NATO Isn’t What It Says It Is

[ralfy]

China's opinion....they know what they can do with their opinion.

Not just China but many other countries in the region.

Also, the point was not to show Chinese opposition but that this so-called defensive alliance is a tool meant to serve U.S. interests.

It also doesn't help that the same U.S. works both ways, i.e., works with China by denying Taiwanese sovereignty but still arming Taiwan.

 

[ralfy]

When you start with failed logic it is not hard to see why you come up with wrong conclusions.

Just to start.
An organization doing something over 40 years after it was formed with none of the original people in charge does not provide proof of why that thing was formed.

Perhaps you don’t realize this but in 40 years things change. Both within organizations and the world at large.

Some say it started as a defensive alliance even though it was formed before the Warsaw Pact was. Later, it is said to become a sword used by the U.S. to encircle Russia.

Now, it's also being used to encircle China.

Maybe they should rename it as NAPTO, and change the Nazi-like logo to one featuring the American eagle.

 

[ralfy]

So what you are saying is that you support spending money on American citizens? Or do you wan you want that all turned into tax cuts?

Or maybe non-lethal, humanitarian aid, and to the poorest countries.

 

[ralfy]

What troops or missiles was NATO stationing in Ukraine prior to Russia’s invasion?

I think they had several in Romania and elsewhere:

NATO Shows Off Missile Base In Romania, Calling It 'Purely Defensive'

NATO has countered Russia’s claims that its missile base in Deveselu, Romania undermines Moscow’s nuclear deterrent -- saying the facility is designed only to protect against an attack by Iran.

www.rferl.org

which plans to set them up in Poland against--get this--Iran plus others.

This was also part of NATO enlargement which antagonized Russia throughout the years. I'll give more details on that enlargement in subsequent messages.

 

[ralfy]

“Aggressor” =/= “illegal”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal because regardless of their lies about “justification”, we can see that this was all just a land grab. They’ve proven by annexing Ukrainian territory. Conquest of territory via warfare is illegal under the UN charter, to which Russia is a voluntary signatory.

On the other hand, there is no international law that would make a US invasion of Cuba over the presence of Soviet missiles illegal.

From what I remember, the U.S. financed Cuban exiles who tried to invade Cuba but failed before the missiles were installed. Before that, it was taking advantage of Cuba via the U.S. military and government, businesses, and even criminal groups like the Mafia. This eventually led to revolution and takeover by the Communists.

It's similar to Ukraine, where Nuland and others were manipulating it by using financial aid as a dangled carrot, supporting opposition groups, etc., etc. After that, Ukrainians were fighting with each other while attacking Russians living in Ukraine.

These don't justify the Russian invasion but explains how the U.S. was involved throughout.

 

[ralfy]

You are the one trying to compare the US supporting a coup in Cuba with a handful of obsolete bombers to Russia invading and annexing half of Ukraine with a dozen divisions and hundreds of combat aircraft and missile strikes.

An attack is an attack, right? So therefore Palestine launching a rocket at Israel that kills no one is an attack and it’s comparable to Israel carrying out an attack in the form of bombing a Palestinian school, yes?

I recall one one interview involving a former U.S. military official during the early part of the war arguing that Russia would not win because it can't copy what the U.S. does. In this case, had the U.S. invaded Ukraine, it would have ended the war on Day One because it would bomb Ukraine back to the stone age. I think it's like the "shock and awe" tactic it employed in Iraq.

 

[ralfy]

Yes, exactly. Russia's aggression war isn't about removing a nuclear threat either. It's about grabbing land.

The problem with that storyline is that it started back in the 1990s, when the U.S. claimed that Russia has imperialist schemes. Later, it made the same claims about China, and over Taiwan and others.

It also didn't help that before all that, Russia was working with Ukraine towards joining a trading bloc which the EU tried to counter.

All these that such narratives are nothing more than warpig claims echoing Reagan's "evil empire" tale, and related to Bush's view that you're either with us or with the terrorists.

This is important because the view is that not only Russian aggression but even the rise of Putin are consequences of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the U.S. drive for sole superpower status, which involves, among other things, using NATO as a sword against military rivals while not trying to upset the latter as much as possible through proxy wars.

This explains why the U.S. has been trying to expand NATO in Asia while telling China that it won't recognize Taiwanese sovereignty while arming the latter for profit, why it worked with Russia over Afghanistan a decade earlier, why it dangled the NATO membership carrot at Ukraine then and continues to do so now, etc.

The U.S. is like a richer and more dangerous version of Russia.

 

[Dr. Manhattan]

Some say it started as a defensive alliance even though it was formed before the Warsaw Pact was. Later, it is said to become a sword used by the U.S. to encircle Russia.

Now, it's also being used to encircle China.

Maybe they should rename it as NAPTO, and change the Nazi-like logo to one featuring the American eagle.

The US doesn't need any country to defend or defeat Russia or China.

