It's ironic that USA lost 60-some thousand troops in Vietnam trying to prevent a communist takeover, only for American companies just to enslave them all anyway. I wonder how different the dynamic with Vietnam would have turned out if it had been more of a Korea situation. USA certainly never enslaved South Korea.
Huh? What do you mean by 'enslave'? If you mean that people work for low wages in the export sector, well then I have news for you on South Korea.
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
I feel like those laws are different because they specifically target pornography, which is seen as an evangelical moral sin. They would prefer to ban it completely, but that most likely runs afoul of the Constitution. So their next best bet is just to try to limit it to over-18s.
Obviously the end result is the same, but I think the motivation is different.
> They would prefer to ban it completely, but that most likely runs afoul of the Constitution. So their next best bet is just to try to limit it to over-18s.
They dont care about constitution. And they are in position to reinterpret it however they want to, regardless of its text and meaning.
If that was actually true then states would have banned or blocked already. This is not a new issue and it has been challenged unsuccessfully many times.
Maybe. Most of the debate that I hear feels similar to social media commentary -- teen boys getting their brains fried by constant access to stimulus. I don't hear anything about onanism or sinning.
Mind you, I'm not saying they're right or wrong, but just that most of the arguments I hear are saying "we think this is an identifiable and secular harm."
It will definitely go down as one of the biggest failures of mankind. Especially since it was so easily preventable if MacArthur was permitted to just take the whole peninsula.
China was already sending troops and material to the front lines when MacArthur was ordered to stand down. Pushing further would have meant a hot war with China.
There is no way we could match them in numbers on the ground. Such a conflict would have inevitably led to us nuking them as a result. Which is probably the reason decision makers chose not to.
And maybe that's really the humanitarian failure. That USA didn't nuke China in 1950 or 1951. Would have solved a lot of problems for generations of people.
Nukes usually don't wipe out entire countries, especially tactical nukes.
I'm far from convinced that using nukes in the Korean War would've been a good move, but equating it with "kill[ing] them all" is completely dishonest. What's your goal in this debate, and is it served by dishonest rhetoric?
USA dropping nukes would have prevented the convention against using nukes in wars from being started. I think there's a pretty good chance we wouldn't have any civilization left by now if we went down that fork in history.
How is nuking Japan different from nuking Korea? Everybody agrees that forcing Japan to surrender with nukes was much better for everyone involved than a ground invasion.
When Japan was bombed, nobody else in the world had nuclear weapons, the US only had 2, and there were only a handful of people outside of the US seriously researching nuclear weapons and were still years away from a test. By 1950 the USSR had working nuclear bombs, had proven so with a nuclear test, and a dozen other countries had started their own nuclear weapons programs.
Maybe the real humanitarian failure is that the US didn't nuke everybody and start over from the stone age. Can't any societal problems if no societies exist, right?
Does any serious historian believe that fully defeating the Soviet Union after WWII would have been possible? Even with the advantage of nuclear weapons, I doubt the US would have made it very far.
Grow an "ender" first. And when you do try - keep in mind that many tried before you. The Swedes. The French. The Germans. They all got their comeuppance, and so will you.
Or how about us not blowing them to bits in the first place? South Korea was on the very edge of capitulation before the US came in full force and even most South Korean citizens were in support of Korean unification at that time. The current state of North Korea would have never come to reality if they hadn't been blown to bits by the US because of big ol' scary "communism".
What makes 1950s Korea evil? You are equating North Korea today with Korea of 75 years ago, they aren't even remotely similar. You don't think your nation getting bombed to literal fields of rubble wouldn't change views and political stances afterwards?
Unification was supported by both sides among the people, most South Koreans supported communism and 70% of them supported unification with the North. South Koreans didn't even support their own government, they were dealing with internal insurrection from their own people. The North was an industrialized nation and the South was a poor farming country and their unification would of been hugely beneficial to both. The war would have been over in another 2 weeks without intervention and a minimal amount of casualties, and it had only been 3 months from the start of the invasion. The only people not in support of it at the time was the political leaders of SK at the time because it meant they personally as individuals would lose power and wealth, and the US who was on a crusade to crush and kill anybody who dared support communism. Korea never should have been split in the first place, but the US and USSR had to be little bitches and force their will upon these people.
Killing 5 million people, most of which were innocent civilians, in the name of "fighting communism" is evil, not the idea of a unified nation of people supported by those same people.
