Sweden and Finland's decision will forever change the landscape of Europe.

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by AmericanNationalist, Apr 14, 2022.

  1. MissingMayor

    MissingMayor Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, but your broken English in the earlier parts of the post are difficult to follow.

    As for your reasoning for Finland and Sweden to not join NATO, you want them to wait until Russia is openly threatening them before they join? That's not how it works.

    I can see you are afraid of the US getting into a direct conflict with Russia because Russia attacks a NATO member. Your solution is to keep new nations out so that Putin's war mongering can continue in other countries. It also appears you would like to cut ties with NATO so Russia can attack even more countries and not worry about the US.

    Sorry, but the US can't crawl into a shell, especially in the face of the paper tiger that is Russia. If Putin were to attack a NATO country every other country on Earth including China, India, etc would oppose him and he would probably be dead in a month.
     
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  2. AmericanNationalist

    AmericanNationalist Well-Known Member

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    Broken English? Considering I have had a college-level English comprehension from as early as the 10th grade, I find that offensive but hey my sentence structure isn't for everyone. Leaving the insult aside(and no, sorry didn't make it any easier to stomach.) I find it ironic: We call Russia a paper tiger due to its performances inside Ukraine, but we're unwilling to give truly lethal aid to Ukraine or even better yet to deploy and push the Russians outside of Ukraine. Why is that?

    If it is a tiger, and it perceives the NATO alliance as a threat thats cornering it, the decision will no longer be the West's to make. Ukraine would just be a precursor then. And what you highlight is what you hope will happen, the best possible outcome. There's a world where the alternative happens: A world where Putin's nuclear blustering wasn't a bluff, but something he was serious about with approval from the Russian military brass. Kiev is under a nuclear cloud, and perhaps some other nations as well.

    For those reasons, you are correct. NATO has become a thorn in US foreign policy. To put it into prospective, the original League of Nations was refused because of the idea of international commitments dragging down the US. Article 5 is worse than the League of Nations and the UN combined.

    Article 5 is our tripartite act. It's literally our opportunity to pull a Germany 1942 and declare a war that is neither needed or wanted.
     
  3. MissingMayor

    MissingMayor Well-Known Member

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    We have been shy about providing lethal aid because then Russia would have a good case for claiming the US and other countries are in direct conflict with them. So we started small with Javelins and have been slowly ramping up. Russia got angry when their ship sank, but that was from Ukrainian built missiles, so international opinion is probably still on our side.
    As I have said, if Putin uses a nuke the whole world would get together and plan his quick removal. He would be signing his own death sentence and the end of Russia as we know it.
    Quite the contrary. NATO is a huge asset for us and the world. If Putin were dumb enough to attack it, that would end him and Russia. No need to go attacking anywhere else. All of his boot lockers like Le Pen and Trump would be equally shunned.
     
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  4. HockeyDad

    HockeyDad Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What if Putin uses 2000 nukes? Would the West's response matter?

    I don't give a damn if Russia takes Ukraine and neither should you. Why should we care that corrupt neolib/necon American politicians have lost their more lucrative money laundering country? Let them grift China for their dirty money.
     
  5. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Given the latest news on Putin, the man is rapidly sinking into the mindset, the plan and policies of Adolph Hitler. He's now into forcing captive civilians they don't execute into forced labor- and literally threatening anyone who provides arms or assistance to the Ukraine; threatening those who want to increase their own security in the face of his aggression. To me, this is either a shift in Putin's attitude, or the revealing of something always present but previously kept out of sight. This is extremely dangerous; a world-wide threat, and I don't think it can be allowed to grow stronger. Bold intimidation, Hitler ruthlessness with a touch of Stalin- He's trying to keep advantage in Ukraine by intimidating others nearby, who very likely are next on his list. He wants to take them one at a time, just as Hitler did. This is a bluff tactic to control opposition. I think it would be wise for all the nations in Europe, and perhaps around the world- to send a message to Putin that he is the one who must stop and withdraw- right now; or face the power of all nations at once. If this had been done early on with Hitler- everything would have changed. It's already gone farther than should have been allowed. Needs to be stopped before he's convinced it's working.
     
