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"?
Probably so if libtards and neocons have their way 🤪
I’m part of a smaller group here at free Republic that believes that Russia is our final ally against globohomo and Islmaphacism.
War with Russia is not imminent.
But I do believe at this point it will take men of God fearing conscience and character to prevent it becoming imminent.
I don’t see either anywhere near our national decision makers.
What do we gain? License to overthrow other democracies? WTH are you advocating for?! Nuclear war?
How do you triumph in a nuclear war?
War with any near peer enemy, with our current military leadership as well as civilian leadership, is madness. Our fighting men are phenomenal….they are lions, but we are currently led by donkeys .
What does Russia have to fear from us? It’s the Europeans. Left to their own devices they’ll fight. Do we occupy like we did in Beruit, 1983?
Neocons prayer come true.
Such US vs Russia garbo always reminds me of a mention made by the former Captain of the USS Dallas:
“We are inclined to overestimate our ability and underestimate our vulnerability.”
Be assured, that if such was to take place or occur, BidenIdiot would have to reverse every Day 1 energy, etc. policy he has nullified, etc. Bet.
We station nukes in the eastern bloc. Point them in both directions. Make sure Europe and Russia pays for it.
The blue city soy boys should have plenty to fear from manly-man Russia.
Red Americans...nothing at all. Our brothers from another mother.
Yes.
Russia isn't going to do a damn thing about it because they can't do anything about. They'll make a big deal out of Europe suffering because of a lack of Russian fossil fuels, and claim that is their revenge.
When they were humiliated in Afghanistan, the Russians didn't use nukes despite the US providing the Afghanis with critical weapons. Had they threatened it, Reagan would have told them to pound sand.
When the Russians were forced to pull out of Eastern Europe, they didn't nuke anybody then either. And when the Soviet Union disintegrated around them, and all the constituent republics went their own way, they still didn't use nukes.
Then we come to Ukraine. The pro-Russia crowd has warned us from the beginning that if we sent supplies to Ukraine through Poland, they'd bomb Poland and start World War III. Didn't happen. They told us if we started sending weapons systems like tanks and artillery to Ukraine, it would start World War 3. Once again, that didn't happen either.
So now, another Russia apologist is telling us that if two small countries that haven't fought an offensive war against Russia in hundreds of years are permitted to join NATO, that will cause World War 3.
Sure it will. Sure.
If you are out there asking Pat,
Yes, I can blame them.
Hope that helps.
Concur.
There is no way to triumph in that war other than completely annihilating Russia military, government, infrastructure and population. Russia would go nuclear before allowing complete annihilation, then we all in a world of hurt. Even if you “win” on paper everybody loses.
Is it worth sending your sons, not some one else’s, yours, to die to save Ukraine.
Just do it and get it overwith! One thing for certain is it wont ever happen again. “I dont know what kind of weapons mankind will be use in world war 3...but in world war 4 they will use sticks and stones.” -A. Einstein.
You are part of a small group here at free Republic that are insanely and moronically desiring a war 5000 miles away overseas with a giant nuclear power while we suffer a communist totalitarian purge here in America. You and your small cabal are beneath contempt.
Pat Buchanan bump for later....
My your hopium circle remain small. Freeregards.
How do you win a nuclear war?
Be a eugenicist like Billg, have 100 person, 5-star networked bunker accommodation with a 3000-manyear food supply.
Billg would think that winning, at least, if not the rest of us.
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