Soviet occupation. Korea was supposed to be unified and elect a government back in 1950, Soviets made sure it didn't happen because they had no chance of winning.
So it was evil because the soviets supported the North? Because communism?
Pretty sure the soviets were perfectly fine with the North taking the South considering the South was US aligned which gave the US a foothold right on their doorstep. And again, the vast majority of Korean people on both sides supported Korean unification. The South Korean leadership, which was basically appointed by the US for their pro-US and anti-communism stance, was so unpopular among South Koreans that there was civilian insurrectionists trying to topple it. The South Korean military upon invasion couldn't even keep its own troops from deserting in significant numbers, and they even blew up a bridge full of refuges to try and stop the advance which it failed to do.
Yes the North invaded which is generally bad, but they did do it with popular sentiment among the people, and they weren't attacking and killing civilians along the way.
And regardless of all that, none of that justifies the US response of bombing and killing millions of civilians and leveling entire cities. The Korean War is considered the most deadly war in Asia ever, and had far higher percentage of civilian casualties than WWII and Vietnam.
Funny you should ask, but yes, communism is evil. Whenever somebody promises a classless society you can be sure they're about to enslave, kill and torture people in great numbers.
I guess if I have to explain it I might as well not bother.
A key feature of liberal democracy over the pre-existing aristocratic oligarchies was providing a classless society (which, superficially, as classes were defined under aristocratic systems, it does.)
The entire analysis of capitalism which articulated the class system with which it replaced that of the pre-existing aristocracy and revealed the elimination of class to actually just be a switch in its structure and elevation of a new ruling class was by Communists.
Liberalism means no state-enforced classes but doesn't promise forcing everyone into the same class. Commies promise the latter, but in fact enforce a class structure of their own.
This is such a weird sentiment and I see it often when talking about EU politics. Is this just how the European constituency feels? Just like beatdown citizens in a government they have no passion about and no control over?
But going off what I said, I acknowledged this sort of legislation is bad and that a right to privacy is needed. How do you arrive at "beatdown citizens in a government they have no passion about"?
All I did was point out the reality right now, even without this legislation.
4chan is an American company with no presence whatsoever in the UK. 4chan doesn't even use normal payment processors, relying on crypto instead, so the UK can't even block payments made by UK subjects to 4chan.
In light of this, why would 4chan comply? Contrary to the claim above, 4chan has not actually blocked UK users, and has no reason to do so. They did however get a lawyer to write up a letter telling the redcoats to go fuck themselves.
because 4chan's services are available to people residing in the UK
the OSA is ridiculous and I hope it goes the same way as the last time they tried it, but this idea that US companies should be immune to domestic regulation in countries their services are available to is silly. even if that domestic regulation is silly. because otherwise the utterly encaptured regulatory environment of the US (plus Visa and MC) solely dictates the internet
> because 4chan's services are available to people residing in the UK
I don't understand why 4chan is obligated to be the one to ensure that UK citizens don't access the site when this should be entirely within the UK government's power, no? At the very least, the infrastructure which allows their citizens to access 4chan is on UK soil so it stands to reason that they actually have authority over that.
I feel like making the case that any site which serves an international audience on the Internet has to observe the laws of every single country represented in that audience is bad precedent and has the potential to be incredibly stifling to anyone but the type of multinational corporation which has the sort of legal apparatus that's required to operate in that sort of environment.
Before you answer, substitute the UK with Iran and whatever distasteful content 4chan is hosting this week with "the dictatorship of Iran is harmful to its people, and they should rise up to remove it from power".
The term "slave" encompasses a lot of wildly different kinds of unfree labor. The racialized system most people think of from transatlantic slavery is a very recent thing.
Nothing resembling that was widespread in precolumbian North America. The earliest similar systems I'm aware of took root in the 17th and 18th centuries, well into the early colonial period.
What I said was a much more precise statement than "there was no violence". Nothing you've mentioned is a counterexample.
The slaves of early 17th century Iroquois were not dehumanized property like colonial era natives and Africans. This is what I meant by pointing out that the term "slavery" encompasses a vast number of radically different types of unfree servitude.
The Apache example is both not similar to Atlantic slavery, and mainly from the 18th century period where I specifically said such systems existed among North American natives.
If you're trying to make a point about the racial hierarchy within the Aztecs, the term Mexica is much more precise. If you're just referring to the slave social class within the empire itself, I can't imagine why you think it's remotely similar to colonial slavery. Aztec slaves weren't property in the sense of colonial era slavery. They had to consent to sale, only their labor was actually sellable, and it wasn't hereditary, among other differences.
