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AFancyQuestionMark posted:Of course. Which is the same reason Russia can't have a war with NATO, so everyone should proceed accordingly - which means not folding to threats from an invasion happy power. I like how Russia exerting pressure is just political realism, but Europe countering said pressure with an equal counter-pressure is radicalism.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:02
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Cat Mattress posted:Russia may not like that, but it's their decision to make. and the entirely predictable consequences of that decision?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:08
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lollontee posted:and the entirely predictable consequences of that decision? Their tinpot dictators will stomp their feet impotently.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:09
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You tell us. Nuclear war? Invasion of a NATO backed country?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:10
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You remember that old von Bethmann-Hollweg quote? "If the iron dice roll, may God help us." What do you think it means? What do you think it will mean? You know, when the dice you're rolling are made of plutonium
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Mar 28, 2018 19:14
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I'd take nuclear annihiliation over your rambling.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:16
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evidently so
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Mar 28, 2018 19:17
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I think that's really dumb. The entirety of the Cold War is littered with various proxy conflicts between two roughly equal (military-wise, at least) nuclear powers. If all-out war didn't break out then, there is no reason to believe it will now, when Russia is in a significantly worse position.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:18
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you know, i'm starting to think it might not be the best idea for finland to join NATO. it's starting to look like to me the main use of the thing going forward, is going to be starting a war with Russia. and uhh, good luck with that
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Mar 28, 2018 19:20
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Good on you for telling us, the people who run NATO.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:26
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NATO, the alliance famous for its many invasions of Russia
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Mar 28, 2018 19:26
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You are acting as if Russia is some force of nature with no agency, and has to respond to its neighbors choosing to align with a hostile block with invasion. That's why you constantly write about NATO starting a war, even though you are plainly stating that you worry about war starting as a result of Russia invading a Western backed neighbor. Yet, for some reason, you grant NATO (or the US) plenty of agency, speaking of it as an inciting actor. I wonder why that could be?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:27
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I'm the Finland that has no ties to NATO. On a different note, Finland participates in nearly all sub-areas of the Partnership for Peace programme, and has provided peacekeeping forces to both the Afghanistan and Kosovo missions. In September 2014, Finland signed an agreement with NATO that allows NATO and Finland to hold joint exercises on Finnish soil and permits assistance from NATO members in situations such as "disasters, disruptions, and threats to security."[16] As such, Finland (and Sweden) participated in the 2015 NATO-led Arctic Challenge Exercise.[17]
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Mar 28, 2018 19:28
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I for one eagerly want to see you guys open up new topics of argument with this dude, who completely argues in good faith and does not melt down when people prove him wrong.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:31
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steinrokkan posted:I'm the Finland that has no ties to NATO. i see
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Mar 28, 2018 19:31
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Fabulous Knight posted:I for one eagerly want to see you guys open up new topics of argument with this dude, who completely argues in good faith and does not melt down when people prove him wrong. well I think your eagerness for nuclear war is ever so slightly bizarre, but other than that I don't think I've lost much faith?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:35
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lollontee posted:i see Seems like Russia has no choice but to burn the bog to the ground, I would say sorry, but you brought it upon yourselves.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:36
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steinrokkan posted:Seems like Russia has no choice but to burn the bog to the ground, I would say sorry, but you brought it upon yourselves. where you from incidentally?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:37
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Czech Republic.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:41
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:You are acting as if Russia is some force of nature with no agency, and has to respond to its neighbors choosing to align with a hostile block with invasion. That's why you constantly write about NATO starting a war, even though you are plainly stating that you worry about war starting as a result of Russia invading a Western backed neighbor. Yet, for some reason, you grant NATO (or the US) plenty of agency, speaking of it as an inciting actor. I wonder why that could be? dunno, but i'm eager to find out!
