Posted on 01/02/2024 2:13:47 PM PST by Macho MAGA Man
NATO in its present form is obsolete.
Turkey is simply following the protocols of the Montreux Convention. Sorry it’s wiki, but see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits
(Nah, I won’t write Türkiye — do we call Germany Deutschland, call Sweden Sverige, call Switzerland die Schweiz? Same deal for Kiev. In English, it’s Kiev not Kyiv, just like it’s Florence not Firenze, Munich not München, etc. Shoot, I think we should still say Peking instead of Beijing.)
You’ll probably get your wish that the Black Sea becomes a Russian lake. Perhaps you are unaware that part of southeast Europe — our allies — are on the Black Sea. And with an unreliable “ally” along the entirety of the southern Black Sea coast that is a very strategic loss for the West, and a tremendous gain for Russia and moslem western Asia.
Gallipoli, the sequel.
“NATO in its present form is obsolete.”
I agree: Eject Turkey from NATO.
Nonsense. The American Empire is over extended and collapsing.
Trump is just one man, with many deep flaws. At best he would slow the decline, but no man can stop the inevitable.
Turkey is a charter member of NATO.
It did't seem so stupid in 1952, when Turkey joined. Turkey at the time had a pro-Western government and was sending troops to fight alongside our own in Korea. They later helped to set up the short-lived Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) aka the Baghdad Pact, which linked the Northern Tier of the Middle East (Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey) to the West. The Turks cooperated with us, allowing the US to deploy missiles and bombers on their territory.
In 1952, Islamic jihadism was not a major issue and wouldn't become one until the end of the 1970's. Turkey had a secular government and the main ideological threat in the Middle East at the time was not radical Islam but "Arab socialism,' which began to gather steam after leftist radicals overthrew the king of Egypt in 1952.
That’s what it looks like.
Sounds like the UK wants Turkey to dispose of their navy, now that the UK has disposed of the rest of their once-meager military in Ukraine.
If we make an example of them and eject them keeping NATO intact. They go away butt-hurt and certainly become closer to Russia. (Which in the long run would be to their detriment. Their problem!) If we dissolve NATO and start negotiating new security arrangements with the European nations, we start from square one. In such a situation we are not compelled to accept Turkey as a member of the new security organization because we need the right flank covered. They can then make a case for their membership or not and we can accept their arguments or not.
Italy and Japan were our allies in WWI.
Former friends eventually turn into enemies, and that will happen with Turkey.
You make some interesting proposals.
“… part of southeast Europe — our allies — are on the Black Sea.”
Good idea! Britain just needs to transfer the minesweepers to Romania, and the Romanians can “lease” them to Ukraine.
This whole thing started with Obama’s “Pokistan “ Bull Sh!t !
“Good idea! Britain just needs to transfer the minesweepers to Romania, and the Romanians can ‘lease’ them to Ukraine.”
What’s the difference? Britain and Romania are both NATO members.
Turkey was seen as needed during the Cold War to anchor the southern flank of NATO and bottle up the Soviet Black Sea fleet.
“The cross-section of the waterway is normally trapezoidal, with 31 metres (102 ft) width at the bottom, 55 metres (180 ft) width at the water surface, 4 metres (13 ft) of water depth, and a side grade of 1:3. The channel is a Waterway Class Vb; the largest authorised vessel is 190 metres (620 ft) long and 11.45 metres (37.6 ft) wide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Main%E2%80%93Danube_Canal
It may be too shallow.
During the Kennedy Administration we had our Jupiter Missiles located there.
You pretty much missed the entire point of what I’m saying. The UK has a very strange obsession with that part of the world. They have had it for over 170 years. Sometimes they fight the turks, sometimes they crush the Greeks,. But the constant, if anything happens in the black sea, the UK acts like it’s a critical interest. And I’ll go one further, if hypothetically we never had another ship from America into or out of the Black Sea, what the hell difference would it make to any American? Would it cut off our pistachio imports or something?
PS, it was just an observation, no reason for the personal insults. Grow up.
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