Am I correct in saying that Estonia is categorizing this as a threat to their security therefore requesting the rest of Nato to consider this an attack on a member?
They consider their security to be threatened, and requested NATO to discuss it. Officially. Which is kind of a big deal.
Article 5 can be invoked once, intentionally or by accident, e.g. a NATO plane is attacked over Ukraine. This whole thing is a mess. Despite history since the end of the cold war (which makes some of Russia's positions somewhat understandable, and the fact that NATO didn't do anything different in Iraq and Afghanistan), if Western-style democracies don't want to loose their freedoms they have to act. Appeasement usually doesn't work with expansionist powers.
> Despite history since the end of the cold war (which makes some of Russia's positions somewhat understandable, and the fact that NATO didn't do anything different in Iraq and Afghanistan)
Can you expand on this? I'm entirely unable to understand why Russia after the cold war didn't become like any other European country and aimed to join the EU etc.
It actually did consider joining the EU, and even NATO at one point, but it wasn't taken seriously by either. The NATO intervention in Kosovo was also a major stumbling block.
Internally, democratic reforms in the 90s became associated with 1) corruption far worse than Soviets had, and 2) right-wing economic measures ("liberalization") that messed up the economy and created a lot of hardship for the population at the time. The very words "democrat" and "liberal" became profanities for some.
So when Putin appeared, the popular sentiment in the country already in favor of a "strong hand" for a while. He only needed to fit the image, which he did quite easily with his KGB background. After that, he gradually deconstructed the civil society, starting with free press.
Russia could have been Germany-fied with a friendlier and supportive hand. Instead it was handed over to evangelical neoliberals, whose imposed economics guaranteed that only the most feral opportunists and violent gangsters would thrive.
Russia could have become a modern social democracy, but now it's a crumbling militaristic dictatorship state run by a raging senile paranoiac with delusions of empire.
It's one of the worst foreign policy failures in all of history.
Ukraine will not be the end of it. If the invasion succeeds Russia will demand a slice of Lithuania to reunite Kalingrad with Belarus. That has huge implications for all Baltic-adjacent states.
But worse, Putin has claimed the RF has a number of nuclear superweapons, including a strategic nuclear-tipped torpedo and smart hypersonic warhead delivery systems. He also completely renovated Moscow's civil defences.
The US has failed to keep pace, and its weapons systems are either old and outdated or over-designed, high maintenance, and relatively fragile.
Putin also been running a very successful program of subversion and political interference. And building up cyberwarfare capabilities.
Even allowing for hyperbole the worry is that Russia is capable of a zero-warning decapitation strike, combined with remote mass infrastructure attacks and internal terrorism. Any response would be relatively ineffective.
This completely undermines MAD as a doctrine.
No mistake - the US is in very, very serious danger now, from both internal and external threats.
> Even allowing for hyperbole the worry is that Russia is capable of a zero-warning decapitation strike, combined with remote mass infrastructure attacks and internal terrorism. Any response would be relatively ineffective.
Does this hypothetical Tom Clancy scenario also plan how to deal with all the silo's the US has with missiles in them and the ballistic missile submarines which exist exactly as a hedge against these kinds of wild scenario's.
Considering the EU currently includes at least one literal dictatorship and NATO includes Turkey, I think pretending this has anything to do with morals and shared values is a bit dishonest.
> They... requested NATO to discuss it. Officially. Which is kind of a big deal.
I'm totally ignorant on NATO procedures, so forgive me that I don't understand the Big Deal here. Obviously, NATO nations will discuss this. They didn't need Estonia to draw attention to what Russia is doing.
So this seems to me a bit like: The exact thing that obviously would happen next (NATO nations discussing) will still happen, but now it's dressed up in a formalism?
NATO, like every other organisation, is discussing things all the time. Article 4 is the equivalent of not just inviting to a meeting about about a topic but raising a formal JIRA ticket and invoking a formal process involving senior management to discuss the severity (and not the mere existence) of that ticket. So yeah, invoking an official article is a big deal, because it forces the whole of NATO to formally address this issue. No NATO member nation can easily weasel out of this now.
The formality had to be done. But the Article 4 invocation is not (I claim) itself a significant event.
To extend your analogy, this is like creating a JIRA ticket when your website with 100 million daily users suddenly goes offline. The shit has already hit the fan and it’s already all hands on deck.
Ukraine is in the middle of two "powers" and the proper role would be one of buffer. They could even benefit from that. Unfortunately, the Russian and the USA have both tried to take that part of the board for them and the Ukrainian population is split on their loyalties.
Russian, simply can't allow more of the board, specially one part so close, to be dominated by the opponent.
