Joe Biden greenlights Russian 'incursion' into the Ukraine - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15208796
JohnRawls wrote:May be in your mind. While totally ignoring ww1 and ww2 historical precedents on how those wars started.

I'm glad you mentioned WW2. What exactly happened after France and Britain declared war on Germany for invading Poland? And it was Poland, not some Estonia. :lol: And nobody cared about the USSR invading the Baltic states and the Eastern half of Poland as well.
#15208797
Beren wrote:I'm glad you mentioned WW2. What exactly happened after France and Britain declared war on Germany for invading Poland? And it was Poland, not some Estonia. :lol: And nobody cared about the USSR invading the Baltic states and the Eastern half of Poland as well.


Thank you for clarifying things. Now then:

If Estonia gets invaded we will hold out for some time but not long alone. But invading Estonia automatically means that all of the Baltic states will definitely join Estonia and if the Baltic states then Poland also joins.

Since you clarified the argument that Britain and France protected Poland during world war two then it is very reasonable to expect for them to do so again under a more formalised and closed knit alliance in any shape or form compared to 1939 or even 1914 of Serbia and Russia.

So once again, it is only in your mind that nothing will happen and nobody will protect Estonia. The whole reason why we didn't get help in 1939 is because we didn't manage to create an alliance with Finland, other Baltic states and Poland but we have learned our lessons and now we are part of the alliance with the biggest fucking stick by a long long mile.
#15208799
JohnRawls wrote:Since you clarified the argument that Britain and France protected Poland during world war two, it is only in your mind that nothing will happen and nobody will protect Estonia.

I agree that Estonia will be protected exactly the same as Poland was. :lol:

Maybe NATO would do actually something if Russia attacked Norway, as Hitler did, with which WW2 really started in Europe. However, their allies failed to effectively protect Norway too. :hmm:
#15208801
Beren wrote:I agree that Estonia will be protected exactly the same as Poland was. :lol:

Maybe NATO would do actually something if Russia attacked Norway, as Hitler did, with which WW2 really started in Europe. However, their allies failed to effectively protect Norway too. :hmm:


Your arguments are pretty laughable by this point but ok. Let us agree to disagree.
#15208812
@Beren

@JohnRawls is correct. I am certain that if Russia attacks a NATO member state like his country (Estonia) then NATO, including the United States will send military forces to directly fight Russian forces in military conflict. It would be very unwise for Russia to attack Estonia today. Now, if Trump comes back to power (which, in my opinion, he should be facing criminal charges here in the Untied States, but hey you know, I guess for all practical purposes, people and other rich white people like Trump, the law just doesn't apply to them and it only applies to us common folk) then I would not be able to assure that the United States would be there for it's allies in a real and serious commitment given that when Trump was in power, he betrayed and stabbed our allies in the back like the Kurds for example. Especially considering that Trump is all buddy buddy with his fellow comrade in Moscow, Putin. If Trump comes back to power, the United States cannot be counted on by our allies in my opinion given he is all cozy with dictators in North Korea, China, Russia, and Turkey.
Last edited by tomskunk on 25 Jan 2022 16:18, edited 1 time in total.
#15208814
Beren is correct.

NATO does not defend its members and/or allies and never has. In fact, several NATO countries have been put into the awkward position of having to move troops away from their own security into NATO positions diminishing their own security in the process.

Greece-Turkey illustrates that aptly, the several humiliations and sabotages against France by the US and the UK both in the past as well as the present solidify that even more clearly.

France removed itself from the "alliance" for 30-40 years, as did Greece because NATO became in very clear ways a substantial security liability rather than a solution, diminishing their national security instead of enhancing it.
#15208816
@noemon

With Biden in power, if Russia attacks Estonia, Russia will be directly fighting U.S. troops. With Trump in power, given that Trump betrayed and stabbed in the back our allies, I don't think our allies can count on the U.S. for anything with him in power. Trump is buddy buddy with our enemies in Moscow, North Korea, and China. If Trump betrayed our allies in the Middle East like the Kurds, then our current allies shouldn't trust the U.S. to keep it's commitments with Trump in power given his past pattern of stabbing our allies in the back and being buddy buddy with our enemies. So, it depends largely on who is in power in regards to if allies can count on the U.S. to keep it's commitments and it's word to our allies.
#15208819
It does not matter who is in power, the US has dropped allies like France like a sack of potatoes, the US was instrumental in Cyprus getting attacked and occupied by Turkey, NATO prevented Greece from mobilising to protect its own borders in the Aegean.

The US has betrayed far more important countries than Estonia. If Russia attacks Estonia, the Baltics or the Ukraine, neither the US nor NATO would do anything about it.

My impression is that Trump being an arrogant bastard would probably do more than any other and certainly more than Biden.
#15208822
@noemon

Regardless, if one makes a commitment and gives their word, they must keep their word. It's like going to a bar with friends and one of your friends gets into a fight. That means you automatically must join in and defend your friend no matter what. A man who flees the scene when one of his friends gets into a bar fight, is not a man nor a friend or ally. If a friend gets into a bar fight, you have to fight too.
#15208823
Sure and that describes the US because when that someone has betrayed their word so many times, people stop considering that word or even signature of any value.

There is not a single thinking European person that either trusts or considers the US to be an ally regardless of NATO, west, UN or whatever.

