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Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#641

Post by logifail »

croon wrote: post #238
logifail wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were living in Finland, I'd feel safer (against external aggression) if the country was in NATO than if it wasn't Finland might feel safer once they're in NATO. The rest of NATO (and non-NATO states in Western Europe), perhaps not quite so much. Surely the risk of NATO being involved in any conflict only increases as NATO grows?

Only if you assume the risk of conflict in any member country being the same as when they weren't a member.

> Only if you assume the risk of conflict in any member country being the same as when they weren't a member

Let's imagine we're France.

What's the actual risk of us being directly attacked by an enemy country, starting a conflict?

Now imagine we're France, obliged to join in a conflict by NATO's "collective defence" Article 5. This conflict was already started by an enemy attacking any one of the other 29 NATO members. Particularly murky that now NATO claims cyberattacks count for article 5, and since 2001 we know terrorism can count too.

What's the risk of the latter compared to the former?

I don't see Article 5 as the providor of peace that so many appear to assume it is. Now that the Cold War is long-gone, and it's no longer as simple as "NATO vs Warsaw Pact" in which is was fairly easy to see which side you'd want to be on, I also don't think Article 5 is worth the paper it's written on.

For instance, would your country's citizens be happy to join a war over Taiwan?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#642

Post by skissane »

vitus wrote: post #297
zx85wes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked for sources for the last and 'illiberal' quotes. Can you provide them?

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…

Question: when Orban says “liberal” or “illiberal”, what does he actually mean by those terms?

Worth keeping in mind that Americans and Europeans (especially Continentals/non-Anglophones) may have rather different definitions of “liberal”: “American conservatism, with its Lockean roots, is—from a Continental point of view—not really conservatism, but rather, old-school liberalism.” [0]

Similarly: what’s the difference between a “neoconservative” and a “neoliberal”? The terms have a lot of overlap, many people could be equally described by both: but if a neoconservative can also be a neoliberal, then what’s the difference between “conservative” and “liberal”?

And then I remember that I come from a country whose main “conservative” party is called the “Liberal Party of Australia” (or just “the Liberals” for short). Many of its members and leaders will defend the apparent contradiction by saying “We are conservatives, but we are also classical liberals”-a line I’ve also heard from right-of-centre Americans.

See also “conservative liberalism” [1] - which of course is obviously a very different thing from “liberal conservatism” [2]

Tis all as clear as mud

[0] https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-big...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_liberalism

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_conservatism

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#643

Post by hugg »

cromka wrote: post #533
hugg wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it still seems realistic to you they will somehow invade Sweden by land and do these things?

So you're willing to take your chances because the bully beat up someone else first?

They've shown their true colors and played their hand. They're significantly weaker now and will be for many years to come

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#644

Post by rich_sasha »

bnt wrote: post #633
rich_sasha wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, plenty of potential things. In strictly defence terms, they buy weaponry from US and Germany. Hungarian air force operates Swedish Gripen fighters and thus most likely relies on Sweden at least for spare parts (which military jets need lots of) so here's another pressure point. They are big beneficiaries of EU funding (not a NATO thing but this is all intertwined) and already at odds with EU rules, which could…

Sweden not selling them parts would be the end of Sweden selling planes to anyone.

Dunno. If it was something else, I'd be tempted to agree. But Sweden deciding to join NATO, everyone but Hungary agreeing, Sweden stopping parts? Not sure. It's a, well, minor act of military... aggression? Extreme unhelpfulness for sure.

Also the real question would be, would Hungary see it as a credible threat. Were they to go ahead with that, they'd find themselves with no airforce and unhappy allies. That sounds like a raise they couldn't afford to raise.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#645

Post by tyleo »

vegai_ wrote: post #37
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'?

Year ago, 6 months ago, 3 months ago, started a war, 1 month ago, last week, yesterday. At one very specific point it stopped meaning anything.

Agreed. “You are now on the unfriendly list,” says Russia. Except Ukraine was on the friendly list and look at where that got them.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#646

Post by CRConrad »

alkonaut wrote: post #30

This makes the formal application next week a foregone conclusion. But, it already was. Perhaps more interesting is that it makes the swedish application almost inevitable as well, and it might happen at the same time.

Why is Sweden always supposed to be "more interesting" than Finland?

I mean, I'm a Swede and all (I only live in Finland), but this seems a bit unfair.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#647

Post by herbst »

darkteflon wrote: post #570
herbst wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I guess? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Ukraine#Situ...

You’re referring to transgressions under Yanukovych? That’s not a great example, since he’s famously a Russian puppet, removed from office in the Maidan Revolution.

Things didn't really get better since then tho (judging blindly from Wikipedia). I don't know anything about their political figures but whatever started to get downhill 2010 didn't stop under whoever is leading now.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#648

Post by aiilns »

simonh wrote: post #511
aiilns wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So those who say they agree with Putin or agree that NATO forced his hand, are signing up to the same view of the status of Ukraine and therefore the Ukrainian people. I don't have to agree with Putin to say that I can understand Russia's issues with Ukraine. Saying that Putin's/Russia's attitude makes sense, does not mean I agree with it. It's in Russia's interests that Ukraine should be under Russia's influence,…

I don't agree with Putin either, but I also agree that his actions make sense within his own frame of reference. It's not just about whether the Ukrainian's lives would be better from any observer's opinion. Nor is it a matter of them 'being under ... influence' as though they have no agency and are simply chaff blown in the wind. This conflict is fundamentally not about influence over Ukrainians, but about the Ukrai…

I won't pretend to be an expert on the matter, but I do not agree with your view.

For one, I think you are seriously misrepresenting USA's position. It's the biggest military power in the West and possibly the world, a country with military bases and operations all around the world. That the USA does not concern itself with other countries' matters is, sorry to say, laughable.

I also don't agree with your position that this is about the Ukrainian people's right to self determination. I think it's much closer to civil war, with "pro-Russia" Ukrainians, especially in the Donbas region, against "pro-Ukraine" Ukrainians. In 2014 that the pro-Kremlin regime fell, I remember some 50 people were killed in a burning building in Odessa. And the pro-Russia separatists of Donetsk & Luhansk were persecuted by the (corrupt) governments of Yatsenyuk & Poroshenko. Leading among those fighting against the pro-Russia "terrorists" was the Azov battalion, with several ties with neo-Nazis. It received military aid from the US up until 2018. And Ukraine has been receiving significant military aid from the US since 2014.

So to me, what you define as "right to self determination" seems more like nationalism in Ukraine backed by the USA to squash pro-Russia movements and separatists.

Lastly, I don't think that recognizing that big players like the USA, China, Russia can, and do, exert their power and influence to meddle in other countries, means that the peoples of those countries are "regional pawns". But framing it in a way that excludes their influence means you miss the big picture.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#649

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

skissane wrote: post #202
rocqua wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK kicking someone out of NATO is very difficult. Otherwise I suspect that about 5 years ago Turkey would have been at risk of being removed.

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…

> which prevents Russia from reinforcing its Black Sea fleet

After the successful attack on Moskva I'm not even sure it's beneficial to NATO or not. Of course it is in the best interests of Ukrainians to keep these ships at bay, but from NATO's point of view this could be an excellent occasion to make some significant blows at Russian fleet.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#650

Post by [deleted] »

senko wrote: post #381
shimonabi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Croat president has publicly said he will veto new members if the status of the Croat minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not improved legally. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/croat-p...

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.

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