NATO is mostly for all the smaller countries that can't beat Russia or China, to join with the US, making them untouchable.

No one needs to dangle anything. Most countries want that as is and need no coxing.

 

[H. E. Panqui]

My Republican stinkers?? My??

Ahhhh... No..

Please read more carefully. I wrote RepubliCRAT [contraction of the stinking REPUBLIcan and stinking DemoCRAT parties] not RepubliCAN.

I use the word Republicrat because, as to the mo$t important thing$ --monetary policy, foreign policy, etc.-- only a fool would quibble about any puny differences among the Republican $hit puppets and the Democrat $hit puppets.

 

[Cope]

How many years were you a general at the Pentagon with intimate knowledge of US operations and logistics and how much we need or don’t need our allies?

14 so far.

 

[samiam5211]

14 so far.

You've been a general for 14 years?

Surely you'd have four stars by now. We probably know your name.

 

[Cope]

Your Eternalism as a fixed unchanging doctrine is similar to the nonsense of Originalism that is retrogressive to US jurisprudence, ie, both are fixed in 1791 -- forever and always inert.

While the Founders rather created a Constitution to be amended indefinitely into future times, eternalism and originalism are moribund. Embalmed and laid to rest in peace while being worshiped as such. The Founders today would reject your fixed views. Jefferson for one advocated revolution every 20 years which is as equally absurd as the timeless eternalism and originalism to which your posts are attached. The Founders sought balance through the active and ongoing interaction by the three branches of government.

Sure, by all means. Amending the Constitution is possible, they made it so, just not 'easy'.

If we let you go the way you wish, it would be as easy as changing your mind and viola it was done.

 

[Cope]

You've been a general for 14 years?

Surely you'd have four stars by now. We probably know your name.

It's above your pay grade, and you don't have the clearance.

 

[Glitch]

Pray tell, why is Ukraine POTENTIALLY joining a defensively focused alliance (not even actually taking steps to join it, just theoretically MIGHT JOIN IT in the future) such a threat to Russia unless Russia was already wanting to invade or attack Ukraine?

And while you’re thinking about that: if this invasion was really about stopping Ukraine from joining NATO, why has Russia insisted from the beginning on wanting to annex approximately half the country?

Because we reacted in the exact same manner when the USSR encroached on our area of influence. Why is it so difficult to believe that an every encroaching NATO is a threat to Russia? It wasn't so difficult to believe when the US reacted in 1962 aggressively towards Russia until they complied with US demands. But suddenly it becomes unfathomable why Russia would consider NATO to be a threat after decades of encroaching on Russia's area of influence. That takes a special level of naivete, closer to a willful ignorance.

 

[Dr. Manhattan]

why did we even allow russia to get nukes?

we should have delt with them and china long ago.

 

[Glitch]

why did we even allow russia to get nukes?

we should have delt with them and china long ago.

Primarily because of Klaus Fuchs, but there were also other spies and traitors. John Cairncross, a British spy and member of the Cambridge Five (radically devote communists), was probably the first traitor to provide the USSR with secrets on the atomic bomb, but the technical information came from Klaus Fuchs. Then there were Ted Hall, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The USSR had a great many spies and traitors working for them. All of them leftist filth, naturally.

 

[Dr. Manhattan]

Primarily because of Klaus Fuchs, but there were also other spies and traitors. John Cairncross, a British spy and member of the Cambridge Five (radically devote communists), was probably the first traitor to provide the USSR with secrets on the atomic bomb, but the technical information came from Klaus Fuchs. Then there were Ted Hall, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The USSR had a great many spies and traitors working for them. All of them leftist filth, naturally.

The moment I caught wind of that shit I would squash it.

 

[Glitch]

The moment I caught wind of that shit I would squash it.

In the case of John Cairncross, he was caught, and allowed to resign from British intelligence, move to the US and teach French literature as some university. In the case of Ted Hall, he was never caught.

 

[Dr. Manhattan]

In the case of John Cairncross, he was caught, and allowed to resign from British intelligence, move to the US and teach French literature as some university. In the case of Ted Hall, he was never caught.

Not talking about them.

I would have squashed Russia.

But I would have also arrested the spys.

 

[Tiger]

1997:

Russia, Its Neighbors, and an Enlarging NATO

More on: Russia Security Alliances NATO’s decision to enlarge comes at a time of historic opportunity. With this growth, NATO will issue invitations to additional Eur…

www.cfr.org

Once again, whenever a problem in the world is created, why does the name Victoria Nuland always show up? From your quote, she's part of the failed rationale that "concluded that Russia’s concerns and NATO enlargement need not be incompatible." She's also was a proponent for invading Iraq and the subsequent destabilization of the Middle East. Nuland was behind the Color Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, toppling a duly elected government and creating the civil war which precipitated the present war there.

