Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#271

Post by spoils19 » Mon, May 16, 2022, 8:29 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #150

So let's recount what Putin has achieved in the last 3 months: 1. Failed to conquer all of Ukraine; 2. Failed to capture Kyiv; 3. Failed to make meaningful gains in the Donbass; 4. Failed to decapitate Ukraine's leadership; 5. Suffered huge casulaties; 6. Done massive damage to the perception of Russia's military (and thus the power it can project); 7. Done more for NATO solidarity than probably anything else in the…

I've been keeping an eye on non-MSM sources, and I've of two minds:

* Is there any evidence that what you say is true? I find it hard to believe most news sources these days, and most nation states often boost their own bravado through press conferences.

* If it is true, then I'm glad that US representatives haven't wasted taxpayer money by sending military aid when it's obviously not needed. I lean libertarian like many others on this forum, so I resonate a lot with similar commentary here.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#272

Post by tuukkah » Mon, May 16, 2022, 8:38 PM UTC

xhevahir wrote: post #142

tuukkah wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone else leaves NATO and sets up NATO2 where Sweden and Finland are members but Turkey is not.

That sounds like a very big and complicated undertaking, both politically and militarily. Turkey has NATO's second-largest army, for one thing.

Turkey is second-largest based on manpower, right? Time to update that ranking soon: Turkey 775,000 vs Finland 937,000 military personnel available

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#273

Post by jmyeet » Mon, May 16, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #249

jmyeet wrote: post #150

So let's recount what Putin has achieved in the last 3 months: 1. Failed to conquer all of Ukraine; 2. Failed to capture Kyiv; 3. Failed to make meaningful gains in the Donbass; 4. Failed to decapitate Ukraine's leadership; 5. Suffered huge casulaties; 6. Done massive damage to the perception of Russia's military (and thus the power it can project); 7. Done more for NATO solidarity than probably anything else in the…

> A lot of this was foreseeable too, which is why many (including myself) thought Putin wouldn't invade. It was a gamble. Would Ukraine fold, or not? If they folded, Russia could have taken all of Ukraine, and the only price would be the sanctions. Putin could easily have thought that it would be worth the price. The question was, what were the odds of Ukraine folding? Putin may have thought they were 90%, which woul…

> It was a gamble. Would Ukraine fold, or not?

It doesn't matter if Ukraine folded. Why? Because what happens next?

If Russia installs a puppet regime and leaves, how long does that puppet regime last?

If Russia stays and maintains a military occupation, it faces the prospect of a decades-long counter-insurgency from a geographically large country with 44 million potential insurgents who are really unified by their hatred of Russians. Post-WW2 insurgencies have had an incredibly high chance of success against even far more numerous and technologically superior occupying forces. It's a bad bet.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#274

Post by macintux » Mon, May 16, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #259

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What 90% of Crimeans want" does not set the agenda for all of Ukraine.

If you dont think the future of crimea should be determined by what crimeans think then you cannot pretend to have any respect for democracy.

It’s possible to respect democracy without believing that the majority of any given population should automatically get whatever they want.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#275

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, May 16, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

giorgosts wrote: post #218

mda wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well isn't this comment completely disingenuous and devoid of context..

When they mutually recognize each others occupied lands as "sovereign states" the context would be pretty obvious. (Turkey to recognize the Russian backed separatists in Ukraine and Russia to recognize the Turkish backed separatists in North Cyprus). Another point of context to you: Russia's narrative for the invasion of Ukraine is copied word by word from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

> Another point of context to you: Russia's narrative for the invasion of Ukraine is copied word by word from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Super disingenuous considering that Greece was the initial country to invade and that multiple UN-brokered solutions to the problem have been supported by the Turkish side only to have been voted down by Greek cypriots. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annan_Plan

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#276

Post by kX4A8o4mVmX8aW » Mon, May 16, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #259

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What 90% of Crimeans want" does not set the agenda for all of Ukraine.

If you dont think the future of crimea should be determined by what crimeans think then you cannot pretend to have any respect for democracy.