Turkey and Libya have declared Crete and the Aegean(EU territory) to be theirs, they have even petitioned the UN to recognize it as theirs! Aside from France stating the obvious, the US & NATO, are not even pretending to defend the recognized sovereignty of a member but they proactively support both jihadi governments and the one in Turkey and the one in Libya.

This is EU Greek territory, of a permanent friend and ally that has fought alongside US troops everywhere in the past 100 years.

You want to talk about Kurds? Or about France? There is even worse betrayals out there.

I think it is prudent for people to become accustomed to the fact that there is no US or NATO. If people want to be secure they need to seek alternative alliances and systems of defense. Falling back to NATO is an illusion and a very clear house of cards.
#15208825
Not even the US takes NATO seriously anymore. It bypassed NATO on Iraq, Libya and Syria, it attacked Christian communities in the M-E and provided military support to jihadis fighting against Christians.

All current US alliances are taking place outside the framework of NATO, like the one with Israel but more aptly the one with Greece.

Greece-US signed a new bipartisan defense treaty just 1 year ago that is totally outside the scope of NATO. It is a bilateral security defense agreement of new bases that are purely for US-Greek defense and not for NATO defense despite both being NATO members.

NATO has been declared dead a full decade now but has been dead for a lot more than that. If Estonia is expecting NATO to save it from Russia then they are sorely mistaken.
#15208827
tomskunk wrote:Russia has been using that gas line project as a way to divide NATO and keep it weak. Germany needs Russian gas and Russia can use that as a method to divide NATO and further isolate Ukraine.


but Germany and Russia promised it would not be a geopolitical tool.
Last edited by Rancid on 25 Jan 2022 17:17, edited 1 time in total.
#15208828
Germany makes no alternative plans nor has she made any despite everyone being against the pipeline for more than a decade and despite the fact that she has another 4 or 5 non-Russian gas pipelines supplying it(more than any other EU country). Germany wants and seeks to be in the "existential" situation she is in. Germany is shutting down perfectly fine nuclear power plants for ideological reasons that she can just decide to keep open and have no "existential crisis" whatsoever until she comes up with an alternative for a pipeline that is not even built. :lol:

I think one needs to be seriously daft to be unable to see through the German position.

German PM explaining why Germany cannot permit the export of German-made weapons to the Ukraine, not just for itself but for third-countries like Estonia also wrote:“Germany has not supported the export of lethal weapons in recent years,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a news conference on Friday.


But when it comes to Turkey threatening EU borders, Germany is more than happy to provide high-end weapons to Turkey:

German arms exports to Turkey at highest level since 2005.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
#15208836
tomskunk wrote:I am certain that if Russia attacks Estonia, then NATO, including the United States, will send military forces to directly fight Russian forces in military conflict.

Besides the surrealism of the US directly warring with Russia for Estonia, the problem is that militarily speaking Estonia cannot be protected from Russia. It's an impossible commitment, an over-extension. So what would the US do? Would they attack Russia from Alaska in an all-out war for Estonia perhaps? :lol:

NATO also wasn't designed for that. It wasn't designed for protecting Estonia from Russia, which is a nonsense anyway, it was designed for defending Western Europe against the USSR, which was a whole different issue.

noemon wrote:My impression is that Trump being an arrogant bastard would probably do more than any other and certainly more than Biden.

In my opinion we wouldn't have all this if Trump still were president, and he'd try to make a European security agreement satisfying to Putin if he asked him for that.
#15208843
"The United States has heightened the readiness of some 8,500 U.S. troops amid tensions between Russia and NATO over a potential invasion of Ukraine, but no decisions have been made yet to deploy them."

"Secretary Austin has placed a range of units in the United States on a heightened preparedness to deploy, which increases our readiness to provide forces if NATO should activate" the NATO National Response Force, said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Monday."

"The NATO NRF is a multinational rapid response force comprised of land, air, maritime and Special Operations Forces."
#15208849
@noemon @Beren @Rancid @JohnRawls @Scamp

I have shied away from discussing politics with Russians until here recently this past day or two when it seemed unavoidable to discuss. Based on my conversations with Russians, I have gathered that even though they know that Putin is a corrupt authoritarian and has a corrupt regime, one of the reasons why Russians like Putin is because he has restored some sense of lost national pride that came from the Soviet Union collapsing. One of the big complaints that Russians have about Russia is the economy and low wages.

This is the reason why many seek to move to Europe, the United States and Canada is to get paid better wages and enjoy a better quality of life. But the loss of the Soviet Union and the subsequent 1990s decade, I get the feeling that Russians felt humiliated and powerless. So, Putin sort of gives Russians a sense of power and national pride again, even though he has been bad for the Russian economy and the fact that it has low wages.

Given that is the case, it seems that Putin exploits this sense of loss of national pride and this sense of humiliation to try to keep himself in power while also preventing a big neighboring state like Ukraine from becoming a prosperous democracy on his borders whose example could threaten his hold on power in Russia given that Russians would start to see the economic success of Ukraine and want the same thing.

Some of the Russians I have spoken to have bought into this false narrative that NATO is an aggressive alliance and that invading Ukraine is about "protecting" Russia from NATO. This is the narrative that is being pushed by Russian state controlled TV in Russia to Russians from what I read here in the American news media here in America.
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