The threat lost by the fall of the soviet iron curtain has been replaced by the Russian and Chinese threats. and NATO is no longer a European defensive alliance, its a worldwide defensive alliance. NATO can and will answer threats should they pop up basically anywhere.

This is why i want Russia to be dismantled and integrated in EU but this will take up a war and years of sanctions to clean up its corrupted structure and create real democracy.
I doubt Europe will accept authoritarian countries massively violating human rights.

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Apr 13 2022 07:54am

Look, it's well within the realm of possibility that this is how things end - but at the current point in time, it's simply an unsubstantiated speculation to claim that this outcome is a foregone and inevitable conclusion.


Mr. Peskov, is it you?




You are really gullible to think that just caving to all of Russia's demands would have stopped or prevented this war. Particularly since the Russian troop buildup was already pointing at an effort to capture all of Ukraine, not just the Donbass. It's blatantly obvious that Ukraine's very sovereignty is what irks Putin.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 13 2022 07:56am

Build up happened fairly recent (in last year or so) when it became obvious that after 5 years of negotiating Ukraine wasn't willing to let the Donbass do it's own thing and they were pushing full force for NATO membership. There really isn't enough evidence one way or the other that says this war would of happened anyways if those concessions would of happened, kind of a reach by you to just assume that.

Let me tell you from my point of view in regards to this on China which I am more familiar with the topic.
The West is not afraid of China. China have doing a lot of business with Europe.

The China threat is purely an American thing and let me say this. America is the No.1 Geo Political Marketing Giant. They are brilliant at it.
Furthermore

Chinese Military threat ( it will take decades and decades for them to be on par with USA I would even think in the next 5o to 80 years they still cannot beat the USA. There is no threat here.)
Chinese Economical threat ( They are improving, but the USA and her entrepreneur and innovative spirit is still way ahead of China)

I will answer you on this what is the China threat that USA and sometimes the West is afraid of.
Ideological Threat.
The West have been " prospering " from her democratic system for years. And if suddenly a country that is not " democratic " one man one vote with a one party system can actually work out. It will raise a lot of eyebrows , it will meant that the system that the West is using right now is not the only system that can work.
This is the China threat.

And in order to keep the West system and political ideologue in line with the " Free World " . They have to make sure China fall. And if China fall , the West can prove to their citizens that a one party system like China , Authoritarian style government, " Communism" will never ever work.
But the Communist part is really funny. The Chinese government as much as you want to call them " Communist" are only in name.

Can I check with you on this, didn't Russia wanted to join EU or " NATO " years ago but they were denied entry ?

thats what happens when you invade another country

That was the optimistic scenario. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people are already dead. Population centers have already been obliterated. Millions of people have already been displaced.
I don't think a time wizard is going to show up, wave his mystical hands and make all the rubble and body parts zip backwards to their original forms.



Its called a war crime, we hung Nazis at Nuremberg for it. Eastern European conflicts tend to have a lot of war crimes, by both sides

This post was edited by Goomshill on Apr 13 2022 08:10am

many of these points are not exclusive to each other.

Europe and the US can love china for its economic boon to us, and they can hate china for intellectual property theft.

and we can be miles ahead on military, and still be fearful for out allies in the region who are not, and what will happen should China decide to move on them militarily.

the chinese threat in earnest is maybe 50-100 years away, even if they brutally put down resistance in Taiwan we couldnt do much but condemn it economically while still doing massive business there. but by the year 2100 we need china out of the potential world ruling government that will follow as national sovereignty diminishes and the global economic govt takes rule. even though many of the control mechanisms and peasantry exploitation measures china employs are a wet dream to american elites as well.

edit: thank you tho for the post, i dont disagree and appreciate the time you took to write it.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Apr 13 2022 08:14am

Thank you very much, I am just trying to put in my own words from the Asian perspective. As a Singaporean, we are also facing al ot of potential hot spot issues that might arise in South East Asia as well. We have to deal with the Chinese and the Americans and we are being surrounded by Muslim majority countries.
But so far the Muslim countries around us have been friendly and secular.