NATO Expands further

[Sherlock Holmes]

Well Finland and now Sweden have announced their desire and intention to apply for NATO membership.

That such a decisions is not made via a national referendum is a subversion of democracy, the consequences are potentially huge and every adult in the country should have had a voice in this.

The Western media constantly babble about Putin and Russia "want to reestablish the old Russian empire" while right under our noses the military force (dominated by the non-European USA) NATO continues its perverse growth.

There is nothing to stop any country from developing a treaty with other nations that guarantee military support if attacked, much as Poland had with Britain at the start of WW2.

It is simply not necessary to join NATO, there are other far less contentious options, all of this bodes ill IMHO.

So, should NATO continue to expand and continue to accept members from states bordering Russia?

[otseng]

It's not all that complicated, so I'm not sure why you're struggling with it.

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[bjs1]

So, should NATO continue to expand and continue to accept members from states bordering Russia?

Yes, that seems like an entirely reasonable course of action.

The current war in the Ukraine has demonstrated at least two facts.

First, the current military leadership in Russia is willing to launch an unprovoked attack against their neighbors.

Second, NATO might provide some help to those who are attacked but it will not fully defend any nation that is not part of NATO.

If I lived in Sweden then I would be clambering to join NATO. It will come with a hefty burden that Sweden has not bear for many years, but it is the only way to defend against a clearly aggressive neighbor in the current geo-political world.

[Diogenes]

Putin has put his personal and crazy dream of a return to empire, the USSR, ahead of Russia's and the world's interests. He is a throwback to Peter the Great and Adolf Hitler, a demagogue that can only arise in an anti democratic regime.
First he attacked Georgia. The West did nothing. Then he attacked and invaded the Crimea. The West did nothing. These actions parallel what Hitler did in the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. The West did nothing. 'Appeasement at Munich' became an international shame.

Finally Hitler invaded Poland.
Putin has finally invaded Ukraine, a sovereign state. And finally the West has done something. Both the government and the people of Finland and Sweden have recognized they need to join NATO. Finally the people of the United States have recognized that Donald 'NATO should be abolished' Trump was wrong and was an ally of Putin.

Trump is much worse than Neville Chamberlain, who accommodated Hitler out of fear and hope. Trump fell in with Putin because he recognized a fellow authoritarian demagogue.
The majorities in both Finland (75%) and Sweden recognize the threat Putin represents and have responded rationally and democratically in their efforts to join NATO.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Russia was absolutely provoked, this is certainly the prevailing view in the Kremlin and among many long time Western observers and writers on geopolitics. The West bluntly refused to consider any of the terms laid out by Russia, their request that Ukraine be denied membership as a matter of long term policy was rejected out of hand.

After the collapse of the Berlin wall Russia made it clear that it did not want to see bordering states ever becoming NATO members, this was understood by all parties. Russia also said that should that happen then they will likely move nuclear weapons to their border with these states and would likely begin massing troops, this has been known for decades by all parties.

Therefore knowing that Russia would react as it has, why would the West then push for NATO expansion? It is clearly a provocation, of course NATO and the West's press/media generally paint a picture of a benevolent well meaning NATO, a NATO that reacts to Russia. This is the big lie though, as anyone who's aware of NATO's history over the past twenty years knows.

In 1999 NATO disobeyed international law and attacked a sovereign state, bombing it for two months, killing people, decimating the economy, destroying bridges, roads, hospitals, power stations and so on. Russia and China saw this, watched this war crime (The Chinese embassy was even bombed by NATO, but they did apologize!).

Clearly NATO will act independently of the UN, completely undermining international law, NATO has shown that it is not a "defensive" alliance, it is a military force and extension of the Pentagon and has been and will be used to pursue the geopolitical goals of the member states, it is certainly nothing to do with defense.

Russia has also broken international law, the invasion of Ukraine is without doubt a breach of the UN charter, but hey, if NATO can ignore the UN why can't others?

The comparison of Putin with Hitler is not supported by the facts. If there's an "empire" being built it is the NATO empire, every few years it grows, it spreads and places otherwise neutral members under US domination.

US Congressman sees Taiwan as member of Asian NATO

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — United States Representative Scott Perry has put forth a proposal for a “Taiwan PLUS Act,” which would see the nation become a member of an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reports said Tuesday (March 23).

The Pennsylvania Republican’s plan would give Taiwan the same level of treatment in terms of arms sales as the other “NATO Plus” candidates, such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and eventually India, the Liberty Times reported.

Perry, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wants the U.S. to take an even stronger stance against Beijing and even recognize Taiwan diplomatically. He said the legislation he proposed would improve military capabilities against China and that if it becomes law, Taiwan could be regarded as a country in all relevant laws and regulations within five years, Perry said.

