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Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
The thing is NATO will and always be dominated by the US and by extension its foreign policy. They contribute a lot of money directly and indirectly,so what do you expect?? US foreign policy does what is good for the US.
The missile shield did not serve any purpose for Europe,as Russia could use shorter range weapons,but it was great for the US as it gave it improved early warning abilities.
Don't for one thing think that the US is not the major partner in NATO,they are especially since almost all the nukes which back NATO are US ones.
Even France didn't join NATO until 2009 and that was only because of a more US friendly president. Now look at the chap in power.
Look at the Suez crisis when they threatened us with economic retaliation if we didn't stand down. Was the UK and US foreign policy aligning then??
What about our military escapades in Iraq,etc?? The US/UK was pushing that the most,not Europe in general.
Does the US in cultural norms=Europe,no it doesn't. Europe is general far less right leaning and far more "liberal" in many aspects. Look at even the whole concept of healthcare.
Europe is basically a buffer between Russia and the US - they would rather have a conflict centering around Europe than one next to them. This is what the whole Cold War proxy war strategy was - fight in a foreign country as long as the home country is fine.
If Europe wants to do its own thing,it needs to make something which is more European focused,and put their money where their mouths are,and we have the money and the technology.
You can see the fact now,China is now doing naval exercises with Russia in the Baltic sea and Russia then helping out China in Asia. This is not good,not good at all.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 15-03-2018 at 04:50 PM.
in the Baltic... and to do that they have to sail past Denmark and Sweden and Poland and .. well you get it....Russia is still land locked. The nothern seas are frozen most of the time... the easter boarders of Russia are actually within a stones throw of the western borders of the American state of Alaska.....
And having them near Vlladivostock was good... it was in range of North Korea than needed keeping an eye on...
this is a global game (and it's played by lots of old boys) .. and they're all watching each other all the time. China and Russia aren't mates. China is rich, Russia is poor. They're watching each other and working together is the best way
Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
OFC,they are not mates - we saw what happened in the 60s but China benefited massively from that period of help(Hydrogen bomb),but our policy has again forced a marriage of convenience,which is basically good for both of them,and by extension not good for us. China now gets Russian resources to fuel its economy,and certain technologies from Russia,and Russia gets political,technological and military support. Its like with certain technologies Russia can't get anymore,now the Chinese are quietly giving it to the Russians:
http://www.theasanforum.org/russia-c...-developments/
You can see how the Russian military started anti-terror joint exercises in China late last year:
http://tass.com/defense/979632
The naval exercises are just the start,as time progresses it might move to proper land/air exercises.
Also on a tech level,there seems to be a massive effort by both to indigenise computer technology - we are talking silly amounts of money in the case of China,so China/Russia can bypass our technological sanctions.
The whole point is while we are fighting nu Cold War with Russia(still) we seem to be ignoring China who is going LOL,quietly observing the methods via which we are screwing them over,and making sure we can't do it to them. The added bonus Russia goes to China and asks for help and China does what it has does with the string of a pearls policies,ie,offer help as long as we make some money and you don't oppose us. Basically making a big alliance through mostly soft power and economics and being observant. OTH,countries like Japan are getting so nervous they are now considering fighter capable ships,which they have not had since WW2.
I just hope as younger people get into more important positions,perhaps we can dial this all back and try and move back towards working better together.
You woud be surprised how much - at a working level - influence the UK has in some policy areas - often considerably more than the US. It is an organisation where the UK does punch above its weight.
I'm glad you said almost - France and the UK are both nuclear nations. But the US is a major contributor, both in terms of finance and contribution of military forces.
Er no! France wqere one of the founder members of NATO ad NATO headquarters were in France until France withdrew from the military structure between 1959 and 1966, taking its forces outside theNATO Command structure. This also included the expulsion of foreign personnel from French soil, (which is why NATO headquarters moved tio Brussels in a building that was to have been a hospital - hence the rather unusual layout).
French remained one of the two official NATO languages (the other being English) throughout that period (which lasted until 2009) when the regained full NATO membership. France has had a permanent delegation to NATO through out the existence of NATO.
That was not a NATO issue.
