[u320]

One thing that isn't mentioned a lot in connection to this:

Sweden and Denmark has a VERY violent history. Hundreds of years of wars. It is said to be the worst conflict in all of human history. Now we are allied and committed to defend each other. That's a huge thing for peace.

[MasterYoda]

"It is said to be the worst conflict in all of human history." No it is not, that is incorrect. I really dont know where you get that from. And I dont agree that there have been a VERY violent history. Yes there have been wars, and all war are voilent, but not anything special for that era. Between 1200-1800 there was 15 wars. From 1-10 years and the majority of them lasted just 1 or 2 years.

And fun facts: Of the 15 wars Denmark started 11 of them and Sweden won 11 of them. Sug på den danskjävlar ;) Sweden is a peaceful coutry and that contry that have lived longest in the world without war, over 200 years.

All nordic countries are very similar in so many ways and our language are almost the same so we can understand, "almost" each (except the Danish people (rest of the nordic countries understand what I mean :), maybe that why there have been conflicts ;) We, the nordic countries see ourself more like a family, like siblings that love each outer but also love to tease each other :D

[MasterYoda]

I have to correct my self, the war length was not between 1-10 years, it was between 1-12 when I checked again.

And about "Hundreds of years of wars." I counted for fun how many years in total Sweden and Danmark was in war with each other between 1207 when the first war started to 1814 when the last one ended, and it was around 54 years in total, over a period of 4 centuries. (54 years are dependent how you count, if a war started 1207 and ended 1208 it could have been both 1 and 2 years long, so I counted 1,5 for all wars. So at best it was 47 years or at worst 64 with a mean time of 3,6 year per war).

[hagbard_c]

> Sug på den danskjävlar ;)

I feel a new war brewing and just started stacking cannon balls at Bohus fästning [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohus_Fortress

[AbstractH24]

I feel a new war brewing just by reading this back and forth

[baxtr]

I have many Serbian friends going for holidays in Croatia. Unthinkable 30 years ago.

So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?

[swat535]

Indeed, let's not forget our incredible human capacity for forgiveness. Two major peace treaties I pray to see every day is Palestine and Israel and for the Russians and Ukrainians to be brothers.

Sometimes I wonder what a unified world look like, for example what would it look for Palestine and Israel becoming a single nation? For South Korea and North Korea to merge again in brother hood? For China and Taiwan ? etc.

Like how boring would the news be in complete peace? what we wound be doing instead if we weren't busy killing each other?

Just some questions I ponder sometimes..

[AlGrothendieck]

While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of NATO was "to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down," a saying that has since become a common way to describe the dynamics of NATO

[red-iron-pine]

the irony is that NATO is pushing Germany to aggressively and quickly re-arm

if NATO wants America in then they need to do something about an angry orange political candidate...

[shrimp_emoji]

Germany will be dead in 50 years by demographic suicide anyway. (Like China, conveniently.)

[rainworld]

As opposed to what, the United States of Guatemala? It’s more or less the same story everywhere in the developed world. At least China’s not seeking to replace their extant populations with foreigners.

Really strange seeing people (often gleefully) parrot these talking points, unaware of their own malaise.

[shrimp_emoji]

I think the United States and a India are much better positioned with respect to demographics, with like a generational lead on Europe and Asia. The U.S. has lots more millennials, with much more balanced sex ratios, than Europe or Asia, at least in proportion. Feel free to fact check me though.

Eventually, a generation or two later, the same phenomenon would hit them as well. But it's difficult to reason about what the world will be like even after it gets Europe and Asia. The world economy and geopolitical community would collapse or something, which could influence demographics in yet further weird ways. :O

[skissane]

> It’s more or less the same story everywhere in the developed world.

I don't think it is all the same story.

Americans don't have enough children to sustain their population, but they can make it up with immigration. So do most developed countries, with rare exceptions (consider Israel)

Compare Australia: same story, but with one fundamental difference: US is experiencing uncontrolled mass immigration over its southern land border, immigration to Australia is much more selective, with strong preference given to people like university graduates.

