[GalenErso]

I don't buy the idea that it was a mistake for NATO to allow former Soviet bloc countries to join, because it would supposedly encroach on Russia's sphere of influence or increase tensions with Russia.

Spheres of influence are gained through economic muscle and cultural power now, not force of arms.

[morkalork]

Reading about what the Soviet Union did in countries like Estonia and Ukraine is pretty harrowing stuff. Wanting to join NATO for protection after is completely understandable and denying them because it would upset their former (and present) abuser is a shameful thought.

[gambiting]

Everything that Russia is doing now it has done to countries like Poland in the past. That's why when we see news about Russia shipping Ukrainian kids to Russia to be "integrated" it makes our blood literally boil - it was the fate of many Polish families as well, my own relatives have stories of their loved ones having to walk back from Syberia after being sent there for "integration".

[908B64B197]

To me, one of the greatest feat of the EU and NATO is the integration of countries like Poland and Romania to the west. These two countries were economically and socially stunted by decades of communist mismanagement, failed socialism and outright theft and genocide from Russia.

It's been truly incredible to see them grow and prosper.

[coffeebeqn]

And hopefully soon Ukraine

[908B64B197]

Ukraine is going to be an incredible opportunity for the west in the coming decades.

Young, educated, motivated population with western values and a strong will for democracy and freedom. An economy that can only grow and prosper. And unlike Syrian and Afghan "refugees", there's a strong desire from Ukrainian refugees to return and rebuild.

[throwaway2037]

Real question: Why did you write Syrian and Afghan refugees with double quotes? In English slang, this is used to imply so-called status -- lesser or fake. Their countries were destroyed by war, and they again have repressive dictatorships. Their need to escape to a safer places seems real to me. Also, if Syria or Afghanistan graduated to democratic, free countries, I am sure many, many refugees would want to return home for cultural reasons.

[tasuki]

I'd like to hope so too, but hope is not enough. How do you see that playing out in reality?

[coffeebeqn]

It’s hard to predict what happens in Russia and what the peace deal will be. I can’t imagine Ukraine will accept anything that doesn’t involve something like a article 5

[riialist]

Yes, this was exactly the reason why I, as a Finnish person, changed my view on joining NATO by 180 degrees the day Russia launched its war against Ukraine. Before that, I wanted Finland to be independent from both the West and Russia. I had more friends in and felt closer to Russia than the USA.

But I have been grateful that Finland has been independent. As a child, I visited the Soviet Baltic countries since church choirs were allowed entry. I remember it clearly because I saw for the first time the fear of speaking about certain topics.

Defending the country’s independence took a whole generation, as all men who could be drafted were sent to war and women participated as volunteers. My other grandmother worked behind enemy lines as an underage girl, delivering messages. The other grandmother volunteered to work in prison camps.

When Finland was last attacked by Russia (formerly known as the Soviet Republic), Finland did not receive much help apart from thoughts and prayers and socks knitted by housewives in the UK and US. In the first round, Finland defended its independence but lost a significant portion of its most prosperous areas, including its second-largest and most international city, Viipuri/Vyborg. What happened in the second round of the war was not glorious for Finland, who allied with Nazi Germany since they were the only ones that offered an alliance against Soviet Union aggression.

I have not thought of myself as a nationalist, but I am concerned about the safety of my family and this thing we call Finland. And I don't want us to face again the situation as Ukraine is facing now.

[andyjohnson0]

Thank you for sharing this.

[BurningFrog]

Very true.

Though it's good to remember the Soviet Union did even worse things to Russia.

[kosievdmerwe]

The problem is that as far as I understand Russia claims to be the successor state of the USSR, meaning they want to claim all its glories (and crimes)

Which if true, means that Russian civilian victimization by the Soviet Union is something to hold Russia accountable for rather than a point of mutual past victimization for past Soviet Union states to commiserate together with Russia on.

