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Thanks ~~Obama~~ Putin!
Reignited the West's arms industry as well! We had gotten complacent until Putin started the largest war in Europe since WWII.
Guys will see this and say "hell yea"
hell yea
I don't like the expansion of NATO, but due to Russia's recent imperialism, Sweden's and Finland's reactions are completely reasonable. A much healthier alternative would have been actually advancing towards an integrated European defense system involving EU members, with a door open to certain neighbours such as Norway, but it's pretty hard to do that when the political groups that could actually promote that alternative are schizophrenically tolerating positions such as "I'm a pacifist, so I'm advocating for my own country's disarmament despite my neighbours starting wars very recently" and "if Ukraine didn't want to get invaded, they shouldn't have sought guarantees against Russian aggression from third countries".
I think Europeans in general psychologically still feel themselves weak without NATO, unable to fill the needs of their own defense.
I've been reading about 1st Indochina war yesterday, so - emotionally biased.
EU's population: 448 million
EU GDP: 19 trillion dollars
Russia's population: 143 million
Russia's GDP: 1,78 trillion dollars
Simplifying a bit here (I'm obviously taking Morocco and Belarus for granted, assuming that Turkey wouldn't attack Greece, and so on), but it's pretty much a "gotta get our shit together" situation, because there's no reason why we should depend on the US for defense, or anything else.
I assume you meant trillion and not million for those gdp figures? Even then, they're low.
Fixed, good catch
That's about architecture more than resources. "Gotta get our shit together" doesn't negate the fact that shit isn't together yet.
It's good to have resources, but such a situation is still weakness. Only I think NATO in some sense is a contributing factor, and EU frankly too, both not in the least because of all those veto and consensus rules.
Why don't you like the expansion of NATO?
Because it includes countries that are routinely looking for trouble, such as the US and Turkey. One of these days Turkey is going to try and drag us into a conflict with Syria or Iran like the US did with Afghanistan.
Maybe it's just me, but it felt like the US fought Afghanistan without much help from NATO.
Fuck the tankies in here and praise UN and Sweden.
Huzzah! Welcome to the team, Sweden. We can all be self defense buddies together! =D
Russia locked out of the Balkan Sea now?
They have Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad's fairly strategically useless to them now that every surrounding country's NATO though. The Suwałki Gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus used to be pivotal in potentially re-taking control of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It would have been very difficult for NATO defend them if Russia took the gap. But now those countries are protected by NATO countries all around so Kaliningrad's a lot less useful strategically. Not to mention that there's a strong Kaliningrad independence movement so they're struggling to control it internally as well.
More here.