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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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"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.

That was the leading thought before we were shown how ineffective Russian conventional military is.

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.

They've claimed to be doing those heavy changes for the last ten years and this is what they have to show for it.

Being cut off from nearly all advanced technology and with a terrible economy doesn't sound like a recipe for improving much in that sense either.

> No, it diminishes. NATO is a defensive alliance. The more members it has [..]

A similar line of argument about alliances and treaties preventing war was used before the First World War. We all know how that ended.

It's also a bad concept. Defensive alliance is a loaded term, but people use it in arguments as if it was a well defined mathematical object.

> Defensive alliance is a loaded term

It also doesn't appear to be a very accurate description of the things NATO has been getting up to since the end of the Cold War.

"[NATO] has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa"[0]

You don't have to be a spin doctor to realise that what seems like "defence" to one person is another's war of aggression.

German defence minister Peter Struck memorably said in 2004 that "Germany was also [being] defended on the Hindu Kush".[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO [1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/bulletin/rede...

> Defensive alliance is a loaded term, but people use it in arguments as if it was a well defined mathematical object.

Almost like "defensive weapons". Almost, because that's even worse.

> similar line of argument about alliances and treaties preventing war was used before the First World War

NATO was formed with that in mind. A single treaty document publicly ratified. No secret pacts. No back-alley alliances.

How has appeasement worked out in Chechnya, the invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea, Georgia, shooting down a civilian airliner?

What shall we give Russia this time? Then when they come for Poland or Romania, who do you suggest we offer to rape and murder?

Given that Russia couldn't even cleanly occupy Ukraine, it's laughable to suggest they could attack NATO countries such as Poland and Romania.

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.

Russia wouldn’t be able to hurt Ukrainian population if the latter had proper Air Force.

Very few countries in the world have "proper" air force.

Only if you assume the risk of conflict in any member country being the same as when they weren't a member.

> 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?

if everyone followed that logic France would still be under nazi rule

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