Senate The US Politics discussion

I have to say, I thought the Greenwald debate was excellent. Obviously democracy should not be undermined in any country, and I understand why, on that level, it is a concern for Americans. But the context is that America regularly subverts democracy elsewhere to a much, much greater degree, and so the subtext regarding this hysteria is that other countries should know that their rightful place is to serve American interests and not vice versa. It's an issue borne out of extreme arrogance.

 

Guys, Trump is totally in the wrong with his latest NATO comments. Since when has a tiny Balkan state in an alliance with much larger states started a world war?

 

Actually, since never

Serbia had accepted all of Austria-Hungary's conditions before the Habsburgs deliberately upped the ante into basically taking Serbia over - they saw a pretext to annex Serbia and thought Russia wouldn't respond. Austria-Hungary started the war, and they were one of the Great Powers of the time.

 

Yes, Austria-Hungary was the aggressor. (Though the Black Hand was supported by the Serbian state.) I studied WWI. I know. A world war was still triggered by a regional confrontation in the Balkans. Trump is an idiot so he of course portrayed Montenegro as the aggressor in his hypothetical scenario, but people are acting as though it's absurd to suggest that WW3 could start with them. NATO practically exists for WW3.

 

A regional confrontation indeed, but not triggered by a minor state. Again, Serbia caved in to the first set of a great power's demands. The great power in question just didn't care and ignored the warnings of another great power not to proceed.

 

Yes, NATO exists to prevent WWIII, and it's done a pretty bang-up job on that front. Trump argued that Montenegro would cause WWIII because of NATO, which is exactly as stupid as people are saying it is. NATO is a defense treaty. Montenegro is protected from attack as long as we vow to protect it. Russia, by way of Serbia, doesn't want to go to war with the U.S. over Montenegro. Russia wants the U.S. out of NATO so it can do what it wants in Eastern Europe.

 

It's a lot more complicated than Austria-Hungary simply ignoring Russia's warnings. (Russia didn't come to Bulgaria's aid in the Second Balkan War so A-H assumed they were bluffing, but because that left Serbia as Russia's only Balkan ally they felt they must intervene or lose face/influence.) The pre-WWI era was characterized by similarly absurd military alliances hinging on mutual self-defense and that helped lead to a catastrophic war. I'm not saying that it will happen with Montenegro, but what President "Not Wouldn't" is suggesting isn't entirely fantastical. What do people think will happen if Article 5 is invoked to, say, defend Estonia from a Russian incursion?

Edit: The Entente and Triple Alliance were meant to "prevent war" too.

 

Survey says: "My sig rocks!"

And someone from the JCC will have to use it as their signature very, very signature when we win this round of the Feud!

 

WW1's beginnings were indeed anything but simple.

All the same, let's not pretend it's because of the smaller state the war started - that's willful ignorance. A great power saw a pretext to seize, and so they did - and it wasn't even their initial response to the Sarajevo assassination. Franz-Joseph's response was actually "a higher power than me has restored order" - he didn't want Franz-Ferdinand to succeed him. Austria-Hungary initially weren't going to pursue, then changed their mind. Had they not, no war begins. It was a great power's game, plain and simple, and nothing puts it clearer than the subsequent German ultimatum to France outright demanding occupation of its entire fortification system and of areas holding half of France's industry.

As to what will happen if Article 5 is invoked to defend Estonia from a Russian invasion, Russia themselves know better than to invade - no nuclear power courts open war with another nuclear power. In the Baltic states, their efforts revolve around their own substantial local populations to set up take-overs without actual war declarations and, therefore, no opportunity for Article 5 to apply.

 

Of course it's a "great power's game." NATO is about U.S. power and influence, just as the Russian Empire's alliance with Serbia was about theirs. Montenegro has no importance strategically (one article I read tried to sell that its coastline is an important stopover from Gibraltar to Turkey, lol, as though there aren't several other more convenient NATO ports) or really in any respect. It's just another former Eastern Bloc country successfully pulled into the Western sphere.

 

Hypotheticals are fun. In actual fact, since we've had NATO with the U.S. spearheading it, we haven't had WWIII. So in practice, NATO has been serving its purpose just fine.

