How can Russia pressure and disrupt the process when NATO members are the ones most afraid of Putin? Finland's doing this only because of Russia's actions.
I can't imagine anybody vetoing Finland's membership. In fact, the more the merrier^Hstronger.
NATO won't accept members that are entangled in regional conflicts which may turn into wars soon (that's why Ukraine couldn't apply anymore after 2014). So Russia's solution would be to start such a conflict, sooner rather than later.
I think the greater reason for hesitating to accept Ukraine up until now would be their still-unstable democracy and high level of corruption.
When the war is over, it may be that the new-found unity caused by the external threat will be enough for them to reinforce their institutions significantly. This could reach a point that could ensure lasting democracy while enabling them to properly fight/eliminate most corruption. At that point, combined with a peace treaty with Russia, they should be able to Join.
NATO has no problems with unstable democracies and high levels of corruption. It was founded by the US...
More likely, Ukraine after the war will be a massively destroyed country, with widespread poverty and a constant need for western powers to pour money into - and that breeds corruption. The only way forward - should they survive as a nationstate - would be some kind of grotesquely enlarged Marshall Plan - they would become in the 21th century that what Germany was between 1946 and 1990: A military bridgehead and designated battlefield should Russia get another taste for war, with modest economic growth.
The level of destruction happening in Ukraine now is, while still terrible, an order of magnitude less severe than what happened in large parts of Europe during WW2. Many countries had around 10% of the population killed, and for those involved in the fighting, a large fraction where men in their most productive age.
Still, most countries had rebuilt their economy to pre-war levels before 1955, and in many cases around 1950.
Given the very small size of Ukraine's economy, reaching their pre-war level will not take very much. Should they, as I predict, come out of the war as a united nation, able to get rid of most of the corruption, they may be able to massively outperform their pre-war gdp fairly quickly.
If they return to pre-war levels of corruption, no amount of economic aid will bring their economy to western levels.
Ukraine can be paid war reparations with the money confiscated from Russia, including Russian reserves. It might actually boost their economy compared to pre-war situation.
Don't worry, that money is gone. It's already in the coffers of western oligarch-equivalents and shareholders. Did you think all that military hardware we've sent them grew on trees?
Would I, as a Finnish or Swedish lawmaker, trust that promise? The US has not won a war in eighty years, and their shoot first, ask questions later approach may ultimately be more destructive than Russians could ever be.
In Afghanistan an Iraq civilians were collateral damage, they weren't targeted on purpose. Whereas Russia is conducting planned genocide, as evidenced in Bucha and Mariupol.
I think that NATO can't accept new members that are not in control of their own borders; the moment such a new member accedes, NATO would find itself in a state of war.
I'm Finnish, and I'd like to see them try. (and fail (again))
Imagine diverting 50% of Russian troops from Ukraine, where they are already struggling, to another special operation in Finland. Can't see it happening.
They'd have to actually declare war to conscript the whole population and what nonsense could Putin say to sell that to his people at this point?
"It worked" is not the phrase that comes to mind when I think of WWI... yes, where was that outcome, but at the cost of tens of millions of deaths[1], years of trench/chemical warfare, exacerbation of the 1918 pandemic.
If we could avoid its equivalent in the 21st century, that would be good.
They're certainly not Russia-aligned. They've never liked each other, and Turkey has been crucial in strengthening Ukraine's defense with their Bayraktars.
They are not aligned, but they deal with the Ukraine conflict in a very pragmatic way. On the one side they are delivering drones to Ukraine, which have proven to be one of the more effective weapons agains the Russian army, on the other hand they will accept Russian tourists into the country this summer.
IMHO Erdogan still owes Putin a favor for being tipped off on the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.
There's a subtle difference. The straits weren't "closed", one of the Russian ships was allowed passage because its home port was registered as Sevastopol prior to the present conflict.
"pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Turkey cannot block Russian warships based in the Black Sea from returning to their registered base."
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Are you saying Turkey should have gone against the rules based international order and blocked Black Sea based ships?
Turkey was under no obligation to do anything. Yet they closed the straits to Russian ships to the extent that they possibly could.
To a populistic loudmouth like he is, he doesn't need a good argument. Also he is trying to relativise war in Ukraine with a lot of Russian style propaganda. Don’t think he has any say in it though. At the same time he is in open conflict for months with the prime minister who wields real power. So if one says one thing the other will say the opposite and call the other bad names. Unfortunately the prime minister is corrupted through and through, as the whole party which forms the government. So citizens are just between the rock and a hard place since the war ended in 1995.
One of the issues of allowing more and more people into NATO, is that potential for fracturing of the alliance increases.
Especially, the original core alliance was very aligned after WWII, politically. However as NATO expands east, the potential for issues down the road grows.