Every five years, the secretary of state would have the right to extend the measure if it is found to serve the national security interest.

NATO is the true threat, a very serious threat indeed and this empire building will not end well, European targets may be the place where nuclear weapons eventually get used again, this is all avoidable if NATO, the US would just cease this insane military geopolitics and focus on our domestic issues like morons with assault rifles assassinating black people buying groceries.

[Sherlock Holmes]

NATO faces a problem though, it is inevitable that as it grows it will become sluggish because decisions requires unanimity and that gets harder as the number of members grows.

[Diogenes]

Russian propagandists may think others have forgotten history.
NATO organized because of Russian invasions. Just since 1939:

1 Poland (1939–1956)
2 Baltic states (1940–1991)
3 Finnish territories (1940)
4 Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (1940)
5 After the Soviet Union entered the war on the Allied side
5.1 Iran (1941–1946)
5.2 Hungary (1944)
5.3 Romania (1944)
5.4 Bulgaria (1944)
5.5 Czechoslovakia (1944)
5.6 Northern Norway (1944–1946) and Bornholm, Denmark (1945–1946)
5.7 Eastern Germany (1945–1949)
5.8 Austria (1945–1955)
5.9 Manchuria (1945–1946)
5.10 Korea (1945–1948)
5.11 Kuril Islands (1945)
6 Cold War
6.1 Hungarian Revolution of 1956
6.2 Czechoslovakia (1968–1989)
6.3 Afghanistan (1979–1989)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... viet_Union

This list does not include Stalin starving 10 million in Ukraine.
https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin

[Jose Fly]

Russian propagandists may think others have forgotten history.
NATO organized because of Russian invasions. Just since 1939:

1 Poland (1939–1956)
2 Baltic states (1940–1991)
3 Finnish territories (1940)
4 Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (1940)
5 After the Soviet Union entered the war on the Allied side
5.1 Iran (1941–1946)
5.2 Hungary (1944)
5.3 Romania (1944)
5.4 Bulgaria (1944)
5.5 Czechoslovakia (1944)
5.6 Northern Norway (1944–1946) and Bornholm, Denmark (1945–1946)
5.7 Eastern Germany (1945–1949)
5.8 Austria (1945–1955)
5.9 Manchuria (1945–1946)
5.10 Korea (1945–1948)
5.11 Kuril Islands (1945)
6 Cold War
6.1 Hungarian Revolution of 1956
6.2 Czechoslovakia (1968–1989)
6.3 Afghanistan (1979–1989)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... viet_Union

This list does not include Stalin starving 10 million in Ukraine.
https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin

They also seem to think that countries like Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine are just hapless dupes of the US and lack any ability to make independent decisions.

Also, this whole "Russia is justified in invading Ukraine because it cannot tolerate a NATO nation on its border" is astoundingly ignorant, since Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all been NATO members for ~25 years.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Russian propagandists may think others have forgotten history.
NATO organized because of Russian invasions. Just since 1939:

1 Poland (1939–1956)
2 Baltic states (1940–1991)
3 Finnish territories (1940)
4 Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (1940)
5 After the Soviet Union entered the war on the Allied side
5.1 Iran (1941–1946)
5.2 Hungary (1944)
5.3 Romania (1944)
5.4 Bulgaria (1944)
5.5 Czechoslovakia (1944)
5.6 Northern Norway (1944–1946) and Bornholm, Denmark (1945–1946)
5.7 Eastern Germany (1945–1949)
5.8 Austria (1945–1955)
5.9 Manchuria (1945–1946)
5.10 Korea (1945–1948)
5.11 Kuril Islands (1945)
6 Cold War
6.1 Hungarian Revolution of 1956
6.2 Czechoslovakia (1968–1989)
6.3 Afghanistan (1979–1989)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... viet_Union

This list does not include Stalin starving 10 million in Ukraine.
https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin

Russia is no longer the soviet union though, does not occupy any of the above and there is no Warsaw pact anymore.

The reason for NATO has vanished and died completely after the fall of the Berlin wall, besides as I mentioned many times there was an understanding that NATO would not expand to include former soviet states that border Russia.

Add to that what I also just said, NATO violated international law EXACTLY what Russia has done with Ukraine. NATO demonstrated via its actions, that it will act as an aggressor outside of international law to further geopolitical objectives.

So, one cannot - with a straight face - describe it as a "defensive alliance", an alliance that can be trusted, as the major Western media/press does routinely.

Even senior US administration officials over the years have objected to NATO expanding into these areas, my views are more or less aligned with theirs. The goal should surely be to reduce the number of Russian nuclear weapons, instead by expanding NATO the exact opposite is achieved.

