I’m not saying Ukraine should/shouldn’t be in NATO, but if Ukraine was in NATO would Russia have invaded?
Don’t larger military alliance disincentivize violent conflict?
I understand if a conflict were to break out it would be much larger, but we can’t know the extent of the smaller conflicts that have not happened due to the existence of NATO.
Don’t larger military alliance disincentivize violent conflict?
Not necessarily - and NATO sure doesn’t seem to mind when their own members wage genocidal wars on the third world (like Turkey is doing with it’s ISIS-staffed proxy-militias in northern Syria).
NATO has shown that it will happily play midwife to US neocolonialism - remember that time the US invaded Afghanistan using an even flimsier pretext than the ones Putin uses? At this point, we should be thankful that the US didn’t allow Russia itself to join NATO (something Putin is still pretty sore about)… but the US sure didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
The price is for Sweden to push for talks to be brought up again. That is not the same thing as letting Turkey join the EU. Though it should also be said the Swedish prime minister said no new terms have been agreed since November.
Won’t happen, not with the whole Hungary mess and the rise of the political far-right going on. No government would risk political suicide and the end of the Union for Sweden’s NATO membership.
Nah. He is also known for instant turns, when he thinks he has bargained enough or when it happens to suit the image he wants to present.
For example say he decided “Vilnius is the moment I stop bargaining, but only at last minute. Lets see what concessions I can get out of them until then” or so on.
It is exactly on brand for Erdogan to suddenly turn his position and go “what problem, there is no problem. What I said last week there was a problem… no no no, I Erdogan The First have solved problem quickly in only few days. Yes we made a deal, I negotiated amazing deal, deal solves the problem. There is No problem anumore. It’s solved.”
What happened to solve the problem? Nothing, Erdogan just stopped insisting there was a problem in first place and well some flowery language on top to make it look like it was deal to end the problem and not a climb down to end the problem.
You do also have to remember that a lot of this was around the elections and stoking the flames of a boogeyman (the PKK), so now that they’re done and over with it was just a matter of time.
It’s not going to get that frenzy as this happens almost every week now. They had their time in the spotlight after that kid washed up in Turkey and it was in the front page, but people can’t keep being invested emotionally when it’s carried on for another decade.
I’m a little confused by the news of US supplying cluster munitions to UA.
I admittedly haven’t yet had much of a chance to look too deeply into it, but I’m sure one spokes person specifically mentioned that the previous concerns about dud rates aren’t a worry anymore as they’re able to reduce it down to 2%.
But the US has recently passed the bill to ban their usage by their own forces unless they were less than 1%. Which has effectively banned the use of them because arms companies admitted that they would be unable to guarantee that with current technologies.
In the meantime the US are destroying their stockpiles as they’re anywhere from 5 - 15%.
So where are they getting these 2% dud rate munitions from?
I know there has been talks of supplying some of the current stockpile that has been flagged for destruction for use to drop from drones. Basically taking the individual clusters and putting them into a little aero bomblet sleeve thing.
I have mixed feeling about the usage of them, purely due to the dud rates, but honestly as far as Ukraine are concerned, they’re in a total war for survival and they should be able to use any tool available to them (excluding NBC). And I trust them to be used only in the appropriate places, and that areas will be sufficiently cleared prior to civilian access.
You can hope, but try and convince the guy in my discord who never fails to bring up Ukrainian war crimes and is outraged that more cluster munitions should be supplied to them.
But he’s totally not a Russian sympathiser, bro. Sorry, need to vent somewhere about his stupid takes. They’re flat out impossible to discuss anything with if you have a different perspective or opinion.
I really enjoyed the new ones, the gladiators are all pretty great except viper, he’s trying to match wolf’s persona but falling flat. Oh and they need to replace the son presenter for someone entertaining
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