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Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

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Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#191

Post by awb »

teatree wrote: post #151
glogla wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Putin is only doing this because of NATO missiles" is a Russian propaganda line. It is disheartening to hear it repeated on HN.

I am not aware of Russian / European geopolitics so pardon my ignorance, but isn't NATO reaching Russian borders a threat? Hypothetically, wouldn't the US would have serious concerns if Mexico decides to join a Chinese alliance. (I am not justifying a war, just wondering what could have been done on both sides to prevent it)

Yes and no.

Yes, countries prefer weak neighbors. A powerful alliance on your border is a potential threat (or deterrent to expansion).

No in the sense that the US only has 90k troops in NATO countries, or about 10% of Russia’s standing military. So it’s not like troops are messing at their border or enough to threaten an invasion. It’s very much a deterrent.

Also no in that the US, Russia and China are nuclear powers. The US should have little concern of a Chinese ground assault from Mexico as it could trigger a large scale nuclear war, defeating the purpose of the invasion. Similarly with Russia, their nuke arsenal means that no one will consider attacking them or invading their borders.

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#192

Post by hef19898 »

mopsi wrote: post #114
2143 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NATO and especially USA should have responded by sending two thousands soldiers to Kiev And Russia would've been scared and retreated. Sarcasm aside, all that would've done is accelerate the whole invasion procedure. And then the 2000 troops would be killed by Russia. Then America/NATO will retaliate. That'll be the endgame.

> And Russia would've been scared and retreated. Yes. Without sarcasm. This happened several times with Trump, who despite all his faults, was a master bullshitter and master at seeing through other bullshitters. A notable episode was an attack by Russian Wagner group on a small outpost held by 30-something US special forces soldiers guarding a gas plant in Syria. Signals intelligence was later able to capture a few…

Not so sure if Trump succeeded. All Trump did was tell Putin "do whatever you want with whomever, as long as you leave my interests alone" (as in my personal interests). Did you forget the Helsinki summit, the one without interpreter? Or the Russian bounty on US troops in Afghanistan?

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#193

Post by creato »

mopsi wrote: post #114
2143 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NATO and especially USA should have responded by sending two thousands soldiers to Kiev And Russia would've been scared and retreated. Sarcasm aside, all that would've done is accelerate the whole invasion procedure. And then the 2000 troops would be killed by Russia. Then America/NATO will retaliate. That'll be the endgame.

> And Russia would've been scared and retreated. Yes. Without sarcasm. This happened several times with Trump, who despite all his faults, was a master bullshitter and master at seeing through other bullshitters. A notable episode was an attack by Russian Wagner group on a small outpost held by 30-something US special forces soldiers guarding a gas plant in Syria. Signals intelligence was later able to capture a few…

You're omitting a critical detail: Russia denied that those forces were Russian, effectively green lighting the US response. That's not a useful "test".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#194

Post by elric »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #137
elric wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed ~200k people. Any target worth nuking, (say Nato HQ) will result in millions of casualties. Urbanization & increased population density have many benefits, but they make for mind-bogglingly disastrous targets of nukes. If there's a choice between nukes raining down and between Putin ruling the world, I'll happily choose the latter. No matter the cost, there cannot be a nucl…

It is easier to come up to that conclusion when you don't have skin in the game. Poor Ukranians are the ones thinking they shouldn't have given up their nuclear warheads.

Everyone has skin in this game.

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#195

Post by watwut »

hef19898 wrote: post #122
watwut wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not understandable. "I don't like nato at the border, therefore I will push my border toward nato". Russian "nato is ennemy" exists, because Russia wants nato be ennemy. It prevents further expansion.

Of those two, Russia and NATO, the only expansion since the end of the cold war and the fall of the USSR was done by NATO. That's just a historical fact. Which doesn't justify anything, but explains a lot. All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.

And Nato expansion was done by allowing coutries who wanted to do join Nato to go in. Yes, some of their motivation was to prevent Russia to attempt to expand again into their borders.

> All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.

That is not purely academic. Framing what Russia is doing now as kinda similar to Czech voluntary joining Nato is word class propaganda. It is in fact a lie.

