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Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#671

Post by dotnet00 »

CRConrad wrote: post #359
klibertp wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I'm not American, and don't care that much. I was referring to this part: > I'm just tired of the USA paying for everything when we don't have the money. Which seems to be one of the things that made the previous President the President.

Funny thing is, the USA isn't "paying for everything". The people who whine about NATO members "not paying enough" seem to think all the other NATO countries have got rid of their armies and are defended only by US troops permanently stationed there. That's not how it works: They all have their own defense forces. Trump was whining that those are not big enough (and he was probably even [at least mainly] right there)…

Wasn't Trump specifically complaining about many NATO members not seriously working towards the 2% of their GDPs they were expected to spend on defense? Which was also in the news around February since Germany seriously committed to meeting that requirement in response to Ukraine, thus effectively saying that he was not all too unreasonable to demand that?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#672

Post by foolfoolz »

hugg wrote: post #299
omega3 wrote: post #55

Let's hope that Sweden will also follow suit.

I hope not. To me it seems very unnecessary (please hear me out), first of all, it seems to be the common idea that Russia is losing the war, has a weak military, cannot invade another country successfully, but at the same time, we should be afraid of them? I've heard the argument that it's the nukes that we should be afraid of, but does joining NATO really mean that they will surely not use them? I also assume that…

i agree. the information war is being won by ukraine. i don’t think russia is in as bad of place as the news suggests, mostly because i don’t think i can trust the news. also i’d rather see an EU defense force than using america (nato) as security. ukraine has showed you don’t need eu or nato to get american help

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#673

Post by simonh »

walrusfromspace wrote: post #599
CRConrad wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Preventing genocide next door is defense The problem here is that when you give a defensive alliance a mandate to defend entities that are not covered by it's mandate it becomes a de-facto offensive alliance.

No it does not. They did not initiate the aggression.

There's a question of semantics here of course. We're contrasting aggressive and defensive military action. I don't see how characterising military action in defence of others as aggressive is a useful or meaningful characterisation. It's defensive, just not defensive of yourself.

Also let's look at the objectives. The intention in Kosovo wasn't to invade Serbia but to end ethnic cleansing. The fact it took force to achieve that was a means to and end, not an end in itself. Without the ethnic cleansing there would have been no military action, so it wasn't about territory or aggression.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#674

Post by CRConrad »

burmanm wrote: post #114
rightbyte wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is much talk about Russia not wanting Finland in NATO but why would NATO want Finland in NATO with yet another expensive border to patrol. "Buffer states" work both ways.

Why would it cause NATO more expenses? Finland takes care of patrolling the border, just like before. There's no intention to get foreign troops to guard our borders (or even foreign troops at all in Finland beyond exercises).

> There's no intention to get foreign troops to guard our borders (or even foreign troops at all in Finland beyond exercises).

Preferably quite a few exercises in the near future... Until ratification is through.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#675

Post by pintxo »

skissane wrote: post #609
ethbr0 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes from America Treaty Obligation Article 5 is the shield that drastically decreases the amount of nuclear weapons European nations need to deploy, because USSR / Russian inventories are balanced out by American inventories, if it comes to all-out war. Consequently, the world as a whole is a lot safer because {flight time Russia-US} >> {flight time Europe-Russia}, which allows for additional fail-safe guarantees o…

> Consequently, the world as a whole is a lot safer because {flight time Russia-US} >> {flight time Europe-Russia}, The US stations some of its nukes in Europe, so the flight time is less than you think. Also, it is widely believed that the US has an “understanding” with certain European countries that in extreme circumstances (aka World War III) the US will hand those nukes over to the host countries, and then the h…

Those are all aircraft based, so not the fastest mode of deployment.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#676

Post by pc86 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #552
tsimionescu wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As I have always understood the concept of proxy war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war there should be another party behind Russia prompting it's actions (since it attacked)

This seems like pedantry. One side can be a proxy while the other side isn't, right?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#677

Post by CRConrad »

aa-jv wrote: post #97
rightbyte wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is much talk about Russia not wanting Finland in NATO but why would NATO want Finland in NATO with yet another expensive border to patrol. "Buffer states" work both ways.

Finland joining NATO benefits the military-industrial complex immensely . There are HUGE profits to be made in the effort required to get NATO and Finnish military standards aligned.

> Finland joining NATO benefits the military-industrial complex immensely. There are HUGE profits to be made in the effort required to get NATO and Finnish military standards aligned.

Those profits have already been made, because both Finnish and Swedish military standards have been NATO-aligned for decades already.

Maybe you'd have a somewhat more sane perception of the world if you actually knew anything about it.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#678

Post by mihaaly »

zx85wes wrote: post #224
mihaaly wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also said that russian energy ties are harmful. They also said that Russian energy ties are essential. They also said that they want Euro for the Hungarian economy. They also said that switching to Euro is no good for the Hungarian economy. They said that the EU membership is important to Hungary. They also said that Brussels is the enemy. They stated that liberalism is a core value for them. They also stated th…

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

For the last one I only have Hungarian references, sorry about that:

https://hvg.hu/itthon/20110906_orban_wikileaks_ne_figyeljene...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3nfpuOoHdI

Anyway, the point is that he is unrealiable, unpredictable, misleading. Apart from the above obvious ones there are countless further examples when he pretended, lied, mislead, did not do what he told will do. It would take very long time to compile a fairly comprehensive list from throughout the years, these are just rapid and random selections. He is basically communicate and act similar to Putin.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#679

Post by pbourke »

pmontra wrote: post #56
nine_zeros wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it was just friendliness towards Russian people? This war is entirely political. Most Russians don't seem to want to invade other countries.

> Most Russians don't seem to want to invade other countries. This is true for basically every people every time in history. People care about food, family, a house, medical care. All is well until some government starts pushing them into a warring state of mind. Examples from the previous generation of European wars, when Italy invented fascism, Germany followed suit ten years later and both countries started to thi…

> What we don't have to do is to start a process like the one that led Germany from the defeat in WW1 to desires of revenge and WW2, or Russia from the defeat in the Cold War to the current attempt to create its empire again.

I note, grimly, that your positive example (Germany and Italy post-WW2) was precipitated by the total defeat, occupation and renovation of those two states by the victors of the war. That is not possible in the current situation, where the best case outcome is that Russia retreats to pre-2014 borders with Ukraine.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#680

Post by CRConrad »

aa-jv wrote: post #363
formerly_proven wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Both Sweden and Finland have "NATO-compatible" militaries and took part in many NATO exercises over the years.

.. and will now be recipients of billions in funding towards the cause. Don't even try to pretend NATO isn't a major profit center for the American military-industrial complex. That is the only reason for its funding and existence in lieu of actual diplomacy and sane foreign policy.

> .. and will now be recipients of billions in funding towards the cause.

Any money for their militaries will have to come out of their own budgets, just like before. NATO doesn't have any coffers for "recipients of funding".

No wonder you're opinions are so warped; you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

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