There is a tension between the concepts of self-determination and territorial integrity that makes the question not so obvious. However the concept of territorial integrity has advantages for weaker nations. If self-determination were absolute then for example the U.S. could get any territory it wanted by using its immense wealth to buy off local residents. I'm sure there are some villages along the Russian border who would be happy to see their land turned into a U.S. military base in exchange for U.S. passports and big piles of money.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#277

Post by golergka » Mon, May 16, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #225

golergka wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how is that relevant here? Because if you're trying to say that US is to blame for this war, here's the newsflash: causal relationships and moral responsibility are not the same thing. Even if you knowingly provoke a criminal to do a crime (for example, by leaving your home unlocked, or by going around a bad neighbourhood in very sexy clothing), it does not in any way absolve him of decision to do the cr…

The world is not simple good guys vs bad guys. Often it's bad guys vs bad guys.

Painting everyone with the same shade of gray is a more simplistic view of the world, not less.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#278

Post by pydry » Mon, May 16, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

kX4A8o4mVmX8aW wrote: post #276

pydry wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dont think the future of crimea should be determined by what crimeans think then you cannot pretend to have any respect for democracy.

There is a tension between the concepts of self-determination and territorial integrity that makes the question not so obvious. However the concept of territorial integrity has advantages for weaker nations. If self-determination were absolute then for example the U.S. could get any territory it wanted by using its immense wealth to buy off local residents. I'm sure there are some villages along the Russian border wh…

>If self-determination were absolute then for example the U.S. could get any territory it wanted by using its immense wealth to buy off local residents.

I mean, yeah. Thats how panama was born for example. Colombia was kinda mad about it at the time but of all the things the US gets shit for its not even in the top 10.

The US also tried to do something similar (and failed) to Kaliningrad. Only Russia objected.

Theres a pretty long history of the US doing this and nobody really minding.

>I'm sure there are some villages along the Russian border who would be happy to see their land turned into a U.S. military base in exchange for U.S. passports and big piles of money.

I wouldnt be so sure. Argentina tried the same thing with the falklanders and it didnt work. Likewise Trump with Greenland.

Villages also wouldnt survive if they were severed economically.

Crimea wasnt bought, anyway. It's just 90% ethnically Russian and objected vociferously to the maidan.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#279

Post by AnnikaL » Mon, May 16, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #238

dang wrote: post #234

We have profound respect for other languages, but HN is an English-language site and articles here need to be in English. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

With various translation tools getting more and more powerful, is it potentially time to reconsider this policy? Something along the lines of please do English articles unless you absolutely can't?

This article opens with a video clip of a reporter speaking in Swedish about Erdogan/Turkey's opinions on Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Although there are captions, manually typing in each caption to a translation service seems very tedious.

Re: Sweden to Apply for NATO Membership

#280

Post by TMWNN » Mon, May 16, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #245

rmind wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot couple important aspects: he also ruined the Russian economy (the conservative estimate is -12% GDP drop this year). Russian military industry also lost access to the Western high tech (unfortunately, a lot of it has been used in their modern equipment, such as missiles, aircraft, etc). It will take at least a decade for them rebuild the armed forces after the war with Ukraine. There is indeed a risk of Kr…

>You forgot couple important aspects: he also ruined the Russian economy (the conservative estimate is -12% GDP drop this year The conservative estimate was that the ruble would plunge about 30% as a result of the war. It's now bizarrely higher than its been in 5 years. I dont remember anybody foreseeing that. Zero. Not one analyst. Ive only heard retrospective justifications for why it happened which any idiot can c…

>I dont remember anybody foreseeing that. Zero. Not one analyst. Ive only heard retrospective justifications for why it happened which any idiot can come up with.

It makes sense (in retrospect; I am certainly not an analyst who predicted this beforehand).

Right now, it is more or less impossible for any Russian to a) use the dollar to buy anything from outside Russia, and b) travel outside Russia to buy anything in the first place. That greatly reduces the demand for exchanging rubles for dollars, whether via official or unofficial means.

Consider Argentina, a country that for years has had its own serious economic issues. A huge skew between the official and black-market exchange rate for hard currency, such as in Argentina (the "dolar azul"), exists because a) there are capital controls but b) it's still possible to use those dollars/Euro/Swiss franc/whatever. Argentineans are free to use the US dollar to buy things, both inside and outside Argentina. This doesn't apply to Russians.

You wrote elsewhere:

>Im also really skeptical of the position that its an irrelevant economic indicator only when it goes in the opposite direction you expect it to. Everybody was saying the exact opposite when the ruble was plunging.

Agreed. It seems like Western analysts were completely wrong on both Russia's military strength versus Ukraine's, and the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.