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What is the slow track, then? Specifically, if the Membership Action Plan was the next step on the fast track, what was the next step on the Slow Track for these countries?
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Sep 13, 2014 00:53
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Yeah, I understand where you're coming from, but a lot of the mistakes you talk about seem to be more in line with NATO and the US underestimating Russia and not playing the same game. If Russia is really like how MP, or the Russians say it is, then it doesn't seem like the sort of country that wouldn't go as far as it could. Since Russia cares so much about spheres and will do anything to get them, then it can't really expect everyone else to not act the same way. I honestly don't buy that Russia is such an innately aggressive country that it invades countries on a whim though. They have interests other than just pure conquest, and they realize that there are costs to aggressive geopolitical action. Putin's no idiot - he knows that the Russian economy isn't super at the moment, and he knows what a toll this invasion is taking on it. Russia still decided to take that hit and intervene in Ukraine, because ultimately they felt it was necessary to protect their interests. e: Reveilled posted:What is the slow track, then? Specifically, if the Membership Action Plan was the next step on the fast track, what was the next step on the Slow Track for these countries? There's not so much a "slow track" as there is a series of steps through which Georgia and Ukraine were rushed. It kind of reminds me of how Medieval and Renaissance nobles could be ordained as a priest, then promoted to bishop, then cardinal, then elected Pope in a week's time. The Membership Action Plan is the level one must attain before being voted in as a full NATO member, but the fact that the US was pushing for Georgia and Ukraine to get to that level, a mere six years after Ukraine got an Individual Partnership Action Plan and four after Georgia got its own, was what was perceived as the "fast tracking." e2: For perspective, NATO was talking about expanding into the Baltics in the mid-90's, but they only officially became members in 2004. Majorian fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 00:54
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Apparent heavy fighting happening in Donetsk livecam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eTRSk_FulY&feature=player_embedded e:can't see anything but definitely some small arms and grad fire in the distance ass struggle fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 01:11
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sparatuvs posted:Apparent heavy fighting happening in Donetsk Yeah, definitely hearing some big booms every now and then. This isn't good.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:15
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Mightypeon posted:Russian availability as a potential balancer (but not neccesarily spoiler/container, both Russia and India would only contain China if they feel directly aggrieved by it) against China, which would enable/embolden India and Vietnam to also balance China. There is also the fact that US trade with Russia is ridicolously tiny (even pre Sanctions). These are very good insights, and I agree strongly with everything except the first two points, not including the parenthetical, and the very last point. Deteriorata posted:I think they all knew exactly what signal they were sending. "gently caress you and your 'spheres of influence'" has been a consistent US policy. Majorian posted:The problem is, the US maintains its own spheres of influence. So close- you're just on the cusp of making a really delicious normative statement. International relations blue balls over here. Dilkington fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 01:28
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Majorian posted:I honestly don't buy that Russia is such an innately aggressive country that it invades countries on a whim though. They have interests other than just pure conquest, and they realize that there are costs to aggressive geopolitical action. Putin's no idiot - he knows that the Russian economy isn't super at the moment, and he knows what a toll this invasion is taking on it. Russia still decided to take that hit and intervene in Ukraine, because ultimately they felt it was necessary to protect their interests. So for perspective, that's what, nine years from the first conversations about the possibility of maybe possibly expanding into the Baltics to full membership, if we assume the Mid 90s as 1995? By comparison, we have Ukraine joining the Partnership for Peace in 1994, The NATO-Ukraine action plan in 2002, and then what could have been a Membership Action Plan in 2008, six years later. Neither really works as a direct comparison because PfP isn't a stated intention to join, and the 2002 action plan was a formal agreement that the Baltics didn't get in the Mid 90s, but as an additional point we do have the formation of the Vilnius group in 2000, which was set up by the prospective candidates of the time to help them coordinate their lobbying for membership. And ultimately, they got accepted just four years later. And Montenegro and Bosnia both went from Intensified Dialogue to Membership Action Plans in under two years. That doesn't really seem like Ukraine or Georgia got fast tracked. It seems like they went through the normal process at a reasonable pace.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:32
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Majorian posted:Yeah, definitely hearing some big booms every now and then. This isn't good. This sounds like some of the heaviest fighting in the war so far, I don't think we'll have good news in the morning.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:38
