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Joint Declaration by Ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, UK
- consumer451 2y agoFull title: > Joint Declaration by the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom in Warsaw For those blocked: https://archive.md/16A71 https://archive.md/16A71
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago"If you want peace, prepare for war." Great news. Europe deserves lasting peace!
- atmavatar 2y agoFor those more classically inclined: sic pacem para bellum
- mdp2021 2y agoYou must mean, "si vis pacem para bellum". (You seem to have written something that would resemble, "If this is peace, let's go to war...")
- scaphandre 2y agoRomani para conjugationem Latinam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lru4dJ4J6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lru4dJ4J6g
- gaoshan 2y agoGiven the direction the US appears headed in this is a timely and critical issue for Europe to address.
- MrMcCall 2y agoI doubt its timing is accidental.
- richwater 2y agoEurope should have does this a decade ago, regardless of whatever the US is up to. They've relied on outside geopolitical strength for way too long.
- sawmurai 2y agoTrue. The best time was a decade ago. The second best time is now.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- klrandom 2y agoThat is nice posturing. They drag out "hybrid warfare" yet again to move more power to the EU, increase defense spending and strengthen the U.S. dependency. Meanwhile EU citizens are getting poorer, industry moves away from Germany and the geopolitical situation gets worse. The audacity of these ministers to claim that "their" security policy has worked is unparalleled. Merkel warned of NATO expansion, now incompetent war mongers like Baerbock, Habeck, Scholz (and Merz in the opposition) claim they have the solutions while the world is burning. Their pensions are safe. The future of the EU economy and the citizen's pensions are not.
- lpcvoid 2y agoI, as an European citizen, would rather lose wealth than bow to imperialistic, autocratic dictatorships such as Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and all of the other Axis of Evil countries.
- sys32768 2y agoThis just a few days after Joe Biden authorizes Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles in Russia. How many of Russia's ~5k nukes are these countries willing to take hits from in order to protect Ukraine?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoWhat's the alternative? Hand the world to Russia? If you have nukes you're allowed to conquer the world for fear of retaliation? Sounds like an equally dark timeline.
- ijasd 2y agoDiplomacy. But war is a racket.
- praptak 2y agoHow well has diplomacy worked so far? What kind of diplomatic steps do you specificallyh propose?
- patall 2y agoThat's the problem with such people. They think it is a simple problem that can be solved easily. And pretend that when i.e Scholz and Putin were on the phone last week, they were talking about the weather and potato salad recipes. Because, as you know, it is such a simple problem. That russia has commited large parts of its industry to the war effords and if there was peace tomorrow, would need lots of money to transition back, probably never even crossed their mind.
- praptak 2y agoApologies for not being charitable but the main problem with "such people" is that they argue in bad faith and will say anything which they think will help Russian interests. There just exist some cases which you cannot argue in good faith (inb4: yes, Russia is obviously not the only one and yes, West also supports and supported many indefensible atrocities but no, it just doesn't follow that the West should let Putin get away just because of this).
- martin_a 2y agoNever forget: Russia can end the war tomorrow. Simply give up and start retreating.
- MrMcCall 2y ago[flagged]
- mdp2021 2y agoThere was that masterpiece from Nolan, in which the main strategist and enforcer during a major assembly says "It's easy: we kill the Batman". The proposal was met with some noise, because the public expected more "how" to such "what".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ijasd 2y ago[flagged]
- pudo 2y agoUkraine is not part of NATO. Should they wish to do so, they are a sovereign state and should be free to apply, entirely irrespective of the feelings of anyone in Moscow. Until the day of their full admission to NATO, they cannot be held liable, punished or even criticized for any of the actions of NATO. Specifically, starting a full illegal invasion against them has nothing to do with NATO.
- throwaway379316 2y ago[dead]
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoSounds like this is the main victory plan of the West. But wait: what if Russia doesn't do that? Are there plans for that (highly unlikely) course of events?
- MrMcCall 2y agoWell, that's why Russia supported its newly-reelected useful idiot here in America, right? I wonder what the body-language experts say about their body language when they got out of the off-the-record face-to-face meeting they had in (IIRC) Finland. No notes of that meeting were kept. How the hell can the president be able to not keep a record of their meeting with an adversarial power's president?
