nAtO iSnT aGgReSsIvE tOwArDs rUsSiA

Hell yeah brother. Let’s have Russia in NATO. Let’s have China in NATO too. Matter fact, let’s have Iran and North Korea (and South Korea) both in NATO too. Let’s loop them all in on every sensitive top-secret Five Eyes comm, clue them in on all our tactics, gift them all our latest, greatest military tech, and train them all on how to use it too.

Then what do you suggest do when North Korea inevitably starts shelling South Korea after cynically invoking Article 5 on the pretext that some South Korean soldier (allegedly, but they won’t release the footage) stepped his pinky toe over the line?

Admit that this effort to enforce some kind of artificial and unwieldy world peace through NATO was a dumb idea, and amounted only to a free military fire-sale to all our revisionist tinpot authoritarian-dictator adversaries?

Oh yeah, absolutely that is a terrible idea. What was I thinking, you were right. Silly me woops.

Lets have an inevitable WW3 scenario where NATO bullies every other country to the point where their statehood is in a death spiral and states like Russia, NK and China decide to nuke NATO and take all of us to hell with them. Sounds like a fantastic f**king idea, I'm already stocked up on my anti-radiation pills and created a 1B dollar nuclear bunker just for the occasion because democracy is really worth it.

>Admit that this effort to enforce some kind of artificial and unwieldy world peace through NATO was a dumb idea

Yeah no shit. Thanks for undermining your own argument for me, humpty-numpty.

Russia joining NATO is a non-starter: some combination of political fantasy football-league thinking and utilitarian Kremlin propaganda. Glad you agree.

As for the risk of nuclear apocalypse, it’s a risk that will always manifest itself in some way for as long as a single country in earth has nuclear weapons. I don’t like living underneath this ambient risk of immediate incineration any more than anyone else. If you have ideas for denuclearization, I’m all ears. However, it’s apparent that the levels of international trust/coordination that would be required to make that happen simply doesn’t exist. In the meantime, non-proliferation is the most practical approach.

For the record, *puts on Model U.N. hat* I would absolutely co-sponsor any U.N. General Assembly resolution to outlaw both war as a tool of aggression and nuclear weapons. I’m sure that will do the trick.

You spend a lot of time contradicting yourself.

Tucker Carlson's show is full of certitudes. Life, love, poetry, war - all messy and full of contradictions.

Yep, I officially have no idea what you're talking about.

I do not think I contradicted myself. But if you think so - very well, then.

More contradictions:

--Russian Lives Matter; yet it is a just action to kill Russian troops on the front lines prosecuting an unjust war.
--Putin has frequently hinted at the use of nuclear weapons; nevertheless, Putin's plans should continue to be opposed.
--Russia as presently constituted doesn't belong in NATO; but one day, it might.
--Ukrainians and Russians are in a desperate war today; but some day, they'll lock arms and drink and be merry together like they did before.

How hard is it for you to understand that Russia's security against a gigantic and very powerful military alliance that is openly aggressive towards it is not negotiable? Even if hat means de-militarising an authoritarian neighbouring state to create a buffer zone to avoid a major conflict.

Do you struggle with communication? Do you have a learning disability?

Gif related https://i.imgflip.com/74zkx6.gif

Russia -- by which I mean Putin specifically, as the average Russian man or woman on the street doesn't care -- is mad about the loss of much of the formerly Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

That's it. There's simply no military threat to Russia from NATO. NATO has existed since 1949, and has never once attacked the USSR or Russia, nor would it. Why? One word answer: Nukes.

Beyond that, NATO is constructed as a defensive alliance. Article 5 has never once been deployed outside of the Afghanistan War, an actual attack on real U.S. soil.

Of note, Russia still maintains significant, one might even say controlling, influence in countries like Belarus, Serbia, Syria, and several Central Asian states. Of course, that's not enough for an imperialist like Putin. Never is.

Russia could have regained a lot of what it lost through soft power: by Being Nice.

The 2000's was a great opportunity to do so. Putin was still young, fresh off of a (mostly) fair election victory, hadn't yet changed the Russian constitution to rig things in his favor for life, and presided over a Russia that for once had some hope for its future. Money was pouring into Russia from around the world. Putin was one of the leading international critics of the Bush Administration's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Rightly so. Putin Had A Point. Perceptions of the U.S. in Europe were at a low point.

However, Putin's subsequent pivot to hard-authoritarianism squandered all that goodwill.

And now, post-Ukraine invasion, it's impossible for any Eastern European state today to look at Russia and see anything other than the old hammer-and-sickle. Even Lukashenko's pathetic public comments lately acknowledge that reality.

And so, darn near all of Europe, and the vast majority of Eastern Europe (only exception: Hungary) has landed all-in on support for Ukraine. Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO. As always, better to fight them Over There than Over Here.

