Sweden became NATO’s newest member on Thursday (7 March 2024), upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the Government of the United States in Washington DC. With Sweden’s accession, NATO now counts 32 countries among its members.
    • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Reignited the West’s arms industry as well! We had gotten complacent until Putin started the largest war in Europe since WWII.

      • zik@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Kaliningrad’s fairly strategically useless to them now that every surrounding country’s NATO though. The Suwałki Gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus used to be pivotal in potentially re-taking control of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It would have been very difficult for NATO defend them if Russia took the gap. But now those countries are protected by NATO countries all around so Kaliningrad’s a lot less useful strategically. Not to mention that there’s a strong Kaliningrad independence movement so they’re struggling to control it internally as well.

        More here.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Irasshaimase~ er, welcome! This isn’t really that big of news imo, they were pretty much already a member kinda.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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            1 year ago

            I agree, the USSR assumed too much good faith on the part of NATO. Millions of casualties from economic devastation later, nationalist wars are still breaking out between former soviet states, and Nazism is on the rise.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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                1 year ago

                It literally doesn’t matter who is invading who, it wouldn’t have happened without the western backed coup of soviet democracy.

            • wandermind@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Also funny how this “appeasement never works” fanaticism never applies to NATO and it’s members

              Yeah, funny how Russia, China and friends haven’t sanctioned the US and other countries. They have the full right to do that instead of continuing to appease them.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            There are other things to learn in history too, such as some countries, like Russia, simply lucking resources to fight wars this big. As the other commenter said, they can’t get past Ukraine.

            Hitler comparison is really out of place here. It’s more similar to some of the wars in Africa and Latin America.

            • someguy3@lemmy.caEnglish
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              1 year ago

              Notice you don’t actually address appeasement doesn’t work?

              But as for military defence alliance (notice how you tried to misportray that?): Points to cold war.

              Something tells me you’re a Putin apologist.

              You should listen to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. WW1 was interesting.

        • wandermind@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Russia can’t conquer even a quarter of Ukraine, and they still invaded Ukraine. Sweden and Finland know that Russia can’t conquer them, and that knowledge has made them stay neutral in the past. But Russia has just shown with Ukraine that they might try anyway just because, and it’s a huge pain in the ass for Ukraine and for everybody else in Europe too. So it’s only natural that Sweden and Finland would like to avoid even being tried to be conquered by Russia.

          And like we can see, the Russian invasion of Ukraine also impacts France, the UK, and Canada. It’s not that these countries have decided to brainlessly follow the US. They want to support other countries who are at more risk of being invaded by Russia because countries being invaded by Russia is a huge pain in the ass for everybody in the region, not just the country being invaded. So their foreign policy goals simply happen to line up with the US goals.

        • Bimfred@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Russia’s inability to conquer any of its neighbors is irrelevant. The possibility of them even attempting is unacceptable if you share a border with Russia. Sure, maybe Putin can’t hope to depose your government, but the destruction and deaths before his failure are still a horrifying reality that’ll take years, possibly decades, to recover from.

          As for why Sweden felt the need to join, despite not having a single meter of border with Russia, it’s because Finland felt the need to join. The two countries are tightly bound and do not want to end up on the opposite sides of a war. Now they’re much less likely to.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I don’t like the expansion of NATO, but due to Russia’s recent imperialism, Sweden’s and Finland’s reactions are completely reasonable. A much healthier alternative would have been actually advancing towards an integrated European defense system involving EU members, with a door open to certain neighbours such as Norway, but it’s pretty hard to do that when the political groups that could actually promote that alternative are schizophrenically tolerating positions such as “I’m a pacifist, so I’m advocating for my own country’s disarmament despite my neighbours starting wars very recently” and “if Ukraine didn’t want to get invaded, they shouldn’t have sought guarantees against Russian aggression from third countries”.

    • asterroid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      but due to Russia’s recent imperialism, Sweden’s and Finland’s reactions are completely reasonable.

      that is, it was not NATO that staged two coups in Ukraine, put its puppet government there and began to push the country into NATO, build bases and create threats to Russia’s security, but this Russia, for no reason, attacked poor Ukraine, which did not exist at all not so long ago, and it was part of Russia

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      I think Europeans in general psychologically still feel themselves weak without NATO, unable to fill the needs of their own defense.

      I’ve been reading about 1st Indochina war yesterday, so - emotionally biased.

      • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        EU’s population: 448 million

        EU GDP: 19 million dollars

        Russia’s population: 143 million

        Russia’s GDP: 1,78 million dollars

        Simplifying a bit here (I’m obviously taking Morocco and Belarus for granted, assuming that Turkey wouldn’t attack Greece, and so on), but it’s pretty much a “gotta get our shit together” situation, because there’s no reason why we should depend on the US for defense, or anything else.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          That’s about architecture more than resources. “Gotta get our shit together” doesn’t negate the fact that shit isn’t together yet.

          It’s good to have resources, but such a situation is still weakness. Only I think NATO in some sense is a contributing factor, and EU frankly too, both not in the least because of all those veto and consensus rules.

        • paholg@lemm.eeEnglish
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          1 year ago

          I assume you meant trillion and not million for those gdp figures? Even then, they’re low.

        • SwagGaribaldi@lemmy.zipEnglish
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          1 year ago

          Brother, you are literally falling for misinformation.

          First of all, there are not nearly that many NATO bases. The image is completely false.

          Secondly, the second image is misleading. In the wake of the formation of East Germany, 10% of its population were former Nazi party members. A third of its public administration were members of the NSDAP. The public officials didn’t just disappear overnight.

          Tankies (then and now) like to perpetuate this myth that East Germany was a successful Nazi-free society while West Germany was a Nazi stronghold despite the overwhelming evidence against it.

            • Enoril@jlai.lu
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              1 year ago

              Why do you expect to be treated like a Human by someone you’ve just insulted in the worse way (in a very uneducated way)?

              If someone called me nazi (knowing my direct family figthed against and some family members die doing it), i would certainly not bother to look at its profile and try to be nice by using the rigth pronoums. You can’t expect being treated nice while shitting dog shit on people face.

              If you act like a garbage bin, assume it.