If Ukraine manages to beat back Russia, the main threat NATO is designed to guard against, I think we can call them ready.
Makes sense and hopefully the war causes this as well, but they are going to need to cut the corruption to be seriously considered for membership. For all of the positives that we have seen about Ukraine, they still have to deal with their Soviet past having normalized certain elements of corruption in the country.
Russia's ruble crashes, stock market closed as sanctions slam economy - CNN Found it interesting that the newest freezes will now make about 40% of Putin's/Russia's "rainy day fund" inaccessible. You hate to see it
There’s also the whole thing that they might get destroyed, if Putin is truly a madman. I get that it’s posturing, but seems like it’s a bit silly because it couldn’t seriously be considered.
With as big as NATO is I'm sure there isn't a perfect record on that end. As long as there's progress being made I think they've more than earned it.
I said China might hit their limit with the nuke declaration, and there it is. Assuming this isn’t just for public consumption and they are still privately helping him, his last lifeline is gone. So we are at the point whether either he will see reality or go all in. I would honestly bet in the latter. Then it becomes a question of who in Russia’s power structure values their country over Putin. Gonna be an interesting 48 hours or so.
Devil's advocate. Nukes being the breaking point for China, in the event of an attack by the Russians involving nukes, does China step in, set aside differences, and take on Russia with the rest of the world? Holy smokes...talk about bizzaro world. 2 things that dies. 1 China gets to play a quasi good guy to get some leeway when it comes to Taiwan. 2, it keeps China from facing the same sanctions as Russia. 3 (more nefarious), they get to see from the "friend" side NATO/US assets, spend the next decade massively building up, and then look to depose the last remaining super power.
Agree, but I think it is more about having all member nation tech inter work with one another, so they are basically plug and play as needed. That’s the kind of readiness I was referring to.
Not in NATO, but the EU has to consider it more closely because of the economic integration. We definitely have had some very sketchy regimes in NATO throughout history from a corruption standpoint, but the EU needs a pretty high threshold of small-l liberalism.
Ukranian farmers need their own military division. Someone posted a video of that guy stealing a Russian tank or whatever from the side of the road...now apparently another farmer just stole a Russian SAM launcher
Right I was referring to the NATO membership. Honestly thought it'd be easier to join NATO versus the EU, but the EU extended the invitation.
Let's hope those around Putin do the right thing and arrange for his "retirement". Followed by a cease fire, a withdrawal of their forces from Ukraine, and a long, long process of rehabilitating Russia so it can rejoin the community of nations.
Your logic eviscerates the purpose of NATO. A better argument could be made that Russia threatening to attack countries trying to join NATO is an act of war. Russia knows that strengthening ties makes military action more difficult and wants to be able to retake former USSR territory. Look no further than the effect globalization is having on Russia in the last week. Another toothless move by the IOC. And corrupt FIFA followed in their footsteps. At least teams like Poland are refusing to play Russia regardless of the name on the jersey.
Good bit of noise that Russia is going to send The Wagner Group (a paramilitary mercenary group that Russia has used in Syria and Africa, and that intelligence thinks is essentially part of GRU that Russia uses for plausible deniability) to Ukraine. This is the commando mercenary group that managed to get in a firefight and then got bombed by the US in Syria.
They aren't giving up without a fight goes to show you the mighty Russian military might not be that mighty those conscript troops don't have a lot of experience or training
Certainly have no solid information on this but a few salient questions / points: 1) Is Ukrainian resolve "blowing up" Putins timetable and expectations? 2) Are Russian protests more than Putin was anticipating? 3) Is world opinion coalescing faster, better and stronger than Putin believed possibe? 4) The last time I checked Putin had a 93% approval rate as Czar, is this approval rate declining? 5) Will Oligarchs back away from support? But my personal concern is if the ship starts to sink for him to the point of disaster (personal safety) will he go ultimate narcissist ala Hitler and LAUNCH?
Going to repost this again. The case laid out in the first 45 minutes is superb. John Mearsheimer, PhD in political science, nails it. It is almost as if he could have been talking a month ago. That is how spot on his talk from 7 years ago is. One of the big takeaways I got is if we had been willing to sign a joint trade agreement between Russia, Ukraine, and NATO back in 2013 then the table would have been set to have Russia on our side against Iran and China in the current geopolitical landscape. We just elected one of the greatest failures in the history of American geopolitics to be our President, so of course he would screw this up just like most other things he touches.
