Posted on 07/14/2022 9:22:31 PM PDT by NoLibZone
At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?
If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki's defense and fight Russia on Finland's side.
What does Finland's membership in NATO mean for America?
If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world's largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment -- to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.
To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.
Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin's blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.
Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa's Solidarity was smashed on Moscow's order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.
While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the "captive nations" of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.
Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more -- Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.
Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought -- certainly by the Russians -- to have been the end of the Cold War.
All the nations once part of Moscow's Warsaw Pact -- East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria -- are now members of a U.S.-led NATO -- directed against Russia.
Three former republics of the USSR -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania -- are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.
Lithuania, with 2% of Russia's population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia's enclave on the Baltic Sea.
To Putin's protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.
It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.
In 1914, the kaiser's Germany gave its Austrian ally a "blank check" to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser's check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland's side.
Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin's custody.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.
We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.
Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?
Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as "saber-rattling"?
I'm not sure that's the "dictionary definition."
Anyway, we have nukes pointed at them. And we've had nukes pointed at each other for some 70 years. It hasn't proven to be a problem.
But we do have real problems, more pressing and immediate problems as I listed above.
How about we focus on those first?
We focus on multiple problems simultaneously and have now for two and a half centuries. The existential threat posed by Russia and it’s weapons package is going to be dealt with.
I don’t think we should start any wars or even have fought most wars of the past EXCEPT WWII (we were attacked, and Nazi Germany declared war on US34 days later) and Afghanistan, but only to destroy the Taliban who would not give up Bin Laden. We should have left there in the Summer of 2002. No nation building ANYWHERE.
Iraq was based on a fakery created by Saddam to make him seem invulnerable but as soon as we took him down, REAL chaos took place.
We should be working with all our might to get negotiations between Russia and Ukraine—not feeding our treasure into the fight.
But still I would challenge FReepers, that, in the unlikely event WE—that is USA—are attacked, we’d all support the USA against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The Oath I took 6 times is not negotiable, but as an independent American I get to decide what is propaganda or fake.
The False Deep State does NOT have my allegiance.
And yes, I do have a moral right to defend my country and oppose the Deep State at the same time. Thinking men know the difference.
Straight up!
However, we need to be out getting MAGA votes in November. We still have time to fight this at the ballot box.
For all of those who say we lost that fight in Nov 2020, you'd be right, except the Chinese virus and constant DNCMedia attacks on President Trump took their toll, and still they had to go every which way to get fake ballots in the mail based on "Covid restrictions to gather in person".
We can NEVER let that be repeated. Then, yes, we should be out on the streets fighting.
Dementia Joe notwithstanding but Russia is a dying country.
At most it’s total population is only 144 million. Ours is almost double that.
And as I said the average life expectancy for a Russian male is only about 65- if he hasn’t drank himself to death yet.
Well, no. We're not focusing on the problems I've listed.
How are we focusing on the invasion of our borders? Or the growing debt and unfunded liabilities? We're only making those worse. Ditto the other problems I've listed.
Due to super high murder rates, US life expectancy has continued to fall from 2019 to 2021.
At least the Russians don't have to worry about massive murder rates (and rising) like in America.
And Russia's population is still over three times that of Ukraine.
Like I said before, Russia has been around for a very long time. They are not going to collapse suddenly when they are making more money than ever from oil/gas exports at super high prices thanks to Dementia Joe's funny sanctions..
I am thinking that NATO should be reviewing their stockpiles of ATGM and broadly training their reserves / militia on the use of the weapons.
And—in time—against China!!!!!
GHW Bush promised no NATO expansion in 1989! But NATO not only expanded, but bombed Serbia in 1999!! Abolish NATO—don’t expand it!!!!
Do a little research. Russia is in a pitiful state.
How is Chicago, St Louis, Baltimore etc etc on the murdr front these days?
Oh wait, they are bust slaughtering each other at high rates.
It will be imminent if this country does not turn its back on the WEF manifesto/NWO/LWO globalists. Countries around the world are falling to this crap right now. The US is on step 3 of 8 of the manifesto right now. It must be stopped.
They are using this administration as part of its efforts to wreck economies around the globe, including Russia’s (who doesn’t belong to or follow the WEF garbage). Wrecking China is being left until after Biden has left office and some marxist shill, not as beholden to the CCP is in office.
NO! For cryin out loud!
Go peddle your woe is me bullshit somewhere else. Your nihilism and defeatism is anti American and makes me sick.
What are you, a shill for Putin?
How is Chicago, St Louis, Baltimore etc etc on the murders front these days?
Oh wait, they are bust slaughtering each other at high rates.
Well, Nancy, the tyranny of American governments affect me a whole lot more than the tyranny of a government 5000 miles away.
Then move to Russia and improve your situation!
I've been listening to conservative talk radio, and voting Republican, for forty years. Look where that's gotten us.
I remember when Reagan declared "Morning in America." Yet over these past forty years, things have steadily worsened. Reagan and Trump slowed the decline, but America is way worse than when I was a kid.
You call it nihilism and defeatism. I call it realism.
You make no sense.
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