This is turning into a major catastrophe. An estimated 4 million refugees so far, I don't know about you boys and girls, but I can't stand the sight of babies being pulled out of rubble.

Meanwhile, in the UK.






Also, some of you may already have seen this:

Mr Pants on fire, wife has a one Billion worth in shares to Infosys company operating in Russia, earned 17 millions odd in dividends, her dad is co-founder of the company:

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That guy lives in The Shire?!

Nope, he bought his own private planet, with a couple of moons revolving around it. When there isn't a photographer around, he has someone making tea for him while the chauffeur goes to fill the car up.

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quote:

Originally posted by Lira Russia has proven, time and again, that they can play a weak hand extremely well.

This statement has aged poorly.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I don't think anyone here said anything resembling that. The argument so far has been about military build-up and perceived threats.

I didn't say that anyone here said that, but that does seem to be the argument put forward by fools like Mearsheimer.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Come on now, mate, really? I'd understand your being dismissive if I just typed a few ramblings away, and I'd be humble enough if this were the case. However, and I don't want to to appeal to authority or anything, would you really be willing to say John Mearsheimer is being something of a Kremlin mouthpiece, for example? He's been even more critical of NATO expansionism than I have in this thread, saying "[t]he West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis"... and that's from The Economist, not the RT, so it's hardly a publication with a pro-Russia bias. I said what I said precisely because I've tried to get as broad a view as possible about this conflict since the annexation of Crimea, as I've explained I had my reasons to.

Lira: Mearsheimer is a fucking idiot. I say that as someone with a BA and an MA in International Relations who has met him several times, read pretty much everything scholarly he has written, and who has a friend who used to be a research assistant for him. He's a fucking fool. He's literally one of the reasons I left IR for my PhD.

Blaming the US for this conflict is absolute insanity and is, as I said before, regurgitating Russian propaganda. Mearsheimer might not be a Russian asset, but he is certainly talking like one.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I have also, up to this moment, been citing and quoting experts whose opinion I believe we can all find unbiased and reliable, from Russian scholars critical of Putin to Western officials (I linked to a diplomatic cable by the current CIA director, then U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, a few posts back). If I'm not mistaken, I am the only one citing sources around here, aren't I?

I think that depends a lot on what you mean by unbiased and reliable? I don't find Mearsheimer to be either.

How about this for a source about NATO threatening Russia:



Russian/NATO borders.

Oh, wow; so threatened!

The US/NATO are not threatening Russia. That is bullshit.

Saying that Russia is threatened by the US/NATO takes away agency from Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

I would think as a non-American/western-European you would understand that.

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I'm eager to see how Lira will react to Russia throwing the hybrid warfare kitchensink at Finland and Sweden in the coming weeks. Here we are, express lane to the fuck out of Russia's pathetic sphere of terror.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO I'm eager to see how Lira will react to Russia throwing the hybrid warfare kitchensink at Finland and Sweden in the coming weeks.

Why? Of course I'll be hoping Russia's shenanigans don't work

I'm myself quite worried that Medvedev's latest threat sounded a lot like my quip to Jack, as the last thing I want is to see the conflict escalate any further. Just because I said it was the most likely outcome does not mean it's the outcome I wanted to see

(Also, I didn't forget this about this thread, by the way, and I do intend to reply to all of you. It's just that I moved halfway across the globe and, you know, work beckons... I wish we were 20 again)

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Are you pulling my leg here or something?

You're hoping that Russia's shenanigans won't work, but you're already worried about Medvedev's "threat". Guess what? The shenanigans just worked on you, and you don't even live in a target country as far as I'm aware. And, regarding what you've said earlier in this thread about NATO's "expansion", it seems like the shenanigans have worked on you for quite some time already.

Took me a while, but I think I was able to state my position more clearly.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO How about you put your sources away for a moment then. Lower yourself to my level and give me answers in a way I can understand.

I'd like to clear one possible misunderstanding: I'm citing all these sources not because I want to feign superiority or look smart, but because I realise how important a topic this is.

