Berlin says EU should prepare for war by end of decade
Europe could face threats from Russia by the end of the decade, and EU countries need to build up their defence industries to be prepared, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said during an interview published on Welt am Sonntag on Saturday.
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More money for the death-machine and profits for the shareholders, hurray!
Pacifism is great and all, but Putin clearly shows that you need to be able to defend yourself, if you don't want your rights and your freedom eroded away by foreign interests. Granted, no military will help you defend against threats to your rights from within, but it makes it at least less likely that those threats from within get backing from foreign threats.
While I really wish we would do more that Russia loses this war sooner rather than later and their economy is shattered, because that's the only way I see out of this with Putin losing power, I have to say that Putin only got into the powerful position he's in now due to mutual escalation for decades. This includes permanent provocations by NATO versus Russia. NATO is a bunch of warmongering pieces of shit, but Putin was so fucking stupid that he basically made the biggest PR campaign that NATO could ever have wished for, and now everyone wants to suck off Jens piece of shit Stoltenberg.
I despise NATO with every fibre of my being, yet I am fully aware that the stupid fucks have played their cards well enough that now even I see the need for a total econominal crushing of Russia. Only with a regime change we could then try to help the next Russian regime with humanitarian aid to prevent famines etc.
I want bootlickers to leave. Putin got into power because he was behind a terrorist attack that was blamed on Chechens and he was already a hardline anti Chechnya candidate, it propelled him to power. It was nothing to do with NATO. Countries bordering Russia have chosen to join NATO because Russia is a fuckawful neighbour.
see my other comment:
The time to support a peaceful regime in Russia was 1989ish, with Gorbachev. But that was when NATO chose to fuck over the moderates in Russia and demonstrate that cooperation with the west will be interpreted and exploited as weakness by NATO. So after a few years, we got Putler as a result.
Not only did Putin do excellent PR for NATO, Putin absolutely validated NATO's entire existence. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would not be free, indepedent countries today without NATO. They certainly wouldn't be supporting Ukraine as much as they have. And say what you will about individual countries, but NATO is proving itself once more a defensive pact. With people dying to rocket debris in Poland, russian drones going down in Romania, US drones being downed and UK planes being shot at over international waters, NATO would have plenty of reasons, if they wanted to escalate their rhetoric towards Putin. But they didn't, because NATO isn't interested in becoming an active participant in this war.
NATO isn't interested in becoming an active participant because it's way more profitable to fight a proxy war and let Ukrainians bleed in a war of attrition that hopefully will crush the Russian war machine and economy. If they wouldn't worry about Russia's potential and the nuclear arsenal, Moscow would be treated like Baghdad.
That's bullshit and a cop-out. Every country in NATO joined willingly because every country should have some level of self-determination. NATO grew because decade after decade, the Russian government proved that they act in bad faith in nearly every interaction with the international community.
Maybe if Russia acted in good faith and was willing to be a partner in the region, neighboring countries wouldn't have felt the need to join NATO, but here we are.
Pacifism doesn't work. We've seen it time and time again that it just buys our adversaries time, and we end up where we're at today.
It is sad how many upvotes a warmonger like you can get. You pick an arbitrary point in time and look at the state of things then and pretend the lead-up didn't happen. That's either propaganda, or an insane lack of functional brain cells.
Concerning NATO expansion, I've got an entertaining link for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q&t=1020
Or at 17:00 if the direct link doesn't work
I had your message marked as unread in my inbox so that I'd eventually watch the video you recommended, but now that I got around to it, I have to say I turned it off after a bit over 2 minutes because - speaking as a non native speaker - the narrator has an insanely annoying slur / mumbling in his voice. How can a native speaker possibly be so bad at English? :(
I guess you're right. His pronounciation isn't very clear. The tl;dw is, and I don't claim it to be all encompassing, watch the video if you really want to know what was said, that Poland and Hungary not only weren't 'annexed' into NATO, not only asked nicely to join, but actively bribed and forced their way into NATO. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin made a horse-trade, where Poland and Hungary joining NATO was scheduled to happen after elections in Russia, but before US elections, so that both can win their reelection. The ascension of Poland and Hungary was clearly communicated and signed off between both head of states. The issue lies with the rest of both countries. Other politicians, on both sides, stirred more hostility. When Bush and Putin took over, the relationship between both coutries deteriorated even further. Bush's unilateral push to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is, according to the video, the reason why Putin invaded Georgia. However after Bush, Obama took over and made it NATO policy that a country must have full control over its land, excluding Georgia for being partially occupied and Ukraine for having singed a lease on the Sevastapol naval base with the Russians, on top of the majority of Ukrainians at the time being against joing NATO. Obama has mellowed his tone significantly towards Russia compared to Bush. Only with the Euromaidan happening did Russia decide that, actually, Ukrainians are nazis and NATO is encroaching our borders and we need to defend ourselves. NATO enlargement isn't 'the US broke all agreements and is pushing for encirclement', but different presidents having different goals. Clinton wanted to be reelected and Poland threatened to mobilize voters with polish roots for the Republicans. Bush was a warmonger that wanted to steamroll everyone, including Russia. Obama was looking to ease tensions and make alliances. The issue with Ukraine is separate from those presidents however. It was triggered by Putin getting spooked by popular uprisings.
Well - I don't dispute that the then-administrations of Poland and Hungary invited NATO. But nevertheless, NATO as never a pacifistic alliance, they were always aiming at somehow outmaneuvering first the USSR and then Russia. There was a chance for an extended peace under Gorbachev, which NATO ruined by screwing over their gentleman's agreement over "no eastward expansion" among other things. After Gorbachev (and the drunkard Yeltsin), Russia elected a "strongman" who decided to be just as much of an asshole as NATO, so there's no real innocent's in this scenario EXCEPT for the people and country of Ukraine, who really are not at fault at all, but get mass-murdered.
So now we're stuck with NATO, despite me personally despising the NATO doctrine and having wanted to smack Stoltenberg's teeth in countless of times. But it's the lesser evil, not because they became more peaceful, but because Russia became more evil.
In summary: It may not be entirely NATOs fault that it has come to this, but the NATO member countries had a chance to avoid this about 30 years ago, and they blew it.
Russia was at war in almost every decade of every century.
Anyone with access to a library can confirm it.
You would join NATO too if you had Putler glued to your ass. We're fucking terrified here.
The time to support a peaceful regime in Russia was 1989ish, with Gorbachev. But that was when NATO chose to fuck over the moderates in Russia and demonstrate that cooperation with the west will be interpreted and exploited as weakness by NATO. So after a few years, we got Putler as a result.
This is not Iraq. This is a dictatorship invading democracies. I protested the same as you did, we lost the conservatives won. That doesn't mean this is our second chance.
This is exactly what this saber rattling is about. But judging by the downvotes, most readers don't have the mental capacity to see that separately from the need to help Ukraine in the current situation.
Really? Is that really what it's about? Or is there any chance that it might be about a country invading and trying to conquer its neighbor?
Or is there any chance that it might be about a country invading and trying to conquer its neighbor?
If it was about that, Ukraine would have gotten tons of long range missiles and F16s and a dozen Patriot systems a year ago.