Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

"Revisionism" in West/Russia relations

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    NATO members weren't members at the end of a gun. Warsaw Pact nations were- plain and simple. The Berlin Wall wasn't built to keep out the decadent West. As soon as the former Warsaw pact nations had a chance to escape the Soviets they did. And they sought protection. The Soviets clearly used force and the threat of force to keep nations in it's "sphere of influence". No Nato nation had to be invaded to force them into a "western sphere" of influence. Additionally after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was offered the opportunity to be part of the alliance and part of the Partnership for peace group. The West supported Russian efforts to get nuclear weapons from the former SSR's sent to Russia. The West supported Russia inheriting the USSR's permanent seat on the Security Council. The US sent financial aid to the Russians, medical aid and Americans even adopted the abandoned children of Russia and provided opportunities for children from the region of Chernobyl to come to the US to escape the radiated countryside. But, yes Putin needs to "protect" Russia from such outrageous acts of aggression. Equating Ukraine's meager self defense in the face of a Russian invasion to the Nazi siege of Leningrad to a bunch of children at camp just really takes the cake. Don't worry kids- anyone messes with us, we have nukes! Very nice Mr. Putin. It's not an invasion, he says. The Russian troops are just on leave and volunteered to help out. Nice place where servicemen on leave can take artillery and tanks home with them on leave. I fretted over taking a foul weather jacket home with me once, never considered taking a missile or M2 home. Can't have it both ways, wanting to be viewed as a legitimate, responsible world power and acting like it's the 1930's in Europe all over again.

    Comment


    • #17
      It's even an insult to the memory of the people who died in Stalingrad with the "siege of Donetsk". It's like comparing a bucket of Water to a river, but obviously Putin wants to stoke up nationalistic fervour.
      "They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

      Protester

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by DonBelt View Post
        NATO members weren't members at the end of a gun.
        Yes we were, Soviet guns.
        Chimo

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by SriLanka View Post
          I loved and respected the original NATO, the one that won the Cold War.

          The New NATO is an evil imperialistic force. They supported terrorists in Libya, they supported terrorists in Syria.
          So let me get this straight. You love the old us, the us who were prepared to unleashed 60,000+ nukes to burn every major city back to the stone age ... to the new us where we trap little monsters into a corner and allow them to kill each other to their hearts' content.

          Originally posted by SriLanka View Post
          Putin is only creating new buffer zones from these aggressive forces.
          In case you don't get it, both the old and new buffer zones are telling Putin to "fuck you."
          Chimo

          Comment


          • #20
            A leader of a nuclear-armed western power uttered Putin's comments before children he or she would be eviscerated by the world press.

            Putin?

            Teflon.

            Either we're numb or can't decipher cave-manese.
            "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
            "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

            Comment


            • #21
              How bad was life in the WP for pact countries? Poland would rather ally with Germany.... Think about that!

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by cape_royds View Post
                An interesting comment by astralis on the Ukraine thread deserves a new thread for discussion.




                In my opinion, it's not exactly revisionism. You just have to look at a couple of maps. The Cold War ended, and then very shortly afterwards NATO expanded.

                Whether countries of the former USSR requested membership is not relevant to the question of whether NATO expanded. NATO countries could have always declined the requests for expanded membership.

                The expansion itself is a plain fact.

                Put it this way: does anyone here think that the Warsaw Pact and USSR would have dissolved as quickly and easily as they did, if the USA and other NATO countries had explicitly informed the USSR at that time that they intended to expand NATO forthwith?

                Consider also the power-political implications of the USA's abrupt unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty. Would it be "revisionism" to mention that plain fact, too?
                If Russia legitimately thought NATO was seeking war with Russia, he would be doing EVERYTHING possible to DE-escalate in Ukraine right now, rather than thumbing his nose at the world. I don't think you have much leg to stand on with the ABM treaty, either, considering we're working on aggressively reducing our strategic nuclear arsenal (and Obama apparently was going to do a run-around Congress to do so).