Like you said, it's people's lives we're talking about. The least I can do to show some respect is read up and refer to people who have done research on this matter, and some useful documents.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO -Given the world today, if you got to decide, would you have kept NATO from "expanding" to the former Warsaw Pact countries and/or the Baltic states?

I'd frame this question differently: if these sovereign countries wilfully requested to join the alliance, as they did, what could be done to neither affect the overall balance of power (so that no country or region feels threatened) nor outright refuse to assist these smaller nations?

First of all, and I believe this is where you might understand where I'm coming from, if these countries wanted NATO protection, NATO should have protected them from the outset! Once Russia attacked a country NATO had already pledged to accept (that'd be Georgia, way before Ukraine), all sorts of sanctions that are happening now should've taken place then. In April 2008 NATO went as far as saying "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. "... and then the South Ossetian War happened (just a few months later), the annexation of Crimea happened (2014), and so on. The result? Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. No sort of boycott from NATO countries, and the harshest punishments came from doping. Now, if I'm cautious about a Nordic rush to the EU, it's because NATO botched a proper response to Russian pre-emptive aggression before not once, but twice. Do you really think NATO will have your back after it failed to protect not one, but two candidates? To be fair, if I were a Baltic country now, I'm not sure I'd feel protected even if I'm already within NATO, let alone with a pending status.

Let's first make it clear that my distrust is with NATO's inertia: it took them nearly 15 years to stave off Russian aggression, hence my scepticism. Now, with that out of the way, of course NATO does have some problems it could work on.

If I had things my way for some really weird geopolitical accident, a reform or a rebranding would be in order, something akin to what Europe's People Party has already proposed: NATO and the EU have made conflict between members much less likely (Greece and Turkey's proxy war in Cyprus being one of the very few exceptions), and this alone is a very good reason for their existence. However, in order to do this, it would be best for all involved if North America left European affairs to Europeans (as long as it's not done on a whim, like Trump threatened to do), thus jettisoning any lingering cold war undertones. Rather than being an alliance against the defunct Warsaw Pact, it would be yet another multilateral (and neutral) European organisation like so many others. This should also shield the EU from American Trump-like figures.

This means phasing out North American presence while expanding eastwards. Its current 28 European members would still be under the protection of an Anglo-French nuclear umbrella with the world's second largest army at its disposal, and a fully European NATO could rebrand itself as Merkel/Macron's "European Army". A stronger France within NATO would also be seen as a bulwark against American overreach anyway, not unlike in the UN Security Council, which is something Russia seems very concerned about.

This reform could leave legitimate Russian worries behind (for one, an American-led NATO has in the past attacked a Russian ally who had not triggered article 5, despite opposition from the United Nations Security Council). Europe itself could then act as a stronger buffer in the Atlantic between Russia and the US, so that its enlargement would have an altogether different impact in the global balance of power.

The "sweet spot" for this transition would've been during Putin's first years in office, when he went on record saying he would like Russia to join NATO and assist the West in fighting terrorism. It's unlikely former Warsaw Pact members would ever be okay with Russia becoming a full member (article 10 would probably be invoked as most of Russia is in Asia anyway), but working with North America and Russia on equal terms as partners could be seen as something of an olive branch to the Russians and would quell fears that NATO exists just to get them. This neutrality would speak volumes.

And, if it fails, there'd still be the good old force de frappe.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO -What do you feel would have been Russia's reaction if, after the USSR's collapse, these said countries expressed strong interest in integrating with the West and the West outright denied them?

It depends on too many variables.

I don't feel comfortable giving you a short serious answer because you'd be justified in telling me I'd be assuming too much. I guess my answer to your next question will be more useful anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO -Why are the countries that didn't join NATO or didn't make it to the EU early enough the ones in Russia's sights now?

Not all of them, and this shows the failure in engaging with Russia properly while expanding NATO (and vice-versa, really, because Russia's way of dealing with this has been nothing short of disastrous). For one thing, it's quite telling we can simply ignore the three countries that share the longest borders with Russia (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China) and the one we usually forget has yet to sign a peace treaty with Moscow (Japan). Because the problem is in Europe, that's where I understand we should focus.