That's never mind the fact that Russia is committing some of those same crimes now along with waging an expansionist war. The past suffering of an abuser doesn't matter while he's actively abusing someone else.

[KptMarchewa]

Current russia is direct descendant of Soviet Union with all the priviledges - security council seat, got all the nuclear arms.

[lazide]

Eh, Moscow always ran the USSR. That’s a bit like lamenting that how messed up an abusers knuckles got after hitting it on folks faces for so long.

[riialist]

Just please flag this if you see this comment as being too political, as in this forum we are mostly spared of these wrangles.

But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really represented in the Soviet nomenklatura (номенклату́ра). At least almost every Finnish speaking representative from Karelia were "neutralized", leaving the previously most prosperious part of Finland in the state as it is now. Finland would not take it back even it was paid for it.

[lazide]

To be (less) political, and apologies if this comes across as insensitive - all of those discussions (of which I've read many) are post-facto. The terrible things some power structures do to dissidents are indeed terrible.

My point, I guess, is that they happened. And the power structure that did it, did it from Moscow.

[philistine]

Trying to perform something humans do to one another, assigning blame, to a successor state who is very much not human, is the wrong way to look at the thing.

I prefer to see the Russian invasion as the delayed violence from the Soviet Union's breakup. Russian politicians were very much in control of all of Eastern Europe, and the Moscow political class was going to build a political case to try and retake Ukraine by force. That the violence did not happen in 1989 probably prevented nuclear war, and the fact it is happening now and not in 2032 is probably also preventing nuclear war.

[prepend]

I can’t reply to comment under this that claimed that people in Moscow were from all across USSR so I’m replying here.

The Soviet Union was still ruled by Russians [0]… “ From 1919 until 1991, 89 members of the Politburo were Russians (which makes up 68 percent). In distant second were Ukrainians, who had 11 members in the Politburo, making up 8 percent. In third place are both ethnic Jews and Georgians, who had 4 members respectively.”

It was less than the population since by population , 80% are Russian [1], but still shows that the USSR was ruled by Russians.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Par...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989)

[myth_drannon]

Well everyone was "Russian" officially. Khrushov was Ukrainian, same can be said with Gorbachev. Many Armenians. There is a concentrated effort to erase all the contributions of other nations of USSR and make Russians as the only builders and inheritors. And this is different from Tsarist Russia where very few non-Russains were allowed to rise in the ranks. That's why large part of Communist movement was comprised from minorities since they were the ones who suffered more from the brutal Tsarist regime.

[philistine]

The fact that political stars could rise to the top does not negate the point that the main ethnical actor and benefactor of the Soviet Union were the Russians. Those star Ukrainians had to please the Russians first and foremost.

It's the same thing in Communist China. Nobody can displease the Han.

[BurningFrog]

Not sure those numbers matter, since Stalin had the only vote that mattered 1924-1953.

And he happened to be Georgian.

[lazide]

Also, the label Moscovite doesn't require being born there!

And Moscovite is indeed a bad word in many parts of the old Union.

[foverzar]

> Eh, Moscow always ran the USSR

The people that were sitting in Moscow however were from all around the Union.

[carlosjobim]

> Eh, Moscow always ran the USSR.

Have you heard about Stalin? Where was he from?

[lazide]

Stalin was born in Georgia of course. But where did he live when he was doing his reign of terror?

Moscow.

Hitler was from Austria, but he still ran things from Berlin. And Berlin is where the power structure was, and still is.

It's always more than one man, even if the man is a dictator. The dictator is just the one who survives the power structures environment in a way to be 'the top'. And that power structure exists in a place.

The vast, vast majority of everything that actually happens under a power structure is done by everyone who ISN'T the dictator. And those folks don't just disappear when the dictator dies.

As to if a countries power structure represents a people or not, meh. It always says it does, and it draws resources, taxes, and conscripts from them. So regardless of any individuals take on if they are 'represented' or how that power is acquired, 'it is the people' near as I can tell.

