Sweden officially joins NATO
Sweden officially joins NATO
www.nato.int
Sweden officially joins NATO
64 comments
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I don't like the expansion of NATO, but due to Russia's recent imperialism, Sweden's and Finland's reactions are completely reasonable. A much healthier alternative would have been actually advancing towards an integrated European defense system involving EU members, with a door open to certain neighbours such as Norway, but it's pretty hard to do that when the political groups that could actually promote that alternative are schizophrenically tolerating positions such as "I'm a pacifist, so I'm advocating for my own country's disarmament despite my neighbours starting wars very recently" and "if Ukraine didn't want to get invaded, they shouldn't have sought guarantees against Russian aggression from third countries".
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EU's population: 448 million
EU GDP: 19 trillion dollars
Russia's population: 143 million
Russia's GDP: 1,78 trillion dollars
Simplifying a bit here (I'm obviously taking Morocco and Belarus for granted, assuming that Turkey wouldn't attack Greece, and so on), but it's pretty much a "gotta get our shit together" situation, because there's no reason why we should depend on the US for defense, or anything else.
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but due to Russia’s recent imperialism, Sweden’s and Finland’s reactions are completely reasonable.
that is, it was not NATO that staged two coups in Ukraine, put its puppet government there and began to push the country into NATO, build bases and create threats to Russia's security, but this Russia, for no reason, attacked poor Ukraine, which did not exist at all not so long ago, and it was part of Russia
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Lol
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Thanks
ObamaPutin! -
Fuck the tankies in here and praise UN and Sweden.
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Russia locked out of the Balkan Sea now?
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They have Kaliningrad.
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Kaliningrad's fairly strategically useless to them now that every surrounding country's NATO though. The Suwałki Gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus used to be pivotal in potentially re-taking control of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It would have been very difficult for NATO defend them if Russia took the gap. But now those countries are protected by NATO countries all around so Kaliningrad's a lot less useful strategically. Not to mention that there's a strong Kaliningrad independence movement so they're struggling to control it internally as well.
More here.
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What a lousy website they have...
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It's the primary source, but I do agree...
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depositing its instrument of accession
Sounds like a sov.cit.
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I hate China
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Irasshaimase~ er, welcome! This isn't really that big of news imo, they were pretty much already a member kinda.
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Took long enough. Glad to have them finally.
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64 comments
I blame the fact they built all these institutions with no clause to expel members, or which require total unanimity to do so. They really bought in to the whole "end of history" thing, I guess.
Yeah, this is an interesting element. Historically, allowing all members a veto, while also having no way to expel a member, means that any such institution is liable to outside meddling. The classic example is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto -- in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, any noble could veto anything. So all it took was buying a few nobles and it shattered.
That is an L take. Having a term limit helps increase the difficulty of making political dynasties. It doesn't make it impossible, but it sure is gonna make it harder for a certain person or group to solidify their power base.