I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).
I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).
Distance is really not much of a factor any more, and hasn’t been for a long time. Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg can already be reached by submarine launched cruise missiles in less than 15 minutes (conservative estimate). And let’s face it, with MAD being a thing, any kind of nuclear strike is likely to escalate into all-out nuclear annihilation, anyway. This makes any attempt at overwhelming the opponent a losing proposition. So in that sense nothing has changed since, oh, the mid-1970s?
Then there is the argument that Russia doesn’t want a long shared border with NATO. Guess what, their aggression has caused Finland and Sweden to join NATO, which has only added to their shared border with NATO. That they already had with Poland and the Baltic states (there is no treaty nor official document prohibiting NATO expansion).
And finally, how hard is it to understand that NATO is a defensive alliance? It is neither politically geared to nor militarily capable of mounting a conquest of Russia. The fact that so many of Russia’s neighbors are eager to join the alliance should be a pretty strong hint as to why it needs to exist in the first place. It is Russia that cannot be trusted, not NATO. And you can’t make your neighbor “drop the gun” in their own house. The Ukrainians were stupid enough already to return their nuclear arsenal to Russia in return for explicit security guarantees. What a mistake that was.
Don’t even get me started on how China is criminally underrated as a manifest threat to world peace…