Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO
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Which is what the expansion of NATO was always about. NATO isn't a threat to Russia itself - if Russia seriously feared NATO aggression, it wouldn't voluntarily demilitarize its NATO borders during the past 13 months.
NATO expansion just neutralizes Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors through threat of aggression (or in case like Ukraine through the use of aggression).
What does this even mean?
Spheres of influence are gained through economic muscle and cultural power now, not force of arms.
Amusingly, that status quo is enforced via the USA’s supposed overwhelming force of arms. Which in turn suggests your analysis is deeply deficient in its consideration of higher order effects.
See also: Georgia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, Belorussian & Kazakh internal protests and revolts, or Ukraine c. 2014.
Russian arms have been used on or by all of those countries. In the case of Armenia, support meant they kicked he shit out of the Azeris before... and not the case now, where Russian can't or won't help them, but the Turks are backing the Azeris.
Force of arms has made a big difference for all of the states around Russia. And not necessarily in a good way.
It's been truly incredible to see them grow and prosper.
Young, educated, motivated population with western values and a strong will for democracy and freedom. An economy that can only grow and prosper. And unlike Syrian and Afghan "refugees", there's a strong desire from Ukrainian refugees to return and rebuild.
But there were many who really wanted to learn the local language, and even if the life at the "asylum seekers centers" was not luxury, they were grateful that they had a place to stay where there was no immediate risk of death.
Some of these people had their families with them, though most of them were young, healthy males, since this segment is most likely to survive the trip. E.g. riding a bicycle in the -30 C/-22 Fahrenheit for 50 kilometres was one common way to entry Finland during this episode.
And regarding Afghanistan, for many, there is not much to be rebuilt. The country was first run over my Soviet army, then the US revenge. The minorities like Hazara have been persecuted during all the previous regimes. These people have no place to go back to.The people I know have instead build careers here, and are vocal against fundamentalist Islam.
Though it's good to remember the Soviet Union did even worse things to Russia.
Let's not pretend it's surrounding is really any better, especially if we start looking at the past.
Someone might think that Russia is opposing a genocidal culture, that had bourne fascism and nazism, enforced apartheid over the world and now breeds it elsewhere to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Did Tsarist Russia really do anything that competes with that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katorga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
The Soviet Union also made extensive use of slave labor, where millions died.
Which if true, means that Russian civilian victimization by the Soviet Union is something to hold Russia accountable for rather than a point of mutual past victimization for past Soviet Union states to commiserate together with Russia on.
That's never mind the fact that Russia is committing some of those same crimes now along with waging an expansionist war. The past suffering of an abuser doesn't matter while he's actively abusing someone else.
The people that were sitting in Moscow however were from all around the Union.
The Soviet Union was still ruled by Russians [0]… “ From 1919 until 1991, 89 members of the Politburo were Russians (which makes up 68 percent). In distant second were Ukrainians, who had 11 members in the Politburo, making up 8 percent. In third place are both ethnic Jews and Georgians, who had 4 members respectively.”
It was less than the population since by population , 80% are Russian [1], but still shows that the USSR was ruled by Russians.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Par...
And he happened to be Georgian.
And Moscovite is indeed a bad word in many parts of the old Union.
It's the same thing in Communist China. Nobody can displease the Han.
Have you heard about Stalin? Where was he from?
Moscow.
Hitler was from Austria, but he still ran things from Berlin. And Berlin is where the power structure was, and still is.
It's always more than one man, even if the man is a dictator. The dictator is just the one who survives the power structures environment in a way to be 'the top'. And that power structure exists in a place.
The vast, vast majority of everything that actually happens under a power structure is done by everyone who ISN'T the dictator. And those folks don't just disappear when the dictator dies.
As to if a countries power structure represents a people or not, meh. It always says it does, and it draws resources, taxes, and conscripts from them. So regardless of any individuals take on if they are 'represented' or how that power is acquired, 'it is the people' near as I can tell.
And many of them are happy to murder anyone who says otherwise to prove it.
