Hinting at a moral equivalence -- because let's be honest, that's what's happening here -- between Russian expansion and NATO "expansion" is at the very least intellectually dishonest.
I am sure people in Iraq (that had nothing to do with 11 of September and had no mass destruction weapons), Libyan negros (that were hunted down and their city razed with NATO air support) and many, many others would agree with me.
It is not even a matter of blaming only USA that drags the rest of NATO with them, Libya for example the country that started the shenanigans was France.
Then there are the aggressive actions of individual NATO members that are ignored by the rest of the alliance, like Turkey bombing Armenians using drones until Russia stepped in.
There is no such thing as a "NATO Aircraft carrier". NATO is an alliance. NATO does not declare war as a block. Iraq was not a NATO operation. Libya was not a NATO operation.
The only time NATO has intervened outside of self defense as per Article V of the Charter was Yugoslavia (and with good fucking reason).
Could France just deploy it's army in the Ukraine and push out Russian occupiers saying "don't worry we are not NATO, we are here privately" and Russia would have to accept that and hold no additional grudge against NATO, knowing that if it retaliates it will trigger article 5?
I don't in any way condone what Russia is doing and I wish that invasion on Ukraine will safely end with NATO having a parade on Red Square and demilitarization of Russia.
I'm just arguing that you can't pretend that labels and formalities is all than counts when things start happening.
USA, UK, Australia, Poland, Netherlands, Italy and Spain (and Turkey threatened to invade in 2007 too), the fact they are all members of NATO is just coincidence, it is not NATO piling up on a single country.
Or Afghanistan:
US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand
or Libya, france gave them weapons first, and invited the rest of NATO, that responded:
Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Turkey, USA, UK.
NATO can claim to be defensive and only about article 5, but the fact remains NATO will happily use their forces offensively and working in a cohesive group. You can't just say it isn't NATO because NATO is supposed to be defensive.
Are you sure?
I just interpret that as "aircraft carrier belonging to a NATO member state".
>>>Iraq was not a NATO operation.
And yet there is very significant overlap of Multi-National Forces- Iraq countries with NATO member states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_%E2%80%93...
>>>Libya was not a NATO operation.
Have you taken a look at the Wiki article on that conflict? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
A couple of choice quotes: On 19 March 2011, a multi-state NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in Libya
24 March 2011: In telephone negotiations, French foreign minister Alain Juppé agreed to let NATO take over all military operations on 29 March at the latest
I'm always amazed at the number of emphatically stated positions regarding recent geopolitics/warfare/etc. that are so easily challenged with a 30-second internet search.
(I could tangent into Russia...)
It was Azerbaijan using drones procured from Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war
Anyway NATO is not a single state. NATO members can make independent decisions other NATO members would disapprove.
Those countries are doing it under their own auspices. You seem to be confusing a defensive alliance with a federalized government.
> As someone living in a country that had a democratic leader toppled down by NATO Aircraft carrier threatening to bomb our most populous city at the time... I disagree with you.
You need to be explicit if you want to argue in good faith here.
They absolutely do not. The military aggression of nato countries against weaker ones is well documented. They have killed, organized coups, waged war, and assassinated elected leaders for their own economic and political goals.
If you're going to argue that every single one of these was merely a country that happened to be part of nato, acting independently, then do it. It's not anyone's responsibility to lob you a specific case that you can try to shoot down on its specific details, and refusing to (proactively!?) do so does not indicate a bad faith argument come on.
NATO expanding east is a legitimate concern to Russia, and it makes sense they would view it as a longstanding insidious aggression.
NATO is only legitimate danger to the Russia interests in bordering countries like the one they are currently pursuing in the Ukraine, by commiting warcrimes among other things.
It didn't even warrant an invasion of Ukraine. Let alone this. Have you read the news? It's not fake. It's all very real-
Russia denies and deflects in reaction to atrocities...
Town by town, prosecutors build war crimes cases...
Zelensky briefs UN on massacres...
Swastika scratched on corpse... Soldiers cut out tongues...
15-year-old raped with mother...
A supposed commitment of NATO not to expand eastward wasn't a concern when they were demanding to be immediately admitted without having to meet readiness milestones like other states in Eastern Europe under President (checks) Putin.
The problem here is that both sides are in the wrong, but for different reasons. NATO expanding eastwards is scary and destabilizing to everyone in the world. Putin, meanwhile, is behaving like an utter savage, and is also scary and destabilizing, to both his immediate neighbours, and also to everyone in the world. Ukraine got burnt, badly from both directions - one pushed it under the bus, the other is in the middle of invading it.
Are these the same level of wrongs? No. Does one excuse the other? Also no. Would I prefer everyone involved to have stopped escalating this, starting two decades ago? Yes. Did poor judgement in the past severely constrict our ability to reach better outcomes in the present? Also yes.
Remember 9/11, and how poor ME policy lead to it? Remember what was in the short term, a reasonable response, in the long run resulted in self-inflicted damage that was orders of magnitude worse?
NATO moving east may well be that short term win. We will see whether the long-term losers will be limited to former Soviet republics.
I can't imagine how scary it would be for Polish people right now if we weren't in NATO, because Russians practiaclly mention us along with Ukraine on a single breath.
It was called a Warsaw pact. Warsaw is Polish capital.
We can't know, it's alt-history speculative wankery. But what we can know is that the latter left the former with very few options.
I call BS on that one. Just for an extreme example, take Uruguay. How is NATO expansion eastward scary or destabilizing for them?
Or take Estonia. Is NATO expansion destabilizing for them? Or is it stabilizing? I claim it is the latter; it keeps Russia from coming back.
Was it destabilizing for Ukraine? Insufficient data. If NATO had never gone past united Germany, would Russia have invaded Ukraine? Maybe. Would it have been this bloody? Maybe not. It might have been like the Russian interventions is Belarus and Kazakhstan. Is it better, or worse to be under their heel for the next N decades, but initially have fewer dead bodies?
It's scary and destabilizing in the sense that Uruguay doesn't really give a rat's ass about where the borders between east and west are drawn in Europe, but would really, really, really prefer that NATO and Russia don't get into a shooting war.
Same thing with threats to the MAD balance of power, like anti-missile defenses. Anyone standing on the sidelines doesn't really care about where the borders are, they just don't want one side to scare the other to the point of nuclear war.
1 in direct mutual self-defense, actually.
> but a number of offensive ones
NATO has conducted, I believe, two operations that were neither mutual self-defense under Article 5 nor at the invitation of the government in whose territory they were conducted nor under a direct call for military forces by the UN Security Council under its notionally-compulsory authority regarding matters of international peace and security, the operation in Libya (which was to enforce Security Council resolutions, but not itself in response for a call by the Council for armed force) and that in response to the Kosovo situation.
Like bombing Libya?
(there is more about Russia vis-a-vis Libya but no need for me to Tangent into that)
That's true if your word means nothing and you have no honor. NATO is in control of their expansion, yes, the members join voluntarily but the existing members have to approve the new membership. NATO can't claim it has no control of its expansion.
Now does any of this mean that Putin is justified in committing war crimes? No, of course not. But it is relevant that the West can't be trusted to keep their word. That makes negotiating a peaceful resolution to this conflict more difficult. It also provides our detractors plenty with which to create a credible alternate telling of the facts.
