(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Small White Dragon posted:So going back to a topic from the previous thread: According to the Finnish Broadcasting Company (links to a news article in Finnish, sorry), quoting an air force commander, the "foreign press" has gone a bit over-board with what they actually agreed to. Following translation is by the undersigned and flaws attributable to me alone, Juha Pekka Keränen posted:The goal is to plan how the four countries could utilize their air forces effectively together in all situations. There is no necessity for an organizational change where all the air forces [of the respective countries] are unified under a single command. In practice, Finland and Sweden have coördinated with our respective defense plans to some degree for a good while now, and hopefully our best and brightest boys and girls will remember that when negotiating with NATO about our local needs and particulars. Ultimately Finland's official stance is that we want our "cousin" Sweden in the military alliance too, and presumably that is also in NATO's interests as well since Sweden fills a gap in the defense of the Baltic sea region.
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Mar 31, 2023 20:32
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mmkay posted:A minor thing popped up in my head - once all the paperwork is delivered and Finland is officially in NATO, does it mean they will need to accept Sweden's request to join as well? No. Why would you think that?
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Apr 2, 2023 08:16
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mmkay posted:Because they're not getting into NATO at the same time? They wanted to do that, but as far as I understand Sweden will have to wait for some unspecified extra time, while Finland is basically good to go? Were there similar situations in the previous group accessions? Finland made a bit of a foreign policy thing about going together with Sweden, because Finland and Sweden are usually foreign policy buddies going back to the Cold War and how Finland needed Sweden to threaten the Soviet Union with Sweden joining NATO to keep the Soviets off Finland's back. All that said, this was dropped when it became clear that Ergodan had his sights set on Sweden's supposed friendliness with what Turkey calls terrorist organizations. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how terroristic these groups may or may not be. The way NATO membership works is, each member state has to give a thumbs up in some way or another for a new joinee to get aboard. Hungary and Turkey gave their parliamentary thumbs up to Finland just now, but there is nothing in this process that would suggest that this thumbs up would somehow transition over to Sweden getting the same treatment. Sweden must undergo the same process, and nothing about Finland being able to join changes Sweden's situation.
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Apr 2, 2023 08:35
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WarpedLichen posted:I think the question is if Finland is a NATO member, if they have to in turn ratify Sweden's accession protocol as NATO members. Egg on my face again, you're right  edit in response to me being an idiot: Even with our new parliament, if Finland votes on Sweden's accession, it will be a no-brainer yes since we don't really have a significant pro-Russia party. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Apr 2, 2023 |
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Apr 2, 2023 08:39
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Hannibal Rex posted:Some new insights into the Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet decision making by two top-notch historians, based on recently declassified documents. They also draw numerous obvious comparisons to the present, which makes this pretty relevant for this thread. This was interesting, thank you! Also, thread title plz? quote:The most disturbing development of all, however, was a plea Castro had sent early in the morning of October 27, Havana time, in which he asked Khrushchev to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States if the Americans dared to invade Cuba. Historians have long been aware of this plea, but thanks to the new documents, we now know more about what Khrushchev thought of it. “What is it—a temporary madness or the absence of brains?” he fumed on October 30, according to a declassified dictation taken by his secretary.
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Apr 3, 2023 13:20
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Keisari posted:I can finally say it: Haista sinä Erdogan pitkä paska. Without any regard for our cousins in the West? Well I'll be.
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Apr 4, 2023 16:22
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Charlz Guybon posted:Even if it's published in one of the nation's largest newspapers like the New York Times or Washington Post? Mike Gravel was prosecuted for reading the Pentagon Papers into the record.
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Apr 10, 2023 15:06
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Willo567 posted:How does any of this help Ukraine? It's just going to make Russia take it out on innocent Ukranians more, not to mention make allies more hesitant to give fighter jets and long range missiles As mentioned upthread, president Zelenskyy is just visiting Finland, where he also met with the prime ministers of Nordic nations. Obviously this visit was intended to be a propaganda triumph, but also a direct petition to our respective nations to keep supplying aid. I understand that you are worried about the conflict escalating by your previous posting, but as far as Finland's new parliament is concerned, we seem fairly committed to helping out Ukraine as best we can. To quote a dead old president, one needs only to look at a map as to why that might be.