While it was (mostly?) unintentional, the biological warfare committed by Europeans makes for a different story than anything that happened before they arrived. The Americas weren't a paradise, but neither were they a slaughterhouse.
The author of the rust software did not solve the platform problem, as a result it is not a solution. Since it is not a solution, it should be reverted. It's really that simple.
I seem to remember the FBI attempting to compel Apple to decrypt a criminal's iPhone, only for Apple to refuse and claim that it wasn't possible. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. I think it was suspected that the NSA was able to do it by exploiting an unpatched zero-day. So they didn't need Apple's help anymore and the issue was dropped from the public's eye.
1. Apple can and does comply with subpoenas for user information that it has access to. This includes tons of data from your phone unless you're enrolled in Advanced Data Protection, because Apple stores your data encrypted at rest but retains the ability to decrypt it so that users who lose their device/credentials can still restore their data.
2. Apple has refused on multiple occasions, publicly, to take advantage of their position in the supply chain to insert malicious code that expands the data they have access to. This would be things like shipping an updated iOS that lets them fetch end-to-end encrypted data off of a suspect's device.
Not to mention, while apple will publically deny it, there are government agents working undercover at every major tech firm. They may or may not know. They certainly exist.
And of course Apple is quite right not to miss the marketing opportunity, on behalf of the shareholders. While acquiescing to lawful demands of course.
I don't remember Apple ever saying that it was impossible for them to do it, just that they didn't want to.
It was always kind of assumed that they could, by eg signing a malicious OS update without PIN code retry limits, so the FBI could brute force it at their leisure, or something similar.
They said it was impossible for them to build a backdoor into iOS that would only be accessible to legal requests from law enforcement, which is true in the strict sense. So law enforcement bought a vulnerability exploit from a third party.
They successfully argued in court that being forced to insert code the government wanted would be equivalent to compelled speech, in violation of the first amendment.
As the Feds often do, they dropped the case instead of allowing it to set a precedent they didn't want.
> They successfully argued in court that being forced to insert code the government wanted would be equivalent to compelled speech
This isn't true, they never "successfully argued in court". There was never any judgement, and no precedent. They resisted a court order briefly before the FBI withdrew the request after finding another way into the device.
There wasn't judgement because the Feds dropped a case that would set a precedent they wanted to avoid.
Since there is longstanding legal precedent that corporations are people and code is speech, forcing a corporation to insert code that the US government demands is a violation of the first amendment.
That being JTAG debugging. Now there are greyhat groups discovering what they can do with it beyond bypassing the PIN at power-up. Honestly surprised phones are not being sold/marketed as having that disabled on both bluetooth and USB.
If you follow the things that have been disclosed / leaked/ confirmed when they’re 20+ years out of date, then yes the probability this is true is significant.
I recall there being a little more substance to it at the time. But looking back from where we are now, that is a succinct way of describing its results.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like this is using the mlua Rust bindings (which are excellent). It's not a Lua runtime from-scratch in Rust. It's the regular C Lua/LuaJIT with a Rust interface.
You're thinking of the interpreter, not the runtime. The runtime is libraries, not the interpreter. The async-io frameworks and stuff like that. Just like how node.js is a javascript runtime, it uses the V8 engine, and bun is also a javascript runtime that uses javascriptcore instead. Neither one of them wrote their own javascript interpreter.
I think of the runtime as the whole execution stack. The interpreter, engine, JIT etc. is the back end. The interface to the world is a wrapper around that.
I would describe this as a Lua wrapper written in Rust. That carries the clear indication that you should not expect the interpreter to be written in Rust.
I would be (and indeed was) disappointed to see that this 'Lua runtime' did not have a Rust implementation of Lua. I would be much more interested in seeing that than a wrapper.
You are correct on this, I should have been more clear about the description. When I wrote the description I was in the headspace of BunJS and Deno. I will make note of this and write a better README description.
> We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty. Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war that could have been much worse involving nuclear weapons.
20 years, not 30, and not even that. There were other clashes plus massive Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs just a few years after Budapest.
For something as serious as giving up a nuclear arsenal it’s reasonable to expect to get more than 20 years of peace and for the co-signers to actual fulfil their parts of the agreement, whether legally binding or not.
The end result is that no country will soon trust a Russian non-aggression promise and none will trust an American promise of support.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. That’s 20 years later.