Look at the Ukraine. Let's imagine that this horrible war never happened, Russia never attacked, and that the Ukraine would join NATO in 2023.
Now fast forward to 2030. Russian political games, and influence, has caused the Ukraine to become more aligned with Russia.
What then? Now, the alliance has a detractor of its goals within!
And what of other geopolitical issues? Who will be China's best friend, in 2030?
With the alliance at its original members, it was more tightly aligned.
Now? NATO is becoming far more political.
Perhaps this is apparent to many, but I feel this is not as apparent as it should be. For as NATO becomes stronger physically, with more members, it becomes less strong politically/actively.
An example. If someone attacked Canada or the UK, the original NATO members would have responded instantly.
What about Croatia? Would the response be the same?
> What about Croatia? Would the response be the same?
Yes, without a doubt. Perhaps a little slow, but ultimately the response would be the “same”[1]. The US and UK have existential interest in maintaining NATO.
Croatia and Hungary would be kicked out of NATO before Sweden and Finland would be prevented from joining. At the point of Finland announcing that they will apply, all of the negotiations and box checking are done beforehand. They don’t leave things like this to chance.
Some say “but there is no mechanism for kicking out a member”. It doesn’t matter. The primary NATO members will just have a vote and say you aren’t part of NATO anymore and that would be that.
[1] I’m using “same” here because an attack on the UK or Canada could never be treated as equivalent to an attack on Croatia given the circumstances needed to be attacking those countries and the kinship of the US with those countries. A better way of phrasing would be if Croatia was legitimately attacked and invoked Article 5 of NATO (the mutual defense clause) the U.S. and others would come to Croatia’s defense. There is absolutely no doubt about this.
Considering that NATO is effectively non functional without the US, the process does not need to be written down. The US president can just make it happen as long as his rationale is supported by 90% of NATO. Defense alliances are a trust thing, not a contract thing.
He has poured considerable amounts of time and money and other forms of backing into regime change in a number of NATO members; he extensively backed Le Pen and Zemmour, Trump (and enjoys public support from a number of US senators), has close ties to Gerhard Schröder, and of course has extensive networks in the British Conservative Party - sufficient for the current Prime Minister to appoint a Russian as a member of the House of Lords over the objections of British intelligence agencies - and Brexit.
It only takes one of those to pay off at the right time.
I can't speak about other countries but the idea that Russia could use its influence to convince the UK to veto Finland or Sweden's entry into NATO is absurd. The Conservatives may have been happy to take russian money before the invasion but it would be hard to do so now and political suicide to be seen as bowing to russian political interests.
Yep. Anyone doubting that Putin actively funds and influences right wing politicians in the West needs only to look at Putin's state spokesman, Dmitri Peskov's daughter, Elizaveta, is an assistant to far-right French politician Aymeric Chauprade, a French Member of the European Parliament.
They can do a lot of things. None which are good for Russia but their leaders might perceive this as a direct threat to their sovereignty and take extreme measures.
Either they stop this now or it's all over anyway.
This is reckless - we need to start a path of de-escalation - give Putin an offramp. Get to back to calm waters.
Then let diplomats do their little dances until there is a hopefully more reasonable people in power on both sides.
Perhaps, but trying to become a NATO member has a much higher chance of getting you embroiled in a war than not doing that.
This continued escalation can't help but lead to nuclear war, our leaders are playing an extremely dangerous game of chicken.
If anything, Russia's botched invasion of Ukraine should show other countries in the region that there isn't so much to fear from them, and that NATO can be counted for help even without having to risk triggering Article 5 against a nuclear power.
And make no mistake: a hot NATO-Russia war is the worse possible outcome for everyone involved. If it came to that, it would be objectively better to become a vassal of Russia than living through a nuclear war, for the vast majority of the population.
Appeasement worked great with Hitler and Mussolini... Finland is a sovereign nation and has the right to join any defensive union it wants.
Interesting with all the down votes, wonder if Russian bots have reach even on HN? The fact is that this is happening, and Sweden is joining too, and I'm glad we are.
You need some very twisted Russian logic to see sovereign states joining of their own accord, with majority support in the population as a valid excuse for Russia to attack us.
Here is how the US responded to the Solomon Islands military treaty with China (emphasis mine):
> If steps are taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation, the delegation noted that the United States would then have significant concerns and respond accordingly.
Note that the Solomon Islands is also a sovereign nation, and that it is > 10,000km away from the US border, and >2000km away from the border of the closest US Ally, Australia.
My point is not whataboutism, it is that sovereign nations have an interest in the military alliances of other sovereign nations, and that the security of one state doesn't stop at its borders. Joining hostile military alliances or massing troops at a shared border is logically viewed as a security threat from another nation, and sovereign nations have a right to attempt to prevent such actions.
