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Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

presidentti.fi

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Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#771

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.

I guess it can be argued that Finland joining Nato is not very surprising (has been discussed in Finland for years) and therefore not very interesting. But Sweden joining Nato this quickly would be more of a surprise and therefore much more interesting.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#772
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Finnish political system was infiltrated by Russian assets (willing or just useful fools) for decades [0]. Luckily this has abated in the last decades. The people have deep suspicion of the Russian state but no particular animosity towards russian people in general. Most finns, especially the young generations, feel most affinity towards west in every sense. The Finnish language is Finno-Ugric and unrelated to sl…

I hope my country, Poland, could find a way to abate russian fools, that seemingly have their prime time now here. I see similar to russian type of rhetoric in TV and social media and some people support them because they seem to provide easy solutions to big problems. I wished it was more plain to see that it's all russia-driven. And yes - I write russia with small letter because I don't see their _state_ representi…

Trusting social media as a measure of general opinion is not a good idea. They could be a tiny minority making a lot of noise.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the NATO membership process have negotiable elements? For example, do different members have different terms, or pay different contributions to costs? Announcing your firm intention to join before negotiating those parts seems like a good way to be paying over the odds forever...

As I understand it, NATO is not a cost-sharing arrangement. Everyone pays for their own defense forces. Sure, that means if some country were to pay nothing for theirs -- i.e. don't have any -- then the others would have to do all the defending of that country, and so "pay indirectly"... If that country were attacked. That's why NATO agreed that members should spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense, and i…

There is about 2.5 billion euros in budget used by the organization directly. This includes people employed directly by the organization, costs related to head headquarter buildings, etc, some command and control infrastructure owned by the organization rather than individual members, some things like deployable radar systems owned by the org directly, plus funding for certain operations that members have agreed to fund via cost sharing, rather than by having any participating members finance their own costs.

Remember, NATO is not just a defensive pact, but also command structure set up to enable the member forces to be utilized as a single cohesive force, rather than just a bunch of allied but disjointed forces. That means communication systems, and setting up unified commands to which portion of member forces can be assigned, making sure equipment and communications systems are intercompatible, etc.

This central funding money is pretty negligible compared to the 2% spending on defense commitment of members. Like the whole central funding would be around 6% of Germany's military budget, but would be fraction of a percent of the US budget. However the central funding is shared amongst all the members. Germany's actual share ends up around 1% of its military budget, UK's actually share is about 0.6% of the UK's budget, and the US share might as well be a rounding error, being my my quick calculations less than a tenth of a percent of the overall budget.

It's certainly not nothing, but is is not like we are talking about super significant portions of countries military budgets.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some of us are still incensed by the lies that were trotted out though. this is the only point i'm trying to make. suppose tomorrow biden comes up and wants to invade iran for example. will american public lap it up like they have for the last so many decades, thats there but what about the rest of the world community? how many will arm IRAN against USA when they know USA to be the one who is invading? who will figh…

> >Some of us are still incensed by the lies that were trotted out though. > this is the only point i'm trying to make. And it's a bad one. Because: > suppose tomorrow biden comes up and wants to invade iran for example. will american public lap it up like they have for the last so many decades, The very line you quoted told you that many (most?) of them didn't "lap it up" then either. You're really not very good at…

> NOBODY WAS ABOUT TO ATTACK RUSSIA.

I think Putin's reasoning is that Ukraine's very independence amounts to seizing Russian sovereign territory.

What I find remarkable is the rarity of reports of Ukrainian attacks behind Russian lines (i.e. in Russian territory). As far as I can tell, they've blown up two fuel dumps and an arms dump. Given the dependence of Russia on what appear to be thin logistics lines, I'd have expected loads of missile attacks on bridges and rail junctions.

Of course, there's propaganda everywhere; perhaps Ukraine has been attacking Russian supply lines, and we're not being told, because that would serve neither Ukraainian nor Russian interests. I guess we'll have to wait until historians get their hands on the records.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#776
post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct, I rarely bother to start debates on topics I know will be controversial here any more. This one being an exception I now slightly regret. HN used to be able to debate without emotion but in the past few years it's more or less disappeared. I am still open to having my mind changed but we rarely get far enough before the downvote brigade find these threads.

The comment I linked is from 2008. This is nothing new. You also might want to have a look at the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like silly semantics. The "application process" is to express interest and ask for an invite.

> That seems like silly semantics It adds a lot of nuance actually. They can't say to the public that NATO proactively wants a country to join, as that would sound as an expansionistic move, so what more probably happens is that NATO first reaches out to countries that are considered strategically useful offering them a deal. Then the public is sold the narrative of the free country wanting to join NATO, that generou…

> There is no other way to sell to your electorate joining NATO.

Sure there is. "Look at what happened to Ukraine".

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#778
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Ukraine is on the doorstep of Europe, that's why Europeans care more, and by proxy the US. But only since Russia started invading. When news about Ukraine were still all about their corrupt government, breaking human rights, their horrible prisons and more like that nobody thought Ukraine to to 'close' or anything. It's obvious the whole perception of Ukraine just suddenly changed because Russia is the bad…

That isn't true. Many of us worked with Ukrainians before the war, especially in the software industry, such as myself. There was no sudden perceptual change. I observed the fear and anxiety my Ukrainian coworkers experienced directly. They are European and they did not deserve this invasion and as far as I'm concerned deserve all the help and compassion the rest of us can offer.

> They are European

"European" is a rather loose term. When I was a kid, Europe stopped at the border with East Germany. Later, a bunch of former soviet countries became "european" countries. Then Ukraine. For a while, Russia was acclaimed as a european country (it's still often described that way in the UK press).

Call me an old fogey, but I'm still doubtful that the former East Germany is really european yet. Being "european" is a question of culture, not of political alliances and borders.

Re: Finland will seek NATO membership immediately

#779

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.

What tragedy? I don't see any tragedy caused by NATO. The war started before NATO involvement. The same with Yugoslavia. Years of war and attrocities, massive refugee crisis in early 90's, ended in a month by NATO.
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