President: Finland Will Join NATO by July – Yle Uutiset | Hacker News Reader

President: Finland Will Join NATO by July – Yle Uutiset

yle.fi

20 pointsvoisin25 comments

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/30/erdogan-says-turkey...

This is non-news. Turkey is holding up Sweden and Finland for nonsense reasons. Probably some kind of behind the scenes politics going on. Finland saying they ‘think’ it will happen means nothing.

The real "nonsense" is their claim that they want to join the NATO. It's just posturing and they do not want to join NATO and give up their "neutrality". If Sweden was serious about it, the Swedish government wouldn't have allowed the Quran burning incident to happen knowing it would cause genuine outrage among the Turkish (who have a large population of muslims). Finland is also trying to weasel itself out by saying that it will join NATO only if Sweden joins it.

You heard about the Quran incident, but aren't aware of the Russians behind it?

Or that Finland discussed joining NATO without Sweden?

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-discuss-nato-ra...

I mean, you're seems unknowing ( and that's very lightly put). Since Finland and Sweden very clearly applied NATO membership together and now Finland actually wants to join NATO without Sweden because of Turkey. You're timeline of things is way off.

What are the news sources you're following for this opinion? I'm really curious.

Or rather, you only read western propaganda, while I read both western, Russian & Chinese propaganda too to get the whole picture.

Finland is considering joining NATO without Sweden. Their political process is yet to put forward a concrete decision on this matter. The Finnish Prime Minister is pushing the idea of Finland joining NATO without Sweden as they have a Parliamentary election in April this year. Obviously the opposition wouldn't like the government to benefit from that so they aren't sure if they should support this. There are some reasonable objections to this idea from other Finnish politicians (who consider the matter on the merit of the subject than from opportunistic politics) because without Sweden in NATO, Finland will have to spend more for the defence of the Baltics. Militarily too, in case NATO needs to, Finland cannot effectively block the Gulf of Finland if the Swedes are not on board (and if they are not in NATO, and remain "neutral", they are highly unlikely to participate in any such military endeavour).

As for the "Russians behind the Quran burning in Sweden" idea, that may be true. And yet that doesn't in any way matter to what I pointed out - the Swedes were very well aware that the Quran burning had been planned, and yet they didn't do anything to prevent it. Which means they allowed it with a deliberate intention to sabotage the process - either because they were pressured by the EU to announce they would join NATO to rattle Russia or they do not want to join NATO or because they aren't willing to accept the conditions imposed on them by Turkey (who wants them to end support for "terrorists" and hand many of them over to Turkey). (This is a conclusion purely drawn by me - Unlike Finland, which has around 75% support now for joining NATO, only 60% of Swedens are in favour of joining NATO. So perhaps Swedish politicians think they can handle the backlash if Sweden is unable to join NATO. Especially if they can use Islamophobia and blame Turkey.)

We'll know for sure about Finland only between April to July of this year.

I think "western propaganda" would be more similar to the Finnish one ;). "Western propaganda" as you call it, isn't state sponsored as it is in Russia or China.

Just stating the obvious here.

As for the Quran, while it's weird to do it. It isn't illegal, as they mentioned it falls under freedom of speech.

That doesn't mean that some actors are not taking advantage of that, in this case => Russia.

I'd say that America is even more aggressive than either Russia or China when it comes to spreading propaganda. Russians and Chinese are more willing to accept state control that limits some of their rights as that's the political system they are familiar with. Thus, the Russian and Chinese government can get away with a lot more "dictatorial" stuff than the US can. Their propaganda methods thus aren't as refined, as they are used to using state power to achieve their political goals. The Americans however need to be more refined with their propaganda because their democracy limits them from abusing state power. A good example is when a Russian politician told NATO that Russia is very serious about it's goals in Ukraine and are even willing to sacrifice more than 300,000 soldiers for it. Where as America continues to be scarred even today by the backlash it faced during the Vietnam war decades ago (and more recently, criticism about its failure in Afghanistan) that it can no longer indulge in the kind of military adventurism it used to do in the past, and needs to do even now to preserve its superpower status. And ofcourse, the way America's capitalist system ties its private enterprises to the heart of its government - the so called military-industrial complex - it's easy to pretend that any propaganda isn't "state" sponsored, whereas the reality is that it is. (The only difference is that because of its democratic system, the US government can't exercise absolute control and is forced to work with corporates to push its agenda knowing that the corporates can turn against them too).