. Again outside the NATO remit. However it was within the remit of the UN
no but it is closer to those of the UK. One could argue that the UK is closer in cultural norms to the US than 'Europe' however that is a false comparison as Europe doesn't have a cultural norm, being such a diverse range of countries. One size does not fit all.
Partly true, although geographically, Russia is closer to the US than it is to Western Europe.
And pay for it - and sort out the military structure! And those are major obstacles.
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this is where I lose you utterly
What has age got to do with it? Whyh do you think that younger people will begin to solve it? I'm not sad about the idea.. I just don't see how it will happen.
to be in that type of job, a full diplomatic job, you get to see enough things to see the truth. And by the time you're old enough to make a difference.. you're an older generation who knows that you cant trust the otherside....the younger generation now are going to grow up with certain knoweldge that Russian spies poison people in the UK using radiactive material and nerve agents, risking the public while murdering people in an unsanctioned way.
Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
Yet our foreign policy is almost aligned with the US though. The US wanted to invade Iraq,we jumped in with them.
France did that since they felt the US had too much influence and wanted to do its own thing. They correctly realised it was dominated by the US/UK policies.
It was a US-UK issue and in the end people can say what they want,the US is the major partner in NATO and is tailored towards its need.
It also shows that if the US does not get its way it will threaten even the UK. People like to bury the implications of Suez,but when the US threatened to destroy the UK economically just mere years after WW2,that tells you enough about who is No1.
US foreign policy is there to help them.
Hence,when push comes to shove the US will get its way with NATO.
They contribute the most money and almost all the nukes.
Which again is US/UK doing something which is not what other countries wanted. Hence the view what US/UK wants is not shared by all of Europe.
Since NATO is US dominated it reflects US interests.
Nope,since the US is far more right wing,and plenty of what we do is not what the US would do.
In the end,a US dominated organisation does not equate to what Europe wants.
US foreign policy is for the benefit of the US.
Most of the Russian population and its two major cities are nearer to Europe than the US.
Most of the Russian military is located there. The same as in WW2.
Hence their money where their mouths are comment.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 15-03-2018 at 05:26 PM.
I think you are missing the point about NATO. It is a defensive alliance where 'an attack on one is an attack on all'.
That does not stop member states pursuing their individual foreign policy, either alone or in collaboration with other Sates. (The UK conducted military exercises with France wile they were outside the NATO military structure. NATO does not have a specific foreign policy other than the defence of its member nations.
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Its not see as defensive though especially since it was made to attack an alliance which has not existed for 30 years.
You honestly need to read what senior US officials like this said:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0bef3378cd8fc
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...caused-by-west
People are just getting too teary eyed about NATO. It was designed in a different era - are we still using things from 1945?? The question we are not.
William Perry has had a long career in government, serving in the Pentagon under Presidents Carter and Reagan before becoming President Clinton’s secretary of defense in 1994.
“We stand today, I believe, in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we faced during the Cold War,” Perry tells host Robert Scheer in this week’s episode of KCRW’s “Scheer Intelligence.”
Since his time in the Pentagon, Perry has founded the William J. Perry Project, which aims to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons. He’s also written a book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink.”
Perry and Scheer discuss how the expansion of NATO in the 1990s factors in to the rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Perry calls this expansion “the first step” in escalating tensions. The “second step,” he says, was “installing ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.”
“Our response to Russia on the objections to these various actions we were taking basically was, ‘What can you do about it? You’re an insignificant power today,’ ” Perry says. “The reason Putin is so popular today is that he has taken actions that, in [Russians’] view, allow Russia to stand as a great power and overcome this humiliating position they were in … so we stand today in a position of hostility between the United States and Russia, comparable to where we stood in the Cold War. In the meantime, we still have many thousands of nuclear weapons.”
The conversation concludes with a discussion on the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea.
“This regime is ruthless, and reckless, but they are focused entirely on their own survival,” Perry says of North Korea. “They’re not going to be conducting a preemptive attack on the United States or Tokyo or Seoul. They’re going to use [nuclear weapons] to threaten and bluster.”
