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Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

presidentti.fi

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#681

Post by [deleted] »

jcranberry wrote: post #557
rich_sasha wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vetos are somewhat overrated. Agents may have the right to veto, but might not have the power to deal with the consequences. Russia has a UN veto and uses it, because they can weather the consequences. Could Hungary piss off all of its allies, trade partners, basically everyone but Russia? Doubtful. Hungary is playing a skillful, if somewhat devious, game of balancing between Russia and the West. But an outright FU t…

What would be realistic fallout from vetoing their application?

[deleted]

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#682

Post by denton-scratch »

DocTomoe wrote: post #389
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.

NATO won't accept members that are entangled in regional conflicts which may turn into wars soon (that's why Ukraine couldn't apply anymore after 2014). So Russia's solution would be to start such a conflict, sooner rather than later.

I think that NATO can't accept new members that are not in control of their own borders; the moment such a new member accedes, NATO would find itself in a state of war.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#683

Post by klibertp »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #623
klibertp wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post was dead when I stumbled upon it. I don't agree with it, for the obvious reasons, including the fact that I'm not American. Yet, my understanding is that this kind of opinion is shared by a large number of US citizens. I don't believe censoring it is the correct way to deal with it - it's not even off-topic as we discuss NATO membership in the first place.

An account created 24 days ago using talking points generally considered incorrect and inflammatory and the account name is literally named "donthellbanme"? And that is whom you chose to give the benefit of the doubt?

Yes. Before vouching, I skimmed their "comments" page. In my opinion, 90% of the posts there were flagged unfairly.

Being incorrect or even inflammatory is not a crime. Being unable to voice your opinion just because it makes other people go "yuck" when they hear them is not something I would like to promote or support.

Regarding the nick, my guess is that the author opinions have been controversial for some time, and they probably were banned for voicing them before. After a third time I can see myself making an account with similar name - at least if I was stubborn enough to try again.

Downvote the GP and ignore them all you want - you can fold their comment along with the whole subtree below it - but don't flag the posts. As you can see, if you bothered to read, there's a lot of fact-based refutations offered by other users in this subthread. These are better weapons against disinformation (if it's that) than pretending people believing that disinformation don't exist, and moving them out of sight, and out of mind.

To be honest, I wouldn't be writing this if it was a few weeks ago. I probably wouldn't even have bothered with vouching, and definitely wouldn't spent time reviewing the comment history. I'm lazy, after all. Unfortunately, someone here linked an essay[1] by pg and it changed my mind. We need more, not less, incorrect and inflammatory voices, because sometimes, someone from the flock of crooks actually is right. And we all lose if they're right but keep it to themselves.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#684

Post by tyleo »

maratc wrote: post #670

Warning: hot take. While it is unlikely that Putin would care a bit about Sweden, this is a huge gamble on Finland's side. HUGE. This can go in one of the two directions: either Putin dislikes but somehow swallows it (the way he did with Baltic states in 2004), or he can go about preemptively wrecking Finland (the way he did with Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014 respectively). Considering Russia was very negative…

I think folks wanted to maintain that wise policy. Even in the days leading up to the war Ukraine dismissed the fact that Russia would attack as fear mongering. The problem is that Russia has now proven themselves an untrustable party. "Keep the status quo and we won't attack," they say but now they are attacking Ukraine anyways.

What do you do if you are Finland? You want to make peace, you want to maintain nonaggression and neutrality but another neutral party doing the same meets devastation before your very eyes. Seems better in this situation to get whatever protection you can.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#685

Post by kibwen »

aiilns wrote: post #581
kibwen wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A defense alliance must be, by definition, against someone I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it certainly isn't true.

Then from whom is the alliance defending themselves, if not from those not into the alliance? For example, a defense alliance that included all nations, would defend against aliens. I repeat, a defense alliance must be, by definition, protecting the members from external threats. I don't think it's a very difficult concept to grasp.

It is possible to create an alliance against an external threat without defining the threat in advance, as you seem to assume. If Russia wanted to join NATO, they could, and this was an imaginable possibility in the 90s, and could be an imaginable possibility again in the future, in a post-Putin era. A defensive pact is just a pact against anyone who attacks; if the US attacked a NATO country, it would be a pact against the US.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#686

Post by ParksNet »

mynameishere wrote: post #589
serpix wrote: post #109

As a Finnish citizen, reservist this has been a very emotional spring. Both of my grandfathers were in the war with Russia. Both of my grandmothers had to leave and burn their homes in the areas annexed by Russia. Twice. I am 100% for Nato.

Yeah too bad the continuation war didn't work out for you.

Because Finland wasn't willing to push all the way to Murmansk to cut off Lend Lease supplies.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#687

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nathanm412 wrote: post #610
fallingknife wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is what Hungary gains from splitting with the rest of the EU and NATO to help Russia. Doesn't seem beneficial to them.

It's not how it benefits Hungary, but what benefits Orban. He's playing the playbook we're all to familiar with lately of antagonizing allies while warming up with Putin. It allows him to solidify his base while attacking the principles of democracy that might threaten his position.

> what benefits Orban

Orban’s party won reëlection. Orban is popular [1]. We can crib about disinformation and this or that, but holding Hungary accountable for his decisions is perfectly acceptable.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-viktor-orban-europ...

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#688

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rich_sasha wrote: post #587
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Ungary alone is stopping the 6th round of Russia sanctions from the EU. They are not afraid to veto to protect their interests, like any nation should do. It's not a coincidence that von der leyen wants to change the voting system from hunanimity to majority. They don't like to lose, and the rules are fine only as long as they can do what they want. So vetoes have more power than you would let us think.

I think it's been convenient to blame Hungary, but the truth is, plenty of countries are unhappy about banning Russian hydrocarbons, with Germany leading the list. They can weather the consequences of their veto, because there isn't much will to make it happen anyway - i.e. there are no consequences. I can imagine Finland/Sweden being very different. Who benefits/loses from Finland/Sweden joining? These countries are…

> plenty of countries are unhappy about banning Russian hydrocarbons

But only one is blocking.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#689

Post by MyWorkAccount12 »

b112 wrote: post #174
vlvdus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather incomprehensible and related to local politics. It's not clear if he can do anything at all so it might be just posturing. https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/62559-milanovic-...

One of the issues of allowing more and more people into NATO, is that potential for fracturing of the alliance increases. Especially, the original core alliance was very aligned after WWII, politically. However as NATO expands east, the potential for issues down the road grows. Look at the Ukraine. Let's imagine that this horrible war never happened, Russia never attacked, and that the Ukraine would join NATO in 2023…

NATO is a political entity. When you say political, do you mean culture war? Cause how can an alliance not be entirely political in nature?

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#690

Post by nicce »

jka wrote: post #75
fsloth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically THE signal to start of the process. Given the majority popular support (76% !!!) and this statement from the political leadership it would be extremely unlikely parliament would not follow through. Before this was made public there might have very well been some secret discussions, and the President and Prime minister might have very well used this statement to signal "please wait". This is as green…

Very likely, although it still makes the decision to upvote a little more difficult than it should be; the current title ("Finland will seek NATO membership immediately") isn't really true (yet). From the English-language translation: "We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days."

Yep, it is also one type of information warfare and influencing. It gets harder and harder to present opposite opinions when there is huge pressure created with misleading titles.

People think that something is already agreed on when they are not.

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