- throwaway379316 2y ago[dead]
- 4gotunameagain 2y agoIt's time for peace, not time to further enrich and empower the military industrial "defence" sector. I fail to understand how would the permission to attack Russia with long range weapons would benefit any other than the arms dealing elite. Russia is not going away, nato is not going away. The only option is peace.
- yladiz 2y agoOkay, I’ll bite. What is peace, in this specific case?
- aceazzameen 2y agoAnd how do you get peace when Russia's only stance is to conquer? Let them take whatever they want?
- ijasd 2y ago>when Russia's only stance is to conquer Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria
- netsharc 2y ago> Libya, Syria It's hard to take people like you seriously if you claim these 2 conflicts are western attempts to conquer. Care to elaborate? It's kinda insane that the stuff that used to be reserved to be screamed by unkempt people at street corners is "mainstream" on the Internet nowadays...
- 4gotunameagain 2y agoYou get peace by not trying to introduce Ukraine to the western sphere of influence.
- MrMcCall 2y agoPerhaps the East Germans, Czechs, et al remember Soviet brutalization? And let's remember that attacking Ukraine was utterly illegal, without a semblance of moral justification, and carried out utterly barbarically.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[flagged]
- Woshiwuja 2y ago[dead]
- telmo 2y agoDid you even read the declaration? It is precisely about commitments to spend more and buying a string defense. Also, despite what some sources in the US claim, Europe has been contributing quite a lot to the Ukraine war effort, in fact slightly more than the US.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jamalaramala 2y agoGood thing that Europe can buy arms and oil from the US!
- Woshiwuja 2y ago[dead]
- ijasd 2y ago[flagged]
- tjpnz 2y agoDoes this also include dropping all restrictions on the missiles they've provided to Ukraine?
- yladiz 2y agoI don’t think so, Germany (at least the current chancellor) is against letting long range missiles like Taurus be used to attack inside of Russia. I expect this to change at some point, given that Germany and other countries have eventually followed what the US does during the war, but not yet.
- lpcvoid 2y agoTaurus is not going to change the war. There's like 600 of them in total, this won't change anything. The 4000 mini Taurus drones that Germany is delivering soon may actually do something.
- coremoff 2y agoA timely message, particularly given the apparent sabotage of undersea cables and other hubrid warfare we've been seeing recently. I hope this also helps with morale in Ukraine.
- davedx 2y agoThe timing is interesting. It seems too close to the Russian nuclear doctrine update to be planned that way, so I'm guessing it's instead partly about appeasing the new US administration? "We'll buy more Lockheed Martin gear, please don't dismantle NATO"
- mdp2021 2y agoIt's also the 1000th, which called for a formal roundup.
- overstay8930 2y ago0% chance Germany will commit to this, it will require too much political reform and no politician wants to spend the political capital on it. Germanys problems are institutional and the bureaucracy around the military is mostly built for self sabotage. They just want the US to get off their backs so they can go back to building nord stream 3, there is no 4D chess being played here.
- Sammi 2y agoGermany is sidelining itself. Both economically and politically. Industry depended on cheap gas from russia - that was a terrible idea. They closed their nuclear plants, so now they are dependent on expensive energy imports from france and the us, which decimates their industrial efficiancy. Demographics are terrible, which is terrible for everything. Now they don't want to even defend europe along with their european partners... germans just can't stop hurting themselves.
- PaywallBuster 2y ago> strengthen NATO by stepping up our security and defence expenditure, in line with our previous commitments, while reaffirming that, in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed to address rising threats to security and meet the requirements to deter and defend across all domains in the Euro-Atlantic area most of EU countries can barely pass a budget without deficit, can't see them actually cutting things to move budget to defense It's either huge deficits or impossible policies that won't pass by any parliament
- jacknews 2y agoSo there's clearly a lot of reading between the lines to be done in recent days, since the US escalated the Ukraine war by allowing strikes into Russia with US missiles. Along with Trump's blow and bluster on the issue - don't forget he'll be in charge in just a month or so. It seems some kind of campaign is in progress, and anyone taking the news at face value at the moment is probably being manipulated.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoI see a few problems with this declaration. 1. There’s no hard commitment to NATO budget targets. Until Germany spends at least 2% for a decade on rebuilding it’s military, those are just words. Next coalition may change it any time. 2. There’s zero chance there will be a peace anywhere close to what’s desired by Ukraine or that Ukraine will be the sole party to negotiations. NATO has already lost this war because it was too slow, indecisive and weak. Again empty words and everyone understands that. 3. EU is nowhere close in military integration and economic flexibility to match the threat, even with that declaration. For example I cannot imagine IG Metall agreeing to work in three shifts to boost production of shells or drones. What is really necessary is to admit that USA cannot guarantee anyone anything, this war is lost and partitioning of Ukraine now will save lives. EU has to build its own union army with nuclear deterrence, fast-track admission of the remaining part of Ukraine and put there its own military (maybe in violation of the peace treaty). Or accept that we have a bigger goal than democracy in Eastern Europe and work with Putin on climate change and global security, hoping that he will die soon anyway and things will get easier if next president won’t have KGB background.
