> Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.
Well, Finland was basically Sweden's shield, and Finland was yielding to Kremlin, so there was very little risk of conflict.
Now Russia has more or less proclaimed it's "back to the empire" agenda which implies subjugation of all of the former states of the russian empire.
Which includes Finland.
The weird thing is, even though Russians lie constantly, when they declare foreign policy targets, they are surprisingly honest and consistent about that.
This implies
1) Finland needs to join NATO asap.
2) After that sweden would be the only weak target left. Gotland is an obvious, concrete military goal that would be feasible target for a RU invasion from Kaliningrad.
Sweden is not a "weak" target just because it's not part of NATO.
Invading, defending, and holding Gotland is not an easy task, especially as the Ukraine invasion has exposed the glaring deficiencies of the Russian armed forces. And Sweden's defense, attenuated as it might be from decades of budget cuts, is focused on defending Gotland.
I'm pretty sure Finland and Sweden are basically inseparable in terms of foreign policy... where one goes the other will go, and they'll discuss with each other in depth prior to any decision.
They may still forgo NATO, its absolutely their choice, and every NATO member respects that, being the primary difference between NATO and Russia. They can leave at any time too.
What disturbs me is that there is a lot of appeasement rhetoric floating around in the comment sections.
If people want to let Russia get away with wrecking Ukraine because Russia has nukes, then we may as well drop the bombs now - once you legitimize that strategy you are going to have massive nuclear proliferation, and even if appeasement worked (it simply doesn't), every other aggressor is going to view nukes as an easy win.
Well, they have been bullshitting for loooong time if that is the case. I recall watching a video of Gorbachev talking to the US Congress and warning about NATO/US expansion. This was in 1997.
There is no credible threat of a NATO invasion but there is the First-Strike issue now that hypersonic missiles are being developed. Putin has been moaning about this for a while now. A security-conscious/pragmatic state models "what is possible" vs "what is probable". If it seems likely that future Finland could host hypersonic missiles pointed at St.Petersburg, well it becomes incumbent on Moscow to attempt to prevent that. It seems unwise to dismiss their concerns if said dismissal would lead to Ukraine 2.0.
Lots of people seem to think that the Russian unwillingness to flatten Kiev means they could not do it.
How many people have to die for Finns to feel like they stood up to a bully?
And yet somehow it is fine for Russia to develop its own hypersonic missiles (well at least try to) and deploy them to kalingrad where they are just as close most Central European capitals as such weapons in Finland would be to Petersburg. Also Estonia is already part of nato and the distance from its borders to Petersburg is pretty much the same so the first strike nuclear risk does not really change at all if Finland joins nato.
For some weird reason Russia is the only country in Europe that must have buffer states protecting its lands and be allowed to use force the enforce this.
It would be helpful if everyone stopped this lying and just said it how it is. Russia wants weak buffer states around its borders that it can abuse however it wants. There really is no actual military reason for any of this as nato is a defense alliance by definition and thus it will not attack first and the current situation in Ukraine has proven this to be true.
"It would be helpful if everyone stopped this lying and just said it how it is. Russia wants weak buffer states around its borders that it can abuse however it wants."
I honestly don't get this whole nuke placement argument.
Both Russia and the US have nukes that reach around the entire planet, and vehicles to keep nukes moving and hidden so that second strike capability is always present. Russia can hide its nukes in Siberia if its worried about a first strike to remove MAD. The nukes would work just as well. Its also been bragging about its super cavitating torpedo... although I get the Russian position a bit more if its all been a bluff like what appears to be the case in Ukraine.
Hypersonic missiles aren't going to be a huge game changer here (how much of those heavy elements can you cram into them), interception technologies just aren't there yet, and by the time they really come into full swing the US won't be Russia's real problem (demographics are destiny... this applies to everyone)
In addition, I doubt Finland would allow nukes placed on its territory. NATO is a fully voluntary organization. There is no command structure that supersedes national authority.
Also fyi, no one outside of Russia believes that Russia was wasn't trying to level Kiev. They are happily continuing to level Mariupol, so its not like they had humanitarian thoughts in mind. You don't send a massive column of armor for a quick strike smart bomb operation. It boggles my mind that even Russians can believe that.
I believe the most prescient military analysis we can make is that Ukraine got invaded because it was not in NATO.
Until Russia invades any NATO
country I have a hard time to dismiss this analysis.
If NATO fails to defend any of it's members then it is nullified. Hence I have a quite high trust to the security instilled by the alliance to any of it's members.
You are pretty good at repeating Russian talking points, by the way ;)
Following the Kremlin's logic, the advent of hypersonic missiles and the neoconservative bent of US/EU politics, it is seemingly inevitable that war is here.
what is a framework to distinguish NATO and non-NATO intervention? Let's say a conflict is small enough for a single country like the US to handle it. Is it still NATO or is it only the US with other members not objecting to it?