And many of them are happy to murder anyone who says otherwise to prove it.

[carlosjobim]

Stalin and most other dictators bring their own power structures. The capital city is just that. As an example, some roman dictators/emperors never even went to Rome, but still had strong power structures.

And just because it has to be pointed out, Stalin didn't do his reign of terror from the Kremlin in Moscow, but from his dacha in Kuntsevo.

Hitler also spent most of his reign of terror from Wolfsschanze and Obersalzberg. He definitely had his own power structure, completely independent of the city of Berlin.

[pas]

I have trouble parsing that. However, the important thing would be to accept the facts, try to process them, and move forward. Of course that's not so easy. (It's not like the US did it. Or that Germany did it super well.)

[xkcd1963]

It's true, since the October Revolution the Soviets didn't actually serve their people

[myth_drannon]

And before the Revolution, Tsarist regime did even more horrowing things to its people. Sadly Russia never had a ruling entity that was good. Well there was hope in the 80's with Gorbachev and Krushev with his Thaw period, but these were short lived and the system went back to its stable state of terrorizing its citizens.

[BurningFrog]

The Soviet Union killed between 20-60 million of its own people.

Did Tsarist Russia really do anything that competes with that?

[akho]

Tsarist Russia enslaved most of its population for centuries.

[KptMarchewa]

Not the same scale, but yeah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katorga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide

[hdjjhhvvhga]

And yet, Putin says those who don't miss it have no heart.

[Gibbon1]

Thing to remember is the Russian Revolution of 1905 changed the structure of the Russian government to a constitutional Monarchy. That's what the communists overthrew and replaced with something far worse.

[go13]

russia and soviet union are not too far apart actually. Let's not make victim of poor russians, while so many of them fight now and fought in the past to kill independent nations.

[foverzar]

> while so many of them fight now and fought in the past to kill independent nations

Let's not pretend it's surrounding is really any better, especially if we start looking at the past.

Someone might think that Russia is opposing a genocidal culture, that had bourne fascism and nazism, enforced apartheid over the world and now breeds it elsewhere to achieve its geopolitical goals.

[coffeebeqn]

It is a voluntary alliance. Countries apply to join. They’re not coerced.

Small countries will and sovereignty also matters.

[TheCoelacanth]

Russia perceives small countries bordering them having sovereignty as an encroachment on its territory. Don't they realize that they are supposed to be Russian puppet states?

[koonsolo]

If Russia would play nice, maybe the countries around them wouldn't mind having win-win deals with them.

But somehow Russia thinks master-slave relationships are better.

[mantas]

It is secured through force of arms though.

As a Lithuanian... If we weren't in NATO, we'd either have a very very serious problems now. Or be a vassal state like Belarus.

[mannerheim]

The question of whether or not it was a mistake misses that NATO expansion was likely inevitable because of the democratic process.

Poland and other CEE countries lobbied aggressively to join NATO in the 90s, and by far their biggest asset was their diaspora communities in the US. The GOP had taken the House in '94 and were pushing for NATO expansion leading up to the '96 election. In order to head off this threat, Clinton promised NATO expansion eventually, to which Dole ended up promising a definite date for CEE's entry. Said Clinton at the time:

'I face a difficult campaign, but I have a reasonable chance. The Republicans are pushing NATO expansion. Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio are key; they represented a big part of my majority last time—states where I won by a narrow margin. The Republicans think they can take away those states by playing on the idea of NATO expansion.'

https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/how-much-did-us-elections...

[jen20]

No-one who has visited the Baltics (specifically Lithuania, my experience in the others is less extensive and less recent) could argue with a straight face that they were better off remaining under a Russian sphere of influence than as part of the European Union and the western world at large.

[User23]

> Spheres of influence are gained through economic muscle and cultural power now, not force of arms.

Amusingly, that status quo is enforced via the USA’s supposed overwhelming force of arms. Which in turn suggests your analysis is deeply deficient in its consideration of higher order effects.