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Reveilled posted:So for perspective, that's what, nine years from the first conversations about the possibility of maybe possibly expanding into the Baltics to full membership, if we assume the Mid 90s as 1995? By comparison, we have Ukraine joining the Partnership for Peace in 1994, The NATO-Ukraine action plan in 2002, and then what could have been a Membership Action Plan in 2008, six years later. Neither really works as a direct comparison because PfP isn't a stated intention to join, and the 2002 action plan was a formal agreement that the Baltics didn't get in the Mid 90s, but as an additional point we do have the formation of the Vilnius group in 2000, which was set up by the prospective candidates of the time to help them coordinate their lobbying for membership. And ultimately, they got accepted just four years later. And Montenegro and Bosnia both went from Intensified Dialogue to Membership Action Plans in under two years. Here's a hint: It could be thirty to forty years since negotiations to bring them in started and MP&Co would still be bitching about it. The idea that they were "fast tracked" has the same purpose as Teodor's 13>15 poo poo fit: get people to argue with something dumb and hope it gains legitimacy from the fact that people are arguing against it.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:43
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Majorian posted:So chalk it up to him being ignorant, not to him being malicious. I'm tired of so many people on this forum assuming that every poster who disagrees with them does so out of ill intentions. This might work as an excuse if Mightypeon hadn't had months and months of people providing counterarguments and irrefutable facts that contradict his weasely defence of the indefensible. He's either a troll or a wilfully ignorant piece of poo poo.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:46
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Dilkington posted:So close- you're just on the cusp of making a really delicious normative statement. International relations blue balls over here. That the US undercuts its call for Russia to dismantle its sphere of influence by having its own sphere of influence? (I think in an ideal world, no country would have a sphere of influence. Is that what you were looking for?) Reveilled posted:So for perspective, that's what, nine years from the first conversations about the possibility of maybe possibly expanding into the Baltics to full membership, if we assume the Mid 90s as 1995? By comparison, we have Ukraine joining the Partnership for Peace in 1994, The NATO-Ukraine action plan in 2002, and then what could have been a Membership Action Plan in 2008, six years later. Neither really works as a direct comparison because PfP isn't a stated intention to join, and the 2002 action plan was a formal agreement that the Baltics didn't get in the Mid 90s, but as an additional point we do have the formation of the Vilnius group in 2000, which was set up by the prospective candidates of the time to help them coordinate their lobbying for membership. And ultimately, they got accepted just four years later. And Montenegro and Bosnia both went from Intensified Dialogue to Membership Action Plans in under two years. You're right, my theory for why it's considered a fast track doesn't hold water. What I do know, though, is that the Membership Action Plan is widely perceived as a fast-track. A Fancy 400 lbs posted:Here's a hint: It could be thirty to forty years since negotiations to bring them in started and MP&Co would still be bitching about it. The idea that they were "fast tracked" has the same purpose as Teodor's 13>15 poo poo fit: get people to argue with something dumb and hope it gains legitimacy from the fact that people are arguing against it. This just shows that you haven't been following this issue for very long. The notion of NATO Membership Action Plans being a fast-track isn't something that pro-Russian partisans just dreamed up over the past year. It's something that's pretty widely accepted in the mainstream.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:59
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America's sphere of influence is the entirety of this sphere we call Earth. That there are temporarily embarrassed friends who yet realize this is just a matter of correction with time.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:07
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Berke Negri posted:America's sphere of influence is the entirety of this sphere we call Earth. That there are temporarily embarrassed friends who yet realize this is just a matter of correction with time. This is my thought as well. We are quiet; we are patient. We know our cause is true and eternal. We will last. They will realize.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:09
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Actually it isn't the new york times was just writing lazily. All countries have to have a membership action plan before joining NATO, at least after the Soviet Union collapsed. The normal previous state is intensified dialogue i.e. the state both Ukraine and Georgia were in when MAPs were offered. It's like saying I put you on the fast track to college by offering you the chance to enroll at high school after middle school ended! Or saying that if you're driving a car, if you're parked and shift to drive, you're on the fast track to 60 mph. You simply can't keep saying this stuff that isn't true. Fast tracking would be skipping the MAP (and might I remind you again that neither actually got one, the closest thing they got was the US proposing it at a NATO meeting?) I'm sorry but there's simply nothing fast about what happened.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:16
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Nintendo Kid posted:Actually it isn't the new york times was just writing lazily. I just posted a bunch of examples of people saying the same thing. Any idea why that may be, fishmech?