Listen to the full interview and to past editions of “Scheer Intelligence” at KCRW.comYou seem to be not basically understanding why Chinese soft power is working. I remember a phrase that a politician said in Asia:"the west likes to dictate to people,not talk to people".The current level of hostility in US-Russian relations was caused in part by Washington’s contemptuous treatment of Moscow’s security concerns in the aftermath of the cold war, a former US defence secretary has said.
Any analysis of Russia has to consider the effect of Nato expansion
Read more
William Perry, who was defence secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration from 1994 to 1997, emphasised that in the past five years it has been Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that have driven the downward spiral in east-west relations.
But Perry added that during his term in office, cooperation between the two countries’ militaries had improved rapidly just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union and that these gains were initially squandered more as a result of US than Russian actions.
“In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame,” Perry said, speaking at a Guardian Live event in London.
Former US defence secretary, William Perry, talking at a Guardian Live event on Tuesday evening
“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that Nato could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having Nato right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”
In his memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Perry writes that he argued for a slower expansion of Nato so as not to alienate Russia during the initial period of post-Soviet courtship and cooperation. Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat, led the opposing argument at the time, and was ultimately supported by the vice-president, Al Gore, who argued “we could manage the problems this would create with Russia”.
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Read more
Perry said the decision reflected a contemptuous attitude among US officials towards the troubled former superpower.
“It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said he don’t agree with that argument,” he said. “Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point ... the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path.”
Perry considered resigning over the issue “but I concluded that my resignation would be misinterpreted as opposition to Nato membership that I greatly favoured – just not right away”.
He sees the second major misstep by Washington DC as the Bush administration’s decision to deploy a ballistic missile defence system in eastern Europe in the face of determined opposition from Moscow. Perry said: “We rationalised [the system] as being to defend against an Iranian nuclear missile – they don’t have any but that’s another issue. But the Russians said ‘Wait a bit, this weakens our deterrence.’ The issue again wasn’t discussed on the basis of its merits – it was just ‘who cares about what Russia thinks.’ We dismissed it again.”
The Obama administration has since modified the missile defence system in eastern Europe, replacing long-range with medium-range interceptor missiles but that has not mollified Russian objections.
The west’s assurances to Soviet ministers on eastward expansion of Nato
Read more
Perry said he was opposed to such systems on technical grounds. “I think they’re a waste of money. I don’t think they work,” he said. “In fact, when I talked to the Russians I tried to convince them not to worry, they don’t work anyway but they didn’t buy that.”
The third factor that Perry pointed to in the poisoning of US-Russian relations was Washington DC’s support for pro-democracy demonstrators in the “colour revolutions” in former Soviet republics including Georgia and Ukraine. Perry agreed with the ethical reasons for backing such revolutions but noted their severely damaging effect on east-west ties.
“After he came to office, Putin came to believe that the United States had an active and robust programme to overthrow his regime,” the former defence secretary said.
“And from that point on a switch went on in Putin’s mind that said: I’m no longer going to work with the west ... I don’t know the facts behind Putin’s belief that we actually had a programme to foment revolution in Russia but what counts is he believed it.”
Perry described the current tensions between Russia and Nato as having “the potential of becoming very dangerous,” and argued for a radical reduction in nuclear arsenals and in particular the removal of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Over 1,000 ICBMs in the US and Russia remain on hair-trigger alert, on a policy of “launch-on-warning”, meaning US and Russian presidents would have less than half an hour to decide whether to fire them in the event of radar and satellite data showing an incoming missile attack from the other side.
The whole issue with NATO,etc is indicative of how our own way of looking at the world has not evolved and we are still clinging to past glories,which everyone accuses Russia of doing but we are doing the same.
They will never forgive us for lying too:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-b...-leaders-early
The whole thing could have been handled better after the USSR collapsed,but arrogance,pride and hubris is what stopped us.U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
Is the same way we go around dictating to far flung countries and why our foreign policy has backfired.
Because in the end as a younger person,the fall of the Berlin wall was full of hope for a better future. All we got is old cold war relics more paranoid about extending their empires and "containing" countries. They were the ones dominating the politics.
I have posted at least three documents,showing how these cold war relics lied through their teeth and basically mocked Russia,etc and instead of using a chance to promote peace in Europe,just kept on fighting the war,since it suited them and their actions have meant we now have one of their kind with the same bloody mentality in power in Russia.