And just because it has to be pointed out, Stalin didn't do his reign of terror from the Kremlin in Moscow, but from his dacha in Kuntsevo.
Hitler also spent most of his reign of terror from Wolfsschanze and Obersalzberg. He definitely had his own power structure, completely independent of the city of Berlin.
And Kuntsevo is in Moscow. Literally.
And if you’re asserting that Hitler didn’t need, or use, the Wehrmacht or other organs of state power (including the Gestapo, which was consolidated out of the prior Prussian Secret Police), and didn’t spend most of his time in Berlin, then I don’t know what to say.
Yes it is, but it's not in the Kremlin, where the official seat is.
Both Stalin and Hitler were independent of their capital cities for conducting their rule. Dictators and emperors are not mere symbolic heads of state, and their network of people means much more than where they sit to conduct their business. This network is not necessarily connected to the capital.
I think we're maybe debating semantics, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the capital cities are more influential than the dictators and emperors. As in my example of Roman emperors who hardly even went to Rome.
Politics is much more about abstract human connections, than brick and stone buildings. We are a very mobile species after all.
But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really represented in the Soviet nomenklatura (номенклату́ра). At least almost every Finnish speaking representative from Karelia were "neutralized", leaving the previously most prosperious part of Finland in the state as it is now. Finland would not take it back even it was paid for it.
My point, I guess, is that they happened. And the power structure that did it, did it from Moscow.
I prefer to see the Russian invasion as the delayed violence from the Soviet Union's breakup. Russian politicians were very much in control of all of Eastern Europe, and the Moscow political class was going to build a political case to try and retake Ukraine by force. That the violence did not happen in 1989 probably prevented nuclear war, and the fact it is happening now and not in 2032 is probably also preventing nuclear war.
But I have been grateful that Finland has been independent. As a child, I visited the Soviet Baltic countries since church choirs were allowed entry. I remember it clearly because I saw for the first time the fear of speaking about certain topics.
Defending the country’s independence took a whole generation, as all men who could be drafted were sent to war and women participated as volunteers. My other grandmother worked behind enemy lines as an underage girl, delivering messages. The other grandmother volunteered to work in prison camps.
When Finland was last attacked by Russia (formerly known as the Soviet Republic), Finland did not receive much help apart from thoughts and prayers and socks knitted by housewives in the UK and US. In the first round, Finland defended its independence but lost a significant portion of its most prosperous areas, including its second-largest and most international city, Viipuri/Vyborg. What happened in the second round of the war was not glorious for Finland, who allied with Nazi Germany since they were the only ones that offered an alliance against Soviet Union aggression.
I have not thought of myself as a nationalist, but I am concerned about the safety of my family and this thing we call Finland. And I don't want us to face again the situation as Ukraine is facing now.
As a Lithuanian... If we weren't in NATO, we'd either have a very very serious problems now. Or be a vassal state like Belarus.
Small countries will and sovereignty also matters.
But somehow Russia thinks master-slave relationships are better.
It was a mistake for NATO to do it without Russia. It's not a matter of "influence", but a matter of military risks and perceived threats.
If there was a political will towards pushing Russia to NATO any similar to what has been going on with Georgia or Ukraine, we'd be living in a different world.
But now (really far more than a decade already) Russia is alienated from NATO, perceives it as a threat and a bad actor. And people will be making all kinds of moralistic arguments, but point is that all of this is a consequence of geopolitical natural laws. Fact is, politicians and leaders were clearly aware of those laws and all the cause-effects and general outcomes, but nevertheless had stirred the world towards it.
Srsly, how do the "United democracies" expect to be taken seriously when their whole attitude to literally everything is "bad guys don't like us for being good boys"?
Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.
> democracies represent the biggest power.
> Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.
Eh, but that's the point: a bunch of countries with a shady history of global power dynamics (genocidal colonialism, fascism, etc) that now declared its current political establishment as a universal virtue, all while invading other countries around the globe.
