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Blut posted:Theres absolutely no guarantee of Azerbaijan expanding into anywhere else. If they do, and if its expansionary noises towards a NATO/EU friendly nation, then there would be realpolitik concerns. yes, that certainly worked out splendidly for georgia
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Sep 10, 2023 20:10
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V. Illych L. posted:yes, that certainly worked out splendidly for georgia Georgia didn't join NATO. Armenia did join the CSTO.
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Sep 10, 2023 20:29
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Owling Howl posted:Georgia didn't join NATO. Armenia did join the CSTO. they didn't, but they did try to go that path. as ukraine has tragically demonstrated, there is a fairly substantial period in which your enemy can make moves - even if NATO was originally cool with armenia joining, which would pose a whole set of issues, most intractably with turkey famously having a veto on new members and NATO's general skepticism to admit members with unresolved land border issues. even if one ignores this, the basic problem would remain the same - their mortal enemy is right there and carries much more weight with NATO than they do. trying to suck up to the americans in, what, 2000? would run into a lot of the same problems as doing so now. russia really is the only power in the region with the ability to protect them from azerbaijan+turkey and any conceivable interest in doing so. i agree that the situation is bad for armenia and i think that making it very clear to the russians that they're pissed at them and are considering some very risky moves unless they shape up is one of a few plays available to them, but the idea that a bet on joining NATO would have any chance on working out for the armenians is just silly.
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Sep 10, 2023 21:16
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I'd say now is a pretty good time to start joining NATO given that almost all of Russia's army is stuck in a quagmire with no end in sight.
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Sep 10, 2023 21:23
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their mortal enemy's patron and close ally have a veto!!!!!!!!
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Sep 10, 2023 21:28
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V. Illych L. posted:yes, that certainly worked out splendidly for georgia Thats because Georgia waited too long to join. If they'd joined in '99 with Poland/Hungary/Czechia, or possibly even at the same time as the Baltics/Romania etc in '04, they would have been fine. Or rather better than fine, since they'd have had a guarantee against Putin. The lesson of Russia's antics in the last 25 years is very obviously now not "don't join NATO, Russian then will respect your borders and won't invade you" its "join NATO as soon as humanly possible or Russia will invade you whenever they feel like it".
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Sep 10, 2023 22:26
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Count Roland posted:The Azeris would want to become a province of Turkey because... why, exactly? That post you quoted is incoherent, but it is possible that the Azeris would try to take Syunik by force, or at least part of it. It would also lead to political backlash beyond Nagorno Karabakh, just like how no one really cared about Russia taking Crimea, but invading the rest of the country was many bridges too far. And that’s not just the EU which would probably be a damp squib about it. The military in Iran would be none too excited about Azeri expansion, given the huge regional minority they have of Azeris (15-20 million - there are more Azeris in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan). Nagorno Karabakh can easily be played off like an internal dispute, which Syunik really can’t. Otoh autocrats can get self absorbed and idiotic, see: Putin.
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Sep 10, 2023 22:31
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Count Roland posted:The Azeris would want to become a province of Turkey because... why, exactly? It's the end point of Alyiev's political vision. https://president.az/en/articles/view/59195 quote:The Turkic world is not limited to the borders of Turkic states. The Turkic world covers a more extensive geography.
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Sep 11, 2023 01:45
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Yeah I mean Fishbulbias post is crazy, but Azerbaijan does pose an actual threat to Armenia, and they will definitely occupy Armenian territory and pogrom Armenians if they can get away with it. That's not a statement of Armenian partisanship, that's just fact. Some sources say they already have, I'll see if I can dig one up.
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Sep 11, 2023 05:56
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Blut posted:Thats because Georgia waited too long to join. If they'd joined in '99 with Poland/Hungary/Czechia, or possibly even at the same time as the Baltics/Romania etc in '04, they would have been fine. Or rather better than fine, since they'd have had a guarantee against Putin. russia has never been the threat to armenia since at least the fall of the soviet union. if armenia tried joining NATO today, even absent the monumental and obvious obstacles against it and NATO having no clear reason to want them in the alliance, it would probably prompt a larger-scale military action by azerbaijan. i have no idea why you're bringing russia respecting anyone's borders into this, it is entirely irrelevant in the case of armenia. as for the rest of your post, nobody in nato was seriously floating an expansion that far east until bush did in 2008, specifically in regards to georgia and ukraine which had both had colour revolutions and were openly flirting with the americans to the point of georgia eagerly supporting the invasion of iraq. there is no coherent reason to believe that armenia, of all countries, would have a faster track than georgia. this stuff is completely fantastical.