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May 3, 2023 14:54
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Oracle posted:That's my thinking as to why it's a false flag: gives Putin an excuse to directly target Zelenskyy since 'he did it first.' Putin has already directly targeted Zelenskyy, why would he need a futher pre-text to do so again? According to Russian propaganda, president Zelenskyy and his administration are Nazi monsters who all should be killed. e,fb 
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May 3, 2023 17:31
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You should look up how close the closest US bases and NATO in general already are to Russia. That's already the status quo From a historical Finnish perspective (please don't ban me fatherboxx for history nerdery), this has been a massive foreign policy issue slash problem. The Soviet Union spent a lot of effort and bullying about their concerns with Norway and Denmark being in NATO, and conversely Finland of the Cold War era had many foreign policy proposals aimed at diffusing this situation. Obviously Finnish leaders understood if a shooting war started the Soviets would want to use Finnish territory to assault Norway, and Finnish leaders also understood NATO / US understood this too, so Finland was in a perilous position.
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May 10, 2023 11:34
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Tuna-Fish posted:Such talk was always completely braindead. There is no world where Norway and Denmark give up the protection of NATO in exchange for being tied to Sweden and Finland. Why doesn't this thinking go both ways? If Norway is tied to the US, they're a prime target for the Soviet Union (you did specify "always"). And Sweden had their own nuclear weapons program until the 1970's, so that was a question of how the Swedes would feel about threatening Moscow with a nuclear strike.
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May 10, 2023 21:03
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OddObserver posted:How did World War II end again? Hitler blowing his brains out, Germany divided, and Japan getting nuked twice and surrendering before a peace treaty. And of course the Soviet block forming, and all that other stuff with the "little powers". Could you please clarify what you mean by this allegory? Is Putin's Russia Germany in this example? Japan?
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May 11, 2023 22:01
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OddObserver posted:The discussion was on defending sides in the war entering the attacker's territory. Certainly, the Allies did that to Germany and other European Axis members. That did not make France and UK non-defenders (USSR was a bit more complicated, but was still 199% morally justified in taking Berlin). I'm not sure it's useful to engage in a "who was morally justified" tit-for-tat about WW2. However, we historically know that Hitler did want Germany to conquer all of Europe and at least some of the Soviet sphere, so he was an existential crisis. If we want to argue Putin is now one too, which he may be!, it's still not a 1-to-1 comparison, especially since Heisenberg couldn't figure out neutron random walk distances properly. In today's world, Ukraine would lose a lot of Western sympathy for invading Russian territory as opposed to defending and reclaiming their own, and this seems like a folly in this situation. Whether or not the flag-pole incident was a false flag incident is irrelevant compared to Ukraine trying to take over Russian territory. Just think of the local people there, managing them would be a nightmare, and every incident would portrayed as a war crime. It would be an awful mess.
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May 11, 2023 22:13
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OddObserver posted:And what I am saying is that those Westerners are being immoral by imposing limitations on a victim that's already started at a huge disadvantage. I hate to break this to you, but morality has usually had fairly little sway in geo-politics. Ukraine needs all the help it can get, and as has been discussed in this thread a-plenty, the popular opinion, if you pardon the expression, in a lot of European states is already shaky on this subject. Obviously places like Finland are committed, but there's some historical... Differences between how we view Russia and how, say, France views Russia. I don't play a lot of map-painting Paradox games so I can't really comment on the tactical plusses and minuses, but I am certain it would be a propaganda defeat for Ukraine to be seen (note that being seen is different than what could actually happen, because media sucks) as an aggressor rather than as a proud defender of their own rights and lands. (If you like, there's a... Difference between how the Finnish Winter War is seen, and how the Continuation War is seen, even if Finland didn't actually invade "new" Soviet territories.)
