Finland's and Sweden's NATO accession following thread.

[Tyzuris]

So currently Finland and Sweden have both sought NATO membership, and thus far both have passed through invitation process and membership negotiations and now our NATO applications are in the process of being ratified.

Currently half of NATO countries have ratified our applications within a week and a half (Albania, UK, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Iceland, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark and Estonia).

Remaining half is as follows:
USA, France, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey, Portugal, Romania and Hungary.

Lithuania is processing the NATO applications of both countries next week, US Senate before August 4th so more ratifications are on our way in the upcoming weeks.

 

[WolfBear]

Let's hope that they will quickly join! This will strengthen NATO's northern front vs. Russia. Just like in World War II, Russia's greatest strength was on its southern front while it was weaker on its northern front. By attacking Ukraine, Russia paved the way for further Nordic NATO expansion.

 

[Cherico]

Let's hope that they will quickly join! This will strengthen NATO's northern front vs. Russia. Just like in World War II, Russia's greatest strength was on its southern front while it was weaker on its northern front. By attacking Ukraine, Russia paved the way for further Nordic NATO expansion.

This eiteration of nato will only last as long as the russian threat.

Europe quite simply put poisoned the well and most americans feel like our problems closer to home are a bigger concerns.

 

[WolfBear]

This eiteration of nato will only last as long as the russian threat.

Europe quite simply put poisoned the well and most americans feel like our problems closer to home are a bigger concerns.

How exactly has Europe poisoned the well? And given that NATO has already lasted for over 70 years, I doubt that it will collapse anytime soon. Heck, I doubt that even Trump would now pull the US out of NATO if he wins reelection in 2024.

 

[Bassoe]

Let's hope that they will quickly join! This will strengthen NATO's northern front vs. Russia.

How the fuck is this supposed to be a good thing? The whole point of NATO is essentially the Americans, French and British saying "we'll start WW3 if any countries on the following list are invaded". And now you want to add two more countries, ones which are threatened with invasion, to the list, thereby increasing the threat of WW3.

 

[WolfBear]

How the fuck is this supposed to be a good thing? The whole point of NATO is essentially the Americans, French and British saying "we'll start WW3 if any countries on the following list are invaded". And now you want to add two more countries, ones which are threatened with invasion, to the list, thereby increasing the threat of WW3.

That assumes that Putin is totally bonkers, which is very far from guaranteed. And if he is, then we're already doomed since the Baltic countries are already in NATO.

 

[Cherico]

How exactly has Europe poisoned the well? And given that NATO has already lasted for over 70 years, I doubt that it will collapse anytime soon. Heck, I doubt that even Trump would now pull the US out of NATO if he wins reelection in 2024.

Europe spent litteral decades not paying for their miltary requirements for their part of the alliance, something we bitched about under numerous presidencies, then you have EU polititions looking down their noises at us and just the general perception that europes elites were using us.

This is before you get into the fact that us yanks tend to be pretty naturally isolationist and kind of resented being forced to come in and clean up europes messes.

 

[WolfBear]

Europe spent litteral decades not paying for their miltary requirements for their part of the alliance, something we bitched about under numerous presidencies, then you have EU polititions looking down their noises at us and just the general perception that europes elites were using us.

This is before you get into the fact that us yanks tend to be pretty naturally isolationist and kind of resented being forced to come in and clean up europes messes.

Then encourage and pressure Europe to pay more for their own defense. Interestingly enough, Ukraine was already doing this even before its current war with Russia. I guess that this really paid off for them, eh?

 

[Cherico]

Then encourage and pressure Europe to pay more for their own defense. Interestingly enough, Ukraine was already doing this even before its current war with Russia. I guess that this really paid off for them, eh?

We did....

Seriously this is something we bitched about under clinton
(The euros should have been able to handle serbia but then we had to be called in to fix it.)

Its something we bitched about under Dubya
(Many europeans lacked the milatary capability to aid us during the war on terror. While I understand why they didn't want in that fight staying out of it still created some bad blood.)

Its something we bitched about under Obama.
(Lybia might have been a bad idea but favors were called in so I'm not upset about that intervention)

Its something we really bitched about under Trump.
(Spent 4 years calling a lot of europe out about this shit.)

And now that the russian bear awoke a lot of us are like "We litterally warned you guys 20 years strait"

So you can see after 30 years of this shit how we would be a little pissed off that europe has to play catch up again...

 

[WolfBear]

We did....

Seriously this is something we bitched about under clinton
(The euros should have been able to handle serbia but then we had to be called in to fix it.)

Its something we bitched about under Dubya
(Many europeans lacked the milatary capability to aid us during the war on terror. While I understand why they didn't want in that fight staying out of it still created some bad blood.)

Its something we bitched about under Obama.
(Lybia might have been a bad idea but favors were called in so I'm not upset about that intervention)

Its something we really bitched about under Trump.
(Spent 4 years calling a lot of europe out about this shit.)

And now that the russian bear awoke a lot of us are like "We litterally warned you guys 20 years strait"

So you can see after 30 years of this shit how we would be a little pissed off that europe has to play catch up again...

Fair points, but at almost 1.5% of their own annual GDP, Finland and Sweden don't spend that little on defense:

Government expenditure on defence - Statistics Explained

EU statistics analyse general government expenditure on defence.

ec.europa.eu

 

[LordsFire]

How the fuck is this supposed to be a good thing? The whole point of NATO is essentially the Americans, French and British saying "we'll start WW3 if any countries on the following list are invaded". And now you want to add two more countries, ones which are threatened with invasion, to the list, thereby increasing the threat of WW3.