>The 2000's was a great opportunity to do so. Putin was still young, fresh off of a (mostly) fair election victory, hadn't yet changed the Russian constitution to rig things in his favor for life, and presided over a Russia that for once had some hope for its future. Money was pouring into Russia from around the world. Putin was one of the leading international critics of the Bush Administration's disastrous invasion of Iraq. Rightly so. Putin Had A Point. Perceptions of the U.S. in Europe were at a low point.

You're point being? Is this another one of your tangents? Of course Putin was right on his opinions of the US regime.

>However, Putin's subsequent pivot to hard-authoritarianism squandered all that goodwill.

Like when? Putin was democratically elected. What you call corruption abroad is just called lobbying in America. Strange hypocritical jab there.

>And now, post-Ukraine invasion, it's impossible for any Eastern European state today to look at Russia and see anything other than the old hammer-and-sickle. Even Lukashenko's pathetic public comments lately acknowledge that reality.

1. Luka's a madman and a dictator. No one actually cares what he has to say, he's a useful idiot.
2. That's your opinion not the majority of eastern Europeans half of whom only side with the west because of the imagined paradise that we supposedly live in. In my conversations with pro-west Eastern Europeans wo have never visited the west I've noticed that they have a fantastical view of how we live that makes me laugh whenever I hear it.

>And so, darn near all of Europe, and the vast majority of Eastern Europe (only exception: Hungary) has landed all-in on support for Ukraine. Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO. As always, better to fight them Over There than Over Here.

Aye, the governments of those countries do. Half the public do support aiding Ukraine while the other half either don't care or support Russia. Countries with direct experience with the west f**king hate us (Serbia for example)

Point being that the decline of Russia's international stature in recent years is self-inflicted. You can't make NATO into the bogeyman for every Russian woe.

Putin has consistently led his country as every bit the ex-KGB agent, but not so much at the glad-handing, winning-hearts-and-minds part.

A successful leader needs both. The olive branch and the quiver of arrows. The soft-talk and the big-stick, as Teddy Roosevelt would put it.

>Russia -- by which I mean Putin specifically, as the average Russian man or woman on the street doesn't care -- is mad about the loss of much of the formerly Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

Wrong. Pic related.

>That's it. There's simply no military threat to Russia from NATO. NATO has existed since 1949, and has never once attacked the USSR or Russia, nor would it. Why? One word answer: Nukes.

Good Lord you are class at contradicting yourself. Nukes are the only reason NATO is scared shitless of Russia. If Russia didn't have nukes, you would have turned it into another Iraq. See how that works?

>Beyond that, NATO is constructed as a defensive alliance. Article 5 has never once been deployed outside of the Afghanistan War, an actual attack on real U.S. soil.

An attack the CIA allowed to happen to push the patriot act? That one? The one same article 5 inaction against a state who the people responsible fled to Pakistan?

>Of note, Russia still maintains significant, one might even say controlling, influence in countries like Belarus, Serbia, Syria, and several Central Asian states. Of course, that's not enough for an imperialist like Putin. Never is.

That's what all major powers do you dafty. By that logic you're calling your beloved Biden the biggest imperialist in the world. Influence doesn't equate control but a compelling military alliance that acts on US interests does.

I can't argue with counterfactuals. In a world where Russia didn't have nukes? Who knows?

Still plenty of reasons to be doubtful Russia would be Iraq-ified. Western European dictators (Napoleon, Hitler) didn't exactly have a good track record of invading Russia even before it had nukes. Every general knows: (1) don't ever invade Russia, and (2) don't ever get involved in a land war in Asia.

Principle #2 violated twice in recent years, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and these lessons were re-learned. If America & Co. can't successfully "regime-change" Afghanistan, of all places, what hope is there for Russia?

And unlike Napolean and Hitler, modern-day Europe is hardly a unified dictatorship, and much more a collection of democracies with no ambitions of making territorial conquests, and many more ambitions of making money, eating pasta, and bingeing Netflix.

That's Putin's whole thing, right? That the West is "degenerate" and "unmanly" and easily swept aside? And yet in the next breath, Russian propagandists panic and say they could be invaded tomorrow. Curious.

Oh. One more thing. You can't measure public opinion in an authoritarian environment. You can try, but you'll always end up with a big asterisk beside any result.

The asterisk:
--Limited or non-existent access to non-propagandistic news sources;
--Fear from poll respondents that they're being monitored by authorities;
--(If applicable) corruption/collaboration on the part of the pollster.

The respondents in this poll apparently weren't asked to consider what serious efforts to reconstruct the USSR might actually look like.

Well, now they're getting a taste, but again, information from the Ukranian front is being mediated through a highly propagandistic lens.