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May 11, 2023 22:29
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fizzy posted:Incidentally, and completely unrelated to the present discussion: I suppose it isn't against the rules of Dungeons and Debate to do incredibly bad faith reads on dead people who never posted here, but this is an absurd "argument". Eco wrote about fascism informed by Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Your (his) point 9, and in particular the part in quotations, refers quite explicitly to the Nazi state's ideological commitment to gearing the nation and the 'volk' for war, first to conquer 'living space' and after that Hitler at least envisioned a future where the Soviets had been "pushed beyond the Urals" and would form an eternal battle front slash training ground for young men. Because life, for men, is about struggle, you see. Not sure why you bolded part 10, it's not like Ukraine is (to my knowledge) executing the infirm or the disabled, etc. Also not sure how you feel point 11 is in any way related to the war in Ukraine. As far as I know, Ukrainian children were taught reading, arithmetic etc. in school, rather than gymnastics, war games, physical labour and so forth, which the Nazi state at least felt was a better education for children than what the ivory tower intellectuals had cooked up before. And point 12 is an absurdist cherry on top of your little cup-cake of bad faith deliberate misunderstanding. Do you think Ukrainian soldiers use guns because they are phallic? Should they bear-hug invading Russians to submission instead? What are you even trying to hint at here? The essay on ur-Fascism has absolutely nothing to do with a defensive war, fought to preserve national independence and prevent a freaking genocide, you doofus. I refuse to believe that anyone could be so dim as to suggest this seriously. And of course, as you say, you just wanted to post some  without it having anything to do with the thread topic, right 
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May 23, 2023 12:06
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Boris Galerkin posted:I read this wrong at first so I thought it was a meme post by Russian NASA showing off their “volunteer battalion to Uranus the planet”. Didn’t realize the name of the unit was called Uranus until after the video. Uranus as a word has some historical connotations for Russians and the Great Patriotic War  So of course modern Russia has to poo poo all over it by associating it with their little special genocide operation
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May 24, 2023 13:44
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Willo567 posted:Do we have any other evidence that the nukes were moved from Belgorod besides Ukraine saying they were? Wouldn't the U.S. notice them being removed? Aren't you answering your own hypothetical there, champ?
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May 25, 2023 19:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm sorry but... like a green onion? I googled it quick and that doesn't seem to be a typo. I'm just kind of surprised by that name. Since when do weapons' system names make sense or obey the rule of cool? Little Boy and Fat Man? Geez. At least Project Pluto was named after an appropriate deity, but people chickened out of making the actual device.
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Jun 12, 2023 17:51
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Huggybear posted:In WWII the Allies knew about the camps and the vicious and genocidal Nazi occupation for years, and built and practiced an effective amphibious landing and invasion force with air and naval support for most of that time. This just seems to be a historical precedent as a key to victory. This is a funny (not ha-ha funny) derail, since you are confusing fiction for history. quote:As early as May 1942, and again in June, the BBC reported the mass murder of Polish Jews by the Nazis. Although both US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, warned the Germans that they would be held to account after the war, privately they agreed to prioritise and to turn their attention and efforts to winning the war. Therefore, all pleas to the Allies to destroy the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ignored. The Allies argued that not only would such an operation shift the focus away from winning the war, but it could provoke even worse treatment of the Jews. In June 1944 the Americans had aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex. The Allies bombed a nearby factory in August, but the gas chambers, crematoria and train tracks used to transport Jewish civilians to their deaths were not targeted. But given your views on how the Ukrainian people might best ward off an actual genocide, this does not seem all too surprising.
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Jun 17, 2023 04:38
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Huggybear posted:Your response proves my statement that the Allies knew about the camps and did nothing about them, preferring instead to build a massive invasion force to defeat the nation that created them. I apologize, I jumped the gun there, as it were. However, your major thesis still seems to lack the massive effort of the Soviet front, which killed a whole lot of Nazis and did not involve the sort of planning you allude to. Which is all to say, it seems bizarre to suggest that Ukraine should just sit back and watch a genocide happen, because you've seen a few war movies.
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Jun 17, 2023 04:56
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Thanks for sharing. Those sound like awful situations.
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Jun 19, 2023 02:10
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Nenonen posted:Like the Kakhovka dam, you can't say that Russians wouldn't do something deeply regrettable and stupid, but there's not much useful information in these announcements. Putin can do whatever he likes at the power plant, but whether he does or not and when he does it, we don't know and have little ways to influence. It's weird that Putin managed it, but we're finally at the "gotta hand it to Adolf Hitler" leagues Horrible job, hope you see a long hearing in Hague, Vlad!