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Sep 13, 2014 02:22
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In seriousness I think the remark that "the West failed to gauge Russia's threshold of threat" is pretty accurate. Maidan was a game, but it was one only one side was really playing. As mightypeon said the other day (no clue if these numbers are accurate at all but wouldn't be surprised if they portray a reasonable picture) Russia spent some preposterous number like $400 billion dollars into Ukraine in the post-Soviet period while the West (I'm guessing US here) it was more to the number of $5 billion over twenty years. I have a lot of doubts on those numbers but I believe it that Russia greatly outspent and carried much more material interest in the country. The EU went into the final talks last winter probably knowing this; probably thinking rightly this was not going to go with Ukraine pivoting west ward. Putin had spent the money, bought the right people, and was ready to cash in years of influence to get Ukraine firmly placed in the Eurasian Union. This was going well until the ill-advised crackdown (and unnecessary, really) of Maidan at the beginning of the year, when everything went from pro-Europe protests to something quite different. I think the West then scrambled for what seemed like a wholly unexpected dose of good luck to take advantage (who wouldn't?) and that's where we are. Putin then revealed that he is playing by different rules than the West expects, or that he felt the rules of the game were violated by the West, and made his own gambit which was to seize Crimea because color revolutions are The existential threat and there is no telling the outcome, at least on their end. Which gambit pays off in the end, all these months later, I'm still not sure. I think the US has the patience to wait out most actors on the global stage but the EU's own existence isn't really a certainty thirty years down the road, less its commitment to countries like Ukraine.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:22
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Majorian posted:I just posted a bunch of examples of people saying the same thing. Any idea why that may be, fishmech? They're all being lazy, it is objectively not a fast track when it's the regular goddamn track and indeed slower than many other countries had done.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:26
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fishmech, Kolya's about to bite your finger and have his batka execute you. 
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Sep 13, 2014 02:38
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That's a nice Gameboy on the right side of the picture.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:40
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Nintendo Kid posted:They're all being lazy, it is objectively not a fast track when it's the regular goddamn track and indeed slower than many other countries had done. Given that pretty much everybody who has written on this subject for the last six or so years uses the term "fast-track," and the only person sperging out about it is you, I'm going to chalk this one up to you being fishmech.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:08
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Majorian posted:Given that pretty much everybody who has written on this subject for the last six or so years uses the term "fast-track," and the only person sperging out about it is you, I'm going to chalk this one up to you being fishmech. Fishmech is right, there is no fast track for Ukraine or Georgia. Numerous people calling the sky pink doesn't make it so.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:14
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Majorian posted:Given that pretty much everybody who has written on this subject for the last six or so years uses the term "fast-track," and the only person sperging out about it is you, I'm going to chalk this one up to you being fishmech. By this same logic, Iraq had WMDs and conservative capitalism is good, and poor people should die because welfare is immoral. Check and mate.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:17
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Deteriorata posted:Fishmech is right, there is no fast track for Ukraine or Georgia. Numerous people calling the sky pink doesn't make it so. Look, call it what you will - my point still stands: pushing for a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia was a horrific mistake on the Bush Administration's part, and it was a mistake on the Obama Administration's part not to reverse that policy.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:19
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Majorian posted:Look, call it what you will - my point still stands: pushing for a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia was a horrific mistake on the Bush Administration's part, and it was a mistake on the Obama Administration's part not to reverse that policy. There was no policy to reverse. NATO rejected their request, and that was then end of it.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:20
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Majorian posted:Look, call it what you will - my point still stands: pushing for a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia was a horrific mistake on the Bush Administration's part, and it was a mistake on the Obama Administration's part not to reverse that policy. It was in no way a mistake: the only "push" came in the form of bringing up a standard motion in the NATO council, which was dicussed and turned down as dozens of them have been in the past. There was no loving policy to reverse: the proposal happened exactly once, years before Obama took office. Is Obama expected to step into a time machine to keep it from happening?
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Sep 13, 2014 03:25
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Deteriorata posted:There was no policy to reverse. NATO rejected their request, and that was then end of it. Apparently not. Biden's comments in 2009 suggest to me that the US hasn't given up the dream.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:28
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Majorian posted:Apparently not. Biden's comments in 2009 suggest to me that the US hasn't given up the dream. You seem to be moving the goalposts, now. That has nothing to do with fast-tracking anything, and everything to do with the US's consistent position of allowing sovereign nations to do whatever the hell they want with regards to applying to join NATO.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:31
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Majorian posted:Apparently not. Biden's comments in 2009 suggest to me that the US hasn't given up the dream. The dream of eventually someday getting Ukraine in NATO? Russia just proved an actual fast track would have been the correct move, you realize.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:33
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That's right guys, there's no policy of getting Georgia and Ukraine onto the Membership Action Plan since 2008...quote:Since Russia first occupied Crimea last month, Georgian officials have been encouraged by Congress, the State Department and NATO leadership to further integrate with NATO. John Kerry announced further U.S. assistance “to help support Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic vision” and expressed his hope that Georgia would sign a partnership agreement with NATO this year. These sentiments were expressed personally to Georgian Prime Minister Garibashvili during his trip to Washington, D.C. last month. Oh. Nintendo Kid posted:The dream of eventually someday getting Ukraine in NATO? Russia just proved an actual fast track would have been the correct move, you realize. It's actually kind of proven the opposite: that promising to expand NATO into Ukraine sooner rather than later makes them react aggressively.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:37
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Majorian posted:That's right guys, there's no policy of getting Georgia and Ukraine onto the Membership Action Plan since 2008... You're self-refuting now, and you can't even tell. It's magnificent.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:39
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Discendo Vox posted:You're self-refuting now, and you can't even tell. It's magnificent. Explain to me how, please.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:41
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Deteriorata posted:You seem to be moving the goalposts, now. That has nothing to do with fast-tracking anything, and everything to do with the US's consistent position of allowing sovereign nations to do whatever the hell they want with regards to applying to join NATO. Not to mention comments expressed does not always align with actual aims. This ties into why the idea "everything will be patched up if the States just explicitly state Ukraine won't join NATO", it won't, because it would be politically disastrous, and even if Ukraine isn't joining NATO any time soon that doesn't mean we can't go around and start saying, in Ukraine, "you know what, thank you for having me visit, but you should really not join NATO."
