281–290 of 521 posts
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NATO in Afghanistan was because of article 5 after 9/11. Also NATO was not in Iraq. There were some NATO member countries in Iraq as part of a coalition the Bush administration put together. But Iraq was not a NATO operation.
This is as much a defense policy decision as it is an economic one. Hard for us to get foreign investment living next to a dictatorial warstate unless there's some risk mitigation in place. Not that I don't trust the FDF, pound-for-pound one of the better military organizations out there. (and a happy member of it myself.)
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In one sentence you say: muscovy has no interest in Finland and in the next: now Finland is threatened because they are in NATO. Because now muscovy is interested in them? Because something else?
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> Wouldn't it be smarter to actually listen to what Russia is trying to say? Russia says a lot of things, often contradictory, but what really speaks is their actions. Invading Ukraine wasn’t about denazification, or nato threat, or anything except naked imperialism.
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This is as much a defense policy decision as it is an economic one. Hard for us to get foreign investment living next to a dictatorial warstate unless there's some risk mitigation in place. Not that I don't trust the FDF, pound-for-pound one of the better military organizations out there. (and a happy member of it myself.)
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> Dugin proposes that Finland be combined together with the Karelian Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation into a single ethnoterritorial formation "with maximal cultural autonomy, but with strategic integration into the Eurasian bloc.” The northern regions of Finland, Dugin adds, should be excised and donated to Murmansk oblast'
-https://tec.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/aleksandr-dugins-foundatio...
Meanwhile, Sweden's NATO application is blocked by Turkey because former Peshmerga fighter Amineh Kakabaveh happened to become very powerful in the chaotic Swedish parliament a few years ago. The story: https://www.outlookindia.com/international/former-kurdish-re...
That's a simplification, and there are a bunch of other reasons. The dictator Erdogan wanting to pressure Sweden and NATO for instance.
Finland got de-Finlandized at last. Which is what the expansion of NATO was always about. NATO isn't a threat to Russia itself - if Russia seriously feared NATO aggression, it wouldn't voluntarily demilitarize its NATO borders during the past 13 months. NATO expansion just neutralizes Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors through threat of aggression (or in case like Ukraine through the use of aggressi…
I mean, yeah, but the reason is probably just "we need more shit to shoot at civilians in UA" rather than "we don't fear NATO invasion"
So, this is mostly a US-centric forum, but I wonder what is the take on this from the perspective of a Finnish person. Is there any controversy or concerns of becoming a foothold for future conflicts? This whole thing has been dragging on for sometime now, had the opinions shifted over time?
Well the PM who nursed this just lost the election. But I suspect most Fins agree with the decision.
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> This is one of the rules of NATO itself. It would be odd to have such a rule, because NATO is a defensive alliance that is of no threat to any of the bordering countries. Russia’s concern is out of the thin air, because if NATO really wanted it to, with how incompetent the russian army is, I estimate it’s 3 days to take Moscow. The only people afraid of the Russian army are Russian men of military age.
> It would be odd to have such a rule I mean, read their rules.
https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_members.html
Those are the minimum requirements for new members, everything else is negotiated in the accession process.