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Sep 11, 2023 07:47
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V. Illych L. posted:russia has never been the threat to armenia since at least the fall of the soviet union. if armenia tried joining NATO today, even absent the monumental and obvious obstacles against it and NATO having no clear reason to want them in the alliance, it would probably prompt a larger-scale military action by azerbaijan. i have no idea why you're bringing russia respecting anyone's borders into this, it is entirely irrelevant in the case of armenia. Russia had never been a threat to Ukraine since at least the fall of the Soviet Union until 2014. The biggest foreign policy lesson of the last 15 years is Russia can very suddenly be a threat to any state they arbitrarily decide all, or part of, should rightfully be part of Russia. NATO membership is the only current guarantee of safety from Russian expansionism. Azerbaijan in the 1990s was not going to launch a "large scale military action" against Armenia because it started negotiations with NATO. Azerbaijan was in no position to piss off the unilateral hegemon of the time in the US. There is absolutely no evidence that if Armenia had pushed heavily for NATO accession in the 1990s like the Baltics it would have been denied. As it stands now we have very clear real world evidence that membership of CSTO isn't guaranteeing Armenian security. NATO application may not have worked out, sure, but if it had they'd be in a far better position.
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Sep 11, 2023 12:24
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In the 90s Armenia was fighting Azerbaijan in NK so I doubt that would've worked. As for russia, I don't really have a clear picture of what their position's now is in regards to Armenia. Obviously they're not enthusiastic supporters though, which is why the EU and US have an opening now. I do wonder though if they might be setting up the conditions to annex Armenia at some point under the pretext of protecting them from Azerbaijan, if things get spicier and EU/US predictably chicken out and don't do anything.
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Sep 11, 2023 13:40
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While Armenia definitely has a cultural and historical connection to Russia, strategically, Azerbaijan is also pretty close to Russia. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russia-azerbaijan-ties-worry-united-states/
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Sep 11, 2023 13:47
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Blut posted:Russia had never been a threat to Ukraine since at least the fall of the Soviet Union until 2014. The biggest foreign policy lesson of the last 15 years is Russia can very suddenly be a threat to any state they arbitrarily decide all, or part of, should rightfully be part of Russia. NATO membership is the only current guarantee of safety from Russian expansionism. it would have been incoherent as a matter of policy. it's pure nonsense on its face for many, many reasons. e. like, what you're saying is "a better policy for armenia would've been to simply antagonise their biggest neighbour for no conceivable gain - what they tried isn't working out very well for them, so any alternative would've been smarter" V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 17:24
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V. Illych L. posted:it would have been incoherent as a matter of policy. it's pure nonsense on its face for many, many reasons. What I'm observing is based on the actual real life comparative experience of ex-Russian sphere of influence territories in the twenty first century. Armenia's decision to stay allied to Russia in the CSTO has resulted in far fewer security benefits than Latvia (for example) has gotten from its pivot to alliance with the US in NATO. NATO membership has had very obvious gains for every state that has joined, as the ten Warsaw Pact/Former Soviet states who had the option of joining either the CSTO or NATO that joined NATO in 1999 and 2004 decided, and were subsequently proven right. There was nothing preventing Armenia from pivoting towards NATO in the way these states did. Russia would have been in no position to preemptively invade in the late 1990s to prevent NATO accession, just as it wasn't in territories it regards as far more "rightfully Russian" like the Baltic states.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:06
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Blut posted:What I'm observing is based on the actual real life comparative experience of ex-Russian sphere of influence territories in the twenty first century. Armenia's decision to stay allied to Russia in the CSTO has resulted in far fewer security benefits than Latvia (for example) has gotten from its pivot to alliance with the US in NATO. except for nagorno-karabakh, azerbaijan, turkey, common sense and basic geography there was nothing preventing armenia from joining nato, no you moron
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Sep 11, 2023 19:15
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genuinely some of the stupidest poo poo i've seen in more than a decade of posting in d&d
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Sep 11, 2023 19:16
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i'm not super familiar with the details of the history of the area, but it's my understanding that the balance of power swung the other way in the immediate post-soviet era? which is partly why it took three decades before the conflict reignited.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:32
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Blut posted:There was nothing preventing Armenia from pivoting towards NATO in the way these states did. Russia would have been in no position to preemptively invade in the late 1990s to prevent NATO accession, just as it wasn't in territories it regards as far more "rightfully Russian" like the Baltic states. how is armenia supposed to join nato if turkïye says "no"
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Sep 11, 2023 19:34
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OctaMurk posted:how is armenia supposed to join nato if turkïye says "no" or just having existing unresolved disputes ("war") with one of their neighbours
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Sep 11, 2023 19:40
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nato expansion had been completely irrelevant in the region post georgia and it's only even a part of this conversation because of some wild assertions that it is somehow relevant and because the csto's credibility utterly cratering over the last few years plus other shifts to the regional balance of power
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Sep 11, 2023 20:04
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it's a real possibility that if armena had fully left the russian orbit and applied to join nato in the late 90s, the armenian population would mostly be based in los angeles and camps outside tblisi
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Sep 11, 2023 20:21
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So regarding Armenia, I can't exactly say I know much about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh but there sure seem to be a whole lot of people on Twitter with Ukrainian flags in their handle essentially cheering on Azerbaijan advancing into the region and even punishing Armenia further. I'm more than a little sceptical about the claims that this is just like Crimea and that Armenia is the cleanly defined 'bad guy' in this scenario, isn't the current Azeri government extremely nationalistic and has been putting the screws on Armenian civilians for years? Is Armenia a plain Russian ally even? I remember reading that they were trying to tilt towards the west before the 2020 war showed that was not going to work. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 04:07
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If you're worried about who the "good guy" is in international politics, check which country has F1 race tracks. It's not that one.