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Jun 22, 2023 12:59
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I keep thinking Dungeons and Debates needs a separate thread for litigating everything that was awful and horrible about World War 2, its time and aftermath, but we have actual historians writing here and I'm too timid to write an OP
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Jul 1, 2023 13:47
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MikeC posted:How? The state remains the primary actor in IR. The challenge has and always will be trying to ascertain the driving motivations of the state beyond the ever-present issue of existential security. I am asking in all honesty and without malice, I'm curious: How does Hitler fit into this theory? Is the idea that if Adolf had been punished harder than a stint in Landsberg writing a political pamphlet, eventually there would have been a cabal of German generals (or whatever) who led the nation into an existential conflict against the Soviet Union? Germany's need for Lebensraum was of existential security? Of course we could frame the EU in these terms, so it sort of tracks, but World War 2 as a conflict was disastrous and the amount of dead people, geez. And from an IR perspective, it did shape the fates of a huge number of nations world-wide, hence the, erm, world war moniker I suppose. edit: the tired Hitler comparison being that Putin is a more irrational actor than another state leader, given that Russia is an autocracy at the mercies of a ruling class without checks and balances. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 2, 2023 |
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Jul 2, 2023 16:58
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. As someone who has a perpetual grudge against West Germany and the term 'finlandization', meant to evoke overt friendliness and even bending over to Soviet demands, how exactly does this logic play out? If nation states are meant to be rational actors, did it not make perfect sense for e.g. Estonia to seek a military alliance away from Russia after the SU fell? If by "pushback" we mean Russia wanting to restore the imperial borders, which by their own propaganda seems to be the idea with the genocidal war in Ukraine, then is it not rational for smaller actors to pursue friendship elsewhere? And, not to put a too fine point to it, but rationally acting Finland joined NATO after about 70 years of playing buddy with Russia for practical reasons (our president J.K. Paasikivi, who was a very angry man, once exclaimed "Go home and look at a map" when someone questioned his logic about being nice with Russia), so Russia defending their sphere of influence seems to have failed miserably, not only in Ukraine but with your alluded-to military alliance approaching eastward. I don't mean to be crude here, but the entire theory of rationally behaving, self-serving nation states seems to fall apart when we observe modern Russian behaviour. When they were content with spiking teas with polonium and other such acts of criminal behaviour, it maybe was marginally believable that they were playing elaborate 12D chess with their "sphere of influence", but as Europe (and the US) evidenced over the past year, launching a genocide against a neighbouring, smaller state was deemed as bad and definitely not good, and gently caress you Putin. The "pushback" produced the literal opposite of everything that a rational actor would want to happen to their state, Russia. To dredge back the horrible comparison, of course the Versailles peace treaty seemed unfair to Germany, and Germany as a nation would have acted to thwart it eventually, Adolf Hitler or no, but it was Adolf Hitler specifically who wanted to plunge his nation into a disastrous war that murdered tens of millions of people, and that's before we count in the Holocaust. The "West" made a mistake in thinking Russia could be integrated into a peaceful, maybe neo-liberal world order where trade and smiles rule (hence the gas pipe projects and their vehement proponents etc.), because Russia as it stands under Putin is a mobster state and cannot be reasoned with. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:21
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BillsPhoenix posted:Russia is the aggressor here and not acting in good faith. They're murdering, committing war crimes. They (Russia) messed up all their soft influence, and possibilities for polonium teas, for what? A blitzkrieg that didn't work? It is irrational to ruin one's chances of integrating into a larger economic system just for the sake of
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Jul 3, 2023 17:27
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MikeC posted:The logical question in this scenario for Estonia to ask is whether seeking a military protection from the west (lets be honest protection since Estonia doesn't provide much) is the best path forward to maintaining Estonia's security because NATO comes with a nuclear guarantee. An alliance is a two-way street. Estonia can ask NATO sign a piece of paper that says NATO will defend Estonia to the hilt up to and including nuclear weapons but the US (NATO) must think that Estonia is worth defending up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Some posters might respond that Eastern European nations have self agency, they do, but so does the US (NATO). The Realist camp at time the SU was falling apart essentially was asking the question....wait - is Estonia (or Eastern Europe) really worth a potential WW3 if Russia decides this is unacceptable to it? Because that's what that piece of paper is saying. And if we aren't serious about this we shouldn't be sending signals that NATO is open to expansion or people might get hosed and make a bad choice. In the case of the Baltics, they got through and now the piece of paper means that even "insane Putin" is unlikely to test them. There was a time in the late aughts that Putin just came out and said this is enough and 2008 Georgia and 2014 Ukraine is the result of this pushback. I think posting friend Koos Group has stated that conversations, so long as they are 'educational', are worthwhile. Your thesis posits that Estonia holds no real value for NATO, and NATO is essentially just being nice guys with their nuclear deterrence. Never mind all the intelligence work the CIA did in Finland and I imagine the Baltics back in the day, but by your own reasoning, that bordering Russia with a military alliance is an inherent reason for Russia to go ape-poo poo, surely the countries operating reasonably and rationally within said military alliance are also thinking it is worthwhile? If Estonia thinks it is worthwhile to be allied with the United States, and the United States, in their infinite grace and charity, choose to grant such an agreement, and the idea is that Russia finds this a casus belli, then which actor here is being irrational? No one, by the realist reasoning. Except now we are forced to accept the idea that the US is merely pretending, and NATO is a sham, because it's not rational to pursue a global thermo-nuclear war. Which it isn't, but this reasoning did not exist through the Cold War; need I point out how the absurdist comedy Doctor Strangelove raised the ire of actual government officials due to it being too close to the truth? Is Ukraine not rational right now wanting more ties with the EU and NATO?
