There is nothing in this that reflects the title. It's nothing more than passive propaganda. They are relying on people to just read the title and not open the link.
What is actually said is:
And let me just end by saying that this reflects the political reality that nations are sovereign. Nations decide themselves, and Ukraine has of course the right to decide its own path. And it's up to Ukraine and NATO Allies to decide when Ukraine becomes a member. Russia cannot veto membership for any sovereign independent state in Europe.
And let me just end by saying that this reflects the political reality that nations are sovereign.
I mean that's just factually untrue. Every nations sovereignty is restricted by geopolitical realities. No nation can just do whatever they desire, including joining certain alliances. Mexico will not be joining BRICS for instance, because of the geopolitical situation. And that's not even a military alliance, which NATO is! Europeans are not special, they have to play by the same rules as everybody else. To claim otherwise is to ignore the reality on the ground right now, both in Ukraine and globally.
Also none of this factors in that joining NATO, by definition, involves giving up some part of your nations sovereignty. NATO in reality acts as an extended arm of the US military and it's industrial complex, and in joining, countries are subjected to this reality of Atlanticism.
One or more members being aggressive does not mean the rest have to follow.
But they usually always do, because of the implication...
You are aware that the US and UK were not the only countries to deploy troops to Iraq (not Iran, as you mistakenly claim). There was a whole NATO training operation involving 13 NATO member states. 20 of the current 31 NATO members had some form of troop deployment in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
Cuba, your nearest neighbour, can do whatever it wants. The US does not get to dictate anymore by military might. They have done in the past. To do so today would bring other trade deals into conflict. The EU would be very against this
I am not American, and it's quite clear the US does use it's military might when it needs to, to dictate the order of the world, and there is nothing that the EU can do about it. Precisely because their sovereignty is curtailed due to being US vassal states. Of which NATO membership is a key part. This includes actions against the EU. Unless you want to argue that the nordstream gas pipelines just spontaneously combusted.
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
At least he had some good jokes to warm up the crowd!
I think I've told you before that I know it's hard to allocate money for defence, because most politicians want to spend money on health, on education, on infrastructure instead of defence.
“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”
NATO is not a friend or friendly force, it is one of the great evils of our time, anyone arguing otherwise just wants to bomb third world countries.
Ask the citizens of Libya and Iraq how defensive and friendly NATO is.
The process of "joining NATO" is not anything equivalent to making friends, any country joining NATO essentially becomes a vassal for US interests. There's a reason why Sweden and Finland held out for so long.
Eh. It's the metaphor. Ukraine is a sovereign state, and the argument about what Ukraine does or doesn't do on its own soil - or who it invites over to play - being somehow justification for invasion is hypocritical tripe. Russia's been invading other sovereign states, and stockpiles weapons in its vassel states; it's an "existential threat" to every one of its neighbors, except the strong ones like China.
The arguments Putin used for invasion about Ukraine abusing its citizens were better, except for being lies. They should have stuck with that one, except they had no evidence and nobody believed it. It still made a better story and was less hypocritical.
Also, behaving like a communist with your country when your neighbor is an imperialist dictatorship is only a recipe for becoming a member of an imperialist dictatorship.
Firstly, I'm not sure your understanding of the meaning or relevance of 'hypocrisy' is very clear.
Secondly, you're introducing a moralistic discourse about this when the first issue is what caused or explained the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Despite the evidence overwhelmingly pointing to NATO expansion, the fact that you are denying it when even Stoltenberg and Blinken are basically at the point of admitting it, implicit as those admissions may be, is pretty comic.
If you think that the Ukrainian government was not only not abusing, but in fact not committing acts amounting to ethnically cleansing Russians in eastern Ukraine, you have been living under a rock and its disgusting that you can utter such bullshit with such nonchalance and impunity. Contrary to, say, accusation of genocide in Xinjiang, for which there is no hard concrete evidence (in fact evidence and reason point to the contrary), there are mountains of evidence in every form of media, whether video, documents, government announcements, proving that there was repressive military and political action being taken against the Russophone and ethinically Russian, or simply anti-nationalist Ukrainians of the East, by the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist regime. There have been mass disappearances, lynchings, bombings, assassinations, and we could go on. Again, there is too much evidence for this in every form for any one person to peruse the entirety of, so either you are pig-shit ignorant, or you are lying. Trouble is you are doing it in the wrong place.
Your last sentence is barely comprehensible quite frankly. If you think that reocognizing that a state should not aggressively expand a demonstrably imperialist organisation and in the process break all related previous agreements and promises in doing so, in a way that every party involved is fully aware will be perceived as a threat to the national security of one of the concerned countries, if one wants to avoid hot conflict, given the self-evident realities of realpolitik, is communist or marxist, then go off I guess.
