Am I correct in saying that Estonia is categorizing this as a threat to their security therefore requesting the rest of Nato to consider this an attack on a member?
Article 5 can be invoked once, intentionally or by accident, e.g. a NATO plane is attacked over Ukraine. This whole thing is a mess. Despite history since the end of the cold war (which makes some of Russia's positions somewhat understandable, and the fact that NATO didn't do anything different in Iraq and Afghanistan), if Western-style democracies don't want to loose their freedoms they have to act. Appeasement usually doesn't work with expansionist powers.
Can you expand on this? I'm entirely unable to understand why Russia after the cold war didn't become like any other European country and aimed to join the EU etc.
Internally, democratic reforms in the 90s became associated with 1) corruption far worse than Soviets had, and 2) right-wing economic measures ("liberalization") that messed up the economy and created a lot of hardship for the population at the time. The very words "democrat" and "liberal" became profanities for some.
So when Putin appeared, the popular sentiment in the country already in favor of a "strong hand" for a while. He only needed to fit the image, which he did quite easily with his KGB background. After that, he gradually deconstructed the civil society, starting with free press.
Russia could have been Germany-fied with a friendlier and supportive hand. Instead it was handed over to evangelical neoliberals, whose imposed economics guaranteed that only the most feral opportunists and violent gangsters would thrive.
Russia could have become a modern social democracy, but now it's a crumbling militaristic dictatorship state run by a raging senile paranoiac with delusions of empire.
It's one of the worst foreign policy failures in all of history.
Ukraine will not be the end of it. If the invasion succeeds Russia will demand a slice of Lithuania to reunite Kalingrad with Belarus. That has huge implications for all Baltic-adjacent states.
But worse, Putin has claimed the RF has a number of nuclear superweapons, including a strategic nuclear-tipped torpedo and smart hypersonic warhead delivery systems. He also completely renovated Moscow's civil defences.
The US has failed to keep pace, and its weapons systems are either old and outdated or over-designed, high maintenance, and relatively fragile.
Putin also been running a very successful program of subversion and political interference. And building up cyberwarfare capabilities.
Even allowing for hyperbole the worry is that Russia is capable of a zero-warning decapitation strike, combined with remote mass infrastructure attacks and internal terrorism. Any response would be relatively ineffective.
This completely undermines MAD as a doctrine.
No mistake - the US is in very, very serious danger now, from both internal and external threats.
#1 no it doesn't - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad
#2 Any other NATO country & non-nato can launch nukes.
Does this hypothetical Tom Clancy scenario also plan how to deal with all the silo's the US has with missiles in them and the ballistic missile submarines which exist exactly as a hedge against these kinds of wild scenario's.
Can you clarify on this? How does recent Russian action threaten freedoms in Western style democracies?
Especially 1936 to 1940.
If you are in a hurry you can start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time
I thought the salami slicing pattern was obvious for everyone to see now.
Since it is not point is that to me and many others the situation looks very similar to what happened just before WWII.
Until all nations are healthy democracies, the institution of democracy faces an existential threat.
If you are referring to something else, be concrete.
I'm comparing Germanys "helpful" occupations of neighboring countries "to help the poor Germans there against abuse" inhabitants to Putin's attempt to occupy Ukraine "to protect all the poor Russians there against genocide."
Putin is even better than Hitler at this game it seems.
That doesn't make Hitler any less a criminal - it just explains how his casus belli sounded more believable back in the day.
If we are comparing history, let's get the whole picture.
They mostly thought they are not ready for the full scale war yet, but that is different calculation.
Two week of 24 hours news with the proper perspective and the people would be asking in the streets for the invasion of Canada.
In fact, some redneck militia trying to invade Canada is a common trope in US entertainment (from South Park over to The West Wing, even a whole movie exists), implying that it would be pretty easy. It's played for laughs, but it adds to the desensitisation of the public opinion about such an endeavour. Consent is manufactured.
All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
> All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
That is not purely academic. Framing what Russia is doing now as kinda similar to Czech voluntary joining Nato is word class propaganda. It is in fact a lie.
This escalation started decades ago, and was totally foreseeable. And yes, the discussion about the root causes, what-ifs and past errors becomes pointless once bullets fly and people start to die.
USSR was literally Russia + occupied countries. Saying it is understandable is like saying it would be understandable for Germany to attack Poland and France again, because Third Reich went that far too.
Perhaps it was when you said, "Of those two, Russia and NATO, the only expansion since the end of the cold war and the fall of the USSR was done by NATO."
It seems that we are being reminded that it has not.
Russian, simply can't allow more of the board, specially one part so close, to be dominated by the opponent.
Anyone that think this conflict in terms of "good" or "bad" have been drinking the kool-aid.
My prediction: A repetition of Crimea. The Donbas will be incorporate to the Russian area of influence, but not the rest of Ukraine, some noises will be done by the West about sanctions or whatever and in five years nobody will remember. Hope to be right, because other scenarios are really scary.
> Russian, simply can't allow more of the board, specially one part so close, to be dominated by the opponent.
Russian in fact could allow that. Whether Ukraine joins Nato should be between Ukraine internal debate and Nato internal debate. That Ukraine has both opinions present does not excuse nor explain Russian war.
What about the Donbas region, do they have the right to decide in an internal debate?
Instead of trying to be pro-Russian or pro-West, Ukraine have lost a chance of become Switzerland and make a live getting presents from both sides. Now, I think, it's going to be split.
Bullshit. And yes, I am anti-Russian expansion. This is a threat to myself, my family, my friends and my kids, actually. I am very pro-western and very happy my home country managed to be nato member.
Stop paining equivalence between Russia and Nato now.
However, it was not my intention to upset you and I'm very sorry innocent people get caught in the middle of this.
And in six years Putin will grab more land again, knowing that nobody will do more than "condemn" it because everyone is afraid of the other scenarios.
You are aware that Ukraine was the buffer between nato and Russia, because the two actually touch in other places quite a lot? Also, "buffer" is not predestined mandatory role for any country. Buffer is not necessary at all.
There are so many levels of wrong with what you wrote here ...
I'm totally ignorant on NATO procedures, so forgive me that I don't understand the Big Deal here. Obviously, NATO nations will discuss this. They didn't need Estonia to draw attention to what Russia is doing.
So this seems to me a bit like: The exact thing that obviously would happen next (NATO nations discussing) will still happen, but now it's dressed up in a formalism?
To extend your analogy, this is like creating a JIRA ticket when your website with 100 million daily users suddenly goes offline. The shit has already hit the fan and it’s already all hands on deck.