The NATO has no power to restrict actions of its members - it can just decide not to support them, which is common. Any action unilaterally taken by a member state or a group of member states that is not explicitly adopted by the NATO council is not a NATO mission.
I know that. I am asking about a framework to distinguish between a NATO intervention from the sole US intervention for the side on the receiving end of it.
Has the nato council voted on it and unanimously accepted the mission? It’s a NATO mission. Has it not? It’s not. Turkeys actions in Syria? Not a NATO mission. Germany and France providing troops to the Minusma mission in Mali? Not a NATO mission. German soldiers getting killed in Mali doesn’t trigger Article 5.
Many NATO interventions happen because the UN Security Council asked the NATO to take leadership on them, others without UN involvement, but all of them require that there’s a political decision before the intervention happens.
Of important note: there is currently no NATO support for Ukraine - many NATO member states do support Ukraine, but others are very reluctant- Hungary for example. NATO certainly is a body that acts as coordinator and supports states that feel threatened by Russia at the moment, even backfilling for capabilities that they’re handing over to Ukraine, so that distinction is mostly political - but it has real effects. Should any of Ukraines neighbors decide to unilaterally send troops into Ukraine and they get attacked there, it’s not an automatic trigger for Article 5 either.
I am pretty sure Libya was never a NATO member. I am pretty sure you too are talking about different things. Grandparent was talking about difficulty of measuring the upside of joining NATO while you are talking about the more easily measurable downsides. There is no contradiction here.
It is better to call Putin's bluff now rather than wait for Ukraine to fall which might force cooler heads to prevail. Also a dual ascension dares Russia to go to war on two perhaps three fronts?
He is suggesting that a no-fly zone should have been instituted prior to the invasion, at the invitation of Ukraine. This would have produced significantly different military and diplomatic implications; it would have required Russia to be the aggressor, and attempt to strike NATO aircraft preemptively before mounting their initial attacks in Ukraine.
If implemented now, a no-fly zone would require NATO aircraft to behave offensively, and would require strikes on Russian air defenses on the ground as well as aircraft.
Of course nations should be free to choose their own path. No-one is arguing against that.
Mearsheimer argues that when the path that a country chooses comes into conflict with a great power's security interests, those interests become the overriding concern of both parties. He points out that Cuba was not allowed to ally itself with USSR with nuclear war being put on the table.
I can't help but wonder what the US would do if Mexico signed a security pact with China to put a military base on its soil.
As a minor example consider the Solomon islands brouhaha[1].
> I can't help but wonder what the US would do if Mexico signed a security pact with China
The only interesting part is where this is the exact same BS talking point as from the most extreme of the pro-Russia/ "Maidan was a CIA coup" shills. e.g. (but not the only example) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30882756
Russian soldiers have been helping rebels and openly fighting in east Ukraine for years as well. Let's not act like Russia didn't start the need for this.
I suggest reading back your own past comments for a quick reality check:
> There is basically no escalation from Russia. [...].
It is just convenient (Biden's domestic issues/Nordstream 2/other unknown reasons) to claim imminent invasion and the media is incentivised to fuel that narrative since it seems to have captured the attention of the populace at large (perhaps based on the Russophobia that is prevalent in mainstream media).
Maybe it's time to be extra aware of your own biases against Russia, NATO, mainstream media...
I was wrong. I admit that. I spoke from a position of superficial knowledge at the time as I ignored the wider context of the situation and was commenting from a position of received wisdom as I was unaware of what a parent post mentioned regarding a widely known fact that NATO was in Ukraine providing thousands of weapons, I was not aware of that and was only commenting on the basis of "received wisdom" on a particular situation.
I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.
No, I am saying that I had not taken Russia's threat model into account. Given that threat model, Ukraine is an existential issue for them and the resolution of the uncertainty that has been in place since 2004 was just a matter of time.
It’s safe to say Ukraine is an existential threat to Putin. Russia as a nation shouldn’t care that Ukraine is democratic and integrating with Europe, except to ask why they couldn’t also.
I don't see how Ukraine being democratic is an existential threat to Putin in any meaningful way. This situation has been almost 14 years in the reckoning since April 2008.
The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.
Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.
> - My touchpad is recognized as "PS/2 Generic Mouse" by libinput, so I can't have touchpad scrolling.
I have the same issue. Different Dell laptop though. It's been an issue for a looong time. Scrolling reliably fails at least once a week forcing a reboot.
They are in dire need of a RESF. There is precious little current material on youtube about the language and it seems to have sunk into obscurity which is making me hesitant to pick it over TS.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.