- Vladimir Vladimirovich, master strategist
"Whoa, if countries are annexed willy nilly then we better join NATO before it happens to us"
- Every single one of those doorsteps
Even without involving Finland, it's worse than that. If he successfully invades and conquers Ukraine, he will certainly have NATO at his doorstep. I doubt this was his real reasoning.
Maybe the plan was to take only as much of Ukraine to show that he could, if he wanted to, take the whole. Effectively turning the Ukraine into a no-mans-land and maintaining the threat of "don't join NATO, or else..." And Finland doesn't have oil to profit from, so he likely had no plans of ever touching that wasp's nest.
I'm not a politician nor military strategist, but I prefer not underestimating powerful people when thinking about their strategies.
(Ignoring Kaliningrad, which has a border with Lithuania and Poland but is not militarily defensible, and the awkward satellite state of Belarus)
Putin was looking to Finlandize NATO, but ended up NATOizing Finland instead.
Egypt?
- USA is just going to come across either Alaska, the North Pole, or EU allies' military bases.
- UA/Finland/etc are going through their land borders.
- Rest of EU is going to have a problem without sending troops through their neighbors. (And using the Black sea is just a huge detour ...)
- China would use its land border.
The invasion occurred because of Ukraine's movement toward the EU which, eventually, would curtail the ability of Putin and the oligarchs to swindle Russias oil and gas wealth through rampant price fixing and kick-backs. Everything else was rhetoric.
Look at a map of Europe, put yourself in the mind of a highly suspicious and pessimistic person and ask yourself "how would I invade Russia?" "how do I get an SRBM or MRBM within striking range of Moscow?" "how do I increase my ability to have Russian speaking agents plausibly cross into and out of Russia?"
Now put yourself in the mind of someone else seeking power and look at the map and, keeping an eye to history, ask yourself "what is the most effective way to destabilize Russia without involving US forces?"
Both parties are playing a very dangerous game that has a non-zero chance of ending with a nuclear exchange, limited or not. If peace was the goal then both sides need to agree to an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of both military and political forces. A new agreement needs to be reached that places Ukraine as a neutral, sovereign country and both sides should pay for reconstruction efforts and restitution to survivors. Of course, peace is never the goal.
This is clear Russian propaganda.
You "seem to forget" that Russia attacked Ukraine, committed several war crimes... Ukraine would be the happiest if the Russians GTFO and left them to be . They should even pay for the reconstruction costs and should be punished for their war crimes. That would almost make things even.
A peace that grants Russia the Sudetenland as a consolation prize along with a guarantee that Ukraine is sovereign (but with a big asterisk in that they are also not sovereign in the sense that they are able to join an alliance of their choosing to protect themselves from aggressors) is just an invitation for Russia to consolidate the new territory and prepare the next push. And not being able to see that is for me much more shallow thinking.
No, not both sides. Ukraine was perfectly to stay home and take care of their own citizens. There's only one country that invaded the other and started stealing their kids and bomb their population.
Russia can leave anytime, peace will be immediate.
You don't need Ukraine to do any of this. Poland and the Baltic states are NATO members already.
Also, who are you talking about when you say "both sides"?Are you talking about Ukraine and Russia? Withdraw to where? Agreement with whom?
Please be specific.
Come to the 21st century and ask yourself: "why war when we can have commerce"?
Based on what Ukraine at least appears to want, especially now, if it is sovereign it won't be neutral, and if forced to be neutral it isn't really sovereign.
Is it the same for the US? Do I want an attack against Finland to be considered an attack against the US? An attack against the US can unleash the end of humanity. I find very risky to leave this at the whims of some out of touch Russian dictator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...
> Under NATO nuclear weapons sharing, the United States has provided nuclear weapons for Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to deploy and store
Btw if it's either NATO or nuclear bombs, why didn't Finland get nuclear bombs in the last 60 years?
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/history_p...
> Do I want an attack against Finland to be considered an attack against the US?
Lots of people in 1939 said that they didn't want to go to war over Czechslovakia. But of course, once a dictator has successfully annexed one territory without a fight, what does he do next? Annex another one.
The US is arming the fighting in Ukraine so it does not have to fight Russia in Poland.
The NATO (and the US actually) benefits a lot by Finland joining, and will benefit from Sweden joining too - only a matter of time.
While the Finns absolutely kicked the Soviets' asses in the Winter War, they actually did lose the war a ceded territory to the USSR.
The actual impact of that article 5 was pretty non-existent. 9/11 was not a declaration of war by a state; it was an action of a well-organized group. There are no specific actions that this article 5 could imply beyond the PR.
