unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine. There is even the obvious pattern of behaviour on the part of the US here regarding NATO expansion. The hopes of Ukraine were never dashed.