Exactly. Ukraine is basically begging to be let into NATO, Georgia tried to join NATO and got invaded by Russia in 2008 because of it, and Finland and Sweden – historically proudly neutral countries – swayed in favor of joining NATO.
My best friend in Finland had the same change of opinion. Before the invasion, he was against joining NATO because it seemed unnecessary, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his attitude is “Fuck Putin, we need to join NATO”. Popular polling within Finland and Sweden back this up. The majority of Finns and Swedes want to be in NATO.
And I’m pretty sure polling would also show that Poland and the Baltics are very happy to be in NATO right now. Like consider Estonia. Barely more than a million people. Without NATO, Russia could absolutely steamroll them if they wanted to. But NATO is the single biggest protection they have against invasion, and of course that is ludicrously desirable for any small country bordering Russia that wishes to not be a puppet for Putin!
When the carrot is so big, you don’t even need a stick to entice new NATO members. So it’s kind of weird to act like NATO is somehow bullying new countries into joining. If anything, new countries joining creates massive new geopolitical liabilies, which is why it’s so hard to join NATO. Joining NATO requires every single member to affirmatively agree to defend that new member’s land and citizens as if they were their own land and citizens. Pretty big frickin liability if you ask me.
Senate votes to expand NATO. NATO expands further towards Russia. Joe Biden has been instrumental and a champion of this since before he was even vice president with Hungary and Czechoslovak. This comes after a promise by the US to not expand NATO closer to Russia. These things increase tensions. Then after a long time of not pressuring or allowing Ukraine in, Biden changes his mind while president. This causes Russia to invade (not that they didn’t want to anyway, but if they didn’t want Russia to invade before NATO was in place they wouldn’t have been looking at it this seriously.) now Ukraine cannot join NATO until after the war unless the US wants to start a war with Russia. This is how the US is implicit.
The process of a country joining NATO goes like this:
County requests membership
NATO decides to process application
Every member state must ratify the decision
That means that every single individual government of NATO members must separately vote on taking in a new member, not just the US Senate. And again this can only occur after the new member voluntarily requests membership.
Joe Biden has been a vocal supporter of NATO, yes. That is largely a question of domestic policy. How do you assert this to be exerting undue influence? For all his talk, if a country does not want to join, they get to decide what is in their best interest, and not join. That is why Finland has not been a member until now.
There was never a formal agreement to halt NATO expansion. As far as I am aware, these claims stem from a verbal agreement with Baker and Gorbachev. If I am mistaken, please direct me to the formal agreement that was made.
Regarding formal agreements, I believe that the Budapest memorandum gave Ukraine assurances against acts of aggression by Russia, the UK, and the US.
Re the invasion coming after Biden changing his mind: Ukraine has had a relationship with NATO since the 90s, and applied for membership in 2008. Russia first instigated this war in 2014 after ukranian protests of their then-pro-russia government. Since then, Ukraine has been more interested in making membership a priority. In 2019 their parliament amended their constitution to prioritize working towards membership. This was all well before bidens presidency, and makes the notion that Biden changing his mind makes Ukraine suddenly seem interested after a long time of being disinterested resulting in the war seem not only incorrect, but nonsensical.
Even ignoring the above deficiencies, the best case argument I see you putting forth is that the US is indeed implicitly responsible, whereas Russia is explicitly responsible.
Countries can be influenced to join NATO. Asked was the wrong word.
Yes of course, that’s how foreign policy works - you exert influence to achieve goals. So in what ways have NATO countries exerted undo influence?
I will assert that by being untrustworthy and aggressive, Russia gave its neighbors a pretty good reason to desire NATO membership.
Exactly. Ukraine is basically begging to be let into NATO, Georgia tried to join NATO and got invaded by Russia in 2008 because of it, and Finland and Sweden – historically proudly neutral countries – swayed in favor of joining NATO.
My best friend in Finland had the same change of opinion. Before the invasion, he was against joining NATO because it seemed unnecessary, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his attitude is “Fuck Putin, we need to join NATO”. Popular polling within Finland and Sweden back this up. The majority of Finns and Swedes want to be in NATO.
And I’m pretty sure polling would also show that Poland and the Baltics are very happy to be in NATO right now. Like consider Estonia. Barely more than a million people. Without NATO, Russia could absolutely steamroll them if they wanted to. But NATO is the single biggest protection they have against invasion, and of course that is ludicrously desirable for any small country bordering Russia that wishes to not be a puppet for Putin!
When the carrot is so big, you don’t even need a stick to entice new NATO members. So it’s kind of weird to act like NATO is somehow bullying new countries into joining. If anything, new countries joining creates massive new geopolitical liabilies, which is why it’s so hard to join NATO. Joining NATO requires every single member to affirmatively agree to defend that new member’s land and citizens as if they were their own land and citizens. Pretty big frickin liability if you ask me.
Senate votes to expand NATO. NATO expands further towards Russia. Joe Biden has been instrumental and a champion of this since before he was even vice president with Hungary and Czechoslovak. This comes after a promise by the US to not expand NATO closer to Russia. These things increase tensions. Then after a long time of not pressuring or allowing Ukraine in, Biden changes his mind while president. This causes Russia to invade (not that they didn’t want to anyway, but if they didn’t want Russia to invade before NATO was in place they wouldn’t have been looking at it this seriously.) now Ukraine cannot join NATO until after the war unless the US wants to start a war with Russia. This is how the US is implicit.
A couple of comments:
The process of a country joining NATO goes like this:
Joe Biden has been a vocal supporter of NATO, yes. That is largely a question of domestic policy. How do you assert this to be exerting undue influence? For all his talk, if a country does not want to join, they get to decide what is in their best interest, and not join. That is why Finland has not been a member until now.
There was never a formal agreement to halt NATO expansion. As far as I am aware, these claims stem from a verbal agreement with Baker and Gorbachev. If I am mistaken, please direct me to the formal agreement that was made.
Regarding formal agreements, I believe that the Budapest memorandum gave Ukraine assurances against acts of aggression by Russia, the UK, and the US.
Re the invasion coming after Biden changing his mind: Ukraine has had a relationship with NATO since the 90s, and applied for membership in 2008. Russia first instigated this war in 2014 after ukranian protests of their then-pro-russia government. Since then, Ukraine has been more interested in making membership a priority. In 2019 their parliament amended their constitution to prioritize working towards membership. This was all well before bidens presidency, and makes the notion that Biden changing his mind makes Ukraine suddenly seem interested after a long time of being disinterested resulting in the war seem not only incorrect, but nonsensical.
Even ignoring the above deficiencies, the best case argument I see you putting forth is that the US is indeed implicitly responsible, whereas Russia is explicitly responsible.
What even is this lunacy?