 

You still have an NES? Lol that's awesome. So do I. My boys and I play it. And Super Mario All Stars on the SNES.

Good times!

 

Military alliances are never to "prevent war." NATO was formed at a time when many U.S. planners had no qualms about nuking Central Europe in order to stop a conventional Soviet advance they knew they couldn't stop otherwise. It was an alliance to prepare for war. Yes, there has not been a World War 3, but that doesn't mean NATO prevented it (the Soviets never had any interest in occupying Western Europe, the Cuban Missile Crisis was precipitated in part by U.S. nukes in Turkey) nor does it mean that it can't happen.

 

You can argue for changing the status quo of NATO to prevent WWIII, but you're arguing against actual history while you tout exactly what Putin wants. Sometimes arguments to fix what isn't broken sound exactly like people are trying to fix something that isn't broken. Putin is the leader that has consistently shown overt aggression in Europe. He is obviously the leader that needs to be curtailed, not kowtowed to.

 

You're overly reliant on the strawman that people who are critical of the U.S. and NATO are pro-Putin.

 

Very much so.

 

It's not a strawman become I'm not arguing against a made-up point you're making. I'm making my own point. Hey, what a coincidence, these silly anti-NATO arguments are being made right at a moment in time when Trump constantly touts the glory of Putin and his policy choices, simultaneous to blaming the woes of the world on America and, you got it, Europe. Russia's Foreign Ministry agrees with him.

To argue that NATO is the problem, you have to show that NATO is causing some problem. It's just a mutual defense agreement. The only reason it comes into play is if some non-NATO entity (hmmm who would that be) is aggressive. By definition, NATO isn't the one causing the war because it exists to protect against aggression that someone else is exerting.

 

Have you noticed, your perceptions are often wrong?

 

I mostly agree with the points that you've been making, and Russia has been the provocateur in many ways recently, and it is obviously trying to destabilize democracies in addition to blowing up hospitals and schools in Syria, and it likes to invade its neighbors. So clearly they're up to a lot of no good presently.

At the same time, NATO's diplomatic measures in the past broke promises to Russia and they have weakened them and boxed them into a corner. The US promise to Russia was that they would help to integrate them into the West. Instead, they brought virtually every Warsaw Pact nation into NATO and under Western influence. Arguably Russia is now responding to NATO, the EU, the US turning its neighbors away from Russia and towards Europe. It wasn't as if these former Warsaw nations were left fully free to choose their paths either. The West used soft power and sometimes more to shape the domestic oolitics and agendas of these nations. Western influence replaced Russian influence, and Russia was left on the outside looking in. (That being said, I also understand where the West was coming from. Yeltsin was a drunk imbecile, and they had no idea whether Russia would collapse into a dictatorship once again, and they wanted to isolate Russia if that happened, and Putin has pretty much brought them there, though I'm sure he'd argue it was necessary to counter the rest of the world ganging up against him.)

Also Russia does have a fair complaint about the treatment of ethnic Russians in a number of bordering nations, not that I'm sure a psychopath like Putin really cares about moral issues in any way. In 2 out of the 3 Baltic nations where people of Russian ethnicity make up enough of the population to affect the outcome of elections, those ethnic Russians are denied the right to vote (even though their numbers aren't enough to turn the nations "Russia friendly," just strong enough to disrupt the status quo). In fact, ethnic Russians whose families have lived there for generations are denied the right to vote. The US and the EU have huge sway in the Baltics. They could prevent that if they cared to. In Ukraine, ethnic Russians were treated as second class citizens. IIRC, in areas where the vast majority of the people speak Russian, it was forbidden for business or governmental agencies or schools to use the Russian language. Plus, the Russians have long had a military base in Crimea. They would always have a presence there.

 

Well, keep in mind...

 

I know this makes the US position seem even more ridiculous, but I need my memory refreshed on this. Didn't the US actually only advice in this instance rather than interfere? And did the US have any notion that Yeltsin would end up being such a terrible mess of a leader initially?

 

Well, this is from the actual article:

Looking back...

...and...

 

WH press sec Sanders acknowledged that Putin talked to Trump about his interest in prosecuting financier Bill Browder and former US ambassador Michael McFaul. she declined to rule out US cooperation in that effort, saying Trump would consult his national security team