It is also widely believed to have had a hand in the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, in order to give an edge to his pro-Russian opponent, Viktor Yanukovych.
But even if that’s not true there’s ample evidence of overt Russian influence campaigns to support Yanukovych in that election, which was just 10 years after the Budapest Memorandum.
There was no such promise. Everyone who was actually in the room during those talks, including Premier Gorbachev, has denied it.
Nor was Ukraine anywhere close to joining NATO. It’s application had effectively been frozen in 2008, and it was not even being offered a MAP which is about step 1 on a 20 step ladder of actions to take before joining.
It’s a red herring being used to justify Russia’s territorial and imperial ambitions.
What would happen if Canada joined a mutual defense pact with Russia? Or Mexico? Think about this scenario, would the US invade immediately?. Something similar actually happened with Cuba in the 60s, and the US invaded them, doing a total naval siege [1]
The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact with the USSR.
The US didn’t invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do so in the embarrassing Bay of Pigs disaster which took place before the naval blockade as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Naturally, Bay of Pigs should never have happened, and it’s one of the things that led to the CIA’s powers and freedom from oversight being drastically curtailed the following decade.
Furthermore, the world and international law has moved on since the 1960s. That sort of brinkmanship has been much reduced.
"nothing should" is correct; "nothing would" is fantasy
> The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact with the USSR.
Yes, putting nukes there brought things to a serious crisis, but the issue with Cuba
> The US didn’t invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do so
Come on, let's be real here. Sure, _technically_ the US didn't invade Cuba. But it funded and assisted a mercenary force in a (very poor) attempt to do so. And that wasn't the only time the US tried to force regime change in Cuba, just like it did in Chile.
If we’re talking about funding and supporting local groups, activists, and insurgents, then we’re going to have to cast the net far wider and include many similar actions by the USSR and then Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Israel, and many others.
That might be a worthwhile discussion to have, but it’s categorically not the same thing as invasion, occupation, and annexation.
And just like it tries to still do in Venezuela. They also did something similar in Nicaragua. Latin America has suffered tremendously from the US's Monroe Doctrine. [1]
You are conveniently omitting the reason why all those Eastern European states wanted to join NATO, which is that they were previously invaded and occupied by USSR and/or Imperial Russia, in some cases more than once (e.g. Poland).
The US was invited into South Vietnam to help defend them against an invasion from North Vietnam. We can debate the morality of the resulting war, which was questionable, but it was not a US invasion.
The US invasion of Nicaragua was in 1912, long before the modern post-WWII era of stronger international law.
Chile was not invaded by the US.
If these are the examples you have, you don’t have a strong argument.
Pardon me, you have gotten yourself dragged into a tu quoque defense of Russia.
It is best not to engage in these arguments, because they are almost never conducted in good faith.
The goal is partially to make the claim that "the US is just as bad/worse, therefore, Russia is acting morally/logically/blamelessly", but primarily to simply turn the conversation into one where you are defending everything the US has ever done wrong, instead of discussing whatever Russia is currently doing, which is where the bad faith comes in.
If you do feel compelled to engage, I recommend at most acknowledging whatever the US did previously, before pivoting back to discussing the actual current situation. Otherwise, you're playing into the strategy.
My argument is that Russia was compelled to attack both Georgia and Ukraine because of NATO expansion, or rather preventing NATO expansion, not because of "Putin is crazy, wants to be a Tsar".
Your argument is that Russia wants to occupy territory just for the sake of expanding Russia, which is really not logical or reasonable.
My argument is that if Mexico or Canada joined a military pact with Russia, the US would invade those countries immediately.
Your argument is that any country can join a mutually defence pact without any consequences, as should be the case for Ukraine.
Buddy, pal, even if it wasn't absolutely craven to attack a country for fear they'd join a defensive pact because they were afraid you'd attack them, you're already begging the question that Ukraine was about to join NATO, which has been shelved for two decades, and even more off the table for the last decade since joining NATO would have required relinquishing its claim on Crimea.
There was a 0% chance of Ukraine joining NATO in the next N years prior to Russia's invasion of them in 2021.
Even if by some twisted logic that were pretext for a quote-unquote "just war", it cannot be a justification for the land grab Russia is making in Ukraine today, killing civilians and committing various war crimes on the daily to do it.