Ok, so, in all seriousness, thanks for making the attempt at a rational and detailed response.
However, and I say this in all honestly, I have got to start paying better attention to the homeserver of the people I'm responding to. While I appreciate the time you put into your response, I've found that my mood is greatly improved when I don't engage the hexabear swarm.
So, I apologize that you took that time and I'm just going to blow it off. My bad for not looking at the usernames more closely.
Cool, now your brother is dead and you lost half your property. Your serial killer gun nut buddy doesn't give a damn about you so he didn't show up to fight himself, but now he holds the mortgage to your house because he lent you weapons to fight and lose.
Coming onto your property. And half of it is theirs now and you're refusing to call a truce even though youve failed your big push to retake that half and are slowly losing more ground.
There is only one country that used nukes against a live target, ever, and they did it twice, to civilian population centers in the middle of active peace negotiations.
There is only one country with nuclear capabilities deployed in over 80 countries under its direct control. There is only one country that has unilaterally pulled out of every nuclear treaty in history. There is only one country that publishes news articles about and has leadership in press conferences talking about winning nuclear war and about developing mini nukes. There is only one country working to undermine the MAD doctrine. There is only one country that just sent a nuclear-armed submarine to one its vassal states as a show of willingness.
As always, the good and conscientious liberal is never more than two steps away from trying to justify the nuclear anihilation of two cities full of noncombatants in a country that was already surrendering. Incredible.
Next they will ignore this and continue to make things up about their state- designated "enemies" to make them sound worse. Sure, we may have lied about every war before this for profit but this time the Badguy Villainman really is Hitler 2.0, we swear! This time we really are on the right side of history, so shut up and support these Nazis!
God damn, I've lived in America all my life and I'm so sick of our bullshit, and I don't even have to worry about stepping on any of the unexploded freedom we leave everywhere else. And if you live in the UK or something, no you don't, it's Damp America, it's all America.
This post is dedicated to the brave Mujahadeen fighters of Afghanistan
If the U.S. actually gave a shit about women's rights it wouldn't ally with Saudi Arabia (and a dozen other countries) and wouldn't have funded and armed fundamentalist Muslims throughout the 70s and 80s.
The U.S. view of human rights generally is that they are occasionally a useful rhetorical cudgel for browbeating skeptical liberals into supporting the war du jour.
If the west allowed the Soviet Union to bring socialism to Afghanistan, the Mujahadeen would have been a footnote in the pages of history. If you agree with no other part of the USSR, the social and gender equality aspects are surely better than current Russia/Afghanistan. Instead we have Osama doing what he did
And the brave women trying to get an education there.
Damn, maybe America shouldn't have funded the fucking Mujahideen of Afghanistan to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
who delivered to the women of Afghanistan their right to choose who to marry, where to work, right to education, and political rights.
Not arguing there. But this was 80 years ago. You would think that making threats of this nature would be something that you would show restraint considering we have a history.
The U.S. is the only country on the planet that has a first-strike policy, i.e., that as a standing matter threatens to use nukes. This is not 80 years ago, this is right now.
Pine Gap – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), near Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt – located on the northwest coast of Australia, 6 kilometres (4 mi) north of the town of Exmouth, Western Australia.
Robertson Barracks – located in Darwin, Northern Territory.
Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station – located near Kojarena 30 km east of Geraldton, Western Australia.
Other U.S. bases in Australia are present and this list does not include ADF bases with U.S. access. The U.S. military has access to all major ADF training areas, northern Australian RAAF airfields, port facilities in Darwin, Fremantle, Stirling naval base in Perth, and the airfield on the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Iraq
There are approximately 2,500 U.S. service members in Iraq, spread across several facilities in Iraq and other bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, being used as training bases for Iraqi and Kurdish forces as well as launching operations against targets in Syria.
Al-Anbar Governorate
Al Asad Airbase
Camp Habbaniyah
Baghdad Governorate
Camp Victory
Duhok Governorate
Atrush Field
Erbil Governorate
Al-Harir Air Base
Erbil International Airport
Nineveh Governorate
Kariz near Zummar
Saladin Governorate
Balad Air Base
Niger
The U.S. operates drone bases from three locations across Niger. These locations are staffed by several hundred U.S. Special Operations Forces in a non-combat role, aiding the Nigerien military with training and surveillance.
