Working together

[Audie]

Not sure what you mean skip some things and change the story? what did I change?

Reread a bit. The Oz is only country stuff
for a start.

 

[Audie]

They said nothing about it for decades. They said nothing about Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia being actual NATO members. They said nothing about other former Soviet puppet states joining NATO.

So the facts are these. The US leaves Afghanistan. Suddenly China goes full war mongering about Taiwan and Russia amasses an invasion force next to the Ukraine. Both make bellicose moves and issue bellicose threats at exactly the same time.

The natural and to me true conclusion is it's not about NATO or Taiwan as much as it is China and Russia being allies and indirectly challenging the US and our allied partners assuming we'll back down. And of course full bore propaganda/gaslighting/lying is part of the picture.

Yes to free Taiwan.
Yes to free Ukraine.
Down with Russia.
Down with China.

" Nothing" 151. Russian Policy on NATO Expansion In The Baltics

As for down-with, same to you and yours

 

[Nimos]

Reread a bit. The Oz is only country stuff
for a start.

Sorry no clue what you are talking about, Im not good with just getting thrown pointers and trying to guess what people mean.

 

[Audie]

Sorry no clue what you are talking about, Im not good with just getting thrown pointers and trying to guess what people mean.

Its ok, not worth it.

Also i like you and quarreling is no fun.
Ive been awake 30 hours or so.

 

[Nimos]

Its ok, not worth it.

Also i like you and quarreling is no fun.
Ive been awake 30 hours or so.

Its fine, I didn't mean it in a rude way.

But a lot of posts are being made and often its not easy to remember exactly who wrote what and where, so having to go back and find all them and read them again, to then guess what point the other person is trying to make, which I might get wrong yet again. Then I have just derailed the chat and spend a lot of time for no reason.

 

[sun rise]

" Nothing" 151. Russian Policy on NATO Expansion In The Baltics

As for down-with, same to you and yours

Your reference is to an article from 1998. They all became NATO members in March, 2004! And that proves my point - Putin's words are lies.

 

[Audie]

Your reference is to an article from 1998. They all became NATO members in March, 2004! And that proves my point - Putin's words are lies.

You claimed the rooskies didnt never say nothing so i showed they did, proving that
Everything youve ever said, or will say,
is rong.

 

[Kooky]

You might wonder why countries like Latvia, Estonia, and such might be viewed as hostile, given that they were virtually taken over by the Soviet Union during and after WWII. No wonder many are keen to join NATO - to simply safeguard what they have now.

That's the ticket. I find that people unfamiliar with Eastern Europe frequently underestimate just how much animosity exists between the various nations there for historical reasons, animosity that still has a really strong influence on foreign policy and the way people look at it these days.

The cherry on top is that many of the former SSRs have a substantial Russian minority, whose existence could be easily construed as a nationalist-irredentist justification to invade and re-occupy these areas for a newly resurgent Russian regime, so there exist very real security concerns on top of the already existing historical resentment towards the Russian government.

 

[Kooky]

Your reference is to an article from 1998. They all became NATO members in March, 2004! And that proves my point - Putin's words are lies.

NATO and Russia already started butting heads during the Kosovo War, where Russia even deployed its own troops to delay a NATO occupation of Kosovo.

Incident at Pristina airport - Wikipedia


As to the Baltics, there were Russian objections from the get go.

In the summer of 1992, when the United States sent its first military advisory “contact team” to Latvia, an unconventional scene could be observed in the art nouveau streets of Riga: uniformed Americans and Russians passed each other daily. In the early 1990s, all three Baltic republics still hosted thousands of former Red Army troops, together with various Soviet-era military installations ranging from a nuclear submarine training facility in Estonia to a massive anti-ballistic missile radar in Latvia. This Soviet-era carcass was the key issue hanging over the newly-freed Baltics. Moscow wanted to hold on to its strategic bases until 2002. The Baltics vehemently objected.

On the other hand, Russia did not feel that this violated any particular "red line" at the time:

Today, Russia assertively claims that NATO’s second wave enlargement violated its red lines. It is important to recall, however, that at the time Moscow reacted in a measured way, tempering its criticism vis-à-vis NATO enlargement. In 2001, during a radio interview with National Public Radio, when asked if he opposed the admission of the three Baltic Republics into NATO Russian President Vladimir Putin responded that the issue could not be summed up in “a yes or a no.” He later added that “we cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way.” In another appearance, Putin declared that Baltic membership was “no tragedy” for Russia. These statements clearly were not a ringing endorsement. However, by historical standards, this was the least public resistance put up by the head of the Russian state.

Here is an excellent article sketching a timeline of the Baltic states' road towards NATO membership:
The Breakaways: A Retrospective on the Baltic Road to NATO - War on the Rocks

It seems to me that Russia's (and here, specifically, Putin's) perception of NATO as a threat has been growing steadily in the past two decades, but to argue that Russian concerns are, therefore, illegitimate sounds like a rather silly argument to make.


EDIT: I just came across this article on the relationship between Clinton and Yeltsin, and it mentions that the 1990s plans to expand NATO eastwards were a major point of contention between the two, citing major opposition within Russia towards the idea:

In a three-hour meeting at the Kremlin on May 10, 1995, Yeltsin asked for a better understanding of what Clinton was doing on NATO enlargement “because now I see nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed. How do you think it looks to us if one bloc continues to exist while the Warsaw Pact has been abolished?” He called it a “new form of encirclement” and repeated his plea to develop a new pan-European security architecture.

“You and I are heading for elections,” Yeltsin said. “The extremists and hardliners are exploiting this issue for their own purposes — on both sides. I am being attacked from both the right and the left on this. We need a common European space that provides for overall security. So let’s postpone any change in NATO until 1999 or 2000. … But for me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding toward those of Russia — that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.” Instead, Yeltsin said in desperation, “Let’s say that Russia will give every state that wants to join NATO a guarantee that we won’t infringe on its security.”

Bill and Boris: A Window Into a Most Important Post-Cold War Relationship - Texas National Security Review

So it seems to me that Russia's objections to NATO expansion existed from an early point on, and that it was the Russian leaders' relations with the West that determined whether they would openly resist that policy or not. It looks to me like Putin is pandering to the same anti-NATO sentiment in Russia that seems to have already existed during Yeltsin's tenure.

 

[sun rise]

Everything youve ever said, or will say,
is rong.

I'm honored that a resident of China, spouting the party line, attacks me so totally. It's upside down but still sincere praise about my ideas.

And I will continue to comment on such events as the Chinese pulling a reporter away while he was on the air because the location he was broadcasting from was not according to the whims of the dictatorship there. They proved once again that they are the enemy of my ideals. So please believe it never happened because that's the party line.

 

[Audie]

I'm honored that a resident of China, spouting the party line, attacks me so totally. It's upside down but still sincere praise about my ideas.

And I will continue to comment on such events as the Chinese pulling a reporter away while he was on the air because the location he was broadcasting from was not according to the whims of the dictatorship there. They proved once again that they are the enemy of my ideals. So please believe it never happened because that's the party line.

Quite the response, editing out the rest of my post and spouting
utter irrelevancies like you was a WW2destroyrr layin' down a
smokescreen.

YOU falsely stated that Russia made no comment on
NATO expansion " for decades".

I showed you are wrong.

You ( falsely) claimed that ( imaginary)
inaction before Putin was in power "PROVES"
PUTIN is a liar.

I fed back some of your type of " proof" to
you in a hyperbolic way, tho evidently such
subtlety went over your head and converted me, en passant, to an agent for dark forces opposing all you stand for.

Droll.