Do you even realise Putin didn't want to rule - he was installed in power. He was basically happy to retire after ONE term as long as his family was financially set up. There was a BBC documentary on him recently .He came from a very poor background and was a nobody.
We made a nobody into Czar,because we were more worried about seeing enemies in the shadows and using deception to expand NATO to fight an enemy who was literally on the verge of economic collapse and making a missile shield for nefarious reasons.
To do what with?? Fight the non-existent Warsaw Pact?? Protect against Iranian missiles which was a lie it appears even in the 1990s.
We could not let it go,and the threat we were paranoid about happened since we caused it to. Its a self fulfilling prophecy.
Now China has taken advantage of it since we have this obsession with Russia.
I told you this earlier Zak,now because of these dinosaurs the next Cold War will be on the bodies of people who were born after the USSR collapsed or were very young.
They could not let it go in the 1990s,and now we are experiencing the consequences. Maybe like Libya,we should think about what we do longterm.
It makes me laugh when the UK papers start moaning about the far right rising in Italy ignoring we had a part to play in it due to stupid foreign policy.
We portray ourselves as the moral democratic guardians of the world,but always seem to like poking countries far away from us,leaving them in a mess and then being amazed when the roosters come home to roost,then we poke back,and the cycle continues.
In the end its the younger people who will be fighting any wars caused by the hubris of the older generations of politicians - what a legacy. Plus I firmly believe the average person in Europe or Russia would rather just co-exist, not have conflict which helps nobody and only makes some people richer or satiates their own egos.
We never learn it seems.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 16-03-2018 at 01:07 AM.
No, you ARE missing the point - it was a defensive alliance after the second world war. The USSR were invited to join (more in hope than expectation) but declined and formed the Warsaw Pact in retaliation. NATO has been resolute in that it is defence, although the USSR and then Russia has maintained their position that it is an offence alliance, mainly as justification for building up its own military capability.
There is still mutual distrust between NATO/EU and Russia and Russias assassination attempt in Salisbury will only re-inforce that distrust by NATO/EU.
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The whole point of NATO was to oppose Soviet influence,and it was formed for that very reason. The Russians knew that from the very beginning and they knew the US/UK would dominate,hence why France did what it did with NATO for 40 years.
But the USSR collapsed and now there was a Russia which was almost on the verge of collapse in a decade.
So why expand an alliance to the borders of Russia?? Who are we defending against or "containing" ??
Egypt??
Even the missile shield was done for lies:
See what I bolded - that is the words of William Perry who was secretary of defence. The US basically told porkies when they kept harping on it was because of Iran.He sees the second major misstep by Washington DC as the Bush administration’s decision to deploy a ballistic missile defence system in eastern Europe in the face of determined opposition from Moscow. Perry said: “We rationalised [the system] as being to defend against an Iranian nuclear missile – they don’t have any but that’s another issue. But the Russians said ‘Wait a bit, this weakens our deterrence.’ The issue again wasn’t discussed on the basis of its merits – it was just ‘who cares about what Russia thinks.’ We dismissed it again.”
EVERY official document about missile defence at the time said it was to counter Iran,when behind closed doors the REAL reason were known.
That shows you it was done to change the conditions of MAD in the favour of the US.
So why did NATO say one thing and do another:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-b...-leaders-early
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3]
This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.
The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.
The conversations before Kohl’s assurance involved explicit discussion of NATO expansion, the Central and East European countries, and how to convince the Soviets to accept unification. For example, on February 6, 1990, when Genscher met with British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, the British record showed Genscher saying, “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.” (See Document 2)
Having met with Genscher on his way into discussions with the Soviets, Baker repeated exactly the Genscher formulation in his meeting with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1990, (see Document 4); and even more importantly, face to face with Gorbachev.
Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” (See Document 6)
Russia was on the verge of economic collapse and it was no threat to anyone,yet the "defensive" alliance lot lied.Repeatedly.
Plus OFC Russia WOULD build up its defences - when you have a $1000 billion alliance on your doorstep - what did all our analysts think would happen?
If you don't want them not to do so,then don't make a "massive" military alliance which outspends them by 10 to 12 times then and then run upto their borders,mocking them,especially if they are actually fearful.