The following (European) countries aren't part of either the EU or NATO, from West to East: Switzerland, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Moldova, Belarus*, Ukraine*, Georgia*, and Azerbaijan*. The ones with an asterisk share a border with Russia, so I'll ignore the other ones as they somehow benefit from being surrounded by NATO countries.

Belarus is aligned with Russia, and Azerbaijan is too caught up in its own problems with Armenia surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to even consider joining NATO. The only two countries left are the ones the West left hanging after they offered to join the alliance, and which Russia has sought to destabilise. If the whole point of the 1948 Finno-Soviet Treaty was to not have the West use Finland as a springboard for an invasion, do we really need to see and find out if Russia will do something similar again?

I'd be, as I said, a lot more cautious. It's not like Finland isn't already well integrated with NATO anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by JEO These questions might be slightly leading, but please, just tell me what you think. If you won't arrive to the conclusion that we are all indeed better off with NATO having "expanded" than not, you might just be dismissing the whole of non-Russian Europe, where I think there are quite a few more experts who agree on NATO's "expansion" being a good thing than not. I feel like you're complicating an issue that's now 100% clear to at least all of Russia's neighbors, if not the whole of Europe; it was absolutely necessary for all the current Eastern European NATO countries to join NATO for things to be as good as they are now, as opposed to how things probably would have been if they hadn't chosen to join. Even if it was NATO's expansion that lead to the conflict we see now, do you not think it was and is worth it? My questions ultimately boil down to one question: would you rather have the current situation in Europe or have half of Europe as Russia's buffer states?

I'm all for whatever leads to fewer deaths and conflicts, really. Is there any sign Russia may attack Finland if it doesn't join NATO?

quote:

Originally posted by JEO You are either in a strong alliance against Russia or forcibly kept from not being a part of it in some way. And sorry for my vitriol towards you. I'm in a sort of proxy war against Russia myself, through people with opinions like yours.

It's fine, I should probably have been more tactful myself and waited before I said anything. Sorry for that. I'm myself trying to do what I can to avoid the escalation of the war because, as I mentioned, I have had close friends directly affected by it.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Right, sure, okay. I think this whole point is just drifting now. If Finland join NATO, Russia will not invade and occupy them. I don't know exactly what you're suggesting they might do to Finland instead of invading them while Finland goes through the process of joining NATO, and I'm not sure you know either, but I think JEO and his countrymen will take a bit of cyber-terrorism over a full scale invasion.

You're right that I don't know exactly what it is Russia could be up to, because under Putin the Kremlin has used all sorts of tools to coerce foreign countries. A Suomi breakaway republic, like in the Donbass or in Abkhazia might be out of the question, and perhaps cyber-terrorism is all Finland is going to get, but I'd rather be more cautious right now.

Either way, it's a moot point now, as Finno-Swedish discussions have picked up pace. We'll soon find out if my concern is misplaced (and I hope it is).

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Cutting through the back-and-forth in the article, the consensus they come to is this: This is pretty much exactly what I said in one of my very first posts, which you didn't move into this thread: Russia may use a limited nuclear strike in Ukraine if things go really badly for them, but frankly I would be fucking amazed if that ever happens. But Ukraine is not part of NATO and that won't result in a nuclear exchange. What I'm talking about is a full nuclear war between NATO and Russia, which essentially means mutual annihilation. That's not going to happen. Putin is ratcheting up the nuclear threat to ensure NATO don't actually deploy troops in Ukraine or institute a no fly zone or anything to that effect, and it will work because neither side wants to end the world. And I don't find your earlier, possibly hyperbolic, assertion than Finland has stayed out of NATO because they're scared of global thermonuclear war if they do join very credible. To me that line of reasoning is so self-evidently daft I just settled for a slightly weary "There's not going to be a nuclear war."

Once again, I apologise for not moving all posts.