NATO is about deterrence, not really defense per se. NATO membership makes wars with Russia less likely, and provably so. So your answer is yes: the only way the modern global economy works is if all the players are guaranteed they won't get crushed and pillaged by rogue neighbors. A continuous land war in Europe is absolutely not safer for the USA than a decades-long cold war.
The "whims of some out of touch Russian dictator" are going to be dangerous no matter what we do. We can't control Putin and we aren't able to effect regime change in a nuclear state. The only decision left to us is how best to control it.
NATO is neither defense nor deterrence, it is about asserting US dominance over the rest of the world.
Where do you draw the line
letting power mad dictators take over their weaker neighboors territory uncontested tends to not turn out well be it Napoleon, Hitler Stalin, or Putin.
How many lives would have not been completely destroyed had the powers that be 15-20 years ago gotten their act together?
I should say that IMO Zelinsky is doing as excellent a job as he possibly can with the situation now. The main issue is not joining NATO when it wouldn’t have resulted in war before the process can be completed. And maybe NATO needs a provisional membership process that allows a country to be temporarily considered an ally via a much quicker path so that while it gains full membership it cannot be invaded.
A quarter million people dead, because these corrupt non-show of a generation failed to act decisevly, hypnotized itself and after wakeup they do not have the decency to fade into the shadow, step back from all posts and make way for a new guard, ready to take decisive action.
So many dissapointments, especially among the pacifists and anti-imperialists.. intellectual & moral bankruptcy wherever you look.
Might aswell trash the last 50 years of nice words and nothing to show for it. The idea, for all these creatures of comfort to return after the conflict, from the dark and moist places they hid, and try to carry on playacting civilized makes me vomit. "Never again" they yell, while being usefull idiots for those who are at it again.
A majority of cowards, who think that power of believe alone will make them good at the end of history after all this. Im so sorry i wasted all those years listening to them, reading there books and actually believing them to have value beyond the "heating" of the pulped wood.
In 2019, Russia produced almost 3 times as much wheat as Ukraine. The invasion was launched by a deranged psychopath, let's not pretend Russia in anyways benefited from this.
I hope you're not using only the wheat production of a country to formulate your answer on this.
It has been a bit of a political earthquake for Germany to find itself arming others, perhaps more even for the political elite than for the general population. I don't think it would have been possible to convince them that Ukraine should be admitted prior to 2022. Now, of course, attitudes are very different (thankfully), but prior to 2022 the plan for most of Europe (and honestly most of North America as well) was to be nice to Russia and they would come around, because otherwise they would lost to much money. It turns out that is a bad strategy.
> United States, Canada, Poland, Romania, the Czechs and the Baltic States, strongly supported Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO action plan members; however, they were strongly opposed by Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Mere months later Russia invades Georgia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
France and Germany are to blame.
When people mistake a feature for a bug.
The main risk here is that, now that Finland is a member of NATO, it is not clear that Sweden will feel itself needing to make any concessions to Turkey, but Turkey may still want to demand them. I would rather that Sweden be formally in NATO. Given that the four biggest Scandinavian nations have agreed to practically merge their air forces, whether or not Sweden is an actual member may not matter too much, though.
Add this spicy bit of news from today seems to indicate that Erdogan realizes what is at stake[2]
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/nato-politics-sweden-government-t...
[2]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-elections-erdogan-...
Please stop thinking that Turkey (or any other country) is doing a favor to Sweden (or to Finland) by accepting their NATO application. It benefits all parties - Russians included.
Now not only is Ukraine out of reach, he has gained 800 miles of border directly exposed to NATO. A single road near this new NATO border connects Murmansk to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg and the exclave of Kaliningrad are the only access to the Baltic Sea, with NATO nations directly adjacent.
Putin is presiding over one of the greatest geostrategic blunders in history and he doesn't even drink enough to have that excuse.
> COPENHAGEN, March 24 (Reuters) - Air force commanders from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark said on Friday they have signed a letter of intent to create a unified Nordic air defence aimed at countering the rising threat from Russia.
In total, they have 200+ modern fighter jets, soon mostly F-35s. And if you look at the map, they are right next to the main bases of Russia's Northern Fleet and Baltic Fleet.
This is a total disaster. Might as well sell warships for scrap.
I’m happy that Putin has been exposed for the weak baby he is as opposed to the strong man image that he projected (and many people understandably believed) before this war.
Didn't see that coming
Would you be willing to help out your neighbor if he told you that he has information about who robbed your house but won't share it with you? I highly doubt it.
Source (in German): https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nord-stream-schwe...
