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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNeocon Shitfit over Nato, Trump almost had it right.
SANGER: I was just in the Baltic States. They are very concerned obviously about this new Russian activism, they are seeing submarines off their coasts, they are seeing airplanes they haven’t seen since the Cold War coming, bombers doing test runs. If Russia came over the border into Estonia or Latvia, Lithuania, places that Americans don’t think about all that often, would you come to their immediate military aid?
TRUMP: I don’t want to tell you what I’d do because I don’t want Putin to know what I’d do. I have a serious chance of becoming president and I’m not like Obama, that every time they send some troops into Iraq or anyplace else, he has a news conference to announce it.
SANGER: They are NATO members, and we are treaty-obligated ——
TRUMP: We have many NATO members that aren’t paying their bills.
SANGER: That’s true, but we are treaty-obligated under NATO, forget the bills part.
TRUMP: You can’t forget the bills. They have an obligation to make payments. Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they’re supposed to make. That’s a big thing. You can’t say forget that.
SANGER: My point here is, Can the members of NATO, including the new members in the Baltics, count on the United States to come to their military aid if they were attacked by Russia? And count on us fulfilling our obligations ——
TRUMP: Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-interview.html?_r=0
There are two basic themes here from Trump:
1. the US is footing the bill for NATO, other countries aren’t paying their fair share, and we can’t afford to do this forever.
2. defense of the Baltic states is problematic.
The neocons are having a shit fit over the latter, and don’t want to change the former.
A basic tenet of neocon triumphalism is that this is Our Global Empire. Germany, France, whatever is left of the UK, and Japan get to play along with us, but we call the shots. We run NATO, we run ASEAN, we call the shots. If other countries were equal partners, they might have some odd idea that they get a say in how things go.
We can’t defend the Baltic states. If tomorrow Russia invades Lithuania, the day after tomorrow Lithuania will be part of Russia. Our options would be to start a land war with Russia or lob nukes at Moscow. We aren’t going to do either. The shit fit here is that nobody is supposed to point out that Emperor Nato is bare-assed naked over extended in eastern europe.
Like the shit fit over Trump pointing out that after Roe v Wade is overturned due to his having appointed three misogynist idiots to the supreme court, women would go to jail for having an abortion in the 38 states where that would instantly become a felony, this is about maintaining an agreed on fictional narrative, not about Trump’s monster status. Trump is a monster, he’s an extreme rightwing authoritarian, but he is also a naive politician who doesn’t know what is not supposed to be said.
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C_U_L8R
(45,000 posts)Unfortunately so are many republicans.
Sooner or later they're going to realize what a dangerous phony Trump is.
Hopefully sooner.
tonyt53
(5,737 posts)
Skinner
(63,645 posts)Russia isn't going to invade any NATO member state because they know an attack on one is an attack on all of them. If one does get attacked the United States would honor our commitment.
Trump just told Russia that if they attacked a NATO member state Trump would let them do it. That is insanity.
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Jay-sus!
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Your move. Land war in eastern europe or nuke moscow?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)In addition to bombing their troop concentrations.
What you don't do is give them a green light to do it, which is what Trump just did.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)Russia is not going to invade Lithuania, because NATO. Trump removes that protection.
Skinner
(63,645 posts)And if they do invade, you bet we will defend our NATO ally, along with the help of other NATO members.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)the point is that our commitment to the baltic states is in reality a fiction. We don't have any credible conventional military options that would prevent Russia from doing exactly what they did in Crimea and Georgia.
So indeed it is unlikely to occur, but if it did, the reality is that there is nothing militarily that NATO could do. Of course we can pretend that we could "bomb their cities into rubble" as somebody else stated, but we can't. We have neither ground nor air superiority in the region. NATO is overextended.
The point is that Trump wasn't entirely wrong, our commitment to the Baltic states is basically just a talking point, but nobody is supposed to say that.
Skinner
(63,645 posts)Maybe if we had 71% of the global total, that might be credible.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Political realities shift and solidify.
Spending more doesn't necessarily fix that either.
Better option anyway, is to make hay while the sun shines. In this case, hay being durable political and economic ties. Russia is still hurting from oil prices. That's an opportunity to forge stronger trade ties in other markets.
Much better than everyone standing around pointing guns at each other in lieu of diplomacy.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Both air and land. You might want to check out the endless data on war-gaming this scenario.
auntpurl
(4,311 posts)FFS.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)Leaving out Ukraine which is muddy with narratives it is very easy to fact check the claims about "Putin's Ambitions". Like the claim that he misses the USSR and wants an empire. He simply never said that. He said that the breakup, as in how and what happened in the FSSR was catastrophic (which it was). Every Russian knows exactly what he was saying because they lived it. Yet the press (and MIC, Politicians, etc continue to make that "quote" to be what it is not).
It is unfortunate that we do not have stronger diplomatic staff with better skills and less hubris because we could end up in a nuclear was over what even many congressman do not realize is often based on propaganda and old cold war attitudes, special interests, etc.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Russia could certainly take Lithuania in a day. But if we are willing to simply acquiesce to such a situation, we may as well just tell Putin to take whatever he wants, because we will not do shit.
I certainly don't want a war. But neither does Putin. Russia's economy is #13 in the world. Smaller than Italy. They KNOW they cannot win anything like a protracted war with a sophisticated enemy. But if they know that enemy will not respond, then they can gobble up smaller former imperial slaves at will.
The whole point of deterrent is to be willing to do something you don't want to do to discourage the other bloke from engaging in adventurism. So far, Russia has paid a relatively small price for its military adventurism. If we signal we aren't willing to stop them, expect more of that.
GOLGO 13
(1,681 posts)She has maybe dozens of well equipped/trained units that can fight for a finite amount of time. While we can project hundreds of thousands of troops & vigorously sustain them for a long, long time.
She can definitely do damage, but up against a more modern fighting force that's defending their country? Also, who are Russia's allies again that would be willing to throw down for a new Russian empire?
