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Earlier today, on Twitter, I posted this link and asked - rhetorically, of course - if there was anyone in the Republican party not in Putin's pocket.
Over on Discord, I was asked what NATO is and what this means. I typed up a fairly sizeable response, and so, am now reposting it in more durable form over here.
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, formed after World War II, in large part in response to the Soviet Union's takeover of the countries of Eastern Europe, with the guiding principle that if any member state is attacked, all member states are attacked.
It effectively brought Soviet expansion in Europe to a halt. It has many faults, but as a defensive alliance, has also been a remarkably peaceful alliance, as military alliances go.
When the Soviet empire collapsed, ex-Soviet client states almost immediately began petitioning for membership in NATO, because they all remember what happened after getting their independence from Russia the first time, in the Russian Revolution and World War I. (Which is to say: getting re-conquered a few years later.)
Many of those states were accepted into NATO, as peer members. (This does not include Turkey, which joined in 1952.)
A quiet but primary foreign-policy goal of Russia since then has been to break NATO, so it can re-establish dominance over its former satellite states. Its activities in Ukraine are part of that same long-term goal.
Also relevant: the EU has been a similar project to NATO, but economic rather than military, going back to the European Coal and Steel Community. It was relabelled the European Economic Community as agreements were expanded, and transitioned into the European Union in 1993.
Anyway, since Putin took power, a - if not the - primary goal of Russian foreign policy has been to break these alliances.
[ANOTHER PERSON] So this situation with Turkey probably has him creaming his pants?
It absolutely does.
Article 5 of the NATO treaties is the invocation of common self-defence. It's been invoked exactly once.
If the US acts against Turkey, and Erdoğan invokes Article 5, that would break NATO. What makes NATO work is that ability of invocation - that if a member state is attacked, the others will come help defend it.
Trump has talked several times about fuck-NATO why-should-we etc, right? And people got him to shut up, because that was also making Putin cream himself. As it should, if you're in his position.
These actions would put NATO in an impossible position. Either NATO (except the US) acknowledges Article 5, and acts, and the US is technically at war with NATO or at very least out of the alliance, or it does not, in which case the primary NATO promise is broken, and the alliance is effectively dead.
And then Russia can begin to push control over the Baltics and other former-Soviet and Warsaw Pact states again without fear of pushback.
All of this is basic Western foreign policy. Pompeo is the sort who does know this. And is apparently acting like he's okay with that.
When I ask if there's anyone in the GOP not in Putin's pocket?
This is why.
Over on Discord, I was asked what NATO is and what this means. I typed up a fairly sizeable response, and so, am now reposting it in more durable form over here.
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, formed after World War II, in large part in response to the Soviet Union's takeover of the countries of Eastern Europe, with the guiding principle that if any member state is attacked, all member states are attacked.
It effectively brought Soviet expansion in Europe to a halt. It has many faults, but as a defensive alliance, has also been a remarkably peaceful alliance, as military alliances go.
When the Soviet empire collapsed, ex-Soviet client states almost immediately began petitioning for membership in NATO, because they all remember what happened after getting their independence from Russia the first time, in the Russian Revolution and World War I. (Which is to say: getting re-conquered a few years later.)
Many of those states were accepted into NATO, as peer members. (This does not include Turkey, which joined in 1952.)
A quiet but primary foreign-policy goal of Russia since then has been to break NATO, so it can re-establish dominance over its former satellite states. Its activities in Ukraine are part of that same long-term goal.
Also relevant: the EU has been a similar project to NATO, but economic rather than military, going back to the European Coal and Steel Community. It was relabelled the European Economic Community as agreements were expanded, and transitioned into the European Union in 1993.
Anyway, since Putin took power, a - if not the - primary goal of Russian foreign policy has been to break these alliances.
[ANOTHER PERSON] So this situation with Turkey probably has him creaming his pants?
It absolutely does.
Article 5 of the NATO treaties is the invocation of common self-defence. It's been invoked exactly once.
If the US acts against Turkey, and Erdoğan invokes Article 5, that would break NATO. What makes NATO work is that ability of invocation - that if a member state is attacked, the others will come help defend it.
Trump has talked several times about fuck-NATO why-should-we etc, right? And people got him to shut up, because that was also making Putin cream himself. As it should, if you're in his position.
These actions would put NATO in an impossible position. Either NATO (except the US) acknowledges Article 5, and acts, and the US is technically at war with NATO or at very least out of the alliance, or it does not, in which case the primary NATO promise is broken, and the alliance is effectively dead.
And then Russia can begin to push control over the Baltics and other former-Soviet and Warsaw Pact states again without fear of pushback.
All of this is basic Western foreign policy. Pompeo is the sort who does know this. And is apparently acting like he's okay with that.
When I ask if there's anyone in the GOP not in Putin's pocket?
This is why.