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Sep 12, 2023 04:51
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khwarezm posted:I'm more than a little sceptical about the claims that this is just like Crimea and that Armenia is the cleanly defined 'bad guy' in this scenario, Wait, what were you ever reading regarding Crimea where "Ukraine is the clearly defined ‘bad guy’ in that scenario"? Crimea had some reasonable disputes but Russia very clearly signed an agreement in the 1990s to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and they did not. Armenia and Azerbaijan are *both* the bad guys in Nagorno Karabakh. If Azerbaijan invades Syunik then they will be clearly the bad guys in that situation. The Armenians did some heinous poo poo to Azeris in that region over the last 25 years, it’s not ancient history - you can even see on google maps very clearly a giant ring around Nagoeno Karabakh of Azeri cities that the Armenians burned literally 100% to the ground and ethnically cleansed everyone to refugee camps in Baku. The Azeris now are also being awful to the Armenian parts of Nagorno-Karabakh by sieging them. Anyone posting on Twitter who isn’t a political, major figure, or someone trying to get out local news, is either a bot or a fringe weirdo who doesn’t realize they’re interacting largely with bots, so I wouldn’t worry too much about some people with Ukrainian flag emojis cheering on Azerbaijan.
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Sep 12, 2023 07:01
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Saladman posted:Wait, what were you ever reading regarding Crimea where "Ukraine is the clearly defined ‘bad guy’ in that scenario"? Crimea had some reasonable disputes but Russia very clearly signed an agreement in the 1990s to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and they did not. i think you're misinterpreting the post. the idea is that the russians are the clear "bad guys" in the ukrainian war, and that accepting this means accepting azeri claims over nagorno-karabakh in a lot of people's minds. this does not necessarily follow, but it does require a bit of work to figure out why (and why it doesn't follow for you) and that has to be legitimate for me, the answer is simply that this stuff is not and has never been about right and wrong, but about power balances within and between countries. in azerbaijan atm, there's a coalition within to hurt the armenians and the power without to make it happen, so it happens. armenia has not the power without to prevent it on its own and no really reliable protector that can prevent it for them. the azeri coalition within is clearly based on some deeply reactionary impulses and is in the service of a really lovely family regime, and is imo something which we should try to work against.
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Sep 12, 2023 07:54
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V. Illych L. posted:i think you're misinterpreting the post. the idea is that the russians are the clear "bad guys" in the ukrainian war, and that accepting this means accepting azeri claims over nagorno-karabakh in a lot of people's minds. Maybe, but the original post said specifically Crimea and not Ukraine. I disagree that "perceived rightness vs wrongness" is not factored into international response, even if of course in practice it plays a back role to geopolitical strength. If Russia had only taken Crimea, there would have probably been some grumbling and tut tutting. Crimea Anschluss + Donbas War led to mild sanctions. All of Ukraine War led to massive international outrage. Maybe it is just a question of scale, but if Ukraine had generally-agreeably anschlussed itself to Russia, similar to how Crimea did, I doubt Russian gas would have stopped flowing to Europe. I’m sure Poland would have raised hell but Germany would have shrugged. Just my guess though! Armenia’s claims about Nagorno Karabakh were accepted by literally no country and no one else ever called it Artsakh. If not for the US, I imagine no one would be particularly perturbed if Syria reconquered the Golan Heights, either. But yeah the Azeri regime sucks and there’s a significant real risk they might try to go past the "kind of reasonable" stage and into war crimes land, as they appear to be doing at least for the historically ethnic Armenian part if NK. I wouldn’t cheer them on by any means, even for the first part of the war where I thought they were more or less correct, given the utter intransigence of the Armenians to negotiate in the last 25 years when they had the upper hand. Before the recent war, Armenia controlled *way* more than the historical boundaries of Nagorno Karabakh. I also just noticed this Armenia discussion is all in the Middle East thread. RIP Armenian aspirations to ever be considered part of Europe, besides Eurovision.