The land grab is Russia's assurance that the crimean pipelines and access to the black sea and the sea of azov remain unchallenged. The pipelines are extremely important to Russia's economy, and they will of course make sure to secure them. Fortunately for Russia, the eastern part of Ukraine also leans pro-Russia, has the most ethnically russian population, votes for pro-russian politicians, and also speaks the most russian, unlike the western part.[1] Russia's strategy is to secure those areas only, since those areas would be the easiest to operate. Russia would never able to rule over the current western ukrainian territories, because of the ethnical and demographical divide.
Russia wouldnt attack both Georgia and Ukraine, and spend billions of resources just for the 0% chance of Ukrainian and Georgian NATO admission. Both Montenegro and Macedonia joined NATO in a matter of months, in the latter case when the regime was toppled. Enabling any talks between NATO and Ukraine/Georgia would be considered extremely terrifying for the national security of Russia.
> joining NATO would have required relinquishing its claim on Crimea.
That’s...not at all clear (there is no such legal requirement, though there were some NATO members who publicly suggested that resolving the territorial disputes with Russia first was their then-current diplomatic position at various times in the discussion of the possibility. But diplomatic positions are sometimes prone to change in response to inducements from parties with different preferences.)
> My argument is that Russia was compelled to attack both Georgia and Ukraine because of NATO expansion, or rather preventing NATO expansion, not because of "Putin is crazy, wants to be a Tsar".
This fails to explain why Russia attacked both countries after NATO had decided not to offer them a path to membership.
Putin's intense hostility toward NATO stems from the fact that NATO stands in the way of invading Europe. The blitzkrieg against Ukraine also failed largely because of military support from European NATO members, who used established NATO communication channels to coordinate their efforts - exactly the thing NATO was established for!
If Russia were a normal European country, it would have nothing to lose and much to gain from bordering NATO. NATO membership comes with oversight and separation requirements that make member states stable and predictable. A former, pre-Putin foreign minister of Russia described this as "free-of-charge security on Russia's western border".
It is a problem for Putin only because he seeks to invade Europe; NATO stands in the way.
> Your argument is that Russia wants to occupy territory just for the sake of expanding Russia, which is really not logical or reasonable.
It is perfectly reasonable when you look at who holds power in Russia: the old revanchist KGB clan seeking to restore the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. This is the world they grew up in and were indoctrinated into in KGB schools. For them, it is a "normalcy" to which they must return.
> My argument is that if Mexico or Canada joined a military pact with Russia, the US would invade those countries immediately.
There is no need for guessing games when Cuba was actually in a military pact with the USSR until 1991 and hosted jets, bombers, missile cruisers and other conventional weapons for decades after the missile crisis. You can read about Soviet warships conducting missile drills off the coast of Florida in old newspapers. This is far more than anyone has done for countries that have joined NATO since the end of the Cold War. And yet, the US did not invade Cuba.
> Your argument is that any country can join a mutually defence pact without any consequences, as should be the case for Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly, in writing, pledged to respect the sovereignty of other European countries, including Ukraine, and their freedom to join military alliances. There's nothing to discuss - unless you want to turn Europe into a landscape of semi-sovereign nations ruled by Russia, which raises the question: why should Russia, in particular, be the European master race? Shouldn't the Franco-German alliance, with its much larger economy, bigger population, and numerous allies, instead dictate what Russia can and cannot do?
> Putin's intense hostility toward NATO stems from the fact that NATO stands in the way of invading Europe
....
> It is a problem for Putin only because he seeks to invade Europe; NATO stands in the way.
These are the most outlandish sensationalist claims I've heard on this subject, that are basically bordering on primary school children discussions. There is absolutely 0% chance or even any rational thought or discussion that has happened by the leadership in Russia on this topic. Not even Russia, but any leader with half a brain would not even simulate this scenario. This is not post WW2 anymore. Even if theoretically Russia had the military capability to "invade Europe", not only would that be the most pointless invasion, since Russia wouldn't be able gain anything after they invaded. What can they gain? They'll go to the banks and loot them, get the gold and send it home? They'll rule over the French or the Germans and make them buy Ladas? Loot some factory machines? They'll install puppets dictators? I really see in no way how this can be anyhow practical or even feasible, even if Russia had that capability. Lets say hypothetically Russia already invaded and occupied Europe, and by tonight their military has control of every piece of territory in Europe, then what? What will they do tomorrow? If you give me a single argument of why that costly occupation of europe would actually give them any benefits that outweigh those costs, then I would surrender this debate to you and never debate this again...
