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Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

presidentti.fi

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#501

Post by pmoriarty »

bfrog wrote: post #470
vitus wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: illiberalism: https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech... "in this sense, the new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not deny foundational values of liberalism, as freedom, etc.. But it does not make this ideology a central element of state organization, but applies a specific, national, particular approach in its stead." https://miniszterelnok.hu/pr…

Sounds like Hungary doesn’t want Islamic culture coming in and rioting

From HN's guidelines[1]:

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"Eschew flamebait."

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#502

Post by eigenhombre »

tokai wrote: post #475
logifail wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, the more the merrier^Hstronger Umm ... wasn't that what people thought of the alliances and treaties[0] just before the First World War? [0] https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-p...

And they defeated Germany and dismantled the Austro-Hungarian empire. So it worked.

"It worked" is not the phrase that comes to mind when I think of WWI... yes, where was that outcome, but at the cost of tens of millions of deaths[1], years of trench/chemical warfare, exacerbation of the 1918 pandemic.

If we could avoid its equivalent in the 21st century, that would be good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#503

Post by CRConrad »

Wildgoose wrote: post #417
KptMarchewa wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a "defensive pact" does not exclude preventing genocide next to it's borders. The fact that you call it "the issue of Kosovo" is telling.

What is really telling is your admission that NATO is also an Offensive Alliance, which is exactly the point I was making, and which has led directly to this tragedy.

Preventing genocide next door is defense, not offense. Just like in Ukraine now. The most Offensive thing here is your defense of genocidal wars of aggression.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#504

Post by tomjakubowski »

ethbr0 wrote: post #459
KptMarchewa wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would NATO ships do there? "Balancing" would only make sense if NATO was directly a part of the conflict.

> What would NATO ships do there? Sail an unarmed NATO-flagged vessel to the Azovstal Steel Plant and evacuate troops?

Couldn't Romania do that without involving the Bosporus?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#505

Post by tsimionescu »

sorokod wrote: post #452
skissane wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NATO has really benefited from having Turkey as a member in this war (which is essentially a proxy war between Russia and NATO)-Turkey exercised its right to close the Bosporus to military ships not based there, which prevents Russia from reinforcing its Black Sea fleet. An ex-NATO Turkey might have taken Russia’s side and left the straits open. Closing them disadvantaged Russia far more than anyone else, since Ukrai…

a proxy war between Russia and NATO That is not how people of Ukraine see this.

With the US alone investing 40 billion dollars in the war, they're simply wrong if they don't see it this way.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#506

Post by ck425 »

rodgerd wrote: post #314
sph wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can Russia pressure and disrupt the process when NATO members are the ones most afraid of Putin? Finland's doing this only because of Russia's actions. I can't imagine anybody vetoing Finland's membership. In fact, the more the merrier^Hstronger.

He has poured considerable amounts of time and money and other forms of backing into regime change in a number of NATO members; he extensively backed Le Pen and Zemmour, Trump (and enjoys public support from a number of US senators), has close ties to Gerhard Schröder, and of course has extensive networks in the British Conservative Party - sufficient for the current Prime Minister to appoint a Russian as a member of…

I can't speak about other countries but the idea that Russia could use its influence to convince the UK to veto Finland or Sweden's entry into NATO is absurd. The Conservatives may have been happy to take russian money before the invasion but it would be hard to do so now and political suicide to be seen as bowing to russian political interests.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#507

Post by doikor »

ssl232 wrote: post #182
jusssi wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 maj…

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.

In reality Finland has been neutral for only very short periods of time. Basically only after we got our independence and WW2 and the small amount of time between Finno-Soviet treaty of 1948 ending with the fall of soviet union and us joining EU.

If you ask Putin being part of EU is very much not being neutral no matter what Finland says and under the Finno-Soviet treaty we were quite clearly under Soviet influence and neutral only in some legal fiction.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#508

Post by teh_klev »

unmole wrote: post #414
teh_klev wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they closed the Turkish Straits. But they didn't. Turkey only upheld the conditions of the Montreux Convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_...

Huh? Turkey has the right but not the obligation to close the straits in times of war. And they exercised that right: > Around February 27–28, Turkey refused permission for 3 of 4 Russian warships to enter the Black Sea, as 3 did not have a home base in the Black Sea.

There's a subtle difference. The straits weren't "closed", one of the Russian ships was allowed passage because its home port was registered as Sevastopol prior to the present conflict.

"pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Turkey cannot block Russian warships based in the Black Sea from returning to their registered base."

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#509

Post by mcv »

tremon wrote: post #74
nymalt wrote: post #21

Didn't Russia (last month) threaten Finland/Sweden with 'consequences' should they decide joining NATO? Wondering what would those be. Putting both countries in a new list of 'very unfriendly countries'?

Russia has been threatening Finland/Sweden with consequences for years. As the Finnish PM mentioned in his speech with Boris Johnson a few days ago, Russia has shown with Ukraine that complying with Russia's threats is not a guarantee that the future will be consequence-free.

If somebody tells you: "I'm going to beat you up if you ask for help", you should probably ask for help. It's not an effective kind of threat, because he's probably going to beat you up at some point anyway.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#510

Post by kayodelycaon »

rendall wrote: post #120
kreeben wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse! The enemy list. But what are they going to do, is what I want to know. Baltic sea will soon be pretty much closed for them and they sure could start WW3 over that but would they? They don't seem to have that in them.

> Baltic sea will soon be pretty much closed for them Why would the Baltic Sea be closed to Russia? How would this be enforced?

Denmark controls access to the Baltic Sea. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Baltic+Sea/@55.685476,11.0...

And Estonia and Finland control access to Russia's only ports in the Baltic Sea. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Baltic+Sea/@60.5931556,25....

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