Arlit
Nigerien Air Base 201, Agadez
Niamey
United States Army
Belgium
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
Bosnia and Herzegovina
NATO Headquarters Sarajevo
Bulgaria
Aitos Logistics Center, Burgas Province
Bezmer Air Base, Yambol Province
Graf Ignatievo Air Base, Plovdiv Province
Novo Selo Range, Sliven Province
Cameroon
Contingency Location Garoua, Garoua
Germany
Bleidorn Housing Area, Ansbach
Dagger Complex, Darmstadt Training Center Griesheim
Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Lucius D. Clay Kaserne (formerly Wiesbaden Army Airfield), Wiesbaden-Erbenheim
Germersheim Army Depot, Germersheim
Grafenwöhr Training Area, Grafenwöhr/Vilseck
Hohenfels Training Area/Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Hohenfels (Upper Palatinate)
Husterhoeh Kaserne, Pirmasens
Kaiserslautern Military Community
Katterbach Kaserne, Ansbach
Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart
Kleber Kaserne, Kaiserslautern Military Community
Lampertheim Training Area, Lampertheim
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl
McCully Barracks, Wackernheim
Miesau Army Depot, Miesau
Oberdachstetten Storage Area, Ansbach
Panzer Kaserne, Böblingen
Patch Barracks, Stuttgart
Pulaski Barracks, Kaiserslautern
Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Kaiserslautern
Robinson Barracks, Stuttgart
Rose Barracks, Vilseck
Sembach Kaserne, Kaiserslautern
Sheridan Barracks, Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Shipton Kaserne, Ansbach
Smith Barracks, Baumholder
Storck Barracks, Illesheim
Stuttgart Army Airfield, Filderstadt
Mainz-Kastel
USAG Wiesbaden Military Training Area, Mainz, Gonsenheim/Mombach
USAG Wiesbaden Training Area, Mainz Finthen Airport
Due to the sensitive and often classified nature of this information, there is no comprehensive list with the exact number or location of all bases, stations and installations. The total number of foreign sites with installations and facilities that are either in active use and service, or that may be activated and operated by American military personnel and allies, is just over 1,000.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The number of around 1000 US foreign military bases is well collaborated, even by US professors and researchers. The existence of organisations like AFRICOM and US foreign troop deployments to countries like Germany and South Korea is well known. It's not a matter of belief.
Naval Facility Okinawa is one of the more controversial. There's also Fort Magsaysay in the Philippines, along with others in the region. The US really does have China surrounded on multiple fronts.
The largest American overseas base is Camp Humphreys in South Korea, which comprises of over 500 individual buildings and cost $11 billion.
Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.
There is nothing in this that reflects the title. It's nothing more than passive propaganda. They are relying on people to just read the title and not open the link.
What is actually said is:
I mean that's just factually untrue. Every nations sovereignty is restricted by geopolitical realities. No nation can just do whatever they desire, including joining certain alliances. Mexico will not be joining BRICS for instance, because of the geopolitical situation. And that's not even a military alliance, which NATO is! Europeans are not special, they have to play by the same rules as everybody else. To claim otherwise is to ignore the reality on the ground right now, both in Ukraine and globally.
Also none of this factors in that joining NATO, by definition, involves giving up some part of your nations sovereignty. NATO in reality acts as an extended arm of the US military and it's industrial complex, and in joining, countries are subjected to this reality of Atlanticism.
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Yugoslavia and Libya would probably beg to differ.
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But they usually always do, because of the implication...
You are aware that the US and UK were not the only countries to deploy troops to Iraq (not Iran, as you mistakenly claim). There was a whole NATO training operation involving 13 NATO member states. 20 of the current 31 NATO members had some form of troop deployment in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.
I am not American, and it's quite clear the US does use it's military might when it needs to, to dictate the order of the world, and there is nothing that the EU can do about it. Precisely because their sovereignty is curtailed due to being US vassal states. Of which NATO membership is a key part. This includes actions against the EU. Unless you want to argue that the nordstream gas pipelines just spontaneously combusted.
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Bro lmao you said this shit right here, you're a joke, a clown, an court jester
no way they said something that fucking stupid
liberal and chud stupidity are a dime a dozen these days
Friendly ableism call in
Friendly ableism call in
Dude's from England, cut him some slack for being oblivious. Cuba was only part of the British empire for like a year.
This is an insult to the lovecraftian function of court jesters.
At least he had some good jokes to warm up the crowd!
Lmao holy shit. What the fuck country is he talking about? The bridges are falling apart everywhere
Actually he also said (in the link):
“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”
"If you don't promise to stop making new friends, I'm going to kill another one."
NATO is not a friend or friendly force, it is one of the great evils of our time, anyone arguing otherwise just wants to bomb third world countries.