> There is no need for guessing games when Cuba was actually in a military pact with the USSR until 1991 and hosted jets, bombers, missile cruisers and other conventional weapons for decades after the missile crisis. You can read about Soviet warships conducting missile drills off the coast of Florida in old newspapers. This is far more than anyone has done for countries that have joined NATO since the end of the Cold War. And yet, the US did not invade Cuba.
Cuba and Russia were never in a FORMAL military alliance or pact, since that would've provoked an immediate US invasion. They were collaborating when needed given their mutual enemy - the US. What brought the missile crisis was the planning of Russia to install nuclear weapons on the island that threatened the US (they were never installed for your information), this was as a result of the US initially installing similar nuclear weapons in Italy, Turkey and England, and also as a result of the CIA training a paramilitary cuban force to overthrow Castro (which failed of course). Again this crisis was brought on solely because of US actions, but that is out of scope for this argument. But after the missile crisis, Russia never really escalated, never put any weapons that were threatening to the US, and the only military help Cuba got was for the defense from attempts of overthrowing Castro by the US-led cabal.
> There is absolutely 0% chance or even any rational thought or discussion that has happened by the leadership in Russia on this topic.
All military and intelligence chiefs of the European nations that share a border with Russia disagree with that and warn that their societies must be prepared for an invasion within 2 to 5 years after the war in Ukraine ends. What you call "outlandish sensational claims" by "primary school children" is something they take very seriously and it has fundamentally reshaped their approach to defense policy. Sweden, most notably, abandoned 200 years of neutrality, joined NATO, and began hardening its vulnerable points, such as the island of Gotland, which was demilitarized in 2005. Now Sweden has re-established a military presence on the island, brought back heavy weaponry, and is building up a defensive force. Why does an island in the middle of the Baltic sea need tanks, air defense systems and fighter jets on high alert?
Finland, known for its progressive policies, left the Ottawa treaty that banned anti-personnel mines. Why do you think they did that? Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are building bunkers and digging defensive lines on their border with Russia. Latvian news reported just today that the government is considering dismantling rail tracks connecting to Russia to make them unavailable to invading force. Not to mention Poland's buying spree: Poland is acquiring hundreds of rocket artillery systems and a thousand tanks.
Are they all foolish children who don't know what they are doing? The looming threat of a Russian invasion is the sole reason Northern and Eastern Europe maintain militaries at all. There is no other threat in the region. Their militaries could be disbanded overnight if Russia were to vanish into thin air.
> Cuba and Russia were never in a FORMAL military alliance or pact, since that would've provoked an immediate US invasion.
It doesn't change the fact that in practical terms, the military cooperation between Cuba and the USSR was much deeper than the relationship post–Cold War NATO members have had with the older members. The newer NATO members have received only a promise of assistance in the event of an invasion. Cuba received actual tanks, submarines and fighter jets.
The military and intelligence chiefs of all these countries will of course act this way, the other side of the answer for this question is "No worries, Russia's not a threat, we'll keep everything as is". Imagine if a military general from Poland or Finland answers this, he'll lose his job immediately. If I am a Polish citizen and the Polish military general says this, I will absolutely make sure that guy gets fired, I will protest on the streets because of this. It would be ridiculous for a military general to say that all is fine, except if he's waging war of course :D
That answer, that Russia's not a threat, goes against the whole NATO and The West's side of the argument, which is that Ukraine needs financial and military support from the US and EU. What's happening in Ukraine is a proxy war, that has been cooking since 2008 if not even sooner. Why would the citizens of EU and US fund Ukraine if Russia's not an existential threat to us? Why would we care? We certainly care more about Palestinians, since we see all these massacred people on instagram and twitter, but none of our money goes there. Theres very little civilian videos coming out of Ukraine regarding war crimes. So we need explanations of why we are sending money to Ukraine, just as we needed those for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc. Bush and the admin lied about WMDs and chemical weapons, which we found out 15 years after, and yet the taxpayer money was washed out of the voter base, into the military industrial complex.
The west is funding Ukraine so that they weaken Russia and do a regime-change that is favorable to The West, not because Russia is an existential threat. Russia can't even occupy Ukraine, a country with the lowest GDP per capita in europe, with one of the highest corruption indexes, let alone imagine occupying parts of Europe, say Poland, or the Baltics. It makes zero sense. Even if they did occupy, they wont be able to do anything? I dont get it? Europe doesnt have any major natural resources? What will they do with all of us? Enslave us and sell us to african tribal leaders? Steal the gold? I seriously dont understand.
