Comments by "Heads Full Of Eyeballs" (@HeadsFullOfEyeballs) on "NATO-Russia war: Can it really happen?" video.

I mean, NATO is a defensive alliance.
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@unduloid They're supposed to defend NATO members, none of which have been attacked. I'm all in favour of helping Ukraine defeat Russia, but NATO as an organisation is really the wrong address for that.
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@theo3030 The reason Russia's neighbours keep joining NATO should be pretty obvious, no? Russia is not a nice neighbour. It's taken chunks out of Ukraine and Georgia, while little Latvia with its huge Russian minority is still intact thanks to NATO membership. I wouldn't call seeking safety from an aggressor a "provocation".
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Moldova isn't in NATO, so that wouldn't work if the goal is to challenge Article 5.
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@BarrySlisk Because then it wouldn't serve to weaken NATO solidarity. Did you watch the video?
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@u2beuser714 I'm not arguing that NATO is nice or peace-loving or whatever. Just that it isn't designed to fight the conflicts of non-NATO states. NATO has never fought a "real" war, just short-lived interventions, peacekeeping operations, no-fly zones etc., precisely because no NATO member has been attacked.
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@svenT16 Russia is only "the biggest country in the world" in terms of land mass. It's mostly an empty wasteland. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy and fewer inhabitants than Bangladesh. It's perfectly sensible for the Russian government to be concerned about its country's geopolitical position, in principle. Putin just happens to be irrationally paranoid about NATO, because he mistakes it for a territorial empire when in reality it's a defensive military alliance.
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The Lapland scenario isn't about acquiring territory in Lapland, it's about making Finland invoke Article 5. The Russian hope would be that other NATO countries will decide that a bit of Lapland isn't worth starting a war with Russia over. Leaving Finland in the lurch and destroying NATO solidarity.
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@antred11 But responding to a war in Ukraine or Moldova isn't NATO's job (beyond shoring up its defensive capabilities in case the aggressor decides to attack NATO later). NATO's job is to co-ordinate the mutual defense of NATO member states. if Romania declared war on Russia over an attack on Moldova, other NATO states would be under no obligation to join in.
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NATO isn't fighting in Ukraine. There are no NATO troops there. NATO countries are just giving some military supplies to the Ukrainian forces.
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That's kind of a big missing thing, though. Also, Russia's neighbours started joining NATO because they wanted to be safe from Russia. It worked, too: Georgia and Ukraine have had chunks taken out of them, while little Latvia with its huge Russian minority is still in one piece thanks to its NATO membership. Russian belligerence is the cause of NATO expansion in Europe, not a reaction to it.
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@uninstaller2860 If Russian forces occupied Finland all the way up to the land border with Sweden, NATO absolutely would intervene though. That's a whole other level of escalation from occupying a strip of wasteland as a "security zone" or whatever.
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@BarrySlisk Other European countries, who can't just retreat into geographical isolation when Russia starts a war in Europe.
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Counterpoint: European countries didn't need NATO at all after the Cold War, until Russia started getting belligerent again. The US meanwhile needed, and still needs, its NATO allies for its network of military bases around the globe. The logistics of the American military empire would be a nightmare without NATO.
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NATO hasn't "expanded eastwards", Russia's neighbours have moved westwards. They've joined NATO of their own free will in order to be protected from Russian aggression. And it worked! Ukraine and Georgia have both had chunks taken out of them by Putin, while little Latvia with its huge Russian minority is still in one piece thanks to NATO membership. If Russia doesn't want NATO on its doorstep, it should try being a better neighbour.
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@nvmffs "so why is NATO supporting Ukraine to such a degree, as you rightfully point out?" Because if Russia conquered Ukraine, that would be geopolitically disadvantageous for NATO. I don't see the mystery. It's not like NATO is pouring huge resources into this war. It's costing them a couple billion a year, total. It's a blip on the budget, the main issue is logistics (scrounging up enough artillery shells on short notice, that sort of thing). Putin expected Ukraine to collapse instantly, in which case NATO wouldn't have bothered confronting Russia over it. But that didn't happen, so now they've got an opportunity to make Russia pay for its mistake.
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Anders Puck Nielsen is an officer in the Danish navy, not an "Anglo-American".
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If NATO was fighting in Ukraine, the war would be over in two weeks. Putin knows this, that's why he has been careful not to touch a hair on NATO's head even though Ukrainian military equipment is being repaired on NATO territory, Ukrainian soldiers are being trained there, and so on.
