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Do it fast, then, and now, while Putin is massively tied up and likely to be for a decade pacifying a well-funded and equipped insurgency.

https://yle.fi/news/3-12272467

> "If Finland and Sweden applied for membership, we could decide on it overnight. You could be a member the very next day because you meet all the necessary membership criteria," said Rasmussen, who was Nato Secretary General from 2009 to 2014.

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If half of the world can be at war at once because of a single soldier being killed in those countries, then haven’t we repeated the 1914 mechanism?

No; we've tested this numerous times. Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...) without a world war; there've been US on Russian engagements in Syria as well.

They did wait for him to (probably inadvertently) fly for a few minutes over sovereign Turkish air space. They wouldn't have dared if he had stayed entirely on the Syrian side.

More interesting is that just a couple of years later all is forgotten and Russia is selling Turkey its most advanced S-400 air defense system, thus precipitating a diplomatic crisis with the US.

Middle Eastern politics: never a dull moment.

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