The West needed a leader that would break that cold-war-ish pointless loop of blaming Russia for everything, since Russia is not a threat anymore, but China is. But any western leader claiming that would've actually caused a political suicide for him, his career would be over, because we the citizens have been fed this propaganda of Russian threat for decades, and its hard to forget it.
What happened with Trump was that he had enough mojo and approval to actually sell the public this argument of Russia not being a threat, and he successfully changed course by 180 degrees, completely disbanding all of the previous decades of foreign policy that was aimed against Russia, because it was useless. He hasnt done many good things since he took office, but just this one makes up for all of them and will go down in history for it.
P.S. just to add, I come from a country in the Balkans, but've lived for a long time in the UK, and now I live in the US. Even my homecountry started preparing for war against Russia :D, most probably because we were "advised" by our "allies" from the EU. The threat from Russia we have is NIL, NADA, not even that, its in the negative range, its embarrassing.
> The military and intelligence chiefs of all these countries will of course act this way, the other side of the answer for this question is "No worries, Russia's not a threat, we'll keep everything as is". Imagine if a military general from Poland or Finland answers this, he'll lose his job immediately.
Why? The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts. Finnish law requires all apartment buildings to provide proper shelters, which adds about 2% to construction costs. Don't you think real estate developers and buyers would be very glad to eliminate this expense? If Russia is not a threat, then this is just a waste of resources.
But your argument is a tough sell when major Russian exercises simulate naval and airborne landings into Finland and missile strikes against Finnish cities. Combined with extreme rhetoric from Russian state media, which regularly questions Finland's right to exist, accuses it of being a Russophobic Nazi state, and portrays it as a "dangerous breakaway" instead of a legitimate independent nation, there is little room to underestimate the seriousness of the threat. This is the same rhetoric Russia has used against Ukraine, and we can all see how far they are willing to take it. Many dismissed the rhetoric as empty posturing until missiles started raining down.
> Russia can't even occupy Ukraine, a country with the lowest GDP per capita in europe, with one of the highest corruption indexes, let alone imagine occupying parts of Europe, say Poland, or the Baltics.
GDP per capita doesn't fight.
Ukraine had vast Soviet stockpiles that had not been scrapped. For example, independent counting has recorded at least 1330 visually confirmed Ukrainian tank losses. Compare that with Germany, which has twice the population and is far wealthier: as of 2022, the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks.
How many other countries in Europe can afford to lose 1330 tanks and still keep fighting? Who even has 1330 operational tanks to begin with? No one. Even major countries like the UK and France have only 160 and 220 tanks, respectively. These small numbers are not enough to stop the kind of onslaught Ukraine is experiencing, which is why European military leaders are rightfully so concerned.
> Finnish law requires all apartment buildings to provide proper shelters, which adds about 2% to construction costs.
When was this law enacted?
> The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts.
Sadly this is not how politics works. If the human race was a giant insectoid hive mind, we would have way better use of resources than we have now. There is a great essay called Meditations on Moloch [1], that explains what youre describing, especially about war. The military industrial complex is its own self propelling feedback loop industry. If no country had a ministry of defense, we would all be better off, but if one country does it, then every country has to have it, so all of this percentages of GDP are sunk into it, instead of going into healthcare or education.
Since WW2, or even before maybe WW1, the rules of war and occupation have changed. Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past. The modern occupation consists of the occupying country having some kind of same-ethnicity but minority faction inside the occupied country, and trying to use that situation to create a breakaway state (which the occupied country wouldnt want of course) so it would create a pretense for war, or use that faction to influence politics for the whole country. The other modern occupation method is to influence the politics of the country by either heavily financially supporting a given faction, or heavily arming that faction (in a paramilitary way). Both of these methods provide political backsupport for the occupying country, in order for better economic deals and geopolitical positioning. But the main goal for the game of modern occupation and warfare is better economic deals.
What politicians and governments state in public is quite different than what actions they enact. Russia's politicians have to look strong. By stating those things about Finland, they hope to say "we hold Finland by the balls" because there is a Russian minority there, and because sometime ago parts of Finland was Russian territory, so they can sell those arguments to the public for a necessary invasion if needed. So they want to tell Finland to not escalate this further by putting nukes on the border, since that would result in war, and to keep being a buffer zone. But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence. In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.
