Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9912794
While a US commitment that NATO would not expand towards Russia was made during talks with the Soviets in 1990, and remains a topic of heated dispute, no undertaking was written into the treaty on German reunification.
The very concept of “NATO expands” is misleading. NATO doesn’t decide to expand. Countries that had previously been neutral apply for membership. Contrast that to how “Russkiy Mir” expands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
“we will coup whoever we want!”
If it doesn’t have signatures, it isn’t a treaty.
After the USSR disbanded, many former soviet & warsaw pact countries lobbied to join NATO and were eventually accepted. They had experienced russian control, and they never wanted it again.
Relations between russia and the west were relatively good for a while, until putin decided he needed an enemy for his domestic politics. He probably should have chosen china. :-P
With Finland and Sweden, russia now has 10% land border with NATO countries. That is far from encirclement, as they sometimes propagandize.
Why did these countries join now and not earlier? Well, that should be obvious. Domestic opinion changed in their democracies, and neutrality was no longer seen as viable. Once again, existing NATO members welcomed new voluntary members to their ranks. 💪
So now that russia has a longer border with NATO member countries, it must be scared, right?
Wrong, russia is reducing military personnel and equipment along the Finnish border, and sending them to Ukraine instead.
NATO is not the aggressor, but it is a military powerhouse, and only getting stronger.
Also, NATO did not “expand its territories”. Sovereign countries that saw the Russian aggression seeked membership to be protected.
Correct.
Due to our location, we Finns did our best for a very long time to keep up good relations with Russia / Soviet Union. And for some time, it benefited us greatly with the commerce options it opened, but the price we had to pay was our diminished sovereingty.
That yoke was finally broken when the USSR fell and we joined the EU few years later. Some politicians tried to open a discussion about joining NATO, but the popular opinion was strongly against it and it was never considered seriously until Russia attacked Ukraine.
Then, like our former president stated, “The masks have come off, only the cold face of war remains”. And faced with the fact that Putin revealed himself to be a totally unhinged megalomaniac, our nation’s attitude towards NATO changed almost overnight.
Our defense forces are quite capable, but we will never again wish to go to war without allies. We could field an army of 900 000 troops if all the reserves were activated, and even after that there would be thousands of men in their 70’s that would gladly take up arms to defend our land from the horror that is “Russkiy Mir”.
If Putin is not stopped at Ukraine, he will continue attacking countries that were under control of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. He is an old man willing to happily sacrifice as many men he needs to fulfill his delusional fantasy. And this cannot be allowed.
This was very enlightening to a Californian, thank you for writing it!
@jbloggs777 @0x815
NATO has huge problems. Not least the horrible complexity of moving men and armour to the East. It’s a logistical nightmare.If it weren’t for those pesky kidsHHHHfarmers. Seriously, of course NATO has problems. It has dubious members, it has to deal with domestic politics, it has to fund itself, build out & maintain a military production base, it needs to be capable of fighting & responding just in case, and most of all it needs to be an effective deterrent. It will never be perfect, and hopefully it never needs to be.
I’m very glad to see security finally being taken seriously in Europe … even if it has been slow to get moving. The coming decades and centuries are going to be rough (and would have been w/o russia’s latest land-grab), and relying on the US security umbrella for european security is not ideal. They will likely remain an important partner though, douchebag presidents or not.
The US is an NPC.
You don’t have to mention people when replying.
It does that when you reply from Mastodon.
Is it possible to have it not do that?
I’m not sure. It may be required so that users on the Mastodon side know that there’s a reply.
But then I’m not familiar enough with the Fediverse to be sure.
Ah yes, “social media users”. I figure it’s something like “Hello fellow American Facebook user. I am Jimmy Bakers from the Alabama.”
Over 70% of Twitter is bots. Most likely so is Facebook.
70% bots, 20% absolute fucking lunatics and 10% users saying “Twitter is dead” every tweet.
Didn’t Russia promise that if Ukrainian got rid of nukes they would leave them alone?
Yeah. The whole reason there’s a war right now is Russia ignoring its own promises.
Maybe Ukraine should get its nukes back.
Ukraine never had effective control of the nuclear warheads, although they had physical control and probably could have made them unusable, but not fire them without some serious reverse-engineering and possibly rebuilding large parts.
Just a touch of rhetoric, I’m really only pointing out how hard it is to deal with Russia in good faith
not only leave them alone but protect them from other aggressors as did the us. This is one of the things with folks who complain about the material assitance. We are actually being sorta weenie as we sorta promised to have troops really. So its a we are doing the least to meet our obligations situation.