Anyone that think this conflict in terms of "good" or "bad" have been drinking the kool-aid.
My prediction: A repetition of Crimea. The Donbas will be incorporate to the Russian area of influence, but not the rest of Ukraine, some noises will be done by the West about sanctions or whatever and in five years nobody will remember.
Hope to be right, because other scenarios are really scary.
One country is attacked by neighborhooding country with history of expanding into neighborhooding countries.
> Russian, simply can't allow more of the board, specially one part so close, to be dominated by the opponent.
Russian in fact could allow that. Whether Ukraine joins Nato should be between Ukraine internal debate and Nato internal debate. That Ukraine has both opinions present does not excuse nor explain Russian war.
That's all very nice, but, unfortunately is not how the world works.
What about the Donbas region, do they have the right to decide in an internal debate?
Instead of trying to be pro-Russian or pro-West, Ukraine have lost a chance of become Switzerland and make a live getting presents from both sides. Now, I think, it's going to be split.
> Instead of trying to be pro-Russian or pro-West, Ukraine have lost a chance of become Switzerland and make a live getting presents from both sides. Now, I think, it's going to be split.
Bullshit. And yes, I am anti-Russian expansion. This is a threat to myself, my family, my friends and my kids, actually. I am very pro-western and very happy my home country managed to be nato member.
Stop paining equivalence between Russia and Nato now.
> Ukraine is in the middle of two "powers" and the proper role would be one of buffer
You are aware that Ukraine was the buffer between nato and Russia, because the two actually touch in other places quite a lot? Also, "buffer" is not predestined mandatory role for any country. Buffer is not necessary at all.
There are so many levels of wrong with what you wrote here ...
> My prediction: A repetition of Crimea. The Donbas will be incorporate to the Russian area of influence, but not the rest of Ukraine, some noises will be done by the West about sanctions or whatever and in five years nobody will remember.
And in six years Putin will grab more land again, knowing that nobody will do more than "condemn" it because everyone is afraid of the other scenarios.
You are absolutely right. However, consider now that USA invades Canada as a result of this. This is infinity worse and always unacceptable. Nobody—not even American citizens—would tolerate that.
The last time USA invaded a foreign country under a false pretense we saw the biggest protests in US history. But then I do have to admit that Bush was reelected in the next election, so perhaps you are right and I am wrong.
Given what we have seen American citizens tolerate in the past, I expect public opinion not only to support such an invasion, but for Americans to enthusiastically participate.
In fact, some redneck militia trying to invade Canada is a common trope in US entertainment (from South Park over to The West Wing, even a whole movie exists), implying that it would be pretty easy. It's played for laughs, but it adds to the desensitisation of the public opinion about such an endeavour. Consent is manufactured.
The position is understandable because Russia is playing a Grand Strategy Game in the past, and doesn't want the enemy ( NATO) to be at all their borders. Justified? Right? Humane? Absolutely not.
That is not understandable. "I don't like nato at the border, therefore I will push my border toward nato". Russian "nato is ennemy" exists, because Russia wants nato be ennemy. It prevents further expansion.
Of those two, Russia and NATO, the only expansion since the end of the cold war and the fall of the USSR was done by NATO. That's just a historical fact. Which doesn't justify anything, but explains a lot.
All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
And Nato expansion was done by allowing coutries who wanted to do join Nato to go in. Yes, some of their motivation was to prevent Russia to attempt to expand again into their borders.
> All that is purely academic now so, with people in Ukraine dying over this shit.
That is not purely academic. Framing what Russia is doing now as kinda similar to Czech voluntary joining Nato is word class propaganda. It is in fact a lie.
Not sure where I compared the NATO expansion, a peaceful one, to Russia's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. All I'm saying is that Russia, pretty much since German reunification, worried about NATO expansion to the East. And personally, I get that. After all, NATO and the USSR (along the Warsaw Pact) used to be sworn enemies for decades by then.
This escalation started decades ago, and was totally foreseeable. And yes, the discussion about the root causes, what-ifs and past errors becomes pointless once bullets fly and people start to die.
> After all, NATO and the USSR (along the Warsaw Pact) used to be sworn enemies for decades by then.
USSR was literally Russia + occupied countries. Saying it is understandable is like saying it would be understandable for Germany to attack Poland and France again, because Third Reich went that far too.
Part of the reason why the German (traditionally Prussian) military elite supported the Nazis was exactly that, the loss of previously Prussian (or German) territory. And not territory that was invaded but couldn't be held. Again, I am not defending Putin or Russia here.