                Putin calculated wrong. Personally I think it's stupid to end decades of rapprochement over the friggin' Crimea, but it's not my call to make, and it's pretty clear that Russia has tried to aggressively dominate its neighbors, while NATO has done damn near everything possible NOT to aggravate the Russian bear. As someone said in the other thread, or maybe this thread, the EU cannot even agree on a fishing policy, there is no chance that they are secretly conspiring to destroy Russia. Hell just sit back, and the EU will destroy itself in a couple decades: 21st Century version of the UAR if you ask me.
                "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                  I don't understand the purpose or content of this thread. Is there an argument in here somewhere? Does it have something to do with what Astralis said?
                  I thought that his remarks on "revisionism" were worth discussing without derailing the thread in which they had originally been made.


                  The Warsaw pact collapsed because the nation keeping everyone in line was no longer able to sustain its military spending & its dysfunctional economy. That would have happened some time soon enough.
                  Agreed.

                  NATO had no plans to expand east in 1991. Moot point.
                  The question I asked in my OP was hypothetical: If the government of the USSR in 1991 had been made explicitly aware that within a decade NATO would be expanded substantially, do you think that the Warsaw Pact or USSR would have dissolved as quickly and as easily as they did?


                  NATO got bigger because Russia scared the shit out of a bunch of nations that had every reason in the world to distrust it already. The 'plain fact' that you think so significant is not in dispute, the implications to be drawn from it is. The map changed because Russia failed to convince its former victims that it wasn't going to revert to an established pattern of behaviour.
                  Do you think that Russia in the 1990's was such a menace that it was necessary to expand NATO?

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by cape_royds View Post
                    Do you think that Russia in the 1990's was such a menace that it was necessary to expand NATO?
                    You're missing the point that he spelled out very well: Who cares what we think? It doesn't matter in this decade or the last, nor the one before that what we think.

                    What matters is what the former Soviet "Republics" and Warsaw Pact nations thought at the time. And that's pretty obvious what they thought.

                    I'll wager they also were not considering the semi-prostrate Russia of the 1990s when they were deciding their alliance options either but the Russia of decades and centuries before then.
                    Last edited by TopHatter; 01 Sep 14,, 02:38.
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post

                      1) We tried extremely hard NOT to expand NATO.
                      2) We offerred an alternative, Partnership for Peace, of which not only did the WP hastily join but so did Russia.
                      3) We set the bar for membership extremely high, a lot higher than it was for the old membership and the new members jumped through hoops to meet those standards. Georgia and the Ukraines currently do not meet those standards.
                      4) We said the same thing to Russia. Russia can join NATO if she can meet our standards. She declined to meet our standards.

                      I agree with you that the expansion of our alliance was not undertaken carelessly. However, you do make it sound like the expansion was some sort of involuntary process. As you point out, NATO has been willing to decline applicants.

                      I also remember that during the 1990's there were those who advocated expansion of NATO in order to keep it "relevant."

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by cape_royds View Post
                        I also remember that during the 1990's there were those who advocated expansion of NATO in order to keep it "relevant."
                        1990's! Are you fucking kidding me! WE WERE THE ONLY STABILIZING FORCE IN ALL OF FUCKING EUROPE! MORE FUCKING SPECIFIC, THE BRITISH, FRENCH, AND CANADIANS!

                        JUST HOW OLD ARE YOU!
                        Chimo

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by cape_royds View Post
                          I also remember that during the 1990's there were those who advocated expansion of NATO in order to keep it "relevant."
                          NATO's mission raison d'être was fundamentally the same in the sense that she was the only core entity left standing - but the mission sets changed virtually overnight - ie they were no longer focussed on soviets testing air borders, subs hacking NATO fleets and the ASW mission for air fundamentally converted into an ISR role. There was a peace dividend (the term used at the time) factored into every ex NATO countries force development and construction. eg F-22 was back burned, P3 Orions were defrocked and scaled back etc.... in fact the majority of NATO powers started flogging off or parking their war stock

                          to even remotely think that NATO maintained force posture is the opposite of the reality

                          what did change was that the collapse of WP countries included some fall out - eg Yugoslavia, East Germany etc.... Yugoslavia became a dysfunctional splintered rump of centuries long grievances etc....