Ask the citizens of Libya and Iraq how defensive and friendly NATO is.
The process of "joining NATO" is not anything equivalent to making friends, any country joining NATO essentially becomes a vassal for US interests. There's a reason why Sweden and Finland held out for so long.
And that they're doing it with no say from the people.
"If you invite your serial killer gun nut friend to build a tree stand on your property pointed at my house, we're going to have problems"
Maybe. But it's my fucking property, and I'll do whatever the fuck I want on it.
Go ahead. Come onto my property and try to stop me.
Average property rights enjoyer here
Eh. It's the metaphor. Ukraine is a sovereign state, and the argument about what Ukraine does or doesn't do on its own soil - or who it invites over to play - being somehow justification for invasion is hypocritical tripe. Russia's been invading other sovereign states, and stockpiles weapons in its vassel states; it's an "existential threat" to every one of its neighbors, except the strong ones like China.
The arguments Putin used for invasion about Ukraine abusing its citizens were better, except for being lies. They should have stuck with that one, except they had no evidence and nobody believed it. It still made a better story and was less hypocritical.
Also, behaving like a communist with your country when your neighbor is an imperialist dictatorship is only a recipe for becoming a member of an imperialist dictatorship.
Firstly, I'm not sure your understanding of the meaning or relevance of 'hypocrisy' is very clear.
Secondly, you're introducing a moralistic discourse about this when the first issue is what caused or explained the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Despite the evidence overwhelmingly pointing to NATO expansion, the fact that you are denying it when even Stoltenberg and Blinken are basically at the point of admitting it, implicit as those admissions may be, is pretty comic.
If you think that the Ukrainian government was not only not abusing, but in fact not committing acts amounting to ethnically cleansing Russians in eastern Ukraine, you have been living under a rock and its disgusting that you can utter such bullshit with such nonchalance and impunity. Contrary to, say, accusation of genocide in Xinjiang, for which there is no hard concrete evidence (in fact evidence and reason point to the contrary), there are mountains of evidence in every form of media, whether video, documents, government announcements, proving that there was repressive military and political action being taken against the Russophone and ethinically Russian, or simply anti-nationalist Ukrainians of the East, by the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist regime. There have been mass disappearances, lynchings, bombings, assassinations, and we could go on. Again, there is too much evidence for this in every form for any one person to peruse the entirety of, so either you are pig-shit ignorant, or you are lying. Trouble is you are doing it in the wrong place.
Your last sentence is barely comprehensible quite frankly. If you think that reocognizing that a state should not aggressively expand a demonstrably imperialist organisation and in the process break all related previous agreements and promises in doing so, in a way that every party involved is fully aware will be perceived as a threat to the national security of one of the concerned countries, if one wants to avoid hot conflict, given the self-evident realities of realpolitik, is communist or marxist, then go off I guess.
Ok, so, in all seriousness, thanks for making the attempt at a rational and detailed response.
However, and I say this in all honestly, I have got to start paying better attention to the homeserver of the people I'm responding to. While I appreciate the time you put into your response, I've found that my mood is greatly improved when I don't engage the hexabear swarm.
So, I apologize that you took that time and I'm just going to blow it off. My bad for not looking at the usernames more closely.
Cool, now your brother is dead and you lost half your property. Your serial killer gun nut buddy doesn't give a damn about you so he didn't show up to fight himself, but now he holds the mortgage to your house because he lent you weapons to fight and lose.
Was it worth it?
Yes. Liberty and self sovereignty is worth defending, especially when the stated objective of the invader is genocide.
Lmao you not only think Russia is committing genocide, but you think they came right out and said their intent is to commit genocide?
Fucking delusional
congratulations, you are beyond parody
Tfw your subscription-based private court rules that weapon emplacements pointed directly at your neighbor's house are not a NAP violation
I mean that is literally what they're doing on a larger scale
They? Russia? Ukraine is Russia's property?
Coming onto your property. And half of it is theirs now and you're refusing to call a truce even though youve failed your big push to retake that half and are slowly losing more ground.
Some Presidents should stick to declaring only things they have control over.
Some NATO officials should stick to avoiding nuclear holocaust over some theoretical pissing contest.
There is only one country that is constantly threatening a nuclear attack. That country is not in NATO.
There is only one country that used nukes against a live target, ever, and they did it twice, to civilian population centers in the middle of active peace negotiations.