And I also agree with you that the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine much more likely than a full-scale nuclear war against NATO, and even the former is a worst-case scenario.

Oh, and I don't think Finland has stayed out of NATO solely for this reason. There's probably some inertia caused by the 1948 Finno-Soviet friendship treaty that stayed in place after the dissolution of the USSR, among other factors.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews This statement has aged poorly.

I refuse to go full Putinversteher here, but it's a bit too soon to write off any other Russian threat, isn't it? Specially given that the fog of war has not dissipated yet, and this invasion seems to hark back to the very conflict that triggered Finnish neutrality in the first place. It was so disastrous for the Russians that it is molotov cocktails that went down in history as memorable, yet here we are.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews Lira: Mearsheimer is a fucking idiot. I say that as someone with a BA and an MA in International Relations who has met him several times, read pretty much everything scholarly he has written, and who has a friend who used to be a research assistant for him. He's a fucking fool. He's literally one of the reasons I left IR for my PhD.

I believe you, specially when you say you've got friends who worked with him. I have no quarrels with that.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews Blaming the US for this conflict is absolute insanity and is, as I said before, regurgitating Russian propaganda. Mearsheimer might not be a Russian asset, but he is certainly talking like one.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the US for the conflict: the blame falls squarely on the Kremlin, as I've said to JEO. It was Putin's decision to make, with Bush's, Obama's, Trump's, and Biden's inaction playing a minor role. There were several ways out of this situation for the Kremlin, and they chose violence, so they must be denounced for that. They should've been punished more harshly long ago.

Now, given this inaction and political unwillingness to do something until very recently, what I am saying is that it's probably more sensible to wait a little before doing the very thing the Kremlin says drove them to an ongoing conflict.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews I think that depends a lot on what you mean by unbiased and reliable? I don't find Mearsheimer to be either.

I'm happy to dismiss him them for the purposes of this discussion, but how about the other people I referred to? And, of course, if there are other observers whose interpretations you consider more unbiased or reliable, I'd be glad to read.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews How about this for a source about NATO threatening Russia: Russian/NATO borders. Oh, wow; so threatened! The US/NATO are not threatening Russia. That is bullshit.

I understand you're not fond of Mearsheimer, and you may feel I'm parroting an argument he made, but even if we stick to land borders only (which itself isn't a good starting point since, at the very least, the Cuban Missile Crisis), the argument is that Russia would feel more threatened by a US-led NATO that looked like this (and could have had Ukraine brought into the fold):



St. Petersburg is a mere three-hour drive away from Lappeenranta, and Putin is old enough to have lost siblings in the siege of Leningrad. Most Russians live West of the Urals, not in Siberia. So, just as we should take Finnish worries seriously, if NATO doesn't have a good track record when it comes to protecting states during negotiations, we cannot be so dismissive about Russian sensibilities here either.

quote:

Originally posted by Lews Saying that Russia is threatened by the US/NATO takes away agency from Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Russia. I would think as a non-American/western-European you would understand that.

Quite on the contrary, as balancing between allegiances and alliances is a given for nearly all countries, isn't it? I'm now precisely in a nation still divided for geopolitical reasons, and which can barely amp up its defence (remember the THAAD retaliation?), let alone reunite, without upsetting the local balance of power between China and a US-allied Japan. I'm sure if AMLO got too chummy and decided to enter a military alliance with China, the US wouldn't be too happy about it either, would it?

If anything, I'm saying all this precisely because I'm sort of equidistant from both Western Europe (as we see ourselves as part of the West) and Russia (as we're seen as a BRIC country).

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quote:

Originally posted by Lira Do you really think NATO will have your back after it failed to protect not one, but two candidates?

Do you really think the Finns want anything else than at least try to get NATO on our side militarily quickly enough, given the alternative? I'd like to remind you that we already tried the alternative for a few decades, and it's a national trauma that we're only now coming out of. It's a national disgrace, and the whole concept still bears our name around the world. If Putin wasn't a genocidal maniac, I'd be willing to think of NATO's alternative for a good five minutes before betting it all on NATO.