Not sure where I compared the NATO expansion, a peaceful one, to Russia's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
Perhaps it was when you said, "Of those two, Russia and NATO, the only expansion since the end of the cold war and the fall of the USSR was done by NATO."
Some question that nobody is asking is, "what's the role of NATO?"
The historical original reason for its existence have disappeared, so what is it for now?
Putin already believes he shares a border with NATO. Ukraine is not independent in his mind. Foundations of Geopolitics explains in depth what modern Russian foreign policy is aiming for.
That would be correct belief. Russia shares border with Estonia and Latvia. If he manage to occupy whole of Ukraine, he will share border with Poland, Slovakia and Romania too.
Then invading Ukraine wouldn't make Russia getting more borders with more NATO members whose now would be very angry about russia and will do whatever they could to make things difficult?
Yes, but it wouldn't be Russian territory would it? Despite all of Putin's talk about Ukraine being Russian (bullshit by the way even if some Eastern portions seem to be more pro-Russia the Ukraine's west), I doubt Putin would make it formally part of Russia. But even if he did, the new NATO-Russia border would be further West.
I think I am well versed in European history, thank you for your snarky comment. There's no reason to believe some local conflict will undermine "democracies" all over Europe, notwithstanding the media that is always preying on people's fears.
The difference between now and WW2 is that all of Europe west of Ukraine ( excluding Switzerland), and most of it north, are in a single military alliance, which has nuclear weapons ( and France also does, not under the NATO chain of command).
Sure. That military alliance was just recently kicked out out Afghanistan, in a very embarrassing way. That Alliance's most powerful member, the US, aren't as strong as they were in the past neither for various reasons. And Putin, it seems, wants to find out when that block is willing to go to war against a peer (or near-peer) aggressor. Because I wouldn't take it for granted that NATO would actually start a shooting war with Russia over the almost indefensible Baltics (beyond some honor saving measures) or that the US would actually got to war with China over Taiwan. What prevented those scenarios was, IMHO, the perception of the Wests power, and the real soft power backing that perception up. Now a lot of that soft power is gone, and the perceived power decreased considerably. At the same time the perceived, and soft, power of countries like Russia and China increased a lot. The balance changed, and naturally people want to gauge, actively, by how much exactly that balance changed. Ukraine will just be the beginning if it isn't stopped.
You seems to see Russia as expanding, they perception, I think, it's exactly the opposite. Putin is not thinking in expanding is thinking in making an stand.
Everything is a question of perspective, isn't it? You managed to put my thoughts into one sentence, thanks for that. Because I think Putin is exactly thinking like that. Let's hope all he wants is to make a stand, and not revenge.
France as well. Poland was never a intended to stay local by the Nazis, it was the beginning. Not that France and Britain did a lot between the invasions of Poland and the low countries / France so.
If you are referring to Germany 1936, it did not resembled modern western democracies at all. It was not established democracy at all prior. It was forced into democracy it never wanted after loosing war. Prior, it was heavily militarized some-constitutional monarchy. Their democracy was failing mess the whole time.
If you are referring to something else, be concrete.
I'm comparing Germanys "helpful" occupations of neighboring countries "to help the poor Germans there against abuse" inhabitants to Putin's attempt to occupy Ukraine "to protect all the poor Russians there against genocide."
Well, there were Danzig (a free city state) and Königsberg. Not that I would consider that being a reason to invade anyone so. Unless you are a crazed war monger in search of an excuse.
Tho, Germans did tried to create local nazi guerillas in northern countries that would support them from inside. It did not really worked out, they never got numbers.
In all fairness, unlike Poland in 1939, Ukraine is not a country that managed to wage war against almost every single of their neighbours in the 20 years before the bigger fish came taking a bite.
That doesn't make Hitler any less a criminal - it just explains how his casus belli sounded more believable back in the day.
If we are comparing history, let's get the whole picture.
Hitler was actually quite open about his "conquest for living space" project and goals. It was believable only if you wanted to believe and afaik, they did not believed him at the time.
They mostly thought they are not ready for the full scale war yet, but that is different calculation.
Pretty funny how open people sometimes are about intentions and goals, and still nobody believes them. Personally, I think people like Xi and Putin can be taken, when it comes to strategic goals, taken by their word. Which is scary in itself, also scary that nobody seems to do exactly that.
Hitler's casus belli was already bullshit back the day. And the whole East of Europe, from the eastern border of Germany to the Russian pacific coast was at war following WW1. With quite a lot of external intervention I might add.
> I assure all the people of Estonia that there is no direct military threat to Estonia and that the situation in Estonia and at our external border is calm," Kallas [Estonias PM] emphasised.
