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Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

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Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#471

Post by majkinetor »

The_Colonel wrote: post #470
majkinetor wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whistle-blowers don't have to fear the same repercussions as in autocratic states. Its amazing that you parot that nonsence while Assange rots in prison and Snowden is hiding for a full decade. Those that fire "whataboutism cannon" arguments etc. are equally bad. Nobody is honest (or rational) here, lets not pretend otherwise, even little kids understand better. It is what it is, its human nature I guess. I don't h…

Neither Assange nor Snowden were leaking political manipulations in the statistical office. Please don't derail the conversation.

Ah, now it makes sense, I was so blind.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#472

Post by ben_w »

polski-g wrote: post #353
mcphage wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you feel the most probable outcome of using that is “Russia takes over Ukraine”? You think that’s what would happen?

If Russia starts to """lose""" the war, the above is what will happen.

https://youtu.be/o861Ka9TtT4

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#473

Post by mongol »

tpmx wrote: post #452
INTPenis wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be very hard to pull off tho. Seeing as our neighbors would supply intel and equipment, while they have to cross the baltic sea in plain view. I mean they can barely take southern Ukraine.

It would be trivial to send an Iskander missile to Gotland to derail the NATO application.

You are unfortunately right. But most people don't realize that.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#474

Post by tpmx »

INTPenis wrote: post #467
tpmx wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not game over for the world if e.g. Russia nukes some remote part of Sweden/Gotland with a low yield bomb tomorrow.

So which propaganda should we believe? The Gotland story that all pro-NATO people use today, or the MAD story from the cold war?

Perhaps not the one that the Russians and Swedish extreme leftists are peddling.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#475

Post by motohagiography »

khuey wrote: post #10
motohagiography wrote: post #6

[flagged]

The smart view of that is that regardless of whatever ridiculous arguments for Russian imperialism people want to engage in Russia is not physically capable of conquering the Baltic states.

Even as NATO members, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania provide key sea ports. Putin is already in a thinly veiled proxy war with NATO in Ukraine anyway. The risk I'm asking about is whether this current defacto-war-with-NATO-factor may neutralize the deterrent effect of mutual defense treaty mechanisms from his perspective.

It's debatable whether there is anyone in office in a NATO country who is prepared to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, or who has sufficient democratic political support to manage or sustain a land war. If China takes Taiwan at the same time, it's mutally beneficial for both Putin and Xi. What leader in NATO can persuasively threaten either Xi or Putin right now, let alone if they acted together?

The responses on this thread haven't really shown a capability for reasoning about the conflicts in economic or abstract terms, which is concerning because as a sample, if an inability to be clear eyed and unblinking about these things is consistent with the view of people in media policy circles, not only is there is a real risk of being blindsided, but it's evidence of a culturally held bias that creates the incentive for these powers to act.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#476

Post by andreygrehov »

joseph_grobbles wrote: post #215
andreygrehov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Nobody should care what Russia has to say about another country voluntarily wanting to (and joining) NATO I'm sorry, but Russia's concern is not out of thin air - you can only join NATO if your membership is not a threat to your border countries. This is one of the rules of NATO itself.

"you can only join NATO if your membership is not a threat to your border countries" This is, of course, complete nonsense. It is as much a fact as the oft-cited claim that NATO promised not to expand (another lie that is true only to rubes). NATO has a requirement that you settle any ongoing border disputes before ascension: If you have a simmering feud with a neighbor country about who owns a pile of rocks, it's su…

> This is, of course, complete nonsense.

This is not a complete nonsense simply from the fact that if a joining country has conflicts with a bordering country, then such a member would trigger the "attack on one shall be considered an attack on all".

> Putin has sent tens of thousands of Russians into a meat grinder, ego-driven war that has zero outcome that isn't negative for Russia for decades to come.

I agree that this war is stupid, but it could've been avoid entirely had the US conducted a constructive dialog with Russia.

Ukraine is grinding Ukrainian males the same way Russia is grinding theirs. People with cash has already bribed to leave the country. Those who haven't bribed yet get caught on the streets and sent to the war the very next week. Military folks don't care whether you are a software engineer who has never held a weapon in your hands or a 58 old guy who's about to retire.

Whatever is happening today is the result of something. That something has been brewing for years. The root of that something are the ambitions of NATO. Some countries simply do not want NATO to be around. And I don't get why it's so hard to understand that.

Edit: I'm a software engineer who has never fired a firearm. Had I been in Ukraine right now, they'd sent me to the war as well, because they mailed my parents all the papers. Luckily I left the country many, many years ago.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#477

Post by coffeebeqn »

tasuki wrote: post #450
coffeebeqn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And hopefully soon Ukraine

I'd like to hope so too, but hope is not enough. How do you see that playing out in reality?

It’s hard to predict what happens in Russia and what the peace deal will be. I can’t imagine Ukraine will accept anything that doesn’t involve something like a article 5

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#478

Post by philistine »

lazide wrote: post #446
riialist wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just please flag this if you see this comment as being too political, as in this forum we are mostly spared of these wrangles. But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really repr…

To be (less) political, and apologies if this comes across as insensitive - all of those discussions (of which I've read many) are post-facto. The terrible things some power structures do to dissidents are indeed terrible. My point, I guess, is that they happened. And the power structure that did it, did it from Moscow.

Trying to perform something humans do to one another, assigning blame, to a successor state who is very much not human, is the wrong way to look at the thing.

I prefer to see the Russian invasion as the delayed violence from the Soviet Union's breakup. Russian politicians were very much in control of all of Eastern Europe, and the Moscow political class was going to build a political case to try and retake Ukraine by force. That the violence did not happen in 1989 probably prevented nuclear war, and the fact it is happening now and not in 2032 is probably also preventing nuclear war.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#479

Post by philistine »

myth_drannon wrote: post #322
prepend wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t reply to comment under this that claimed that people in Moscow were from all across USSR so I’m replying here. The Soviet Union was still ruled by Russians [0]… “ From 1919 until 1991, 89 members of the Politburo were Russians (which makes up 68 percent). In distant second were Ukrainians, who had 11 members in the Politburo, making up 8 percent. In third place are both ethnic Jews and Georgians, who had 4 me…

Well everyone was "Russian" officially. Khrushov was Ukrainian, same can be said with Gorbachev. Many Armenians. There is a concentrated effort to erase all the contributions of other nations of USSR and make Russians as the only builders and inheritors. And this is different from Tsarist Russia where very few non-Russains were allowed to rise in the ranks. That's why large part of Communist movement was comprised fr…

The fact that political stars could rise to the top does not negate the point that the main ethnical actor and benefactor of the Soviet Union were the Russians. Those star Ukrainians had to please the Russians first and foremost.

It's the same thing in Communist China. Nobody can displease the Han.

Re: Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

#480

Post by philistine »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #296
foverzar wrote: post #229

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?

I was born when the Soviet Union fell. All my childhood I watched media like James Bond and played games like Command & Conquer about Russian invasion, saw my extended family suffer the generational trauma of war, and being male, am forced by threat of imprisonment to personally accept social responsibility for sacrificing my life defending our country from Russian invasion, I'm pretty fucking relieved the nightmare…

I think you forgot the only Bond movies who dealt with direct Soviet threats were :

- From Russia With Love (Rosa Klebb secretly works for SPECTRE but is a KGB operative so let's count it)

- Octopussy (vilain's a defector)

- The Living Daylights (defector also)

It's in Goldeneye that is created the idea that James Bond constantly fought the Soviets. I don't fault you for thinking that it's an easy thing to illustrate your point, but I like my James Bond and I like him because he's always fighting weirdo rich assholes, not the Soviets.

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