(And note that even in Europe, BBC and DW are much better at their jobs than any Russian or Chinese owned media).

As for the Quran burning, I am not debating the legality of the protest. I am just highlighting that for all the public hue and cry made about joining NATO, Swedish politicians don't seem to be acting with the seriousness that should be given to an issue of national security. Some may say that the easiest explanation is that the Swedish politicians are stupid. I don't believe that. Either they have made a backdoor deal with Russia (received some guarantees for their security) or genuinely believe that it is in their best political interest to remain "neutral".

This isn't about NATO.

It's about gas found in Crimea in 2008 that could replace Russian gas ( and it's failed sphere of influence)

Do your research.

Doesn't matter if "the Russians are behind it" - the Swedish government still allowed the Quran burning. Let me repeat that - the Swedish government was well aware about this "protest" and still allowed it to happen knowing very well how Turkey would react to it. Do you really believe allowing some religious book to be burnt was more important for them than joining NATO (which apparently they need to because of national security)!? The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Swedes aren't serious about joining NATO, yet.

Starting a new threat? Why?

Sure it matters. Russia is trying to add pressure and abiding democracy.

It's always important in a democracy who is doing what and what their viewpoints are.

In this case, it didn't deserve any attention. Erdogan is just a PITA as usual too. He even tried in court against comedy in Belgium.

If the Swedes were serious about joining NATO, they could have pressured the protestor to do his Quran burning after Sweden had become a member. But instead, they allowed it to happen even though they knew how Turkey would react. And this isn't an "Erdogan" issue. There is genuine outrage among the Turkish population about this incident and it will be very hard for any Turkish politician to overcome the public animosity against Sweden. That means Turkey will not support Sweden becoming a NATO member.

What?

Do you realize that you statement is delusional?

And that the person doing the burning of the Quran is not affliated to the government of Sweden, but to Russia. Which i already mentioned above...

A reminder of the scale of self harm the "special military operation" is.

In these days of civilization which country and which cross-country organizations are _not_ running "special military operations"??

"specifically military operation" was the name the Russian Federation used when it was hoping for quick and glorious little war. RF is using it now because it dares not call it what it really is as it has all sorts of unpleasant implication.

Are you really asking which countries are at war in Europe at the moment?

That wasn't the point of my message.

> Are you really asking which countries are at war in Europe at the moment?

Perhaps it was a worldwide question, not only Europe.

Also war has become too formal and require a lot of paperwork, so countries have been using weird names while bombing other countries. I guess the GP didn't care about the exact name.

Perhaps, but then the question makes no sense when the context is the strengthening of NATO which is against the interests of the RF.

For me it does make tones of sense as I, as a European, have understood that NATO is not a peace bringing organization. They _are_ interested and motivated by war. NATO is not my friend.

NATO is a "If you don't want to be invaded by the Soviet Union, hire a friend with nuclear weapons." organization.

There are some interesting questions like how much in the entry and annual fee to keep the friendship.

you are putting NATO in a very nice light, which to my eyes it doesn't deserve. there are many example for it of breaking international laws, i.e. in Cosovo.

it helps breaking down the world in black and white to understand complex matters, but I wouldn't exactly paint the NATO white.

Finland and Sweden are keen to join Nato. What is their motivation in your opinion?

I'd love to know the reason why they want to join! I would assume through some sort of pressure, but I am only guessing now.

I don't discard pressure because Americans do that all the time.

Anyway, for Finland, they lost 9% of their territory in 1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War and they may be afraid of other invasion.

For Sweden I have no idea. But after playing a Risk-like game with ships for too many years while I was young, I think that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland is a nice place.

Valid reasons! What alternative however could they consider to NATO? So to protect their own interests, Sweden's and Finland's, they need to join a, to my eyes, warmongering organization.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com