The tiny Estonian town that could spell the end of NATO

The Week ^ | 3/27/2014 | By Michael Ben-Gad

[Mariner]

Will Putin call NATO's bluff?

The Russian invasion and rapid absorption of the Crimean peninsula might seem like the spark ready to ignite a new Cold War. In fact, given the feeble Western response so far, the more likely outcome is not the division of Europe once more between NATO's Western alliance and a neo-Soviet Russia, but rather the fracturing and ultimate demise of NATO and the Western alliance itself.

Of course, no one expects the West to use military force to protect Ukrainian territory, despite the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia, the U.S., and the U.K. guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for its relinquishing the nuclear weapons that remained on its territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet even the Russians now seem surprised, indeed somewhat amused, by how disunited and weak the Western response has been. So what comes next?

Having demonstrated to the Ukrainians with his Crimean excursion the emptiness of Western guarantees...

[MSF BU]

Actually maybe a little bit of ethnic cleansing would make sense? Pay them to return to Russia and continue to enhance the miserable conditions in Russian ethnic areas. This really points to the absurdity of the “Diversity is our Strength” mantra.

[MSF BU]

This only points to the need for Taiwan, Japan & South Korea to develop nuclear weapons.

[greeneyes]

Europe didn't do squat to Hitler until England stood up. I don't really expect anything to be done other than rhetoric.

Remember when Russia invaded Afghanistan, or when the tanks rolled into Yugoslavia? We were in much better financial and military shape then than now IIRC. We didn't really do anything then either.

That's why I don't expect much now. Also we have a limp wristed Chamberlain in the White House.

[bigheadfred]

Perhaps of interest. Direct link to the Prague Post.

Full text of Putin’s speech on Crimea

[VerySadAmerican]

Half the people in this country might say “I disagree with obama on this but I still love and support him.”

[MaxMax]

And they would still vote for him.. My father told me that many Dems in his
town are backtracking saying they're Republican now. I said they're lying because
of the embarrassment Obama is causing them and they would most certainly keep voting
Democrat in every election expecting a different result.

[Almondjoy]

Hardly.. there is a tried and true behavior in life. When a bully punches you in the nose he never backs down when you simply say to him... “That’s not a nice thing to do.”

[Dagnabitt]

So true. "Diversity is our strength" is no more true in Estonia than it is in California or Detroit.

At least Russians in Estonia don't play the knock out game (they prefer the pass out drunk game).

[Krosan]

It is a late reply, but I hope it is okay. Estonia has adopted a Finnish style defense policy and I believe it is very wise considering our very limited resources. Soviet occupation ruined our economy and costs in money easy for rich countries are hard for us. Every male nowadays has to go to a 8 to 11 month military training (it used to be longer, but training was of lesser quality) and we have weapons caches hidden in all our forests. Forests cover more than half of Estonian territory. In addition to this we have a large unpaid volunteer militia where people can keep on training on how to defend our land.

It is not so easy as we have to be very wise in where we spend our money. Estonia has 725 times smaller GDP than USA so there are no mistakes allowed when we want to build a credible defense against Russia. If NATO bails on their obligations we will die in a futile fight.

I hope this will not happen. I'll post a video of our volunteer militia training to lighten the gloomy mood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otQ3fmG9YUI

[MSF BU]

Yes, but in all fairness, that is pretty common up there. In Finland it is perfectly acceptable to answer “get drunk” when asked what you’re weekend plans are. The difference of course is that the the Finns (Swedes, Norwegian, Estonians, etc.) are industrious and live in well ordered societies. Why this is beyond the Russian people to do is an interesting anthropological question.

[MSF BU]

It sounds as though Estonia is going toward the Swiss system?

[Krosan]

I think the systems are very similar anyway, but our situation and nature is so much more similar to Finland and the countries have such strong connection, that we’ll probably just keep trying to learn as much from them as we can and copy the parts that make sense. Finland is bigger, richer and not in NATO though. They also don’t have the legacy of 30% immigrants with questionable loyalty from the Soviet occupation.