  6. 9royhobbs

    9royhobbs Well-Known Member

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    OK
    The cold war was necessary as history has proven. To say that democracy couldn't be overtaken by Communism is something that we don't know.... yet. Communism hasn't fallen. It's alive and well in China, N. Korea, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam and democracy was most definitely under a threat by Communism. For you to think so means that you are under 60 years old and don't know what the world was like.
    The Soviets were a constant threat to our homeland space.
    I don't agree with you expansion assessment. I don't think Canada would have, I think Mexico would have been more likely to.
    The cold war ended with a US defeat? That statement doesn't make sense unless you're basing on your belief that communism was never really a threat which in and of itself is wrong so now you're getting deeper into fallacies.
    Finland and Sweden aren't being reckless, they are being pragmatic. There is no reason to believe that reassurances from Russia can be trusted. Ukraine is the proof of that.
    You speak as if NATO is a nation in and of itself which you know is not true but that.......concept.......is the basis of your logic which in turn makes your premise false.
     
  7. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    That is a polite way of putting it. I am not seeing much understanding of history at all, just lots of 'I think this should happen because I say so' stuff.

    No one with even the most limited understanding of the past century could claim America has been 'liberating Europe for 100 years'.
     
  8. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    Your opinion is very much the same as that of a now-retired German friend of mine who had a distinguished career in the Bundeswehr, highlighted by deep involvement with the 'reunification' of Germany, 'on the ground' in the old GDR as the Soviet Union was imploding. Simply put, my friend KNOWS Russia, and, Russians!

    When (not 'if') Finland joins NATO as a full partner, it will be quite a 'big deal', for a lot of reasons both obvious and obscure. For one thing, it will more than double the length of NATO's shared border with Russia, and put potential tactical nuclear missile platforms within 185 miles (~300 kilometers) of St. Petersburg, and even less to Murmansk.

    The Russians are, uh, reputed to have a significant military installation in that little piece of Russia wedged in-between Poland and Lithuania on the southern Baltic Sea coast, called 'Kaliningrad Oblast'. This is an area of focused concern for NATO, although the Baltic is simply too shallow for today's submarines to 'hide' in. With both Finland and Sweden in NATO, the logistical advantage that Kaliningrad provides to Russian military posture toward Europe would be diminished considerably.

    Many Germans secretly worry that adding Sweden and FINLAND would 'push Putin over the edge' and make a much larger, much more catastrophic European conflict far worse than it already is. But, backing away from Russia now could be as disastrous as it was for 'the West' to back away from Hitler when he took over, first, Austria... then Czechoslovakia, and all the rest of it....
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2022
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  9. MissingMayor

    MissingMayor Well-Known Member

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    I doubt Putin has enough loyalists to allow him to launch a world destroying event.

    Why should I care that Putin launches an unjustified war, killing hundreds of thousands of citizens, just to annex Ukraine? Why shouldn't I?

    I guess you are afraid of Putin and want to hide it behind your partisan fever dreams about Hunter.
     
  10. AmericanNationalist

    AmericanNationalist Well-Known Member

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    That is why in this zero-sum game, both must recognize they lose from this exchange(they, including US.) Let's take our bleeding hearts and minds out of the equation for a second and think strategically: The US is in the midst of rising inflation prices, higher than the EU itself. With the supply chain issues. A larger war naturally by its design will limit chains even further and further increase inflation costs. Hell, this didn't escape the mind of our idiot of a president. Even HE knew it! Unfortunately, the State Department isn't acting in the interests of ending the conflict.

    With our position in NATO and NATO's position overall, it should be possible to hamper out this kind of deal. And if the Russians choose to advance, then we can respond. Yes @MissingMayor being a responsive force rather than a proactive one, in this regard is in our interest, and the interests of the smaller nations.

    Putin is made aware of our response, and we of his. In this stalemate provides the opportunity, as long as both sides recognize the harm they can do to the other.
     
  11. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    It appears right now that 'the pot is boiling', and the lid is sliding back over the top of that 'pot'. It could be hoped that with all the pressure building in Russia, that the other Russian oligarchs would band together with all those Russian military and intel groups that have suddenly become 'out-of-favor' with Putin -- and overthrow him! I'm just naive enough to think that removal of Putin from office could be the best course for everyone concerned... except Putin.

    But, even if Putin stepped down tomorrow, it is at least a 50-50 proposition that Sweden and Finland would go ahead and join NATO as full partners anyway. Someone as self-serving as a Russian oligarch might do 'the right thing' once in a while, and then turn right around and do something else shortly afterward. Surely, the Finns know this better than anyone else....