I just feel like "democratic" don't notice at all how they're slipping into antagonism with almost every other culture except their own, up to labeling the forming west-skeptical alliances as "new axis of evil" or claiming everyone who doesn't politically align to them to be dysfunctional (see Hungary)
What's the coping strategy for the fact that so many diverse regions of the world that share nothing in common assess a very tight (geographically, economically and culturally) circle of countries as a threat?
Secondly, here are the values of the european union: respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law. Can you tell me which values you don't agree with?
Hungary is part of EU with all benefits and responsibilities. If they don't align with these values then they get penalized, simple as that.
I don't know about right now, but not long ago UK forces were in Syria, that Syria government never asked for. Should we call it invading? If not, what's your definition of invading?
That's more or less definition for annexing, not invading.
> That or installing a non-democratic dictatorship and subdue the local population.
That's a regime change or may be a coup.
What I am talking about is how everyone outside Europe starts rolling their eyes as Europeans claim that the mere reason why their super advanced, super civilized society has bad blood with someone else is because Europeans just too advanced and democratic and only bad boys don't like good boys.
One of NATO’s founding members was Portugal - under the Salazar dictatorship. Both Greece and Turkey went through periods of military dictatorship while NATO members-did NATO have any problem with that? The idea that NATO was formed to be a “club for democratic states” ignores its own history
This is a historically inaccurate slogan.
> Unless Russia adopts democracy and human rights it's a bit impractical for it to work with or join NATO.
Are we still talking about 1990s-2000s? Russia was no less democratic and adoptive of human rights than other ex-Soviet states pushed to NATO. Do you actually consider 2004 Georgia to be more in line with western view of human rights and democracy then 2004 Russia, really?
Poland and other CEE countries lobbied aggressively to join NATO in the 90s, and by far their biggest asset was their diaspora communities in the US. The GOP had taken the House in '94 and were pushing for NATO expansion leading up to the '96 election. In order to head off this threat, Clinton promised NATO expansion eventually, to which Dole ended up promising a definite date for CEE's entry. Said Clinton at the time:
'I face a difficult campaign, but I have a reasonable chance. The Republicans are pushing NATO expansion. Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio are key; they represented a big part of my majority last time—states where I won by a narrow margin. The Republicans think they can take away those states by playing on the idea of NATO expansion.'
https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/how-much-did-us-elections...
Hah, yeah, that's not a big deal at all, neutralizing Russian ability to force its will upon its neighbors, through threats of aggression. Like, who's scared of Russia these days? They're just empty threats. I'd like totally bet my life on it, just empty threats.
EDIT: /s
Ukraine?
Putin and Co. really hasn’t done much for Russia or it’s people lately.
They looked stronger when they were a less aggressive bully and were poisoning people.
Russia doesn't have to win in order to be scary to their neighbors—they just have to persuade their neighbors that they're irrational and have no sense of self preservation.
Also,I felt your comment was not nice towards all the minorities and "divergents" in the Russia and elsewhere. Just Google Grozny, Aleppo, or Anna Politkovskaya if you want to know why your comment could have been interpreted as something else than just a joke.
In my view, to say that Russia’s actions are just empty threats is an undervaluation of the price the Ukrainian people and military are paying now. Whole cities have been wiped out of existence, and both the military and civilian population have faced extensive casualties as Russia has resorted to “brute force” attacks, showering bombs wherever in Ukrainian land.
We in Finland have been building bomb shelters for the population that can withstand even nuclear attacks, and we have universal male conscription and voluntary female drafting. About 80% of Finnish male citizens complete the service, which makes Finland have military resources unlike any other European country. This tradition is more than a hundred years old. If someone wonders why, just search for the term “The Great Wrath.”
I mean, yeah, but the reason is probably just "we need more shit to shoot at civilians in UA" rather than "we don't fear NATO invasion"
Putin may have been hoping to Finlandize NATO. Instead, he NATO-ized Finland.
The first ally of Finnland after the winter war was Nazi Germany.
So it is actually the second try to find allies for Finnland against Russia.
Not that I don't trust the FDF, pound-for-pound one of the better military organizations out there. (and a happy member of it myself.)