No one can be sure whether we'll get far enough with NATO before shit hits the fan, but what I'm interested in here is your alternative to Finland applying for NATO...

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I'm all for whatever leads to fewer deaths and conflicts, really.

...and you're outright saying it here, without any qualms; you'd rather let Russia tell you what you can and can not do than fight.

I don't really know you or your story, and I know even less about your country, but I feel like here lies the biggest difference between you and me. I and about 70% of Finns are willing to risk a conflict to not have to return to what we went through with the USSR after the wars and to potentially save us from a larger conflict with Russia. I and 74% of us are willing to defend our country with our lives, should the situation ever get so bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Is there any sign Russia may attack Finland if it doesn't join NATO?

You'd be willing bet my country's future on Russia not attacking or projecting their power because there are no signs of it? Man you surely don't know shit about Russia, not even with all the sources and your intricate posts that take two weeks to write.

Finland: "We are willing to join NATO now as Russia has clearly shown again there's really no limit to their insanity, and we fear we are next. Our membership would be bringing NATO 280 000+ more wartime soldiers and 900 000+ reservists. We're also going to drag the cowardly Sweden with us into NATO, which would essentially turn the Baltic Sea into Lake NATO or something. Our willingness to defend our country is the highest in Europe, and we'll basically be fighting until the last man, but we'd really like to just skip the next conflict if possible, and for that we'd need NATO's help. How copy?"
NATO: "You're welcome to NATO and we would be willing to expedite the proce-"
Lira: "So what's your source on Russia's aggression towards Finland, Finland?"

Get fucking real, Lira. You sound more ridiculous by each post you make. Even if there weren't clear signs of Russia wanting Finland as their buffer zone or more, some sort of aggression would take place sooner or later. Only an idiot would bet nothing will happen just because things seem calm.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira If the whole point of the 1948 Finno-Soviet Treaty was to not have the West use Finland as a springboard for an invasion, do we really need to see and find out if Russia will do something similar again?

Yeah! So why not just give up and lick the boot even without the treaty, pre-emptively?? It's some sort of divine luck that Finland doesn't have a critical mass of people like you, who would've kept our military from integrating with NATO and paving our way into it.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I'd be, as I said, a lot more cautious. It's not like Finland isn't already well integrated with NATO anyway.

So.. You don't really think NATO would have our back during our application process, but Finland already being well integrated with NATO actually does provide us some sort of safety? Or what is it that I'm not getting here?

You're dismissing at least two decades of NATO debate in Finland, in which one side treated the "NATO option", as we called it, being de facto equal to a NATO membership. Well it's not, and we saw that in Georgia and Ukraine, and after Ukraine we'll likely see it in Finland too, if the process isn't fast enough. The best time to join NATO would have been during or after Yeltsin, but the second best time is now.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira perhaps cyber-terrorism is all Finland is going to get, but I'd rather be more cautious right now.

Thankfully it's not up to you to decide whether we should be "cautious" or not. We've already taken this step as a nation, and the whole country is prepared mentally for Russia's attempts to meddle with the situation, and we're not new to it.

Regardless of you somehow trying to prove otherwise, at times you speak exactly like the Russian shills (and the clueless US tankies) that try to poison our current consensus on our NATO membership. You use the same arguments as the nationally despised appeasers who we have let take part in our politics despite their clear inclination towards Kremlin.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira ...which is something Russia seems very concerned about.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira This reform could leave legitimate Russian worries behind

You're parroting the same thing over and over again; Russian "concerns" and "worries". No one is threatening Russia, and there are no concerns or worries on their part, just a murderous struggling empire which everyone in Eastern Europe with half a brain would like to see collapse. And don't come at me with a "Do you really want to see Russia collapse? I'd be more cautious with wishes like that." Just spare me from the world-hugging shit already when the subject is Russia. Half of Europe's been waiting for this cancer to go into remission for centuries, and your anti-US shit isn't helping at all.

Last edited by JEO on Apr-18-2022 at 15:58