Before the Soviet Union had completely imploded, the USA and our NATO allies promised the USSR that we would not expand NATO to include former Warsaw Pact nations. Bill Clinton and subsequent presidents broke that promise, pushing the borders of NATO closer to Moscow then ever before. Viewed by Russia, it was a threat of encirclement -- and was Putin's "red line" in Ukraine.

The reality is that the USA won the Cold War. Russia was removed as a military threat to us. We should have welcomed Russia into the sphere of Western economies, instead of trying to restart the Cold War to satisfy internal American NeoCon/NeoLib warmongering politics. Communist China, not Russia, is our true strategic threat.


"NATO's mission: To keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." -- Lord Hastings "Pug" Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.

The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
<continued>

 

[Ikari]

The problem with that storyline is that it started back in the 1990s, when the U.S. claimed that Russia has imperialist schemes. Later, it made the same claims about China, and over Taiwan and others.

It also didn't help that before all that, Russia was working with Ukraine towards joining a trading bloc which the EU tried to counter.

All these that such narratives are nothing more than warpig claims echoing Reagan's "evil empire" tale, and related to Bush's view that you're either with us or with the terrorists.

This is important because the view is that not only Russian aggression but even the rise of Putin are consequences of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the U.S. drive for sole superpower status, which involves, among other things, using NATO as a sword against military rivals while not trying to upset the latter as much as possible through proxy wars.

This explains why the U.S. has been trying to expand NATO in Asia while telling China that it won't recognize Taiwanese sovereignty while arming the latter for profit, why it worked with Russia over Afghanistan a decade earlier, why it dangled the NATO membership carrot at Ukraine then and continues to do so now, etc.

The U.S. is like a richer and more dangerous version of Russia.

Well it seems those accusations of imperial schemes turned out right, as that's what Russia is doing.

Nothing subtracts from the fact that none of this would be happening had Russia stuck to its own boarders.

 

[ataraxia]

Trying to compare a country to an alliance of countries is awfully silly, especially when one considers the numbers of wars of aggression or colonial wars the member states of NATO have fought.

Everyone else has moved on. Today Russia is the only one still trying to recapture its 17th century glory.

 

[RabidAlpaca]

Yes. This is the true objective for forming the NATO alliance - a U.S -led World Order. American protection served as leverage.

The proof is that after the Soviet empire crumbled in 1991, there was no longer any need for NATO. If NATO's real purpose was to thwart the Soviet threat, then it should have disbanded immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved.

But it didn't. . . . instead, NATO kept expanding. The following countries were inducted into NATO AFTER the Soviet Union dissolved:

• Czech Republic (1999)
• Hungary (1999)
• Poland (1999)
• Bulgaria (2004)
• Estonia (2004)
• Latvia (2004)
• Lithuania (2004)
• Romania (2004)
• Sweden (TBD)

So we know for certain that the actual purpose of NATO was something different than its stated objective (to thwart expansion of the Soviet Union).

The U.S. should immediately exit NATO. Our Founding Fathers warned us about the perils of permanent (and entangling) alliances with other countries:

"Let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce." - Thomas Jefferson

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world." - George Washington

NATO is obsolete because there's no Warsaw Pact. It turns out that it was formed before the Warsaw Pact was.

Given that, it's not obsolete because it's a tool meant to serve U.S. interests, which in turn also needs proxy wars. Hence, admitting Turkey, dangling the membership carrot towards Ukraine even after it has been invaded, and then trying to bring in Japan to counter China. And that's the same China to which it maintained it will not recognize Taiwanese sovereignty.

I know people like you are historically challenged, but Russia has been invading its neighbors for the last 30 years. NATO is more relevant now than it ever was. Your positions are 100% in line with Kremlin propaganda.

If Ukraine was in NATO, it never would have been invaded, and that's a fact. If NATO is obsolete as you guys claim, what would stop Russia from taking Lithuania or any other little country? The answer is nothing.

 

[Questerr]

I think they had several in Romania and elsewhere:

NATO Shows Off Missile Base In Romania, Calling It 'Purely Defensive'

NATO has countered Russia’s claims that its missile base in Deveselu, Romania undermines Moscow’s nuclear deterrent -- saying the facility is designed only to protect against an attack by Iran.

www.rferl.org

which plans to set them up in Poland against--get this--Iran plus others.

This was also part of NATO enlargement which antagonized Russia throughout the years. I'll give more details on that enlargement in subsequent messages.

So no missiles in Ukraine. Thanks for confirming.

Pray tell, why would missile defense sites be a threat to Russia unless Russia was planning on launching missile attacks on the countries where they’re located?

 

[Questerr]

I recall one one interview involving a former U.S. military official during the early part of the war arguing that Russia would not win because it can't copy what the U.S. does. In this case, had the U.S. invaded Ukraine, it would have ended the war on Day One because it would bomb Ukraine back to the stone age. I think it's like the "shock and awe" tactic it employed in Iraq.

It isn’t just bombing. Another thing Russian can’t do that America can is have a competent and functional logistic system.