The US and the UK were signatories to the Budapest Memorandum (all three memoranda, actually, there are similar ones with Belarus and Kazakhstan), but it was never intended as a mutual assistance treaty in the way the North Atlantic Treaty (the “NAT” part of “NATO”) is. It was just an agreement to respect each other’s territorial integrity and not to use weapons against each other. It literally says:
The Russian Federation, […] reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The cop-out clause, of course, was “except in self-defence”, which is what Russia implicitly claims, when saying that its citizens in Donbas, and thus Russia itself, were under attack by Ukraine. Playing the victim has always been the preferred way to justify a war of aggression.
The part about giving up the nuclear weapons is implicit in the preamble which welcomes Ukraine to the non-proliferation treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state.
The whole Memorandum is also really short, literally fits on a single page: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
I mean number 4 though:
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
granted that says UN but given the US history we usually acti if the UN will not.
@HubertManne @0x815 @coffeejunky @Hopfgeist
The US fell, and nobody over there noticed.
The US is incable of any decisive action.
It is in a state of political paralysis.They did say that they ‘might’ ban Tiktok in six months though.
Don’t get me wrong. Im glad we don’t have troops there but im ashamed there is even debate around if we should be supplying ukraine.
@Hopfgeist @HubertManne
I am ashamed that the UK did not honour this agreement.They did. What the UK, the US and Russia(!) should do in case Ukraine is attacked, is to “seek immediate UN Security Council action” to provide assistance. Which the UK and the US did. Of course, that didn’t achieve anything because of the veto powers of the permanent UN Security council member Russia.
Yes, and that was codified by all signatories of the Budapest Memorandum. Russia tries to argue that it hasn’t violated the terms because it only uses weapons against another signatory state “in self-defense”, which is an agreed exception. Everyone knows it’s ludicrous, but apparently even Russia does not want to be perceived as violating agreements.
Even if it were true, I wouldn’t care. If russia does shit, they will have to eat it themselves.
Fuck the fucking tankies on this website. Bitch and moan about western imperialism while Russia moves on the “well, axsctually, Russian empire, Ukraine doesn’t exist” theory of Putin. What country doesn’t exist next, you champions of the proletariat?
nothing of that all was in writing, just some people said off the record that maybe perhaps that’d be the right thing to do. russia isn’t a peer adversary to NATO, russia isn’t even a peer adversary to your average scummy ISP
Well hey, if we’re gonna be bandying about geopolitical bullshit like that:
The last country that was actually a part of the Soviet Union was the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Thus, it stands to reason that the USSR’s permanent UNSC council seat should have technically devolved to Kazakhstan, as it’s the closest thing there actually was to a successor state of the USSR.
Nah, that would imply that the USSR was actually a union of republics and not a Moscow’s little colonial empire.
You’re missing the point of the exercise: to be geopolitically creative and weasely.
@0x815
Yes, that’s not true at all.https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Both the west and russia are ruled by corrupted governments and mentally ill individuals who seek wealth and power at the expenses of other people. Politicians and rulers do not fight their wars, they force people to fight for them. War is a profitable business for these vermins and they seek more of it.
No treaty? Yes, factually that is true.
But you could say we where double dealing. We said something, did another.
And the linked article in the post says the same. Yes , oral guarantees where made. No, they where never written down and quickly forgotten when push came to shove. Probably because we knew russia could do jack shit about it at that time. And still can’t .
There is no treaty and nothing written down. Each side claims there was a verbal agreement which was advantageous to them. So I don’t think we can really make much of it.
You know who did make an agreement though? Russia and the USA guaranteed independence for Ukraine in exchange for them giving up their nukes.
Hey. Hotdogs for sale for $1.
Hey I’d like a hotdog for $1!
Sorry the price just went up to $2
Awh that sucks, but it’s still my decision on whether or not I want to buy a hot dog for $2, which I do. One hot dog for $2 please!
Eats hot dog
Wait a second! You said the hotdogs were $1! Give me my $1 back!
See how this makes no sense?
No, there were negotiations for the reunification of Germany and during those a few Western officals offered not to go further east. However that ended up not being part of the final treaties. In fact the 2+4 Treaty, which the Soviets signed does clearly state that ALL of Germany is part of NATO, with NATO troops being allowed to be stationed in former East Germany as well. Obviously that is just Germany, but in no other country, did the Soviets have any sort of legal reason to deny joing NATO what sort ever.
So no this is just Russian propaganda and not to be taken seriously.
I really don’t understand the logic that Sweden and Finland witnessed their neighbor being invaded twice in 10 years, with absolutely no provocation, they voluntarily join a defensive alliance, and for some reason people still defend Russia for actually invading, giving a defense an action that caused the offensive action (it’s the russian invasion that triggeted nato expansion, not the contrary).
It’s as if a thief was justified in straling stuff in your property because you put a fence to defend from thieves, don’t you see how illogical it is?
yeah and the current situation is do to the breaking of an actual written down agreement so no surprise oral promises would be off the table.
- If they debate it, it gives it legitimacy.
- Project your future plans.
It was the modus operandi of anything russia says.