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#196

Post by [deleted] »

kalessin wrote: post #157
nomercy400 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Russia cares. They have a growing, energy-hungering neighbor (China) buying their gas in the east, and a Europe committed to reduce their gas and oil usage in the next 10 years in the west.

It is important to note that the gas exported to China and Europe are exported from different fields, and are not connected with each other. As it stands right now, Russia cannot export the gas it produces for Europe to China.

[deleted]

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#198

Post by jollybean »

teatree wrote: post #151
glogla wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Putin is only doing this because of NATO missiles" is a Russian propaganda line. It is disheartening to hear it repeated on HN.

I am not aware of Russian / European geopolitics so pardon my ignorance, but isn't NATO reaching Russian borders a threat? Hypothetically, wouldn't the US would have serious concerns if Mexico decides to join a Chinese alliance. (I am not justifying a war, just wondering what could have been done on both sides to prevent it)

No, NATO is not a threat to Russia.

NATO is not organised well enough to conduct offensive operations on that scale, moreover, there is no state on earth, including US and China that could take parts of Russia and hold for long.

But that aside, the very real political and economic situation in the world would make it unfathomable. There's basically no 'strategy game' where the West would have the intent let alone ability to truly invaded Russia.

The 'NATO' issue is almost entirely a canard, a very easy argument that Putin uses to cause confusion, allow other supporters (i.e. China) to make empty arguments at the UN etc.

Putin is literally using the 'UN Charter' to as cover to legitimise his invasion of Ukraine.

Putin has used the term 'genocide' constantly in the last decade to refer to what is happening in Donbass even though this is obviously not the case.

Putin's implication that 'he's invading Ukraine to stop fascist country, to protect Russian speakers and to 'keep peace'' is basically rubbish, as are his arguments with respect to NATO.

There's a grain of truth in it, of course there is violence in Donbas, but amplifying the issue is the very obvious ruse.

Their playbook is wide open - we know their doctrine, we know how they use misinformation, we know how they argue, we know their intentions. It looks pretty bad on us to allow any of this to happen.

FYI - Western Media has been making a lot of money arguing in public lately, and it's appalling what we're seeing on some of the news outlets, and some of the statements by US public officials. Some people are 'taking a stake' in the situation as they would any other news item, i.e. 'jockeying for position' on the issue. It's disgusting.

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#199

Post by [deleted] »

vidarh wrote: post #127
misja111 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And when those American soldiers are killed by Russian missiles, do you then declare full on war on Russia You are assuming here that Russia would be willing to cause a World War by attacking those American soldiers. > as a Pole the risk of actually being involved in military operations is making me extremely uncomfortable right now. But the alternative, to let Russia have Ukraine, will become very uncomfortable in…

Look at the long history of authoritarian leaders thinking they could act without triggering escalation, e.g. Taliban, Saddam, and consider again if you want to take the risk that Putin will be rational enough to avoid further escalation and the consequences of doing so given the failure to defeat even the Taliban.

[deleted]

Re: Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4

#200

Post by elric »

kgwgk wrote: post #143
elric wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed ~200k people. Any target worth nuking, (say Nato HQ) will result in millions of casualties. Urbanization & increased population density have many benefits, but they make for mind-bogglingly disastrous targets of nukes. If there's a choice between nukes raining down and between Putin ruling the world, I'll happily choose the latter. No matter the cost, there cannot be a nucl…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_Munich "Although appeasement, which is conventionally defined as the act of satisfying grievances by concessions with the aim of avoiding war, was once regarded as an effective and even honourable strategy of foreign policy, the term has since the Munich Conference symbolised cowardice, failure and weakness. Winston Churchill described appeasement as "one who feeds a crocodile,…

If we're going to be quoting that page, we might as well do it right:

> But when Britain and France did go to war in 1939, they were still unable to save Poland from being conquered and occupied. Clearly, had they gone to war a year earlier, they would not have been able to save Czechoslovakia, either

Churchill is probably not someone we should ascribe too much wisdom to...

That, and nukes changed everything.

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