Russia: Our Opposition to Further NATO Expansion Covers Sweden and Finland Too

https://www.cnsnews.com ^ | December 26, 2021 | By Patrick Goodenough

[PghBaldy]

It’s not just the leadership- many
ordinary citizens are children now too.

[Apparatchik]

You probably need to read more. NATO membership is available to Finland and Sweden, among others. They have only to ask for it, but their populations do not support it. In the case of Finland, only about 28 percent do, whereas nearly 50 percent are against.

Secondly, NATO does not “offer” membership. It’s not the Freemasons, FFS.

[AppyPappy]

The Russians have done everything right but they are limited by their own military. The Soviets beat the Nazis due to defense of the Motherland, officers shooting anyone who failed to attack and fear of the gulags.
None of these are true anymore.

[Parley Baer]

I am waiting for that Putin-Biden talk coming up. If it happens? I think this time Putin is setting a trap to show how stupid Biden is.

[devere]

“Putin is setting a trap to show how stupid Biden is.”

What is the point of showing what everyone already knows?

[devere]

Reportedly 67% of the Finnish military support NATO membership, and I think that when Russia invades Ukraine, public opinion will suddenly change as it did in the UK when Hitler marched into Prague. Opinion in Sweden is edging closer to NATO membership. Moldova is constitutionally neutral. Once the Russian wolf is at their door it will be too late for those nations to join NATO, just as it is now too late for Ukraine.

[Parley Baer]

Not everyone knows it by far. You should see the replies I get on our Next Door site here in Southern California. By the way I was just informed that I have been banned again for 5 days.

[Alas Babylon!]

Putin is setting a trap to show how stupid Biden is.

That's not even a real challenge.

All Putin has to do is call him while on TV and say, "Let's go Brandon!"

[Robert357]

Time for NATO to hold a joint winter training exercise in Finland, if Russian troops aren’t removed from the border of Ukraine.

The NATO exercise should either be called “White Death” or “Winter War.” The Russians will totally understand the meaning.

[nathanbedford]

The critical national interest of the United States is to survive the multifaceted, sinister, tentacled threat posed by China. So our policy respecting Ukraine, NATO, the European Union, the Baltic states, Finland and Sweden-and all other hotspots around the world including Iran and North Korea – should be based on preserving our own national survival.

That does not mean that we have no interest in a healthy and robust NATO, if one could be fashioned, or in an economically vibrant and independent European Union if those nations could realistically be counted as allies. It does mean that America needs allies because China is picking up client states very rapidly.

Yet it may not seem so at first glance to much of our nation but America is rapidly running out of friends and allies around the world even as China rapidly accumulates client states. The Chinese Belt and Road initiative has insinuated Chinese influence into well over 100 foreign nations, many of them in South America and the Caribbean, on the West Coast of Africa but all within the critical maritime crossroads famously identified by Admiral Mahon and all readily convertible into military bases for the projection of power.

The Chinese-Russian axis is now overt and the Iranians are also on board. China is rapidly gaining positions in which they will be able to control sea lanes and they will also have boots on the ground enabling them to extract minerals, foodstuffs and petroleum upon which they are growing increasingly dependent and for which they will soon become desperate. Combine the vast population of China with the vast geographical expanse of Russia, add the raw materials available in that continent and a world superpower can easily emerge that dwarfs the United States.

Chinese ability to innovate is growing exponentially as we have seen in their ability to fashion hypersonic rockets and killer satellites. They are increasingly sophisticated in waging cyber warfare, which they do on a daily basis. Their navy is bigger than ours. The cold hard truth is that China is beating us and we as a nation are oblivious to the extent and immediacy of our danger.

There is every reason to fear that a move against Taiwan, predicted at least once already on this thread, might be coordinated with a move against Ukraine and we would have nothing with which to reply except kinetic warfare waged by our feckless and demented commander-in-chief. This is a threat which we were among the first to raise here. But the point is that Biden has failed to mobilize any state in the European Union, in NATO, or effectively in the Pacific (emphasis on "effectively"),either military or economic with which to deter overt military aggression by Russia or China.

Neither nation when it invades Western Ukraine or Taiwan has reason to conclusively fear that they will be utterly isolated from political, diplomatic and economic relations with the rest of the world. In other words, neither Russia nor China have been put on notice which they are bound to believe that they will bankrupt themselves even as they win two pyrhicc victories. Where is the organized deterrence?

So we have no leverage, no deterrence, against these countries because we have no unity within the ranks of our putative allies since we lost over time our credibility now confirmed by the great skedaddle from Afghanistan.

If there are incursions against Ukraine or Taiwan, or elsewhere, the dominoes will begin to fall in the wake of another American humiliation as we are exposed to be utterly feckless. If Taiwan goes, the Philippines will inevitably go. Indochina comes under threat. Japan will have very hard choices to make and the Japanese must make them with no confidence either in American fortitude or the American nuclear umbrella.

If Ukraine goes, disintegration of the Western European states is likely as the Germans decide that they would like to trade Mercedes-Benz automobiles for gas with which to heat their homes because they have just shut down there remaining nuclear plants. God help Poland who still carries nightmares of its history of its unfortunate geographical situation on the doorstep of both Germany and Russia.

After our allies desert the United States because we are further humiliated, proven untrustworthy and impotent, we will inevitably be drawn back into fortress America. It is then that we will learn that two great oceans are simply not enough protection in the modern age. As the belt of the belt and road inexorably constricts our economy and threatens us with increasingly overwhelming military odds, including nuclear war, the left in America will simply surrender us and hand us over.

The disintegration has to stop somewhere. That is not a half-assed justification for belligerency on behalf of Ukraine or for Taiwan but it is a plea that we as a nation recognize the mortal peril posed by China, consider its relationship to places like Ukraine, and adopt a realpolitik counter policy on every level that permits our own economic survival, our technological survival, our allies to believe, our leftists to be ignored and our enemies to be intimidated.

[Yardstick]

*bump*

[Thunder90]

Another thing to consider is that the “collapse “ of the Soviet Union was actually a reorganization. Now the Soviet bear wants to reassemble itself and become what it was, and reap the fruits of the last 30 years.

[Iowa Slim]

I still haven’t gotten an answer as to why NATO is still necessary, why we need to be in charge of it, and why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to run it right up against Russia. It’s part of the perpetual warmongering neocon project to stir up foreign trouble for us to solve with our people’s blood and treasure, right?

[BenLurkin]

“America needs allies because China is picking up client states very rapidly.”

Interesting point.

[mac_truck]

I still haven’t gotten an answer as to why NATO is still necessary, why we need to be in charge of it, and why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to run it right up against Russia.

NATO may still be necessary for European cohesion, but direct US involvement in NATO is no longer needed. Europe needs its own standing army as a compliment to its financial and political structures, and is fully capable of running NATO on its own. The US should set a time table for 'retiring' from NATO and start the process immediately.

[katie didit]

bttt, red dragon rising.

[MercyFlush]

“The Soviets bear wats to...reap the fruits of the last thirty years”

‘reap’ is not how I spell ‘rape’.

[MercyFlush]

Russia threatening war over who NATO assosciates with is perfect justification for NATO.

[Paul R.]

Left to their own devices, the Euro’s (Euro NATO states) will NOT maintain cohesion for long.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

I still haven’t gotten an answer as to why NATO is still necessary,

Because contrary to the left and the Putinists on this forum, the United States is not the "Great Satan," and bad people exist in the world who would like to kill every single one of us.