Of course, doing it by force of arms the way Russia did is entirely illegal and immoral. Even the threat of violence is considered unacceptable by the Geneva convention, though of course that is often ignored. But complaining or seeking diplomatic and even economic ways to prevent such actions is not immoral in my view, and it is certainly not unusual.
I don't know the situation, but if Solomon Islands are doing this of their own accord, and that's what their population wants then I'm not against that. But then again I'm not American. I understand that there are cases, like with the Cuba Crisis, where the fear was warranted. The Soviet's had a history of invading and occupying other nations. China is mainly a threat to Taiwan, and perhaps historically to Vietnam, but unlikely to seek territorial expansion outside of Taiwan. Yes, the US also has blood on its hands, but nobody can argue that the US has tried to invade in order to occupy and integrate foreign territory in modern times.
> I don't know the situation, but if Solomon Islands are doing this of their own accord, and that's what their population wants then I'm not against that.
You may not be against that, but my point was that this is mostly not how world leaders think. Note that it's not just the US - Australia, New Zealand, and I'm sure other countries in the area also came out strongly against this, and similarly explained that it affects their security.
Of course, unlike Russia, they didn't literally illegally and unacceptably invade the Solomon Islands. However, if China were to participate in a revolution-coup combo (as Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine were doing 2 weeks before revolutionaries forced Yanukovich out [0][1]); and then a pro-Chinese leader (even one with popular support) started being armed by the Chinese government, and holding joint military excercises defending from an Australian invasion [2]; then the situation would perhaps change.
It's important to note not just what is morally right and wrong, but also what are the established rules of the world. It's great to fight against those rules as much as you can (and US citizens have more power to change this than any other people on Earth, as the voters in the most powerful country in history which is at least partly democratic), when they are unjust, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore them while they are in place.
Is it not possible that it would be preferable to both sides, even in a hot NATO-Russian war to stick with conventional weapons?
Russia just wants Lebensraum, which would be ruined by nukes, and NATO would probably not want to seem excessively cruel to Russian civilians when their purpose is supposed to be entirely defensive.
Testing something like this is dangerously close to the brink. It's highly unlikely that the losing side would agree to lose without using their most powerful weapon, and it's highly unlikely that NATO would wait for a Russian first strike, which they would likely believe very possible, especially given all the demonization of Putin and Russia.
Don't forget that there have already been numerous close calls in terms of nuclear war, without anything close to a conventional war as background.
> If I were living in Finland, I'd feel safer (against external aggression) if the country was in NATO than if it wasn't
Finland might feel safer once they're in NATO.
The rest of NATO (and non-NATO states in Western Europe), perhaps not quite so much. Surely the risk of NATO being involved in any conflict only increases as NATO grows?
"Surely the risk of NATO being involved in any conflict only increases as NATO grows?"
No, it diminishes. NATO is a defensive alliance. The more members it has with credible military spending (which Finland has) the higher the cost for Russia to invade.
I should add that Russia desires the Baltics, which are in an awkward position to defend by NATO. Finland has a strong military and its proximity to those countries makes an incursion somewhat less likely.
Indeed they demonstrated that, but don't underestimate the effect an existential crisis like this has. We will almost certainly see heavy changes coming to the Russian military. It could be that in five to ten years their military is actually capable, after both structural and strategical upgrades.
And the lines we now draw between NATO, Russia and China could well be the lines of a WW3 within a decade. Hopefully not though.
The more NATO expands, the higher the risk of that war. Russia joining China wasn't even a foregone conclusion, but our leaders are doing everything they can to push it in that direction.
That doesn't follow. Even though Russia has not been able to occupy most of Ukraine, they've still been able to attack the civilian population. Either through medium range missile strikes, or with occupation forces committing war crimes before being pushed back (to put it mildly). I assume the citizens of Poland and Romania much prefer being able to go to a shopping mall without being subject to missile strikes.
> Only if you assume the risk of conflict in any member country being the same as when they weren't a member
Let's imagine we're France.
What's the actual risk of us being directly attacked by an enemy country, starting a conflict?
Now imagine we're France, obliged to join in a conflict by NATO's "collective defence" Article 5. This conflict was already started by an enemy attacking any one of the other 29 NATO members. Particularly murky that now NATO claims cyberattacks count for article 5, and since 2001 we know terrorism can count too.
What's the risk of the latter compared to the former?
I don't see Article 5 as the providor of peace that so many appear to assume it is. Now that the Cold War is long-gone, and it's no longer as simple as "NATO vs Warsaw Pact" in which is was fairly easy to see which side you'd want to be on, I also don't think Article 5 is worth the paper it's written on.
For instance, would your country's citizens be happy to join a war over Taiwan?
