Tegularius wrote: ↑June 1st, 2022, 1:05 amI asked did NATO ever start a war not whether or if it's a military alliance!
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑June 1st, 2022, 11:11 pmThe US is a leading member of NATO and it has started many wars for itself or with the explicit support of NATO. NATO invaded Afghanistan in 2001. It also intervened in Libya in 2011. If as you claim, NATO was a peaceful defense force that only reacts to attacks, why then the need to expand it?
You can’t come along with better examples? Russia is only reacting against NATO's expansion!?
It's expansion comes from those who
want to join as is happening with Sweden and Finland who now want inclusion considering Russia's hooliganism. Whatever Russia expected worked in reverse causing the expansion!
The U.S. was attacked in 2001 and the NATO mandate triggered accordingly. If it hadn’t been activated, the NATO protocols would have been useless. Had this not happened, Afghanistan would not have been attacked which strictly speaking it wasn’t. It was the terrorist groups in Afghanistan that were focused on, not the civilian population as is happening in Ukraine. Look at Afghanistan now under Taliban rule! Who do you think most people would prefer back in control...especially the women!
Obviously such an attack as happened against the US initiated the expected response by its NATO allies conforming to their mandate.
Admittedly NATO’S operation in Libya is more dubious and there is still much debate about it but to claim it as some kind of qualifying precursor to Russia’s transgression against Ukraine is obscene considering what’s happening there now and not least, what they did in Syria.
Tegularius wrote: ↑June 1st, 2022, 1:05 amIf it's simply all about geopolitics as compared to naked aggression why did Finland and Sweden, who were so far neutral, now decide to join. What were the geopolitical implications for them to apply NOW which normally they wouldn't have done?
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑June 1st, 2022, 11:11 pmFor the same reason: it is in line with the objectives of NATO's expansion. Both Finland and Sweden are NATO partners since they joined the EU in 1995. They are not neutral since then.
Being part of the EU it’s unlikely they can be completely neutral. It would be a contradiction if that were so! However, their military and politics has so far been independent of NATO, which, based on Russia’s thoroughly unjustified attack on Ukraine, they now wish to understandably rescind since Putin’s Russia has clearly gone rogue.
Russia has a massive inferiority complex. It's Putin's agenda to set right by making
Russia Great Again by attempting to regain its former boundaries. Being subject to such disorder on a national level,
as exemplified in their news and media channels, they will project their own deficiencies as caused by others. To boot,
they have an overriding Nazi neurosis ready to thrust that term on anyone they wish to dehumanize and treat accordingly which explains the atrocities in Ukraine and again demonstrated in their media sick with hatred. The Russian army has always consisted of murderers of civilians, torturers, and most egregiously rapists. Wherever they are the story is always the same.
This is not news to the countries who now want to join NATO even though it may come as a surprise to you.