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Mar 28, 2018 19:41
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steinrokkan posted:Czech Republic. notice how i'm provocatively not wishing death on both you and all your people
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Mar 28, 2018 19:43
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I don't know. That's why I asked. I assume its because of some weird double standard, but maybe you should try to explain your point of view in more detail, especially when it comes to absolving Russia of all responsibility and treating Western countries as the only agents in a purely mechanical system. Or you could just keep posting the same thing over and over in increasingly tired and dismissive one liners. That's fine too.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:46
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lollontee posted:notice how i'm provocatively not wishing death on both you and all your people But you are, bud.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:48
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Ardennes posted:Tying Western Europe together, especially at the same time the Bretton Woods system to place was pretty obviously a way to counter Comecon. It doesn't have to actually say this in the text of the treaty to do so (also most treaties don't actually state their literal geopolitical purpose). Integrating Western Europe while most of it was already especially was tied to the US dollar made sense. You are basically begging the question here by assuming that just because there might have been a need to counter the Soviet Union at the time that the EEC was founded, the EEC was obviously founded to counter the USSR. But that both gets the timeline wrong and ignores all the issues European leaders were also dealing with: post-war reconstruction, violent decolonisation, the need to provide their citizens with a return to prosperity, and perhaps most importantly, the need to reintegrate a state that had recently committed massive and terrible crimes into the European community and permanently prevent it from becoming a menace again. As well as of course wanting to be reelected and not simply ceding their newly regained sovereignty to foreign rule. By the time the EEC was created though, most of these issues had begun to be settled in some way, it was clear that there would be no European defense or political union, but defense would be taken care of through NATO instead. That left economic integration, which each of the member states had an interest in for their own reasons, sometimes economic and sometimes political, quite apart from Cold War politics. You say that 'integrating Western Europe' made sense', but that didn't make it at all obvious that it would happen or make clear how it would be done. Moreover, it ignores the actors: to whom did it make sense? And here we know that the USA was not at the table in Messina where the Treaty of Rome was negotiated; the Benelux, West Germany, France and Italy were (Britain merely sent an undersecretary). And they created a Treaty which very much limited the scope of the EEC's activities and the instruments it had to take action to basically the Common Market and a common agricultural policy, as well as nuclear energy cooperation in Euratom. That is not an organization created for economic expansion or economic defense against encroaching communism; it's an organization created for cooperation and integration, an organization of which the practical ambitions never quite reached the lofty heights of its rhetoric. The EEC created a market, and a market is not an actor but a place where or through which people act. The whole union thing only came afterwards, but that was only when the USSR had already collapsed.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:53
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lollontee posted:You remember that old von Bethmann-Hollweg quote? "If the iron dice roll, may God help us."
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Mar 28, 2018 19:54
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:I don't know. That's why I asked. I assume its because of some weird double standard, but maybe you should try to explain your point of view in more detail, especially when it comes to absolving Russia of all responsibility and treating Western countries as the only agents in a purely mechanical system. Or you could just keep posting the same thing over and over in increasingly tired and dismissive one liners. That's fine too. You do seem to have very specific beliefs about my opinions, however. You see, I'm hoping to get an answer one of these days by repeatedly posting the same argument over and over again. I betting that if I repeat the same thing over and over again, you'll eventually run out of things you believe to me my opinions, and will have to respond to the posts I make. Oh and to repeat once again: If you provoke a war with Russia, Russia will use nukes. What counts as a provocation for the Russians is of course, their prerogative. Holding your conception of national sovereignty in high value, does not unfortunately relieve you of having to take Russian opinions into account, especially when deciding whether or not to station American tanks and ABM systems on your shared border. Good night.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:54
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lollontee posted:What counts as a provocation for the Russians is of course, their prerogative.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:57
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A unilateral model in which one party gets to decide on all norms with no feedback is as illegitimate as it is naive. You are treating Russia as some sort of international autist who can't be trusted to behave in line with rational expectations, so it is better to just stay clear off them. And you expect people will NOT want to prepare defenses against such an unpredictable, fickle antagonist?