Countries with similar civilized values should not be naïve and be ready to stand up to barbarians including being aggressive when needed, and yes, EXPAND!
And certainly the West should not be ashamed for standing for its values and what is right, otherwise there is a wide range of ambitious nations who think that their way is unique and the only way to deal with others is power, while despising fundamental human values.
While power may beat everything in some cases, but for some reason citizens of those barbarian countries want to move to the West rather than enjoy their countries' glory in a concentration camp.
I'm saying this as Ukrainian.
Oh please don't pose.
People don't make fancy distinguished name awful reeking dangerous incendiary so far from the frontline. Their whole memorability comes from their immediate production efficiency, when you don't care about anything else and need a weapon like RIGHT now. People who don't joke around are occupied with a completely different set of things.
You know, that already happened before. When Germany tried to.
The story: https://www.outlookindia.com/international/former-kurdish-re...
The dictator Erdogan wanting to pressure Sweden and NATO for instance.
They also wanted F-35s, not just F-16s. That's not one to sell unless you're 100% confident they won't copy it for their own domestic production, or sell it to, say, the Russians. And modern Turkey is looking a little shaky in that regard (no, not an earthquake joke).
No, from Russia.
> But now they afraid Turkey to sell f-35 to Russia?
No, they're afraid of what Russia's S-400 that Turkey bought might covertly reveal to Russia about the F-35.
Turkey had the choice between the F-35 and the S-400. It chose the S-400 instead of the F-35. It has no one to blame for that decision but Turkey.
Let's remain neutral and a free haven for political dissidents and potential refugees of the future, right?!!
For some people, yes... In fact US involvement is largely a controversial topic because joining NATO, to some people and politicians, is tantamount to putting US military bases in your country.
The reality is, when people talk about the benefits of NATO they will strongly lean on the fact that it's many countries in a pact together. Decidedly not hiding behind the coat-tails of the US- in fact the US involvement, at least in political circles, is generally seen as a net-negative.
Too bad their funding didn't match that rhetoric until after Russia was already invading Ukraine. It'll be years yet before Germany's military will be up to snuff, and outside of France, the UK, and Poland, most of the NATO armies would struggle if they encountered any resistance on-par with what the Russians are putting out.
Nor are their logistics and production capable of keeping up w/ the high-intensity peer/near-peer fight that we're seeing in UKR.
UK spends 2.2% (an all time low!), France just under 2%. These are much larger economies so expenditure is definitely greater than Ukraines in absolute terms.
Are you suggesting that they should pay more? Why? Seems like the current amount is effective.
It's already bad for us in Poland to not have nukes and capability to nuke Moscov at will. We were developing nukes in 80s but guy got assasinated (either RU or US).
Link? I’d love to read that story.
Me personally I totally acknowledge the largest military in the world.
The rest of NATO gives you basically another China's worth of military (they're #2 by spending), so it's not nothing, to put it mildly.
The geography controlled by and the economic power of the bloc is also important, for logistical reasons. Having not just open trade and maybe some donations in wartime but outright military support for your supply lines is huge, plus intel sharing and such.
NATO is a military alliance of 30 nations.
The US armed forces are 75% of NATO's military power.
Thankfully that opinion represent a minority here in Sweden nowadays. Good riddance.
The opinion on NATO vs "neutrality" after the Ukraine invasion was, to borrow a phrase from another comment in this thread, a mask off event.
Also: If NATO can't ratify Sweden we need to look at other ways to develop a nuclear deterrence strategy.
Is there any controversy or concerns of becoming a foothold for future conflicts? This whole thing has been dragging on for sometime now, had the opinions shifted over time?
I'm pretty fucking relieved the nightmare is over.
Just hoping we can prevent WW3, or at the very least win it together.
Ouch. Genuinely hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everything I know about politics (especially from Russian perspective) tells me that this is only the beginning and uncorking of a potential conflict.
I assume, you do not expect that NATO membership would put Finland into a direct hot confrontation with Russia, thus turning into a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
> WW3, or at the very least win it together.