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Sep 13, 2014 03:43
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Berke Negri posted:Not to mention comments expressed does not always align with actual aims. True, but that just underlines my point, which is, "Why keep sending that signal to Russia, if Georgia and Ukraine aren't going to be able to get MAPs anytime soon?"
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Sep 13, 2014 03:48
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Majorian posted:It's actually kind of proven the opposite: that promising to expand NATO into Ukraine sooner rather than later makes them react aggressively. Please explain how Russia would invade Ukraine in alternate 2014 where Ukraine is already in NATO and Russia would put itself at war with the majority of the world's military power immediately by doing so.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:Please explain how Russia would invade Ukraine in alternate 2014 where Ukraine is already in NATO and Russia would put itself at war with the majority of the world's military power immediately by doing so. I really, strongly doubt that most NATO countries, the US included, would go to war with Russia over the status of the Donbas - regardless of their Article V obligations. Which is a big part of why France and Germany aren't letting them in in the first place - why let in a country that you're not willing to protect?
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Sep 13, 2014 03:51
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Why would Georgia even be a NATO member other than to troll Russia? In what tortured geographic logic can it be considered a North Atlantic state?
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Sep 13, 2014 03:52
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Please, not another incarnation of this argument.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:52
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Majorian posted:I really, strongly doubt that most NATO countries, the US included, would go to war with Russia over the status of the Donbas - regardless of their Article V obligations. Which is a big part of why France and Germany aren't letting them in in the first place - why let in a country that you're not willing to protect? This is no different from the arguments about whether NATO would actually defend the Baltics, and is equally dumb. If Ukraine was a NATO member, Russia would not risk their own security by loving with Donbas on the chance that maybe NATO wouldn't respond.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:54
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Deteriorata posted:This is no different from the arguments about whether NATO would actually defend the Baltics, and is equally dumb. If Ukraine was a NATO member, Russia would not risk their own security by loving with Donbas on the chance that maybe NATO wouldn't respond. But like I said, that's a big part of the reason for why neither Ukraine nor Georgia is a NATO member in the first place. Nobody wants to go to war with Russia over Eastern Ukraine. So why continue to loudly pursue a policy of making them members when A, it's not going to happen anytime soon, and B, it worsens tensions in the region already? (the answer is, "Because our government doesn't know what it's doing in Eastern Europe, and hasn't for a very long time")
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Sep 13, 2014 03:56
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Majorian posted:I really, strongly doubt that most NATO countries, the US included, would go to war with Russia over the status of the Donbas - regardless of their Article V obligations. Which is a big part of why France and Germany aren't letting them in in the first place - why let in a country that you're not willing to protect? So you don't believe in NATO at all then? Look, the whole reason Russia was scared of Ukraine joining NATO in the first place is Ukraine in NATO meaning they can't push it around the way they want to. Because they are quite rightfully I might add concerned that loving with a NATO country at that level means Russia gets hosed back with with full military force. Also you seem to be claiming the Crimean seizure didn't involve Russian troops here... McDowell posted:Why would Georgia even be a NATO member other than to troll Russia? In what tortured geographic logic can it be considered a North Atlantic state? Italy was in NATO from day 1. Italy has absolutely no territory touching the Atlantic, northern or otherwise.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:57
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Had Ukraine joined NATO in say, 2004, I'd say no, we would not be worrying if NATO was really committed to defending it. If it was like 2013... The thing is, under any metric, Ukraine's military was not ready to join NATO for quite awhile. I think NATO's continuation, if none of this happened, and US really re-focused on South East Asia, would be in doubt. Not over, not for a long time, but if the European project seemed to be "safe" it would increasingly be questionable, but now it's future is pretty solidly defined as Russia can be, not just ephemerally but materially belligerent.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:59
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