Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

presidentti.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#441

Post by belter »

ericmay wrote: post #419
belter wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you find the money? 64 F-35 at my calculations comes at approximately 5 Billion dollars, this is excluding spare parts and training. Finland military complete spending/defense budget for 2019 was $3.97B. Edit: Actually it seems my calculations where off by 50%. This will cost you 10 Billion... "Audit clears Finnish F-35 buy amid rising spending on pandemic, Ukraine" https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe…

And you know that you can like spend money over time right? Or maybe even raise the budget? Or maybe they have a savings account that they draw from?

Of course it will be spent over time, but we are talking about a single weapons system, unproven in combat so far, that represents four times the overall annual defense budget of Finland for Army, Air Force and Navy.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#442

Post by Kim_Bruning »

Kiro wrote: post #252
ssl232 wrote: post #52

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 hav…

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

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.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#443

Post by mach1ne »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #366
mach1ne wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should add that Russia desires the Baltics, which are in an awkward position to defend by NATO. Finland has a strong military and its proximity to those countries makes an incursion somewhat less likely.

That was the leading thought before we were shown how ineffective Russian conventional military is.

Indeed they demonstrated that, but don't underestimate the effect an existential crisis like this has. We will almost certainly see heavy changes coming to the Russian military. It could be that in five to ten years their military is actually capable, after both structural and strategical upgrades.

And the lines we now draw between NATO, Russia and China could well be the lines of a WW3 within a decade. Hopefully not though.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#444

Post by robertlagrant »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #58
ngold wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is rather apt. And mirroring Russian claims to disarm nazis in Ukraine and take over the government in 3 days. Only to get sanctioned into economic doom, and have Ukraine forever supplied with the teeth of all western nations. It did not work out so well. We are all rooting for spinal cancer.

If they did it bit by bit then all nato can be a target. There is a strategy about this as far as yes minster goes about nuclear bomb detention. You just very hard to press the button if the other side just bomb say another country not in nato. And even if … Coalition never easy work especially you do not give them pressure. Thanks in a dark sense Russia basically sealed the Ukrainian identity and possibly the nato.…

Salami tactics! Such a good scene.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#445

Post by ericmay »

antris wrote: post #170
fsloth wrote: post #2

There was some discussion on plausible NATO membership of Finland and Sweden. At that point the disucssion was based on guestimates from media. But now it's official. This is not the NATO membership application, but a statement from the political leadership in Finland that they support and suggest parliament proceeds with the application process with maximum urgency. The President and Prime Minister of Finland have p…

>Translation: During the spring, there has been an important discussion about Finland's possible NATO membership This is a very generous description of what happened. There has been air of forced consensus in the "discussion" between media, politicians and people on social media. People have been branded as "putinist" or "playing into Putin's hand" for merely suggesting that the decision shouldn't be rushed, and that…

> Whether you agree with Finland joining Nato or not, I think there are good arguments to be made on either side. But to say that there has been any real discussion is a stretch at best. This process was rushed.

Saying that this process was rushed ignores the 75 years leading up to that decision. Finland has been very careful even during the Cold War to keep the US and the Soviets happy and present themselves as a truly neutral nation between those two powers. Finland already spent all this time “arguing the other side” by not joining and keeping everyone at arms-distance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hostile rhetoric toward Finland and other countries are markedly different from the last 75 years in the post-WW2 era. So no, it’s not really rushed. Finland had the debate you are talking about already and has had this debate for 75 years. You just didn’t know that they already had the debate.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#446

Post by aa-jv »

gwd wrote: post #356
aa-jv wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Providing evidence and arguments to support your claims is not "spoonfed bootlicking". Your claim was: "NATO is a war-crime committing, human-rights abusing entity." The first seems to be a link collecting data points for civilian casualties. I don't see any NATO actions on there; and in any case it's missing the further evidence that war crimes and human rights abuse occurred. The second page, on the front page anyw…

Airwars tracks civilian casualties of war. These casualties - war crimes and crimes against humanity - are committed by NATO members and aligned states almost every single day. NATO bases are used to launch the attacks. NATO resources are used to cover up the crimes.

Clearly, you're not asking for this information in good faith, or else you'd have discerned this already, even with a casual look at the Airwars reports, which details quite descriptively the nature of NATO involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As far as your glib understanding of Wikileaks, I suggest you really, really study the material.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#447

Post by senko »

g0ran wrote: post #429
senko wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Croatian president is stupid (as is the Prime Minister, fwiw), with little actual power, and spewing things left and right to make himself more relevant. Thankfully, Croatia doesn't have any real influence in NATO so nobody will be obliged to listen to that stupidity. Source: I live in Croatia.

> Croatia doesn't have any real influence in NATO so nobody will be obliged to listen Unfortunately, same applied when that drone with explosives fell in the middle of Zagreb. Deafening silence from NATO.

Yeah. If that happened in Berlin, we'd have WW3 by now.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#448

Post by aa-jv »

wiseowise wrote: post #273
aa-jv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do believe that NATO is a war-crime committing, human-rights abusing entity that is bringing much death and destruction and turmoil to the world for the sake of special interests - political and commercial - who stand to gain billions in profit from every single NATO base built. But, I've been paying attention to NATO's war crimes over the last two decades, as well as the immensely evil crimes against humanity…

Nobody asked about your opinion of NATO, answer the question.

Yes, NATO-aligned states do currently commit war crimes and crimes against humanity at heinous scale - with seeming impunity - and there is nothing to indicate this would change in their battle against Russia. Sanctions - factually, crimes against humanity since they collectively punish an entire nation - are already evidence of the intentions of the West in dealing with Russia: to see its destruction.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#449

Post by netsharc »

myko wrote: post #427
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Joining NATO is literally in the Ukrainian constitution. It is not optional, attempting to join is a requirement of the government of Ukraine and not working toward that end would be unconstitutional.

Geez, I'm on Ukraine's side, but "It's in this document so we have no option but to do it" is not a valid argument. For what reason is it in the constitution, when did it get in, then you can make a substantive argument.

What next, should I write "the bank has to give me $1M" on a piece of paper and show it to the bank teller?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#450

Post by ericmay »

bitL wrote: post #282
sorenjan wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is pressuring Russia, that's Russian propaganda. They want to paint themselves as attacked and surrounded, but it's them attacking sovereign neighbors and trying to expand beyond their borders. Who would have any interest in invading Russia? China attacking from the east would probably make more sense than NATO attacking from the west, but I've never heard anyone suggesting that as a realistic event.

It's not about how we perceive a threat to them, but how they perceive it. It makes no sense to destroy one's economy for Ukraine, yet here we are, so their calculation considered it more important.

“It doesn’t make sense…” yes if you are looking through a liberal western lens. You’re not looking from a Putin or Russia point of view. His reasoning for invading Ukraine are much deeper and different than the things that we consider important.

I though Ezra Klein’s interview with Masha Gressen and some of his other interviews were quite good at helping inform: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

Post reply on HN