A key, if not the key, U.S. interest in Russia is a rapid and substantial reduction in the tens of thousands of Russian strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and the hundreds of tons of nuclear material which are still deployed or stored throughout that nation some six years after the end of the Cold War.

Progress towards these goals will require comprehensive and sustained cooperation between the U.S. and Russia and a strengthening of mutual trust and confidence. The Clinton Administration's plan for NATO expansion has already undermined, and its implementation will raise further obstacles to, the establishment of the kind of relationship that is critical to success in arms control.

The START II Treaty, which would reduce Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 3000 - 3500 is awaiting ratification by the Russian Parliament. The parliament is dominated by members of communist and nationalist Parties who are hostile to President Yeltsin and suspicious of Western intentions. They have responded to NATO expansion by opposing ratification of START II.

and

The Act contains within it the potential for alienating Russia as much as integrating it into a European security system. The Act does not address two aspects of expansion which cause the greatest concern to the Russians, namely the scope and pace of expansion. NATO's current plan is open ended. It clearly contemplates inclusion of the Baltic states. But Russia has made clear that inclusion in NATO of any members of the former Soviet Union is unacceptable. Both Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have already given conflicting interpretations of The Act.

It is already clear that NATO expansion has seriously delayed START II ratification and that, unless the process is suspended, it will continue to jeopardize major arms reduction treaties as well as other vital arms control goals which we have traditionally pursued.

Finally:

June 26, 1997

Dear Mr. President,

We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons:

In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the "ins" and the "outs," foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included;

In NATO, expansion, which the Alliance has indicated is open-ended, will inevitably degrade NATO's ability to carry out its primary mission and will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems, and unevenly developed systems of democratic government;

In the U.S., NATO expansion will trigger an extended debate over its indeterminate, but certainly high, cost and will call into question the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, traditionally and rightly regarded as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

Because of these serious objections, and in the absence of any reason for rapid decision, we strongly urge that the NATO expansion process be suspended while alternative actions are pursued. These include:

—opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe;
—developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program;
—supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and
—continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe.

Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.
Sincerely,

George Bunn Townsend Hoopes Sam Nunn
Robert Bowie Gordon Humphrey Herbert S. Okun
Bill Bradley Fred Ikle W.K.H. Panofsky
David Calleo Bennett Johnston Christian Patte
Richard T. Davies Carl Kaysen Richard Pipes
Jonathan Dean Spurgeon Keeny Robert E. Pursley
Paul Doty James Leonard George Rathjens
Susan Eisenhower Edward Luttwak Stanley Resor
David M. Evans Michael Mandelbaum John Rhinelander
David Fischer Jack F. Matlock Jr. John J. Shanahan
Raymond Garthoff C. William Maynes Marshall Shulman
Morton H. Halperin Richard McCormack John Steinbruner
Owen Harries David McGiffert Stansfield Turner
Gary Hart Robert McNamara Richard Viets
Arthur Hartman Jack Mendelsohn Paul Warnke
Mark Hatfield Philip Merrill James D. Watkins
John P. Holdren Paul H. Nitze

From: The Arms Control Association.

So as you can see it was under Clinton that the expansion ramped up, it had never been policy. It was also under Clinton that NATO violated international law.

The US has never been bombed, the people have never experienced it, NATO insanity could well lead to a pre-emptive strike from Russia or China. Sooner or later a nuke will be used, acting intelligently to reduce that risk is what moral leadership would do, we don't have any though.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Russian propagandists may think others have forgotten history.
NATO organized because of Russian invasions. Just since 1939:

1 Poland (1939–1956)
2 Baltic states (1940–1991)
3 Finnish territories (1940)
4 Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (1940)
5 After the Soviet Union entered the war on the Allied side
5.1 Iran (1941–1946)
5.2 Hungary (1944)
5.3 Romania (1944)
5.4 Bulgaria (1944)
5.5 Czechoslovakia (1944)
5.6 Northern Norway (1944–1946) and Bornholm, Denmark (1945–1946)
5.7 Eastern Germany (1945–1949)
5.8 Austria (1945–1955)
5.9 Manchuria (1945–1946)
5.10 Korea (1945–1948)
5.11 Kuril Islands (1945)
6 Cold War
6.1 Hungarian Revolution of 1956
6.2 Czechoslovakia (1968–1989)
6.3 Afghanistan (1979–1989)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ ... viet_Union

This list does not include Stalin starving 10 million in Ukraine.
https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin

They also seem to think that countries like Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine are just hapless dupes of the US and lack any ability to make independent decisions.

Also, this whole "Russia is justified in invading Ukraine because it cannot tolerate a NATO nation on its border" is astoundingly ignorant, since Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all been NATO members for ~25 years.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became members in 2004, 18 years ago, not ~25. This was following the Clinton ramp-up, Russia stated their disapproval of that years before and again objected in 2004 when it happened, their objections were ignored just as they were with Ukraine, I find absolutely nothing surprising about Russia's stance on Ukraine, nothing at all, totally foreseeable.

Think about it - if there really had been very little prospect of Ukraine actually joining NATO any time soon (as is stated by US, UK and many others) then what prevented an agreement that it would never become a member? wouldn't that be a small concession worth making that could have averted war?

Saying there's "no real prospect anyway of Ukraine becoming a member" and then also saying "under no circumstances can we agree to not allowing Ukraine to join", seems a tad suspicious, insincere and since we know NATO cannot be trusted what seriously did people expect Putin to do?

[Sherlock Holmes]

I wanted to share this with others here, some news from over twenty years ago, some here in this thread were probably in kindergarten back then so will know nothing of this (emphasis mine)

Acts of murder

Up to 38 NATO aircraft have been shot down or crashed. This is suppressed, of course

By John Pilger
Tuesday 18 May 1999
The Guardian

The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by NATO in Surdulica in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific. But minimising the culpability of the British state when it is engaged in criminal action is normal; censorship is by omission and misuse of language. The media impression of a series of NATO 'blunders' is false. Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by NATO is left in little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the civilian population of Yugoslavia.

Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools, colleges and students' dormitories have been destroyed or damaged, together with housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums, churches and 14th-century monasteries on the World Heritage list. Farms have been bombed, their crops set on fire. As Friday's bombing of the Kosovo town of Korisa shows, there is no discrimination between Serbs and those being 'saved'. Every day, three times more civilians are killed by NATO than the daily estimate of deaths of Kosovans in the months prior to the bombing.

The British people are not being told about a policy designed largely by their government to cause such criminal carnage. The dissembling of politicians and the lies of 'spokesmen' set much of the news agenda. There is no sense of the revulsion felt throughout most of the world for this wholly illegal action, for the punishment of Milosevic's crime with a greater crime and for the bellicose antics of Blair, Cook and Robertson, who have made themselves into international caricatures.

'There was no need of censorship of our dispatches. We were our own censors,' wrote Philip Gibbs, the Times correspondent in 1914-18. The silence is different now; there is the illusion of saturation coverage, but the reality is a sameness and repetition and, above all, political safety for the perpetrators.

A few days before the killing of make-up ladies and camera operators in the Yugoslav television building, Jamie Shea, NATO's man, wrote to the International Federation of Journalists: 'There is no policy to attack television and radio transmitters.' Where were the cries of disgust from among the famous names at the BBC, John Simpson apart? Who interrupted the mutual back-slapping at last week's Royal Television Society awards? Silence. The news from Shepherd's Bush is that BBC presenters are to wear pinks, lavender and blues which 'will allow us to be a bit more conversational in the way we discuss stories'.

Here is some of the news they leave out. The appendix pages of the Rambouillet 'accords', which have not been published in Britain, show NATO's agenda was to occupy not just Kosovo, but all of Yugoslavia. This was rejected, not just by Milosevic, but by the elected Yugoslav parliament, which proposed a UN force to monitor a peace settlement: a genuine alternative to bombing. Clinton and Blair ignored it.

Britain is attacking simultaneously two countries which offer no threat. Every day Iraq is bombed and almost none of it is news. Last week, 20 civilians were killed in Mosul, and a shepherd and his family were bombed. The sheep were bombed. In the last 18 months, the Blair government has dropped more bombs than the Tories dropped in 18 years.

NATO is suffering significant losses. Reliable alternative sources in Washington have counted up to 38 aircraft crashed or shot down, and an undisclosed number of American and British special forces killed. This is suppressed, of course.

Anti-bombing protests reverberate around the world: 100,000 people in the streets of Rome (including 182 members of the Italian parliament), thousands in Greece and Germany, protests taking place every night in colleges and town halls across Britain. Almost none of it is reported. Is it not extraordinary that no national opinion poll on the war has been published since April 30?

'Normalisation,' wrote the American essayist Edward Herman, depends on 'a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals... [and] others working on improved technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive Napalm). It is the function of experts and the mainstream media to normalise the unthinkable for the general public.'

This week, the unthinkable will again be normalised when NATO triples the bombing raids to 700 a day. This includes blanket bombing by B-52s. Blair and Clinton and the opaque-eyed General Clark, apologist for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, are killing and maiming hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people in the Balkans. No contortion of intellect and morality, nor silence, will diminish the truth that these are acts of murder. And until there is a revolt by journalists and broadcasters, they will continue to get away with it. That is the news.

This is the real NATO, it is a criminal tool of Western geopolitics, not the benevolent "defensive alliance" concerned with doing good that is espoused by Western propaganda.