    My German friend has reminded me now, with a peculiar kind of solemnness in his voice, that Russians are really quite different from other Europeans, in temperament, in behavior, and in a sense of ethics toward others -- even other Russians, because various factions of Russians dislike each other almost as much as they dislike us in 'the West'....
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2022
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  12. AmericanNationalist

    AmericanNationalist Well-Known Member

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    No, it literally could not have overtaken it because systems are forged by people, not by gunpoint. Even if by some chance the Red Terror had sleeper cell inside of America, if those cells could not override the will of the American People, convince the American People to adapt a Communist lifestyle then there was no threat of communism ever taking hold in the US.

    The same is true for Radical Jihad taking hold in the US. For every one adherent to the false ideology, there are millions of Americans who reject it, to the very bitter last and so therefore, it will never take hold in America. Literally, the only time the Soviets posed a threat was the Cuban Missile Crisis and that's because the Soviets encroached on our backyard and therefore in violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

    But would the Soviets have encroached if we didn't view Soviet/Communist existence as untenable? Unlikely. The political war against Communism, nearly destroyed the world. So forget a US defeat, we were on the brink of the end of human existence on a fallacy. You don't wage wars on systems, systems in of themselves are powerless to affect human ecological systems.

    So even with all of the communist nations you mentioned, there is not a single threat to our ecological system. None. And if the American People organically choose to adapt communism? Then that transfiguration was by choice.

    You are correct that I wasn't alive at the time of the cold war(as I mentioned before, I wish I was alive at the time.) Because every flawed premise led to another mistake. I completely repudiate US foreign policy(1955-present.)

    I will say it in bold: Every single move we made, was a mistake. We enabled the rise of the muhajeeden and therefore gave rise to elements that are perpetually against the United States. And this antagonistic force, much like Communism cannot be completely eradicated(lest of course, we commit war crimes.) At our best, we can only hope neutrality and the distance of the oceans(as well as serious vetting of those crossing the US border) will be sufficient. And perhaps we'll have to live with an extremist threat always posed at the US land.

    And all of this, for the flawed political ideological war.

    And here too, we're making a mistake. This isn't the same as a "show of force" to intimidate Putin and the Russians and to get them to back down. This is purposefully ignoring what is animating the Russian Government and saying "so what". We learned not a single thing from the Ukrainian incident. This isn't going to bring Putin to the table, and it may not anymore provide the assurances that article 5 could have brought to Sweden and Finland.

    You stated that I act like NATO is a single nation. Militarily, yes. No different in structure from the European Union. Individually, as another poster pointed out take out the "collective" aspect of the alliance and this is WWI all over again. And why are we making these mistakes? Simple, really.

    "He's the butcher, he's evil! We can't negotiate with him, there's no way!" And so he is an evil butcher committing war crimes, yes. But we want him to stop these war crimes and that means we have to deal with him, like it or not.

    US foreign policy isn't borne out of cold hearted calculations, but emotions. We need to create policy more out of calculations rather than emotions of fear, virtue, justice, etc.
     
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  13. ToughTalk

    ToughTalk Well-Known Member

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    You do realize that as much as you hate him at the end of the day you're going to have to negotiate with Putin to end all this he's not going away. Russians love him. So we are stuck with him. You need to find a way to negotiate with Russia on Russian terms or this is just going to drag the f*** on and the only people that are going to pay the price on this or the Ukrainian civilians which is so far exactly what's happening
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2022
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  14. Josh77

    Josh77 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If we did that, there would be no war, and that goes against the interests of the MIC. What you view as mistakes, others view as everything going according to plan, and massive profits to be gained, at the expense of human life and progress.
     
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  15. David Landbrecht

    David Landbrecht Well-Known Member

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    Nothing ever done nor said by any participant in NATO has even hinted at military intervention in Russia. Georgia, Crimea and, now, Ukraine engender healthy distrust of Putin.
    Russians should consider that, given the incredible incompetence displayed by its army, NATO and others are not immediately pouring in to take advantage of the obvious opportunity.
     
  16. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    Russians have always believed in 'quantity' instead of 'quality'. They have always been satisfied to throw as many men as needed in mediocre equipment, based on heavy-handed tactics and bull-headed strategies in order to secure objectives for them.

    Truth? Putin wouldn't blink if he got 50,000 Russian military personnel killed in order to achieve his objectives with the 'Donbas', and a subsequent land-bridge through Zaporizhzhia and Kherson on down to Crimea.

    It will be interesting to see what Putin's reaction will be when Sweden and FINLAND join NATO, probably in late June or early July. And the Finns have hated Russia's guts for over a hundred years....
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2022
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