Try to reduce their fears - all the sabre rattling just did the opposite and Putin is a cut-throat,paranoid person.
So what happens if China makes "defensive alliances" with Ireland or Mexico. We will be totally fine,right??
I assume the US/UK would be OK - funny how the US/UK were involved in regime change in Iran,etc to install pro-US dictators when countries didn't swing our way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_I..._d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_C..._d%27%C3%A9tat
What about South America,Africa,Asia,ME,etc - we moan about Russia/USSR being arseholes to its neighbours and supporting dictators but we don't respect the wills of countries to install friendly people in charge,and even subvert democracy to do that. By doing what we tend to do it legitimises some other countries in doing the same.
Only in the UK/US does UK/US foreign policy look "defensive" since we are not really affected - UK/US policy is not considered universally defensive. So a US/UK dominated NATO,is considered "defensive"? Um,no. Maybe to us,but one person's defensive posture might be another person's offensive one.
Our policy is considered hawkish and aggressive in enough countries,with the use of economics and military threats to bend countries to do what we want,especially combined with the general history. Not to say others have not done it too,OFC but we do tend to like taking the high ground,and the others which do it are "evil."
Read this:
http://theweek.com/articles/640709/w...ry-humiliation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
The "Century of humiliation" is taught in Chinese schools to show how foreign powers screwed around with China.
This is why China does not trust us,and why it intends to become a big superpower and make sure everyone bows to them,so it intends for it to NEVER happen again.
This is a country which 1000s of years ago,could have had a massive empire but instead looked inwards. Now,after our "defensive" foreign policy its even shaping their view of the world 200 years later. 200 years!!
We poke around,and then are surprised when stuff gets flung our way. This is not the first time - what about our misguided policies to arm Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980s??
Its seems despite considering ourselves more "enlightened" than the rest of planet,we have a very bad track record of actually learning from our mistakes.
Who pays the price?? The general public not all the hawks who are sabre rattling.
Edit!!
You know what CBA with this - people even can't be bothered to read the documents I linked to with facts,so there can't be an argument. When a secretary of defence himself and various recently unclassified documents,show the real stuff happening in the 90s which does support what I said,well that should be enough.
Plus,you know what despite all the protestations,the fact of the matter we are here where we are now and we helped push things along that path. Russia has to take the blame for its actions,but things might have been different if there had been less hubris.
Foreign policy is not just about dictating to and mocking "weaker" and "less developed" countries and doing what we want since we are "better than them"- but also understanding their fears and trying to genuinely downplay them and help them.
Yet all the evidence says it didn't happen,and anybody looking at what was happening predicted this easily - I saw this happening a very long time ago. People are shocked,I am certainly not. Putin never really hid his feelings that well. I see things getting worse TBF! When a country has so many nukes like Russia,its hard not to feel very uneasy whether something could flare up!
Second Edit!!
Before anyone construes any of my posts as support for Putin it isn't - its just frustration we could have handled things better,at the very start,and IMHO I feel its a repeating pattern with our form of foreign policy(which makes situations worse),and someone less hawkish would be in power now in Russia,as the fear peddling would have less effect in the present. All I see is escalation and more escalation,which could lead to a big confrontation, and China quietly making a power grab whilst we are distracted.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 15-03-2018 at 11:44 PM.
Maybe we should rename this thread "Argument about history of NATO" and start another one about what happens re: Salisbury poisoning and diplomatic explusions.
It could even stress the focus on what's coming next by asking "What NEXT".
Oh, wait ... this one did that. Not that you'd know it.
peterb (16-03-2018)
And getting the thread back on track, an ‘interesting’ range of responses from the opposition party, with Jeremy Corbin declining to condemn Russia, while other members of the opposition and the back benches have ringingly endorsed the Government response.
There was a telling comment on R4 this morning that The Russian regime is ruthless, and anything but a resolute response is seen as weakness.
One suggestion is that a co-ordinated response would be to delay the World Cup by a year and hold it somewhere else, denying Putin a showcase for his regime
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The Cold War started some years ago on the cyber front, and the destabilisation of Europe.
It's an election year...
Society's to blame,
Or possibly Atari.
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