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"They are waging war in Ukraine to halt further NATO encroachment." That's a very silly strategy then. Considering NATO had repeatedly made it clear to Ukraine that they would never be allowed to join, precisely because it wasn't worth a confrontation with Russia. Seeing as European countries had been bending over backwards for decades to maintain friendly (=profitable) relations with Putin's Russia. NATO was perfectly happy with Ukraine as a buffer state, they just wanted the government to be generally pro-Western, the same way Russia wanted it to be generally pro-Russian. But Putin always conceived of NATO as a territorial empire rather than a defensive military alliance. He himself runs Russia as a land-grabbing territorial empire because that's the only mental model he has of international relations. So he couldn't imagine that NATO wouldn't "annex" more territory if given the chance, and got increasingly paranoid about it when Russia's neighbours started joining NATO to be safe from Russian land grabs like in Georgia and Ukrine.
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If the USA bailed out of NATO, the European Union would probably set up some sort of joint European nuclear deterrence programme. Since the member states that already have nukes ((just one now I guess, since Britain is out) wouldn't want to hand them over to EU control, but it would also be crazy inefficient for each member state to build its own nukes.
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NATO cohesion wasn't in question during the Cold War. Everbody agreed what the stakes were then.
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It's trivial for a united NATO to crush Russia, but it would still be very expensive and cost many lives. So if NATO member states feel like the conflict isn't worth it, there's a risk they won't make that commitment just to defend a bit of Lapland or whatever. The choice isn't "fight Russia together or fight Russia individually", it's "fight Russia together over something that doesn't really concern me, or hope that Russia will leave me alone because there's three more countries between me and them".
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There is no scenario in which Russia "overruns Eastern Europe". Poland, just for a start, has a far more capable military than Ukraine ever did. And they hate Russia's guts, so they would fight fiercely. Any Russian pushes further west would be at least as much of a slow bloody grind as their Ukrainian campaign so far.
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@philpphilp2731 NATO hasn't "expanded east", Russia's neighbours have turned to the West for protection against Russian expansionism. NATO doesn't conquer countries, they apply for membership. And it worked! Ukraine and Georgia have had chunks taken out of them by Putin, while little Latvia is still in one piece despite its huge Russian minority, thanks to NATO membership. If Russia doesn't want NATO on its doorstep, it should have tried being a better neighbour.
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Finland has a much, much smaller army than Ukraine.
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The sword itself incites to violence. Having a tool at hand makes you prone to using it above other options.
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Militarisation does come with its own risks for a democracy. Militaries are in the habit of overthrowing governments, military service inculcates young people with an authoritarian mindset, and having a powerful military creates the temptation to use it. It's a balancing act.
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I understand that this is what Russian propaganda has to claim in order to explain why they haven't been able to defeat Ukraine, but it's bullshit. There are no NATO troops in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting using a couple billion dollars worth of old NATO hand-me-down equipment. The fighting is not in any way comparable to a direct confrontation with NATO.
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NATO isn't "forcing expansion". NATO isn't a territorial empire that conquers land, countries apply for membership of their own free will. And the reason Russia's neighbours keep joining NATO should be obvious, right? Russia keeps fucking invading them. They've taken chunks out of Georgia and Ukraine, while little Latvia with its huge Russian minority is still intact thanks to its NATO membership.
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"Note Russian side has bigger advantage over NATO than allies had over Nazi. Huge population advantage, more than 2 to 1 and huge economic advantage, more than 2 to 1." Did you mean to write that sentence the other way around? The EU alone has three times as many citizens as Russia, and Italy alone has a bigger economy.
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@theo3030 It would only be a "provocation" if there was any chance in hell that said alliance would ever attack you. And if you think that NATO was planning to attack Russia, you're more paranoid than Putin. European NATO states had been bending over backwards for decades after the Cold War to maintain friendly (=profitable) relations with Russia. But Putin conceives of NATO as a territorial empire looking to grab land, because that's how he would do it. So he interprets any concessions as signs of weakness.
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Trying to keep its borders "safe" from what, exactly? None of its neighbours have any interest in conquering Russian territory, and NATO sure as hell has no interest in a war with Russia. Russia meanwhile is right now militarily occupying land belonging to two of its neighbours, Georgia and Ukraine.
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