" It's not about protecting every centimeter of every NATO member nation's soil"
I'm 100km from border. it matters to me.
found it!
http://rt.com/news/191328-nato-gernmany-obligations-unable/
" It's not about protecting every centimeter of every NATO member nation's soil"
I'm 100km from border. it matters to me.
found it!
http://rt.com/news/191328-nato-gernmany-obligations-unable/
Originally posted by Clovie
" It's not about protecting every centimeter of every NATO member nation's soil"I'm 100km from border. it matters to me.
found it!
http://rt.com/news/191328-nato-gernmany-obligations-unable/
I understand your concern as I myself live about 30km from the border, but protecting every centimeter is simply not realistic and nobody can really do that, including Russia.
Thanks for the link. That article is really only about Germany not being fully prepared to respond to an emergency. It's not exactly good news, but as long as the USA and the UK are capable of a full response, there's not much to worry about.
Originally posted by Clovie
Yep, same as ours.. plus there went offical gov delegation, with foreign affairs minsiter 😖Again can't find anything in english. Our TV said that Spiegel (German journal) said that NATA don't have enough army to keep all it's participants safe. TA DA! told ya that they won't help us if something happens!!
NATO would be compelled to rise to Poland's--or Estonia's for that matter--defense simply because if it didn't, the alliance would cease to exist as anything but words on paper. The way an alliance works is that you can't pick and choose who you do and don't defend. Hence why NATO is so cautious in incorporating countries like Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance--those countries have a damn good chance of getting attacked by Russia, in which case NATO would be compelled to go to war with Russia, something nobody wants.
If the last thirty years have said anything, it's that major nation states no longer have the stomach to go to war with each other. The last example of two major modern nations actually going to war with one another (so, not counting border skirmishes or undeclared conflicts) was the Falklands Conflict, and that was in 1982. That's not to say it can't--or won't--happen again in the future or in our lifetimes, but the inertia against it is incredible.
Originally posted by Clovie
USA is far far way and they are busy fighting islamic terrorists.. and UK almost just got divided on its own..I just don't wanna war. and I don't trust in those sweet words, they say it now, and if something happens that will say they don't have army, time etc.
so we always loose.
The USA is far away, yes, but it has military bases all over the world(many of them close to Poland) and its Air Force and Navy can reach any place in the world in a matter of days. And only a small fraction of the USA's forces are fighting the Islamists.
As for the UK: the division didn't happen and it was democratic and peaceful. I think it has very little bearing on the UK's obligations to NATO.
No sane person wants war. Omega Vision explained this already, but NATO means much more than sweet words.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
While it's true that NATO as it is wouldn't be able to outright stop a full-on Russian invasion of Eastern Europe (it would be a long fight, even assuming it stays conventional, but at the end of the day Russia isn't the Soviet Union and it couldn't hope to build up and maintain the kind of force that it would take to keep Europe under thumb--they'd get halted somewhere in Germany and then ground to dust by superior NATO airpower), the idea that it wouldn't rise to the defense of Poland is ludicrous.NATO would be compelled to rise to Poland's--or Estonia's for that matter--defense simply because if it didn't, the alliance would cease to exist as anything but words on paper. The way an alliance works is that you can't pick and choose who you do and don't defend. Hence why NATO is so cautious in incorporating countries like Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance--those countries have a damn good chance of getting attacked by Russia, in which case NATO would be compelled to go to war with Russia, something nobody wants.
If the last thirty years have said anything, it's that major nation states no longer have the stomach to go to war with each other. The last example of two major modern nations actually going to war with one another (so, not counting border skirmishes or undeclared conflicts) was the Falklands Conflict, and that was in 1982. That's not to say it can't--or won't--happen again in the future or in our lifetimes, but the inertia against it is incredible.
The EU comission tasked with the investigation concluded that Georgia attacked Russia.
Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
The USA is far away, yes, but it has military bases all over the world(many of them close to Poland) and its Air Force and Navy can reach any place in the world in a matter of days. And only a small fraction of the USA's forces are fighting the Islamists.As for the UK: the division didn't happen and it was democratic and peaceful. I think it has very little bearing on the UK's obligations to NATO.
No sane person wants war. Omega Vision explained this already, but NATO means much more than sweet words.
Originally posted by Shey Tapani
The EU comission tasked with the investigation concluded that Georgia attacked Russia.
The same report also assigned blame (albeit secondary) to Russia for its posture and actions in the prelude to the conflict.
It would be as if Turkey had gone to war with Syria in 2012 after those stray shells landed in Turkish territory. Syria would have been responsible for the war, but you could hardly say that Syria "attacked" Turkey.
The direct threat to Russian security was even less than that in the case of South Ossetia. Russia simply refused to allow its pet breakaway region to be conquered by Georgian forces. Attempting to present it as Russia acting in self-defense is as ludicrous as saying that the Iraq War was about America protecting itself from terrorism.
If you read Nikolai Gogol, you'll see that going back as far as the 1830s Russia was already a nation and culture founded on paranoia and a bizarre combination inferiority-superiority complex. The leaders of the Russian Empire were convinced that other nations were jealous of them and scheming to undermine and conquer them. This probably goes back to cultural memory of the Tatar yoke. Russians seem to pride themselves first and foremost on what invasions they've repulsed.
More and more young Russians lionize Stalin because he defeated Hitler and saved the Motherland, ignoring the fact that he was completely unprepared for Barbarossa and was more or less hiding under his bed when German forces approached Moscow, to say nothing of his many other "virtues."
The Russian Army was so ill-prepared that those who did have weapons often abandoned them or surrendered without much of a fight. When the T-34 was first encountered, it was a shock to the Germans, but it didn't become a pressing issue because many of the first T-34s the Wehrmacht encountered had been abandoned by their crews wholly intact.
I recall reading that in the opening hours of Barbarossa, Stalin was so confused at what was going on that he issued orders to his generals to tell their soldiers not to shoot at the Germans because they had a non-aggression pact.
Very recently I read something (might have even been on this forum) that suggested that Stalin didn't see it coming because he'd had his intelligence service monitor the Germans for preparations for winter conditions, and since the Germans invaded without having prepared for the winter none of the Russians saw it coming.