Thing is, Putin has boxed himself in; he's said publicly that Ukraine is not a thing, that so-called Ukrainians are in fact Russians, and that he aspires to a Peter-the-Great-style Russian empire stretching from Vladivostok to the Baltic.
The only "off-ramp" I can see being halfway-acceptable to Putin would be for Ukraine to surrender their claims to Donbas and Crimea, in exchange for Russian security "assurances". Even that would make Putin look weak; he's declared that one his goals is to "demilitarise" Ukraine. To do that he would have to conquer the whole of Ukraine.
So any promise by Putin to accept a proffered "off-ramp" would be seen with a very jaundiced eye by Balkan, Central European and Baltic states. And by me, actually.
I'm no warmonger; far from it, I've been mostly a pacifist most of my life. But any "off-ramp" plans would either be unacceptable to Putin, or they would lead to a new war.
It's interesting to look into what kind of person Peter The Great (Putin's hero) was.
He built the Summer Palace in St. Petersburg in emulation of the European palaces he visited on his tour of Europe. But unlike European palaces, in the Summer Palace he installed a torture chamber, in which he personally tortured then murdered his own wife. He seems to have enjoyed torture and murder.
This is the model that Putin so admires.
I don't know that it's yet possible to ascribe any war-crimes to Putin personally. The crimes that I've heard tell of are of the kind that might be carried out by low-morale troops in any army.
Of course, the Russian army in Ukraine necesssarily have low morale; they've been ordered to attack and kill people that their own leader has said are their "brothers".
Low morale in the Russian armed forces is a persistent problem; in WWII Russian assaults, Russian machine guns were positioned in the rear, to kill any Russians that thought to fall back. It's not surprising that in the fall of Berlin, there was widespread looting and rape by Russian soldiers.
All soldiers behave like this, to a greater or lesser extent. But this Russian army has been engaged in city-flattening, rape and murder to a shocking extent.
Personally, I'm not inclined to forgive. But that's not my call; I'm not Ukrainian.
Objectively, this is not true. Putin wanted war. Leadership around him wanted war too. They wanted war they will win fast, but even if that succeeded it would be war too.
Nobody wants war, but we also don't want to be part of Russia.
Putin can de-escalate this anytime and "losing" doesnt make him seem any worse than starting a war, killing tens of thousands and making millions flee their homes.
I wish I believed that. His credibility depends entirely on his ability to threaten (to poison his opponents, to flatten cities). He's a strong man, and he can't afford to be seen to back down.
Here's the only off-ramp I can see working:
"Mr. Putin, you can keep your yachts and your offshore wealth; you won't be pursued for warcrimes. But you must exile yourself from Russia, and never darken the world stage again."
I don't think Putin would accept that deal; he'd rather go down with his ship. He thinks he's Peter The Great.
> Either they stop this now or it's all over anyway. This is reckless - we need to start a path of de-escalation - give Putin an offramp. Get to back to calm waters.
Putin has demonstrated again and again that he will interpret any de-escalating, sensible political moves as weakness. Any attempt at appeasement or compromise will be seen by him as an invitation to dare the next aggressive step.
Orban is the prime minister not the president. As for being chummy no Hungarian prime minister or president current or former has ever served as board member for Gazprom, nor served as head of shareholders for Nordstream AG, or director of the board for Rosneft the Russian oil company. All these positions were/are held by a former german chancellor Gerhard Schröder whom had put Germany onto the path of closing perfectly working nuclear plants and thus leading to the current dependence on Russian oil and gas:
You are trying to shift the blame, but Germany was not blocking the airspace for weapons delivery to Ukraine or blocking the sanctions. Ration of dependence of Germany on Russian Gas/Oil is way lower then ratio in Hungary.
I'm putting things into perspective. Hungary has 136 km shared border with Ukraine, it also represents only 0.25% of the global GDP, and it is a small country of less than 10 million inhabitants that took in 700'000 Ukrainian refugees. It is okay to disagree with some of their positions, but to put blame one them for the current mess is ridiculous. As for ratio of dependence I have no idea how you did measure it, but it was certainly not per capita gas consumption.
Don't forget Merkel. There are still people that say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas but could not do anything about it. For 16 years!
There is more "evidence" that Merkel is a long-term Russian intelligence asset, recruited from her youth in East Germany,[1] than that of Trump being the same. One guess on which claim is incessantly repeated by the bien-pensants of the chattering classes.
Bonus: Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?
[1] Something else never talked about is how her parents moved from West to East Germany when she was a baby
Fair enough. I must imagine there will be intense pressure from NATO members towards Hungary if they're the only ones protesting. Is there a process for booting a member?
I can't imagine anybody vetoing Finland's membership. In fact, the more the merrier^Hstronger.