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"?
Unfortunately, there are arrogant, bubble-dwelling ideologues in DC who share this comic-book fantasy about fighting and somehow "winning" a war with Russia.
Eisenhower gave the Turks a nuclear guarantee in 1954. The Finns are no less deserving and it is no less crazy.
Crazy is giving into Russian threats and giving them control of Europe. Even the Eastern half of Europe.
The Russians don’t have the military capability to march into Kyiv much less into Helsinki.
The Russian conventional military has proven to be a paper tiger. Their nuclear capability is almost certainly far less than claimed. It is highly unlikely they spend the money to maintain their nuclear arsenal. It is almost certain that most of the money that is budgeted for nuclear maintenance disappears into the kleptocracy. In other words most of their shit won’t work on Blow Up the World Day.
In any event we have more than enough nuclear capability to wipe Russia out. And we have more than enough tactical nuclear weapons to go 15 rounds with Russia.
Russians should be just as weary of MAD as we are.
Finns and Ukrainians have the right to govern themselves in a civilized manner and live among the civilized nations of the world. So do Swedes and Poles.
Yep 😦😞😔
🛐🙏✝️
I remember when liberals said the Soviet Union was unstoppable and would tear us down, and that was under 40 years ago.
(How do you triumph in a nuclear war?)
Mineshafts
Ratio of 10.....
Oh wait....movie 🍿🍿🍿
i am rather optimistic...
for new zealand... :-/
Yeah, so if Poland had just negotiated with Hitler and given Danzig back Hitler wouldn’t have invaded and tried to conquer all of Europe?
Or if the US/NATO had just super promised Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO Putin wouldn’t have invaded the whole country anyway?
Those are two things you said that sound unrealistic
This is never going to happen. Vladimir knows damn well what happened the last time they tried that.
You get it. As we used to say in the old Cold War, “Just say nyet to Russian nuclear blackmail.”
“The Russians don’t have the military capability to march into Kyiv much less into Helsinki. The Russian conventional military has proven to be a paper tiger.“
So we need only kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down? Now where have I heard that before…..
You do realize that what is being done in Ukraine is being done with less than 200k troops right?
I suggest you study the eastern front in WWII as a starting point. It may amaze you to learn that we are not the ones that stopped the Germans in Europe, it was the Russians. The eastern front, taken out of WWII and stood alone, is the greatest conflict in human history.
Underestimation of your enemy is folly. And fighting them with our current military leadership? Folly of the highest order.
No, let Europe handle Europe, I am tired of paying for territorial lines in Europe with American blood.
The Russians can claim to have 10,000 nukes. But in reality, only 100 of them worked. That's enough to destroy our grid. We wouldn't be able to feed the population of this country. Yeah. I wouldn't challenge the Russians on this. Even if they are corrupt and drunk.
“Even if they are corrupt and drunk.“
I don’t care who you are that’s funny right there.
China, India, and Israel are all ignoring sanctions, still trading with Russia. The latter two are our "allies."
“I’m part of a smaller group here at free Republic that believes that Russia is our final ally against globohomo and Islmaphacism.”
I’m with you !
NATO should have disbanded soon after the Soviet Union did. Instead it became a hazardous military anachronism. It did as most taxpayer-funded entities would do, it sought a new mission to keep the funding intact and growing. Because we while muggles see government as a set of agencies with different missions, those running the agencies only see funding levels, funding levels, funding levels,...nothing else.
After the Soviet Union fell apart the new NATO mission to keep the funding intact became “terrorism” (that can be read two ways and it should). The engine of terrorism was fueled with double-tap drone strikes on weddings and funeral. You didn’t think those events just kept happening time after time “accidentally”, did you? It’s what is called “unacknowledged policy”.
We should dust-bin NATO along with the “war on terror” and let the Europeans work out their own security compacts.
Some conservatives, unable to stop the destruction of America at home, compensate by focusing on foreign conquests.
"See, we're still strong! See our proud servicemen fly Old Glory as they bomb some distant sh*thole nation! We can still feel proud to be an American!"
Yep. The EU should have developed their military alliance after the collapse of the Soviet Union so we can pull out. Downsize our military except for the Navy.
Conservatives love to joke about France, but France has long used nuclear power. Credit them for that wise move.
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