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Sep 12, 2023 08:38
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It would be comparable to Crimea if the Ukrainian government actually began genociding Russian speakers. NK seceded to defend themselves from genocide. Saladman posted:ut yeah the Azeri regime sucks and there’s a significant real risk they might try to go past the "kind of reasonable" stage and into war crimes land, as they appear to be doing at least for the historically ethnic Armenian part if NK. This already happened in 2020. They killed Armenians who refused to flee before their advance.  Azeri special forces found an 82 year old man who refused to flee from his home. He begs for his life in Azeri as the soldier begins cutting. A crowd gathers to watch the beheading of a 69 year old man who was found in his village. His head is then mounted on a dead pig. Two Armenian men are captured and then wrapped in Armenian flags and executed in Hadrut. Others who were unable to escape had their ears cut off.
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Sep 12, 2023 15:57
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FishBulbia posted:It would be comparable to Crimea if the Ukrainian government actually began genociding Russian speakers. NK seceded to defend themselves from genocide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_massacre Armenians started the ethnic cleansings and butchering of civilians, now the tables have turned. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 12, 2023 16:10
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Nenonen posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_massacre Why did all the Armenians leave Azerbaijan in 1990?
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Sep 12, 2023 16:12
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Nenonen posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_massacre Great link! You can read there about how Azeri forces were shelling Stepankart from that town, were warned to withdraw, and then interspersed themselves in a column of civilians that got in a firefight with the Armenians. That's still inexcusable on the part of the Armenians but that link can also lead you to further context about the conflict, like when Azeries started lynching Armenians in a Baku once Soviet authority fell apart and Armenia invaded Azerbaijan to protect the ethnic Armenians in the western part of the country. Despite all that history it would seem like a poor excuse 30 years after the fact for Azerbaijan to continue trying to massacre Armenians within and outside their borders but if it makes you feel good to justify genocide because Armenia joined CSTO you do you.
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Sep 12, 2023 17:11
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Nenonen posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumgait_pogrom I'm not sure Armenia-Azerbaijan is the type of situation where you can easily point to a single event and say "they started it". poor waif fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 17:15
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V. Illych L. posted:except for nagorno-karabakh, azerbaijan, turkey, common sense and basic geography there was nothing preventing armenia from joining nato, no The majority of those, or similar (South Ossetia etc), applied to Georgia too, and there was no problem on NATO's end with their potential accession. Thats some well reasoned, well punctuated, highly intellectual debate style you've got going on there though.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:06
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Blut posted:The majority of those, or similar (South Ossetia etc), applied to Georgia too, and there was no problem on NATO's end with their potential accession. What do you mean? Georgia has wanted NATO membership for over 2 decades and they don't even have a membership action plan yet while other countries have gone through that process and gotten membership in a fraction of the time. If that doesn't show that NATO has a problem with Georgian membership I don't know what does.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:58
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Blut posted:The majority of those, or similar (South Ossetia etc), applied to Georgia too, and there was no problem on NATO's end with their potential accession. when the interlocutor is impervious to reason, insults have to serve this poo poo is incredibly obvious and only a stupidity bordering on the deliberate fails to even attempt to substantially address it (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 12, 2023 22:37
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Blut posted:The majority of those, or similar (South Ossetia etc), applied to Georgia too, and there was no problem on NATO's end with their potential accession. those were problems with georgia's potential accession too you might have noticed that georgia isnt in nato
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Sep 12, 2023 22:44
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Here at NATO, we denounce the idea of spheres of influence, but if you don't join, its your fault when the death squads we helped train behead all of your civilians and render your nation extinct. Luckily this line of argumentation seems more popular on this forum than in real life
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Sep 13, 2023 00:07
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Owling Howl posted:What do you mean? Georgia has wanted NATO membership for over 2 decades and they don't even have a membership action plan yet while other countries have gone through that process and gotten membership in a fraction of the time. If that doesn't show that NATO has a problem with Georgian membership I don't know what does. OctaMurk posted:those were problems with georgia's potential accession too The rather large problem/road block with Georgia's accession to NATO happened in August 2008. It didn't come from the NATO side. V. Illych L. posted:when the interlocutor is impervious to reason, insults have to serve These are big claims from someone who apparently can't figure out how to work a shift key like a functioning adult, no?
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Sep 13, 2023 12:24
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/africa/libya-flooding-storm-daniel-wednesday-intl-hnk/index.html Flooding in Libya up to 6000 dead with 10000 missing.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:04
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Blut posted:
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Sep 13, 2023 20:00
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