Have russia to be a member of both nato and european union

Russian membership in eu and nato?

  • Possible

    Votes: 29 63.0%
  • Impossible

    Votes: 17 37.0%

  • Total voters
    46
So have russia to be member of both nato and eu. Preferrably without any third power threatening both west and russia so much that they need to cooperate.
 
The problem (for EU) is that Russia would be such a huge weight that it wont be a European union anymore but a Russian union

NATO could be feasible but it would need a big change in US mentality and Russian politic to fill the gap
 
So have russia to be member of both nato and eu. Preferrably without any third power threatening both west and russia so much that they need to cooperate.

You'd need to somehow butterfly Putin and have someone more democratic and pro-western succeed Boris Yeltsin as the leader of the Russian Federation. Personally, I'd suggest either Boris Nemtsov or Mikhail Kasyanov, as they both later became involved with a political party which is currently an associate of Alliance Of Liberal Democrats of Europe.

The problem (for EU) is that Russia would be such a huge weight that it wont be a European union anymore but a Russian union

I don't really think that. Russia's current population as far as I know is around 140 million, while the European Union as a whole has more than 500 million people. Russia would surely be the largest member in terms of population (though not in terms of GDP), but that would hardly turn the the EU into a "Russian union". It would just be adding a large new member.
 
The problem (for EU) is that Russia would be such a huge weight that it wont be a European union anymore but a Russian union
Counting the UK, Russia would be the fifth country in the EU by GDP (nominal), which is what matters.

They would certainly have a big influence, perhaps replacing Italy as the third leading nation, and would basically carry the entire EU military by themselves, but they wouldn't dominate.
 
Isn't NATO designed specifically to counter Russia? I mean if Russia is integrated into the EU, is there a need for NATO?
 
Point of information: the Lisbon Treaty actually imposes a cap on the number of MEPs an individual country can elect, so Russia couldn't really exercise any more power within the EU apparatus than Germany or France.

On paper, anyway.
 
You'd need to somehow butterfly Putin and have someone more democratic and pro-western succeed Boris Yeltsin as the leader of the Russian Federation. Personally, I'd suggest either Boris Nemtsov or Mikhail Kasyanov, as they both later became involved with a political party which is currently an associate of Alliance Of Liberal Democrats of Europe.
The problem is not with Putin. You could have Russia ruled by the most liberal democrat imaginable who considered maintaining good relations with the EU and NATO their highest priority and neither NATO or EU would ever want to admit Russia. The former because it would make NATO superfluous and the later because the leading members of the EU would never want the loss of influence that would be the result of Russia joining the EU.
 
Does "Russia" have to refer to the modern Russian Federation? If not a sneaky cheat could be to have the USSR "collapse" during WW2, by which I mean the CPSU loses control over the country though not fall completely to the Nazis, while the WAllies liberate Europe from the West. Post war the badly damaged state "Russia" emerges and is included in NATO, and eventually the EU if/when it forms.
 
One way is to weaken the federation after the collapse of the USSR, have secessionist movements gain more power and eventually secede. Then with a smaller Russia, elect a pro-Western leader and you basically could get an EU Russia.
NATO could be butterflied though. What would be interesting, is if there was a Pacific alliance against China in its place.
 
The problem is not with Putin. You could have Russia ruled by the most liberal democrat imaginable who considered maintaining good relations with the EU and NATO their highest priority and neither NATO or EU would ever want to admit Russia. The former because it would make NATO superfluous and the later because the leading members of the EU would never want the loss of influence that would be the result of Russia joining the EU.

Wouldn't NATO members be interested in turning their greatest enemy into a valuable ally? Really, if Russia is friendly, what do they have to lose? Rather than making NATO superfluous, I think that adding Russia would simply turn it into the most powerful militairy alliance that the world has ever known. While it's true that NATo was initially formed to proetect western nations against the USSR, that only remained their sole purpose for about as long as the cold war. Since then, NATO has had to deal with plenty of other enemies that are not Russia (North Korea, Sadaam's Iraq, radical Islam etc.). I think that a pro-western Russia could prove to be a formidable ally against all of these foes.

Regarding the EU, why do you think Russia's influence in it would be so great? There have been plenty of points made agianst it in this thread....
 
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