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Comment by ProjectArcturis | Hacker News Reader

This comment really illustrates the hollowness of the "NATO expanded too aggressively" claim. NATO didn't force any of these ex-Soviet countries to join. They ran to join NATO as soon as they could. They'd experienced living with the Russian boot on their neck, and they were eager to join a collective security organization to prevent it from ever happening again.

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I have a different perspective. If NATO hadn't expanded to Turkey, Sweden and Finland would have had a much easier time not being blackmailed. NATO expanding to essentially-dictatorship countries was too eager.

And yes, I understand Turkey's geographical position giving it power over sea routes, and why that was desirable to NATO. But choosing to include a fickle ruler in a unanimous-decisions-only organization is just asking for trouble.

(The Baltics wanted in on NATO, and it's good that they got in. They're largely decently run small countries in a tough spot, not world stage bullies.)

To be clear, Turkey has been undergoing pretty decisive democratic backsliding since the mid 2000s. It was added to NATO at the same time as Greece, and at that time, Turkey was the more democratic of the two countries (see, e.g., the electoral democracy index for 1952 on https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/ ).

edit: note if you're trying to find Turkey by searching on that site, it uses the endonym Türkiye

Türkiye is probably the first western country to not secure its demographic dividends, with maybe Greece (hard to say because the EU mess things up with free movement of people and stuff). It did not fail hopefully, but the infrastructure gains are small compared to even ex-USSR countries. I fear the same is happening in slow motion in India (we'll see in 15 years i guess).

In 1951, when Turkey joined NATO, the country was not actually all that dictator-like.

Turkey brings more value to NATO then Sweden and Finland combined. It has a standing army (2nd biggest after US in NATO) with combat experience, defense sector with proven capabilities. Not to mention 11th economy in the world by GDP PPP and growing.

It's better for Turkey and NATO, that Turkey is in NATO. I would say it's far more important than Sweden or Finland being in NATO.

> This comment really illustrates the hollowness of the "NATO expanded too aggressively" claim.

In the US, only wingnuts and "useful idiots" (really the same group) are repeating this talking point.

Mearshiemer got quite a favourable hearing on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559136

Good lord. I was not aware of this guy before, but his position seems to be akin to suggesting a woman deserved to be raped because of how she was dressed.

Even people pretty forgiving of his essays acknowledge he's habitually at odds with basic facts and history.

Not a wingnut, per se, but on the same spectrum of people divorced from reality. It's too bad as well, because US foreign policy is deserving of more scrutiny than it gets, and it gets a fair amount.

I have mixed feelings on him. On the one hand it is a bit - woman should expect to be raped because of how she was dressed. On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.

I think he errs a bit in suggesting such behaviour is normal for all great powers. The Americans and Chinese while imperfect aren't that bad. And the EU if you can call it a great power does nothing like that - the rape pillage invade stuff. Though of course a couple of centuries ago Europe was invading all over the place. It goes to show these things can change. Probably with Russia we need to make things enough of a pain the the neck for them that they'll see the wisdom of changing eventually also.

He's said in a few different pieces that Putin 100% does not want to ingest Ukraine into Russia, that he's only interested in "lopping off its limbs" and keeping it out of NATO.

Which is at odds with what Putin has said many times, that Ukraine is not a real nation, but a part of Russia, and Kyiv historically was central to the Russian empire. It's really clear that Putin wants all of Ukraine, not just bits of it. Putin has almost (but not quite) come out and said it. It's an open question on whether Putin would stop with Ukraine (we'll find out only if he takes Ukraine), but there's things he's said which hint that he won't.

> On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.

So far. At some point, he's going to have to reckon with all the stuff Putin has said about his ambitions that he ignored.

I really never understood how this statement and "NATO expanded to aggressively" were seen as contradictory. Putin's government wants to put the boot on Russia's neighbors, and NATO was in the process of taking that option away from them, and that's why they committed to war. They're not lying about their motivations, they are phrasing them in head-of-state speak. The same goes for denazification, which is thinly veiled code for intervening in who's allowed to govern Ukraine.

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