There is only one country with nuclear capabilities deployed in over 80 countries under its direct control. There is only one country that has unilaterally pulled out of every nuclear treaty in history. There is only one country that publishes news articles about and has leadership in press conferences talking about winning nuclear war and about developing mini nukes. There is only one country working to undermine the MAD doctrine. There is only one country that just sent a nuclear-armed submarine to one its vassal states as a show of willingness.
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Next they will ignore this and continue to make things up about their state- designated "enemies" to make them sound worse. Sure, we may have lied about every war before this for profit but this time the Badguy Villainman really is Hitler 2.0, we swear! This time we really are on the right side of history, so shut up and support these Nazis!
God damn, I've lived in America all my life and I'm so sick of our bullshit, and I don't even have to worry about stepping on any of the unexploded freedom we leave everywhere else. And if you live in the UK or something, no you don't, it's Damp America, it's all America.
This post is dedicated to the brave Mujahadeen fighters of Afghanistan
damn, preach!
And the brave women trying to get an education there.
If the U.S. actually gave a shit about women's rights it wouldn't ally with Saudi Arabia (and a dozen other countries) and wouldn't have funded and armed fundamentalist Muslims throughout the 70s and 80s.
The U.S. view of human rights generally is that they are occasionally a useful rhetorical cudgel for browbeating skeptical liberals into supporting the war du jour.
Cannot argue against that. Much in the same way the EU bought Russian gas and oil after the invasion of Ukraine. Necessity is a burden sometimes.
The adults in the room make hard descision get things done sweaty
Incredible own goal here my man
In your opinion.
The US created the people keeping women from getting an education
Youve got neutron star for brains
If the west allowed the Soviet Union to bring socialism to Afghanistan, the Mujahadeen would have been a footnote in the pages of history. If you agree with no other part of the USSR, the social and gender equality aspects are surely better than current Russia/Afghanistan. Instead we have Osama doing what he did
Damn, maybe America shouldn't have funded the fucking Mujahideen of Afghanistan to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan who delivered to the women of Afghanistan their right to choose who to marry, where to work, right to education, and political rights.
Historically illiterate dipshit
The only country in the world with an official "first strike" nuclear policy is the United States.
Not arguing there. But this was 80 years ago. You would think that making threats of this nature would be something that you would show restraint considering we have a history.
The U.S. is the only country on the planet that has a first-strike policy, i.e., that as a standing matter threatens to use nukes. This is not 80 years ago, this is right now.
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"Threatening to end the human race is good, actually"
Note the seamless transition to this, when "I think Russia does what the U.S. actually does" is shown to be false
Love it when smug contrarian westos stumble assbackwards into Juche thought
Except ofc the DPRK is unironically orders of magnitude more humane and realistic than the Burger Reich
You are mistaken. The US is in NATO. Unless you mean to tell me their 1000 military bases encircling Russia and China are somehow not a provocation?
Name them?
Oh you hate US Imperialism? Name every troop
I'm pretty positive even the u.s military struggles to know where all of its military bases are.
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List of United States military bases
Joint bases
Australia
Iraq
Niger
United States Army
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Germany
Israel
Italy
Iraq
Japan
Kosovo
Kuwait
Lithuania
Poland
South Korea
United States Marine Corps
Germany
Japan
South Korea
United States Navy
Bahamas
Bahrain
British Indian Ocean Territory
Cuba
Djibouti
Greece
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Poland
Romania
Singapore
South Korea
United States Air Force
Aruba
Curaçao
Estonia
Germany
Honduras
Italy
Japan
Kenya
Kuwait
Lithuania
New Zealand
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal (Azores)
Qatar
Romania
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Cyprus)
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
United Arab Emirates
United States Space Force (lol)
Greenland (Denmark)
United States Coast Guard (wtf)
Bahrain
Cuba
Germany
United Kingdom
Japan
Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
ETA: These are just the ones officially listed on Wikipedia
Go on you can have my upvote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases
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Are you being deliberately obtuse? The number of around 1000 US foreign military bases is well collaborated, even by US professors and researchers. The existence of organisations like AFRICOM and US foreign troop deployments to countries like Germany and South Korea is well known. It's not a matter of belief.
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Lmao go back to reddit you debatelord loser
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Debate pervert
Name 1000 military bases? How about viewing the major ones: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyafNUuWIAA_Iz9.jpg
Of course you'll now say there's something wrong with the picture and lalala your way out.
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Thank you for proving to be a jingoist wilful varlet.
Naval Facility Okinawa is one of the more controversial. There's also Fort Magsaysay in the Philippines, along with others in the region. The US really does have China surrounded on multiple fronts.
The largest American overseas base is Camp Humphreys in South Korea, which comprises of over 500 individual buildings and cost $11 billion.
Learn to read.