- martin_a 2y ago> this war is lost and partitioning of Ukraine now will save lives Ah, classic talking point. Just bend over when your country gets attacked by Russia and hope for the best... Yeah, maybe that does not work so well.
- MrMcCall 2y agoBrother, many people just choose to forget the history of WWI and WWII and all that ensued. To many in the world, a few more raped Ukrainians are just the cost of doing business in their status quo. Every single person on Earth with means is choosing sides between good and evil. To those who have any spiritual development, it is obvious who is on which side. The others weave their illogic to continue justifying how they lie to themselves, no matter what it costs to others.
- mdp2021 2y ago
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Finland and Germany on the severed undersea cable in the Baltic Sea https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42178018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42178018
- teroshan 2y ago> enhance resilience to cognitive warfare and hybrid threats in Europe, also through the relevant EU mechanisms, and promote the resilience of our societies This is really interesting to me. I'm wondering what a systematic approach to combat fake news, foreign interference, and other social media abuse would look like.
- mdp2021 2y agoThe name was already given by Niall Ferguson a long time ago: Cold War II.
- consumer451 2y agoIt's about time for a response to the doctrine laid out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
- mdp2021 2y agoIt is not really clear how much that textbook is actually adopted.
- consumer451 2y agoI suppose it's not, but otherwise, it appears that it was written by someone who could predict the future to a large extent.
- mdp2021 2y agoWell, the first time I saw a boost of attention over that text and the figure behind it, was after Brexit... ("UK should be divided by the continental etc.")
- baybal2 2y ago[dead]
- Palmik 2y agoWeird that the declaration is by those few countries from EU + UK, yet they talk about the future of EU. Why weren't the other EU countries involed / invited?
- davidguetta 2y agoSerious questions: what was the point of giving ukraine weapons but not enabling them to attack russia for 2 years ? You can't stop a war if you are only allowed to defend. That's not how ANY fight work in ANY field.
- mdp2021 2y agoFear of escalation, allegedly.
- aubanel 2y agoYou can definitely win war by defending. That's how WW1 played out in France : Verdun, La Somme, etc were all played on French territory, and bled out the German army. Then there was some attacking, but you could imagine that if Ukrainians wreck all attacking Russians in their territory it would be easy for them to push until Russia asks for peace. (But I don't think even full-fledge European help, offense included or not, could help Ukraine achieve that)
- aguaviva 2y agoYou can't stop a war if you are only allowed to defend. Actually plenty of wars have been won in exactly this way.
- davidguetta 2y agoWhich ones ?
- toonalfrink 2y agoTo me this statement looks like, they can't really make bold statements, so they make vague ones instead
- Caius-Cosades 2y ago>including the economic and financing power of the European Union and by reinforcing Europe’s industrial base. >invest in our critical military capabilities Ain't that a joke. So first these people spent like 35 years deindustrializing away the old manufacturing sectors away, and then with the regulatory perpetual machine known as European Union they spent decades strangling any and all novel industries to death in their cribs. Not to mention the ever increasing tax burden this virtue signalling lunacy places on the populace. Now that it turns out that paper shuffling does not in fact produce anything physically tangible, they wish to wave a magic wand and somehow conjure an industrial base into existence that had taken previously taken well over half a century of careful cultivation to bring into being. >enhance resilience to cognitive warfare and hybrid threats in Europe, also through the relevant EU mechanisms, and promote the resilience of our societies, Cool, so more regulations against freedom of speech then? It wouldn't do at all if young people wondered as to why there hasn't been any tangible economic growth for the last 15 years, or why they can't ever own a home like their parents or grandparents did. After all, asking those kind of questions is a threat to our European Union's democratic values.