Uncontrolled, non-selective mass immigration is likely to cause much greater problems than controlled selective mass immigration.

And Australia isn't unique here, I think Canada and New Zealand are closer to Australia than to the US in this regard.

[rainworld]

>aggressively and quickly re-arm

On top of that, there's inflation and the value-added tax, which mean that, once all the extra costs have been covered, only about €50 to €70 billion will be left over to spend on actual hardware. "The longer you have this money sit around somewhere, the longer factors like inflation and interest payments have to eat away at this pile," Loss said.[0]

There has been some criticism from European allies, and within Germany, that so many big orders have been placed in the United States.

Depriving local industry. And of what use is this anyway. Why on earth would Germany need ballistic missile defense etc.

>quickly

Two years in, the entire West still cannot outproduce Russia. Let alone Russia plus friends. For the most part, dependable large orders—necessary for expansion—aren’t coming. Overall, deindustrialization is only accelerating.

Italy just ordered 132 L2s for 2027–2037. Pathetic timeframe. These tanks will be obsolete by then.

>NATO wants America in

There is no NATO without the US. Something could conceivably carry the same name but it would not be the same thing. NATO is and has always been an instrument of American control over Europe.

>angry orange political candidate

Remember when Trump ordered a reduction of the occupation force in Germany (35k then)? Well, Serious People got Very Nervous and the military stalled the order. In fact, the generals were in a state of barely concealed mutiny then. And now there’s 50k.

So, rest assured: Germany will be Kept Down for the foreseeable future.

[0]: https://www.dw.com/en/what-happened-to-the-german-militarys-...

[Vilian]

two years in of what? only russia is in war economy, you say like every one is spending as much effort on this as russia, drink less propaganda

[rainworld]

Two years of proxy war. Two years of stressing the necessity of defeating Russia in Ukraine—or at least denying it victory. Two years of coming to the realization that you can’t just turn money into weapons, it takes an industry. Money that they can’t really spare anyway. Two years of realizing that sanctions work both ways, and only one side came prepared. Two years of trusting the experts.

One and a half years of believing sanctions + weapons + training + the greatest ever kontrastnupol were going to do the trick. They really thought it was going to work.

[quickthrowman]

> So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?

Probably not. Russian history for the last several hundred years is a series of kings, emperors, and dictators. Massacres and purges.

The entire peasantry was only freed from slavery 150 years ago. Being ruled by hereditary monarchs and dictators for so long has fundamentally changed Russian culture to be vastly different from the West.

IMO it would take a radical culture shift for Russia to join the West.

[valarauko]

Isn't that true of, say, western Europe too, perhaps leading Russia by 50 years or so?

[andrewjl]

Western Europe was not too different at the start of the medieval period but then evolved in a different direction. The King's Two Bodies by Ernst Kantorowicz is a good read on this.

[tim333]

There's been quite a trend in the long term to democracy and the like if with blips. Like in this graph of countries that are democacies, 200 years ago 2.5%, fifty years ago 30%, now 61%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-non...

I get the impression Russians would like a more modern system but have a job shifting Putin. But he won't be around for ever.

[empiricus]

The current NATO expansion happens only because those countries are scared of Russia. Also, by definition, NATO exists to fight Russia.

[przyszlem]

This is not true, NATO is a defensive pact. Only russian propaganda says differently

[JacobiX]

I think that NATO was founded after World War II, largely due to British efforts to contain the Soviet Union and its influence in Europe ?

[Vilian]

true, but nothing there say that russia cat't apply to join

[danlugo92]

Except the "no/minor corruption" requeriment...

[thiagoharry]

This is western propaganda. NATO were used to attack Yugoslavia and Libia. Attacking 2 countries that did not attack you looks offensive, not defensive, to me.

[xpl]

Russia had in fact expressed desire to join NATO in Putin's early days as a president.

Apparently he wanted to fast-track, so it might have hurt his ego somehow, when he was told that Russia is no special.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240228155601/https://www.thegu...

George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.