This is exactly the reverse of the truth.

What causes major wars, is when an expansionist state perceives weakness and a lack of willingness to act. It's the loss of deterrence. This is explicitly caused WWII to be a World War, rather than a police action against Germany in the mid-1930's because they were breaking treaty terms. A big part of what caused WWI was the perception on almost every side that they would be able to rapidly and effectively crush the enemy; the war would be maybe six months, and nobody had living memory of what a real war between European powers was like.

NATO is a huge deterrent to Russia. It is explicitly the fact that Ukraine is not in NATO that was key to the Russians deciding to attack Ukraine, rather than a smaller, more easily conquered nation like Estonia or Lithuania.

If you decrease deterrence, if you show you're not willing to act to stop expansionist powers swiftly, then they will keep expanding until you are left in a position of 'do or die,' and you have the war anyways, from a much worse starting position.

 

[Tyzuris]

Fair points, but at almost 1.5% of their own annual GDP, Finland and Sweden don't spend that little on defense:

Government expenditure on defence - Statistics Explained

EU statistics analyse general government expenditure on defence.

ec.europa.eu

That data is obsolete. Currently with our defense budget of 5.8 billion euros, Finland already spends over 2% of our GDP on defense. And that amount increases if we use the NATO formula instead of the Finnish budget formula which excludes military pensions (as they're paid from the budget of health and social ministry), the military parts of the budget of the Border Guard (which in peacetime operates under the ministry of internal affairs and gets its budget from the budget class of said ministry instead of defense ministry) and the costs of military crisis management abroad which is covered by the budget of the ministry of foreign affairs.

 

[Cherico]

This is exactly the reverse of the truth.

What causes major wars, is when an expansionist state perceives weakness and a lack of willingness to act. It's the loss of deterrence. This is explicitly caused WWII to be a World War, rather than a police action against Germany in the mid-1930's because they were breaking treaty terms. A big part of what caused WWI was the perception on almost every side that they would be able to rapidly and effectively crush the enemy; the war would be maybe six months, and nobody had living memory of what a real war between European powers was like.

NATO is a huge deterrent to Russia. It is explicitly the fact that Ukraine is not in NATO that was key to the Russians deciding to attack Ukraine, rather than a smaller, more easily conquered nation like Estonia or Lithuania.

If you decrease deterrence, if you show you're not willing to act to stop expansionist powers swiftly, then they will keep expanding until you are left in a position of 'do or die,' and you have the war anyways, from a much worse starting position.

Add to this Russia is a naturally expansionistic country due to their geography, their first impulse is going to be to expand as much as possible to get to defensivble boarders.

this was true under the czars and its true now, and they are not gentle conquerers the russians use secret police, terror, and on occasion strait up genocide to hold together their massive empire. This was true under the Czars and under the soviet union and to a lesser extent until recently until the modern day.

During times of expansion they scare the absolute fuck out of the europeans who often invade or form alliances to contain russian power. Which makes russia more paranoid. Its likely that this full court press plus the fact that Putin doesn't really have any one to pass down power to plus all of the demographic issues leads to the end of russia as a unified state for awhile after putin dies.

 

[Sergeant Foley]

So currently Finland and Sweden have both sought NATO membership, and thus far both have passed through invitation process and membership negotiations and now our NATO applications are in the process of being ratified.

Currently half of NATO countries have ratified our applications within a week and a half (Albania, UK, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Iceland, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark and Estonia).

Remaining half is as follows:
USA, France, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey, Portugal, Romania and Hungary.

Lithuania is processing the NATO applications of both countries next week, US Senate before August 4th so more ratifications are on our way in the upcoming weeks.

Assuming Finland and Sweden are now officially in NATO now that Turkyie dropped their objections?

 

[Cherico]

Assuming Finland and Sweden are now officially in NATO now that Turkyie dropped their objections?

The kurds were in Turkeys Whey so a deal had to be done.

 

[Sergeant Foley]

The kurds were in Turkeys Whey so a deal had to be done.

Translation: They had no choice but to give Erdogan what he wanted.

 

[WolfBear]

Translation: They had no choice but to give Erdogan what he wanted.

Yep, or at least to look like they were giving him enough of what they wanted. Sad, but the Kurds are disposable, unfortunately. They failed to get their own state after WWI and it's been downhill for them ever since, with the exception of Saddam Hussein's ouster in Iraq.

 

[Sergeant Foley]

Yep, or at least to look like they were giving him enough of what they wanted. Sad, but the Kurds are disposable, unfortunately. They failed to get their own state after WWI and it's been downhill for them ever since, with the exception of Saddam Hussein's ouster in Iraq.

Let's not forget about Trump throwing the Kurds under the bus which caused Mattis to quit.

 

[WolfBear]

Let's not forget about Trump throwing the Kurds under the bus which caused Mattis to quit.

Trump's foreign policy was consistent here. He also threw the Afghans under the bus. Except the Kurds were actually capable fighters, unlike the Afghans.

 

[Cherico]

Trump's foreign policy was consistent here. He also threw the Afghans under the bus. Except the Kurds were actually capable fighters, unlike the Afghans.

The Kurds have the problem of having simotainious beef with the Iraqis, Iranians, and the Turks.

Any time you want to make a deal with any of these 3 countries you have to toss the Kurds under the bus. A shitty thing to do but that's middle eastern politics.