> the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks
Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules. They're not the example you're thinking of. In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.
Many decades ago. Finland now serves as a blueprint for civil defense. Estonia and Latvia have begun to introduce similar provisions, and Norway announced restoration of theirs that were abolished in 1998.
> Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past.
The USSR was perfectly willing to trade economic development for imperialism. The methods they used to keep the Eastern Bloc under control are also well known. Are you not aware of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Prague spring of 1968, the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and other key events? Driving a tank over dissenters or ordering soldiers to beat their skulls open with sapper shovels is a surprisingly effective way of crushing opposition. That remains true in 2025, as we can see on the news.
> In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.
The same was said about Ukraine, and yet here we are, about to enter the fifth year of the war.
I see no reason to believe that an attack on other European countries besides Ukraine would lead to a much different reaction. Revelations about the Biden administration have shown that Biden knowingly limited Ukraine's capabilities precisely when the Kharkiv offensive was achieving its greatest successes because he got scared by Russian threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons. What makes Finland or Latvia or Poland so exceptional that it would suddenly make allies stop fearing Russian nukes?
> But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence
This is just your bias talking. Finns are proper Europeans for you, while Ukrainians are some half-slaves of Russia. For Putin's generation, the us-versus-them border runs considerably further west from yours, somewhere along the furthest extent of imperial Russia and the USSR and its satellites. The Russian viewpoint is very well summarized in the 1997 "Foundations of Geopolitics" by hardcore Russian Nazi Alexander Dugin and much of what he wrote there has been put into action since the book was published: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#In_...
> Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules.
Not true at all. West Germany had 5000 tanks in the 1980s. As a general rule, European countries have lost about 80-90% of the equipment and manpower that they had during the Cold War.
> In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.
Other areas are just as lacking. Germany has only about 30 operational fighter jets, artillery rounds for only a few days at the intensity seen in the war in Ukraine, and so on. Germany has a scandal about the poor state of the Bundeswehr every time its inspector-general issues a report.
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With outlandish ideas about "Moscow being occupied within seconds", it seems like you're living in another era of the distant past. It is a luxury that defense and intelligence chiefs cannot afford, which is why your assessments diverge from theirs. By focusing on economics, you clearly fail to recognize that Russians are driven by an entirely different set of factors. By overestimating European military strength, you severely underestimate how far a broader Russian attack could penetrate.
The argument is that these rules that you describe that any country can join any mutual defence pact without any repercussions is just plain wrong, mainly because the US would be immediately working against that even with military interventions. Its the same thing with how the US's stance for foreign policy is to push democracy where it suits them if they have big influence with one of the parties, and to push favourable dictatorships if not. There's double standards and twofacedness by the US foreign policy which really everyone else sees besides US citizens themselves, mostly because the average american barely even knows anything about domestic politics let alone foreign ones (except the few propaganda topics we get from the three letter tv channels).
Just answer this question, would the US object to, possibly with military intervention, if Mexico or Canada would join a military defence pact with China or Russia, or India, or say really any other country besides the US, even Brazil. We both know the answer to this.
Now lets do even easier. Would the US object to any South American countries joining a mutual defence pact with Russia / China? We already have the answer to this.
What would happen if Canada joined a mutual defense pact with Russia? Or Mexico? Think about this scenario, would the US invade immediately?. Something similar actually happened with Cuba in the 60s, and the US invaded them, doing a total naval siege [1]
The assurances made by western leaders were made verbally, but not codified into treaties or agreements, as per the famous line "not one inch eastward". Does that make western leaders lying twofaces?
At the 2008 NATO meeting in Bucharest, NATO gave open invitation to both Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO sometime in the future, without any MAPs. Not that MAPs are very important here on a timescale basis, since both Montenegro and Macedonia joined NATO in matter of months, without the consent of the population, but by corruption of the leadership. What is an open invitation stated publicly, also consists of thousands of conversations in private.
Hence, Russia would not allow this to happen at any cost. Would the US tolerate Russia meeting up with Canada and Mexico behind closed doors and offering them nuclear protection, first covertly, then even publicly?
‘Not one inch eastward’, as Gorbachev himself made clear, was only about stationing troops in East Germany during the immediate Soviet withdrawal. It did not constrain the future unified Germany or NATO.
There was no such open invitation to Georgia and Ukraine, only vague promises. MAPs were still required.
The US would have no right to invade either Canada or Mexico if they were discussing joining a mutual defence pact with Russia, yes.
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