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Mar 28, 2018 19:58
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Hambilderberglar posted:Where is this idea that Russia can't wait to fling nukes at NATO (aligned) countries coming from? You're very ready to assume they're at all interested in escalating to this point. Because NATO countries, with american involvement, have historically come insanely close to starting a nuclear war with Russia on numerous and well-documented occasions for a variety of reasons. Most importantly during the Cuban crisis, where American marines were about one executive council vote away from being repelled in their assault on Cuba with tactical nuclear missiles. For example, as a place where the thing you're referring to (called fear of nuclear war), comes from. lollontee fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 19:58
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lollontee posted:YOU CANNOT HAVE A WAR WITH RUSSIA. THEY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. IT WILL END BADLY FOR THE HUMAN SPECIES. PLEASE GET THIS BASIC PRINCIPLE OF 20TH CENTURY GEOPOLITICS INTO YOUR STUPIDLY THICK SKULLS. It's safe to qualify any kind of policy that does not actively try to avoid war between NATO and Russia as the number one priority as "criminally insane"
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Mar 28, 2018 19:59
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From the "very smart people being very dumb" department: Dutch scholar of far right movements Cas Mudde has an editorial in The Guardian today calling for the Hungarian liberal opposition parties to collaborate with the antisemitic, neo-Nazi Jobbik party in order to prevent the currently governing right-wing Fidesz government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from completely turning Hungary into an illiberal state. He argues that the only way to prevent the complete loss of Hungary to authoritarianism is for a democratic-fascist alliance. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/hungary-liberal-democracy-tactical-alliance-far-right
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Mar 28, 2018 20:01
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lollontee posted:Oh and to repeat once again: If you provoke a war with Russia, Russia will use nukes. No it won't. Why do you believe that it would? What could possibly cause you to think this? lollontee posted:What counts as a provocation for the Russians is of course, their prerogative. Holding your conception of national sovereignty in high value, does not unfortunately relieve you of having to take Russian opinions into account, especially when deciding whether or not to station American tanks and ABM systems on your shared border. Good night. Holding its own "national interests" in high value does not unfortunately relieve Russia of taking its neighbors opinions into account. Why should others take Russian opinion into account, but Russia can just go around doing whatever it wants, including invasions? I don't think that's right, in either moral or realpolitik terms. Russia is in a weaker position than NATO. It doesn't get to dictate the foreign policy of other nations that choose to align with NATO or the EU due to various incentives, and if it does, according to your own logic, NATO would be "obligated" to respond.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:04
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Seeing as the far right continues to go to from strength to strength at the expense of centrists, especially the centre-left, in the Netherlands, I don't see any reason to trust a Dutch scholar of the far right's opinion tbh
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Mar 28, 2018 20:05
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:
Ahhh! There we go. So you really do have a skull that thick. Welp, can't help ya sry!
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Mar 28, 2018 20:10
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Maybe you could try actually stating what you mean plainly, instead of leaving a trail of obnoxious one-liners and generally acting like a prick.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:13
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:Maybe you could try actually stating what you mean plainly, instead of leaving a trail of obnoxious one-liners and generally acting like a prick. lmao sure buddy
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Mar 28, 2018 20:15
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Or not.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:15
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lollontee posted:Because NATO countries, with american involvement, have historically come insanely close to starting a nuclear war with Russia on numerous and well-documented occasions for a variety of reasons. Most importantly during the Cuban crisis, where American marines were about one executive council vote away from being repelled by tactical nuclear missiles. For example as a place where the thing you're referring to (called fear of nuclear war), comes from. If you want to treat Ukraine as being analogous to Cuba and invoking the fact that America was a vote away from chucking some bombs, the fact is that Russia to my knowledge has not threatened to nuke anybody over Ukraine doing anything there. Nor Georgia or the Baltic countries, or... anybody else really, not even when the Black Sea was suddenly crowding with NATO vessels during the Georgian war. Russian leadership doesn't consist of unsophisticated troglodytes that are chomping at the bit to use the nuclear veto any time their policy goals are in danger of being thwarted. There are costs associated with doing this and invoking it for every setback you're worried they'll blame NATO, the EU or Finland for is a complete nonstarter for them. Escalating to this point is expensive and the Russian leadership is nothing if not price conscious because they don't have 4% of the world's largest economy to throw into a defense industry black hole and even if they did, they'd probably just pay off the political classes the way the  civilized people do it under capitalism.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:22
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Hambilderberglar posted:Even if I take all of that at face value you've told me something about how ready you interpret American strategy to be to drop nukes on things. None of this tells me how willing the Russians are to do so. Unless you're projecting America's readiness onto Russia? Nuclear brinksmanship is a thing that exists, yes.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:26
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lollontee posted:Nuclear brinksmanship is a thing that exists, yes.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:27
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