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Jul 3, 2023 17:40
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BillsPhoenix posted:NATO even thought the Russian invasion would work pre war. I was pleasantly surprised by the joint European response too, but that isn't really the point. Starting a full-scale land war in Europe has to seem insane to anyone not larping out their Hearts of Iron game.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:48
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The funnier implication of that chain of reasoning is that Sweden should just annex Norway and Finland since Sweden has been an imperial power.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:43
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Small White Dragon posted:I'm not from the EU but I have a hard time imagining this happening. Per wikipedia, sounds like Turkey would be the EU's most populous country and have the most parliament members. The EU is a slow and lumbering mess by design, since the boogey-man of federalization was already unpopular in the 90's and guess what's the populist shtick about anti-EU sentiment in Europe today. Sweden sure can try to "help", but that's a pretty small gesture in the grand scheme of things. And as has been pointed out, Turkey as it is today won't meet EU's standards in many areas, so lobbying for them is carrying water into the sea.
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Jul 10, 2023 23:59
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fatherboxx posted:I am used to only seeing nm in microchip discussions so the recent posts confused me alot  Forget it Jake, this isn't SI townIn other news(Finnish source, apologies), there's some hubbub from Norway about re-structuring NATO command now that Finland and later on Sweden will be team buddies. Apologies for a Google translate, eh, translation, but it seems readable. Finnish Yleisradio posted:The commanders of the Nordic defense forces have brought up the idea of a joint NATO staff, from which the defense of the Nordic countries would be managed. The Norwegian magazine Klassekampen writes about the initiative . In the image, "yhteisoperaatioesikunnat" is "joint operations headquarters" in English, and Norja means Norway. I think the audience can figure out the rest.
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Jul 17, 2023 17:38
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Obviously the superior mad  satellite thingy would be like the microwave power plant in Sim City 2000, where the microwave beam from the satellite sometimes misses the power station and sets your entire city on fire.
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Jul 19, 2023 09:52
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Antigravitas posted:All of this discussion on the merits of the USA supporting the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation fighting a defensive war curiously omits the opinions of nations and people in the region that are being affected by military and civilian aid to Ukraine. I think it's partly because there's two inter-twined conversations, one which relates to this thread more and the other a bit less. Ukraine wants (and needs) materiel and other sorts of military assistance like training, which NATO and some other European nations are offering in addition to the United States. Since Ukraine is a sovereign nation defending themselves from a violent aggressor, this is both a moral good and supported by international law and the UN charter. Then there is the conversation about the United States' internal politics and how voters there view all this, which apparently led to re-litigating Vietnam among other things. There have been a few Finnish politicians and commentators who have observed, in various phrasings, that superpowers have the luxury of dismissing foreign policy into just another talking point, especially for internal "debates" and arguments about things ultimately divorced from the affairs of whichever state is affected by said foreign policy. Smaller nations generally do not have such a luxury, as Ukraine's horrible situation demonstrates quite aptly.