                          At a military level NATO did not grow - in fact it was the opposite as every politician in the EU/NATO saw it as an opportunity to maximise the peace dividend and cut back on military spending

                          Having ex WP countries wanting to join in the peace dividend years was never about a growing military capability as it was still (and is still) a fraction of the absolute capabilities of the pre collapse years

                          There's paranoia - and then there's absolute lunacy to even suggest that NATO post 89 sought to dominate the Russians - nobody gave a fig as the CCP had become a basket case - in fact everyone was seeing it as an opportunity to have a stable russia and an equal partner now that nobody was anticipating going to war.
                          Linkeden:
                          http://au.linkedin.com/pub/gary-fairlie/1/28a/2a2
                          http://cofda.wordpress.com/

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by cape_royds View Post
                            I thought that his remarks on "revisionism" were worth discussing without derailing the thread in which they had originally been made.
                            Fine, then actually offer us a bit more than that opening post. Insipid would be a compliment.

                            Agreed.
                            In which case the hypothetical below is meaningless.

                            The question I asked in my OP was hypothetical: If the government of the USSR in 1991 had been made explicitly aware that within a decade NATO would be expanded substantially, do you think that the Warsaw Pact or USSR would have dissolved as quickly and as easily as they did?
                            So it takes a few more years....maybe. So what? The whole edifice collapsed for internal reasons. it was already disintegrating, sometimes violently. Keeping the many & varied nationalities and nations in line with a declining economy was a losing bet. In 1981 the threat of invasion was able to keep Poland in the fold. By 1991 I'm betting another nation would have tried something similar & succeeded. It would only take one. I think it was all coming down & coming down soon. I'm yet to see anyone offer evidence to the contrary. What NATO might or might not do wasn't relevant to any of that.

                            Do you think that Russia in the 1990's was such a menace that it was necessary to expand NATO?
                            Only if you had an ethnic Russian minority...or were a former part of the USSR....or were within range of its military forces.

                            Sheesh! were you even awake during the 90s?

                            1991-92 South Ossetian War

                            War in Abkhazia (1992

                            War of Transnistria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                            First Chechen War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                            Second Chechen War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                            Incident at Pristina airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                            This isn't a comprehensive list, but the violence of the first Chechen war alone was enough to scare the shit out of any nation that had recently left the brutal arms of mother Russia..

                            You may not have been paying attention, but the small nations of E.Europe & the Caucuses were. They noticed that even a dramatically weakened Russia was prepared to use its military, diplomatic & economic power to intervene in the region. Having had extensive experience of life in the Russian sphere of influence they decided to grasp an historic opportunity that might never come again to extract themselves from that sphere.

                            Russia was still a threat to its neighbours in the 1990s, but not enough of one to prevent many of them from peacefully seeking an independent future in Europe. They decided not to wait until Russia was strong enough to stop them by force or threat of force. Looks like a pretty good choice from here.
                            sigpic

                            Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Meh, frankly speaking, all those were drunk Yeltsin's actions.

                              Putin actually ended that caption.
                              No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                              To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Not sure how it ended. Those troops are all there still. Russia expanded its control in Georgia in 2008, too, so we're not really talking a docile Russia since 2000.

                                Re: independent Europe. You can't blame the 1990s policy-makers for trying. But they successfully imploded the Spanish and Italian economies. Very poorly managed project. I have no faith in independent Europe's ability to defend the Baltic republics 20-30 years down the line. Useful bargaining chip for future policy-makers. Not much else.
                                Last edited by GVChamp; 01 Sep 14,, 13:54.
                                "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X