The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

[hnarn]

You don’t need to be an expert on Russian foreign policy to conclude from nothing but that final quote that Russia (rather, Putin) never had any serious desire to join Nato in the first place.

Putins views on Russia may have been more widely broadcasted recently because of Carlsons interview, but don’t be fooled; they were no different 24 years ago.

[partiallypro]

Putin had no intention to join NATO, and knew he wouldn't get in. The only reason he would want in is to do the exact same thing that Russia does on the UN security council as a permanent member, which is to stifle and blockade. There are some current NATO members that hold things up, largely Turkey. Coincidentally a large number of smuggled items that get around sanctions to get to Russia...go through Turkey.

[xpl]

Yes, that is a plausible explanation.

On the other hand, I have witnessed how the Putin's rhetoric made a U-turn over those dozens of years — from "Fukuyama-level" liberal and pro-Western (early Putin), to "geopolitical realist" and pretty much anti-Western (as of today).

I don't know how much this reflects his actual worldview transformation (if there was any), but I have reasons to believe that there is no smoke without fire.

[partiallypro]

I highly encourage you to read some well researched books about Putin, his world view hasn't changed all that much. This is a former KGB man. He has held, for a while, that the fall of the USSR was one of the biggest disasters in history. His rise in power was stemmed by a terrorist attack which he possibly had a hand in to orchestrate his rise and the eventual invasion of Chechnya.

[ekkodur]

Have you checked direct or inderect export/imports of Greece with Russia? You'll be ashamed to blame Turkiye. If you don't know Greece is also a NATO member.

[hnarn]

> So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?

While not technically impossible, practically this is very hard to see. Unless Russia becomes a market liberal, well functioning democracy, it will not happen -- and what are the odds of that?

Russia had the chance after the collapse of the Soviet Union, instead it devolved into a plutocracy and what is essentially a one-party state in anything but name.

Regardless of what some people might think, in no small part due to many people seeing Russia as the spiritual successor to the SU combined with its vast geographical size, Russia is not a superpower, and will not become one in our lifetime.

Yes, they have nukes. So does the UK, and the UK economy is 20% larger than Russia despite is essentially being an island off Europe. How about France? They have nukes too, and their economy is 30% larger.

Russia is a failed state at the tail end of a century long brain drain, crippled by corruption and authoritarian rule, but none of these things are the most deciding factor in why they will never be part of NATO; the primary reason is that Russia quite simply has an empire complex.

What do you get if you combine economical stagnation and a dead empire inferiority complex? You get Hitler, or in this case Putin, and I very much doubt any of us will see a "rehabilitation" of the Russian people like we saw in Germany in our lifetime.

[Sammi]

Russia will need to break up into smaller pieces before it is palatable for nato to absorb. Too geographically big right now. USA cannot tolerate anyone else in nato being big in any way that rivals them.

[partiallypro]

Geographical size means nothing and isn't a challenge to the US, Russia's economy isn't that important to the global economy. The Russian economy is smaller than Canada's and Canada is not only a NATO member but also geographically large.

[red-iron-pine]

Smaller than Italy's. PPP works in their favor, to some degree, but outside of natural resources and low-end manufacturing they're mostly holding on to the shadow of the USSR. It's not really a place for innovation, and not a great place to do business unless you're willing to hemorrhage cash via bribes and bureaucracy.

[danlugo92]

> Unless Russia becomes a market liberal, well functioning democracy, it will not happen -- and what are the odds of that?

I think the odds are actually pretty good 50 years out in the future.

At the same time, some democratic or benevolent dictator country (e.g. Phillipines or El Salvador) could be totally fucked up (again) in 50 years.

[baxtr]

Interesting take. What do you think we will see in Europe the next 5-15 years?

[Vilian]

my bet is also explained here https://youtu.be/YJVUGecCXv0

[baxtr]

Very interesting, but also not very reassuring…

[geysersam]

Hopefully! If the warmongers don't get to decide

[gerikson]

> It is said to be the worst conflict in all of human history.

By who?

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavism

[gitaarik]

Don't all countries have a very violent history? (: