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Marco Bollocks's avatar

It is interesting how two hegemons involved in the current war (one directly, one indirectly) projected own approach within their own alliances (CSTO and SCO) onto NATO. And how it has backfired.

Russian decision makers probably assumed that all these Molvanias in NATO will behave as Belarus or Kazakhstan in CSTO: they will simply follow big brother's lead with fear and/or reluctance, showing little or no own initiative. And NATO hegemon was presumed too busy to react, licking wounds from Afghanistan, or planning new hits in the trade war/decoupling with China. Had Ukrainian army fail in three days as Orcs calculated, this line of thought would probably prove dxmn right.

Chinese general idea about CEE is even more vague, as they simply do not understand countries with populations smaller than 3rd tier provincial cities in China. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is just discussion club (with occasional joint military drills) where Chinese verkhushka dreams that someday CCP will follow Soviet example to create some kind of Nursultan or Tashkent Pact. Therefore, it was shock that village-countries could unite, respond, and even lead more powerful NATO members into helping Ukraine more proactively.

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mtg's avatar

"People who say they are “anti-NATO” usually mention war crimes committed by particular NATO countries. I don’t deny them, personally I think the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan were criminally stupid and I deeply regret ICC did not indict George W. Bush and Tony Blair."

But that's another issue - Iraq was not a NATO operation. It would happen without NATO anyway.

If NATO was disbanded tomorrow, not only it would be replaced by different system of alliances, but this system would allow USA much more aggressive stance, with small countries being demoted to vassals from partners.

NATO makes USA less aggressive - if there is an option to intervene as NATO, with higher pretense of legality, that means that intervention outside of NATO is automatically harder to justify.

You cannot invoke article 5 while invading another country. Maybe you may use NATO to shield yourself from retaliation if you are Turkey, but Israel is using USA in the same way without NATO.

Being anti-USA is understandable.

Being anti-NATO just show complete ignorance of what NATO is.

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