[watwut]

Ukraine is asking for those guns ... and one of many reason is that being under Russian leadership means becoming poorer and poorer.

[red-iron-pine]

Which, apparently, matter.

See also: Georgia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, Belorussian & Kazakh internal protests and revolts, or Ukraine c. 2014.

Russian arms have been used on or by all of those countries. In the case of Armenia, support meant they kicked he shit out of the Azeris before... and not the case now, where Russian can't or won't help them, but the Turks are backing the Azeris.

Force of arms has made a big difference for all of the states around Russia. And not necessarily in a good way.

[foverzar]

> I don't buy the idea that it was a mistake for NATO to allow former Soviet bloc countries to join, because it would supposedly encroach on Russia's sphere of influence or increase tensions with Russia

It was a mistake for NATO to do it without Russia. It's not a matter of "influence", but a matter of military risks and perceived threats.

If there was a political will towards pushing Russia to NATO any similar to what has been going on with Georgia or Ukraine, we'd be living in a different world.

But now (really far more than a decade already) Russia is alienated from NATO, perceives it as a threat and a bad actor. And people will be making all kinds of moralistic arguments, but point is that all of this is a consequence of geopolitical natural laws. Fact is, politicians and leaders were clearly aware of those laws and all the cause-effects and general outcomes, but nevertheless had stirred the world towards it.

[tim333]

NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships, in practice mostly Russia. Unless Russia adopts democracy and human rights it's a bit impractical for it to work with or join NATO.

[foverzar]

> NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships

This is a historically inaccurate slogan.

> Unless Russia adopts democracy and human rights it's a bit impractical for it to work with or join NATO.

Are we still talking about 1990s-2000s? Russia was no less democratic and adoptive of human rights than other ex-Soviet states pushed to NATO. Do you actually consider 2004 Georgia to be more in line with western view of human rights and democracy then 2004 Russia, really?

[skissane]

> NATO was formed basically as a club for democratic states to defend themselves from aggressive dictatorships

One of NATO’s founding members was Portugal - under the Salazar dictatorship. Both Greece and Turkey went through periods of military dictatorship while NATO members-did NATO have any problem with that? The idea that NATO was formed to be a “club for democratic states” ignores its own history

[koonsolo]

Dictators don't like united democracies. Strange.

[athrowaw]

Should we allow dictatorships because any country should have a sovereignty?

[foverzar]

Totally strange given that love to democracies have nothing to do with anything.

Srsly, how do the "United democracies" expect to be taken seriously when their whole attitude to literally everything is "bad guys don't like us for being good boys"?

[tim333]

NATO seems to get taken quite seriously by its opponents for some strange reason.

[koonsolo]

Exactly, and in the end that's the only thing that matters: power. We in the western world can be very happy that democracies represent the biggest power.

Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.

[foverzar]

> Exactly, and in the end that's the only thing that matters: power.

> democracies represent the biggest power.

> Anyone who doesn't agree is free to emigrate or happily live in a dictatorship of course.

Eh, but that's the point: a bunch of countries with a shady history of global power dynamics (genocidal colonialism, fascism, etc) that now declared its current political establishment as a universal virtue, all while invading other countries around the globe.

I just feel like "democratic" don't notice at all how they're slipping into antagonism with almost every other culture except their own, up to labeling the forming west-skeptical alliances as "new axis of evil" or claiming everyone who doesn't politically align to them to be dysfunctional (see Hungary)

What's the coping strategy for the fact that so many diverse regions of the world that share nothing in common assess a very tight (geographically, economically and culturally) circle of countries as a threat?

[foverzar]

As some dangerous warmongering entity, sure, it has to be considered: just look at Russia trying to get a better foothold for another confrontation with it.

What I am talking about is how everyone outside Europe starts rolling their eyes as Europeans claim that the mere reason why their super advanced, super civilized society has bad blood with someone else is because Europeans just too advanced and democratic and only bad boys don't like good boys.