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Comment by nicolapede | Hacker News Reader

If you look at the Baltic Sea before and after the invasion of Ukraine, that was largely a neutral space (before) that has since turned into a NATO one -- excluding only the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

I would argue this makes any further move by Russia in that space quite problematic.

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Sweden and Finland have been in the EU for almost 30 years. Sweden joining NATO does not really change the geopolitics of the Baltic.

Of course it does. Sweden and Finland being members of the EU had absolutely 0 bearing on the US getting involved in a war with Russia. Do you honestly think Russia would've tried to invade Ukraine if they were NATO members?

EU is economical/societal effort (or war prevention), NATO is military (and doesn't prevent members from fighting, ie Greece vs Turkey). Ever heard of actual EU army? Doesn't exist out there in the world, maybe on paper.

> Ever heard of actual EU army?

Well, there's Eurocorps for the last few decades, but that's not an army, just a corps-level HQ unit under which component-state forces can be slotted.

OTOH, that's not a particularly poor model for a fairly loose multi-state federation.

On the other other hand, its not actually an EU force, its a force of a particular group of EU states that is made available to both the EU and NATO, and has conducted operations on behalf of each.

The treaty of Lisbon has a mutual defence clause.

Membership of NATO also guarantees help from US and other non-EU NATO members of course.

Given that we (Sweden) have been the preferred partner with Norway for NATO winter training exercises since the 1980s and our entire military strategy was based on "Nato will protect us if Putin invades" you are not wrong.

What changed was USA having people like Trump and the Republican party talk about not protecting NATO countries anymore. It made us realize that we can't continue to count on US help as the premise is based on the US having absolute control of the nuclear weapons, but loading them on NATO ally dual capable airplanes to launch the nukes.

If Europe is not convinced that the US will not share the nukes as agreed, then Europe has to actually rearm and might even casue a nuclear proliferation with France and UK restarting their nuclear programs.

so yeah it changes and not changes the geopolitics.

France and Germany rearming… what a great idea!

Considering the invasion of Ukraine for the second time in 10 years, and the official threats of using nuclear weapons, rearming doesn't sound as bad as before.

There were actually three distinct invasions - Crimea in early 2014, Donbas in summer/autumn 2014 (after the rebels started losing), and finally 2022.

> and the official threats of using nuclear weapons

"Why are we shocked? Of course if a country has a weapon it also conceives a situation where it would use it. If a country would never under no circumstance use a weapon it would not have the weapon at all. Every country who has a weapon also conceives a scenario when to use it. Even if they don't issue reminders"

-- My own translation from an interview to Alessandro Barbero

To decomission a weapon is to weaken the army. Rulers must be very careful about taking power from the army, as army officials are wary of being stripped of power. A ruler must be in the good grace of the army.

For that reason, it is difficult to get rid of inherited weapons. A plausible justification is required.

With Putin, however, Russia is strenghtening an army. It is correct in this case, I think, to verbally remind your enemies of the threat they represent. E.g.Trump, in the US, has a strong discourse position to pull the US from conflict, because his supporters want "To make America great again", the world be damned.

I'm not aware of russia doing nuclear rearmament. Do you have any source in that sense?

This is why Sholtz and Marcon are having a bit of a public disagreement. Germany really do not want to send soldiers to Ukraine. For a whole lot of internal very German reasons their military is not in a good position for armed conflict.

I recommend this video on French defence strategy https://youtu.be/n5eUh3_eo9E?si=k19OmbQiGVdw2LXB

And this one on Germany's very cumbersome procurement tgat is part of why Germany is not keen on rearmament (apart from the obvious: they know what they did) https://youtu.be/8jDUVtUA7rg?si=Du6Rrq2TolbIIaw5

that said Macron is at the moment the only European leader outside of the Baltics that is keen on sending people to Ukraine.

This is what we have to deal with. People believing that when our enemies are arming themselves, it is somehow problematic to respond? This attitude is fading in Europe (thankfully) but I still see this far too often.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

The EU is not a military alliance, NATO is. There is a substantial difference between countries being in the EU only and being in NATO (either only or along with the EU.)

EU is technically a military alliance (article 42). Just not as strong as NATO.

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