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Aug 6, 2023 10:52
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MikeC posted:But this is a barrier to peace and no truce, peace deal, or treaty will paper over that fact unless one side or another gains total military victory which seems rather unlikely. Until Putin and the Russians give up on the dream of empire or the Ukrainians give up the dream of true independence, the shooting will continue and any stoppage in fighting will be temporary. I'm willing to just not touch the genocide or morality arguments for now because  , but let's focus on the realist (I am not sure if that is the correct IR term here, sorry!) interpretation of this conflict, and work from your stated premise that someone has to "lose face", or back down from their primary aims in this conflict. Let's say, just to humour me, that Russia's European neighbours would prefer it if it were Russia who lost face. What do you propose would be a desired course of action for said neighbouring states? Continue supporting Ukraine despite the alluded-to manpower issues, or try to force Zelenskyy's regime to make some kind of peace offer that Russia could accept?It seems to me that the latter proposition isn't acceptable, again working under the assumption that Russia's European neighbours see Russia's imperialism as undesirable. It's fine and well for us who are not in the actual war zone to argue semantics about causes of war vs. reasons for pursuing a war and how sensible they might or might not be, but isn't the realist position here that the rest of let's say eastern Europe is fairly rigidly committed to an attempt to stop Russia's imperialist, violent tendencies from purely self-preservatory motivations? This is not a moralistic argument, I would say, but simply a foreign policy one (I won't say "game theory" for fear of that particular derail), since the eastern European regimes we're talking about here certainly remember, in one form or another, what an imperialist Russia did in the previous century. edited a bit for clarity Rappaport fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 09:31
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Kikas posted:Also there are no "regimes" involved in this genocidal war of conquest wagered by an imperialist dictator Ukraine is defending itself from. The war can end anytime Russia wills it, they just need to go home. The only forseeable way to force that is attrition or massive changes at the top in Russia. That's why we should support Ukraine with means to inflict the former until the latter happens. I edited my post a bit to make my meaning clearer, I didn't mean regimes as in Ukraine and Russia but the European states providing assistance. I apologize for wording it so badly 
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Aug 16, 2023 10:05
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daslog posted:His analysis is spot on though. This conflict is about Russia trying to maintain / regain its sphere of influence and the Ukraine is trying to remove itself from Russian ties and move closer to the west. Even if the best case scenario happen (bullet in Putin's head) the next guy in charge will feel compelled to do whatever he can to hold the former empire together, including invading his neighbors. Too bad NATO actually expanded thanks to Putin's actions, gonna be even harder to expand their totally legitimate and not at all horrible imperial desires now. Sad trombone sounds all around. The point is, no government in Europe* wants an imperialist-aimed, war-faring and genocidal Russia next door. I was pleasantly surprised at how unified this response was this time around, and how threatening German grannies with freezing to death didn't deter a joint European response to aiding a nation being invaded. *I guess the Russian puppet states don't count, but the entire point for the rest of Europe outside Ukraine and Russian puppets is to minimize Russia's ability to further their ability in creating puppets and annexing territories, so 
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Aug 16, 2023 11:45
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daslog posted:Europe will need to maintain that level of Unity for pretty much forever, because I can't see Russia playing nice in the sandbox anytime soon (or ever). Forever is a long time. Capitalizing random nouns is a thing in some languages, but I assume you are not calling all eastern Europeans super mutants in want of a Master. So what is the point of this post? I cannot legitimately tell what you are arguing or positing here. Could you enlighten me?
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Aug 16, 2023 13:01
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Kikas posted:Gotta convince Latvia to finally help us annex and divide Kaliningrad then. Because as of now, Russia is at the border of NATO and has been since Poland joined the coalition. But since nothing is happening there, and even Putin is too smart to try something stupid like move troops through the Baltic, Kaliningrad (sorry, Królewiec as we went back to calling it) and Belarus, noone talks about that. Again, my wording was maybe opaque. I wasn't suggesting destroying Russia as a state and salting their earth, but rather that their imperialistic tendencies be curbed. I live in a country with a 1300 kilometer-long land border with Russia, I doubt annexing Karelia and the Kuola peninsula would really help matters either.
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Aug 16, 2023 13:11
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cant cook creole bream posted:How do indirect embargos even work. If you as a nation export some goods to some country do you need to verify that they don't resell it somewhere else? That doesn't really seem feasible. It has been attempted before, causing a lot of head-ache for diplomats and potentially some rich bastards too.
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Aug 16, 2023 13:25
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Not So Fast posted:Why is explanation of why a conflict has occurred considered as justification or endorsement for the aggressor? Do you think Russia would have invaded regardless of what Ukraine did in regards to NATO or EU membership? I mean, their bargaining position from the get-go seemed to require multi-lateral European agreements and treaties, so it isn't like Ukraine was in any position to stave off an invasion all by their lonesome, if we look at this from the benefit of hind-sight. An article from Reuters in December 2021 posted:Russia said on Friday it wanted a legally binding guarantee that NATO would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, part of a wish list of security guarantees it wants to negotiate with the West. Of course we could give Russia the benefit of the doubt and figure they weren't really serious about having NATO withdraw from their borders  , but maybe that is a bit silly.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:00
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