Eh, there will be no winner in WWIII - only how much everyone loses before they decide to strike some kind of eventual deal. And IMO the WWIII had already started by the modern military standards of multi-domain operations.
Neutrality is no protection against aggression. Vienna was famously one of the first targets for Soviet nuclear strike.
According to your link in the other thread, that is assuming it was "ruthlessly" occupied by NATO.
In any case, the "end the game for everyone button" example seems like a poor choice. How did Austria actually fare during the Cold War? I honestly don't know too much about Austrian-Soviet relationships except for a few trade deals.
Moldova, invaded (1990) and occupied. Georgia, invaded (2008) and occupied. Ukraine, invaded (2014, 2022) and occupied.
Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland: Not invaded, not occupied.
> Moldova, independence from the Soviet Union (27 August 1991), constitution adopted (29 July 1994)
I genuinely wonder what is the source of that list. I assume "invasion" of 1990 is the Transnistria War?
- From Russia With Love (Rosa Klebb secretly works for SPECTRE but is a KGB operative so let's count it)
- Octopussy (vilain's a defector)
- The Living Daylights (defector also)
It's in Goldeneye that is created the idea that James Bond constantly fought the Soviets. I don't fault you for thinking that it's an easy thing to illustrate your point, but I like my James Bond and I like him because he's always fighting weirdo rich assholes, not the Soviets.
Joining NATO is widely regarded as the safe and rational choice. Russia already saw Finland as part of "the west" and Russia's attack on Ukraine meant that our international relations with them were pretty much destroyed. Staying out of NATO made no sense from that point onward. Why try to stay "neutral" with no formal defense pact, when Russia viewed us as hostile anyway?
So yeah, I would say that the vast majority of Finns feel safer now, and becoming a NATO member has been seen as a positive thing overall.
Most of the seven were also not re-elected in Sunday's election.
> Why try to stay "neutral" with no formal defense pact, when Russia viewed us as hostile anyway?
Good point, thanks for that perspective. Was there hypothetically any way Russia could signal if it was not the case though?
The way of a western democracy is not anything goes. We all have to agree to certain truths.
Can I please disagree?
Some of these seem very reasonable—things like "shouldn't we try to push for peace?" "Should we really be arming the people of another country?"—and others might seem reasonable if you don't know a lot about the recent history and politics of the region—like "the main reason Russia invaded was because they were scared of Ukraine joining NATO".
I would not seek to impute specific intent to any particular commenters here; while it's entirely possible that a forum like this has some genuine Russian propagandists on it, I would say it's just as possible that they either don't know or don't care about HackerNews. Either way, it's clear that a lot of this propaganda has made it into the general conversation, and some people believe it and spread it for various reasons of their own.
Eh, I live in the region and feel like this is a (somewhat) fair point, though somewhat misquoted and misrepresented (not in the least that there is no really ever a single specific reason for war, but rather a cascade of them). Not implying that war isn't a disaster or whatever.
Anyhoo...
> there have been a significant number of commenters here who have, for whatever reasons, advanced opinions that align very closely with Russian propaganda.
"Russian propaganda" is merely aligned to the perspective of a huge-enough chunk of the it & engineering world, just as well as "Western propaganda" is.
I think a lot of people are just very bad at articulating their points so that they don't sound like shallow slogans or whatever, but I don't suppose it's fair to label them as propagandists. Most are just sharing their perspectives, however they may be. Pity that forums like that aren't really suitable for people sharing different and opposing views, which should be pretty natural state of things in times like these.
When you meet a mad paranoid dog like Putin, the best thing is to bait them and let them eat themselves just like Putin has done.
A pyramid of lies and corruption 100 years in making finally falls apart
I believe and hope that Putin's regime will collapse. After that the West will be very busy "lifting fingers" figuring out what to do with the huge country in disarray and full of nukes.
No they are not. Almost all[0] are the classic Russo-apologist talking points.
As for second one, I would much rather be in western block then in the BRICS block. Better living standards, less violence, better everything.