Quote (Malopox @ 8 May 2023 11:55)
Poland decided to join an arbitrary war and bomb a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Note that it was not an "alliance" effort as both Germany and France refused to join in as they were not convinced by Powell's statements in the UN and even cited UN report on WMDs in Iraq as a reason not to join. Now if I would be a sovereign state that is not interested in allying itself with US for whatever reasons (e.g. Russia, China, India or any other rising nation that could present a problem for US hegemony in the next century) - I would be worried about being arbitrarily bombed for no fault of my own - based on a worked up fake news propaganda story. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia for a lack of better sources:
Do you think Aleksander Kwaśniewski will ever be summoned by the ICJ to be tried for his role in enabling e.g. this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massacreImagine e.g. Nigerians will manage to unify Africa in the 21st century into an African Union styled after European Union and will promote the development of a common foreign interest and common army and what not. I'm sure this would immediately be considered a "foreign threat" by the Pentagon and we will start hearing a lot of dirt about how Nigerians are subjugating free nations of Africa, how bad they are and how free world should stand up with Country X in their stand against Nigerian influence!
You say that Germany and France opposed, but other countries like UK, Australia joined it.
Germany and France were the countries who denied Ukraine membership into NATO, because they wanted to stay friendly with Putin.
Germany only spends like 1,2% gdp on their military, while according to NATO guidelines they should spend 2%.
Germans made their economy dependant on Russian gas pipeline.
France politicans are relatively friendly to Russians, with mrs Pen getting financing from Russian banks. Mr Macron is the only exception in french politics, who is not pro-russia.
So these countries were not the backbone of NATO, they didnt think their politics correctly in a strategic scale.
They mostly played their local games, focused on short term goals of their own country, instead of thinking about the whole NATO alliance.
I dont really like Trump, but there is one thing he said right, that Germany and France were not doing enough in NATO, and relying on America for European safety too much.
This has somewhat changed with Ukraine war, and its better now, but we are talking about past here.