WI Russia joined NATO?

Would America ever allow Russia to join NATO?

  • Never. "Opposing Russia" is the whole point!

    Votes: 75 53.6%
  • Of course. NATO must expand!

    Votes: 40 28.6%
  • Polly mcPoll face

    Votes: 38 27.1%

  • Total voters
    140
This map is apparently post-2014 but still omits Russian deployments in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. So it is then a map of those deployments Russia owns up to or ones that are legit in the eyes of international law, not total deployments.

Generally, though, we can well say that Russian foreign deployments and bases are more often than not matters of Soviet legacy. Are there actually any significant Russian military missions in nations that were not parts of the USSR, or at least Soviet allies, satellites and collaborators in the Soviet era? At least looking at this map I don't think so.

Read the dates. As for the Ukrainian incursions and the Crimean seizure those are not so much "bases or deployments" as active territorial acquisitions which are defacto (note the word) Russian controlled territory.

The Cuber (not a misspelling) presence is a Soviet Cuban treaty thing Russia inherited. Venezuela (not shown but significant), bears watching because of strange things going on inside that country.^1

^1 Putin previously has his air force fly "show the flag flights" with his few operational bombers as signals of his displeasure to something that Washington has said or done. These are demonstrators, not actual THREATS. Just like the deployment of a couple of Blackjacks and a support flight echelon was a recent deployment to Venezuela show his support to Madura (that power-mad individual) in Caracas was not a "The Russians are coming!" moment. The Russians have not made any really overt move to establish a more formal pronounced presence, but they have to be in country in some strength and at least advise how to use the too complex and advanced for the Venezuelans air defense equipment that the Venezuelan Caudillo has "purchased" from the Russians. Not enough Russians there to declare a base force presence, yet? You decide.

Syria for the moment and Libya until Putin was chased out are examples to note. Russia shows up where there is no pushback. This is not the actions of a world conqueror but of a man (Putin) who plays a weak hand aggressively and dangerously to stay in the "Great Game". There is some danger here. Not understanding the situation or knowing the history is the risk and limit miscalculation is the strategic error Putin runs. Monroe Doctrine and US southern flank is VERY DANGEROUS. What was the US Response to the Putin move?

Dust off those Pershing II and Poseidon plans. OOPs. Putin has to think about that one, because now he has put his nation's neck under a new knife. And his "ally" China is very unhappy with him, too. You see, this now involves them.

c10_1_jpg.ashx


Land based "coast defense" rocket artillery is much cheaper than ballistic missile submarines and unlike China the US CAN hit ships at sea with them because the US invented the tech about four decades ago. The "Great Game" has unforeseen consequences.
 
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Perhaps I did no make myself clear enough: I'm not discussing Russian-Ukrainian relations as a matter of principle. Not here, not in a real life with my friends: we decided that the issue is contentious and, as such is declared a taboo. Of course, you can write whatever you want on the subject but I'm not going to read or respond.

Russian perception is an important question, but IMO so is Western perception, and the perception of all the non-Russian peoples whose nations and lives had been changed due to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the USSR.

I quite agree that all points of view matter but I was addressing a narrow issue of the Russian attitudes toward the US and why it is what it is now. It has little to do with the realities of life or up to which degree expectations on both sides had been justified.
 
Russia has always wanted buffer states as part of their National defense. This based mainly on paranoia of being invaded. This is justifiably based on their history of being invaded from the both the East and the West. Additionally they have always been treated as a fringe part of Europe and not really part of Europe. If they are invited into NATO along with the other Eastern Bloc nations and also invited into free trade agreements with the Western European nations and the US it would potentially ease their fears of invasion since they would be protected by treaty with the their former rivals in both Western Europe and the US. Their only potential military threat at this point becomes China which is essentially held in check since to now go to war with Russia would be to go to war with the United States and the NATO nations. This sense of security and trade benefits would allow them to work more on their economy and allow them to shrink their military in size but increase its lethality by becoming a small all volunteer force that would be re-arming with modern weapons which is paid for with the drastically lower manpower costs and no longer carrying the maintenance costs for outdated equipment.

What are all those nuclear weapons for ?

A nation must apply to join NATO. Russia never wanted to nor did it ever apply.

A nation does not have to apply.

North Atlantic Treaty (underlining my own):

Article 10
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.



In fact, @Dennis Dean Matta has it entirely correct. The North Atlantic Treaty is relatively short. Nowhere in the treaty does it allow for a country to accede absent an invitation from all existing NATO members. Nor does it envision nations applying to join. They can only be invited (unanimously) to join.
 
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longsword14

Banned
Nor does it envision nations applying to join
My comment was not about an actual regulation, but intent. For all the talk about Russia wanting to join NATO, talks never went far ahead. As for invitation to join, it was not a priority for the rest of the members so hardly any fault there.
All this talk of resentment due to absence of invitation to membership of NATO is meaningless. Things got hot well after the times when Russia had entertained a possibility of joining NATO.
 
My comment was not about an actual regulation, but intent. For all the talk about Russia wanting to join NATO, talks never went far ahead. As for invitation to join, it was not a priority for the rest of the members so hardly any fault there.
All this talk of resentment due to absence of invitation to membership of NATO is meaningless. Things got hot well after the times when Russia had entertained a possibility of joining NATO.

But Russia never had to apply. That was @Dennis Dean Matta's point, which was being disputed (unless you mean to say that you made a mistake in saying "a nation must apply to join NATO" and in your follow up comment on "an actual application", if so then that understandable). Russia needed to be invited. Much as how Ukraine's NATO aspirations will go nowhere unless all NATO members are in agreement to invite Ukraine. So it's not really possible to separate the actual regulation from the intent, because regulation is important and can feed back on intent and vice versa.

As for Russia's intent, others have noted that Russia/the Soviet Union showed some intent on at least four occasions. Now it can be argued that the intent was lukewarm but we can't say there was zero intent (unless perhaps we are going to equate those times with perhaps Rwanda's intentions to join NATO...)

My comment was not about an actual regulation, but intent.

By the way, saying your comment was not about an actual regulation but intent is confusing given what you seemed to very clearly write before:

What are all those nuclear weapons for ?

A nation must apply to join NATO. Russia never wanted to nor did it ever apply.

And none of it ever came to something like an actual application. A few have shown some inclination to join NATO, but never actually applied which is not the same thing as NATO rejecting their wish.
Russia simply wasn't going to be part of NATO unless something drastically changed in it near-abroad policy.
In the link from NYT:
"I have seen the letter," Mr. Worner said. "He did not apply for membership, he just raises a question, and then says he regards that as a long-term political aim. My reaction is that nothing is excluded, and we will have time enough to develop relations."

Because what you wrote, even if you meant it to refer to the intention to join rather than the process, speaks very much on the process rather than the intention ("inclination" refers more to intention than "application" and "apply"), whereas Dennis comment (which is the sole part of which you quoted) was clearly speaking on the process: "If they are invited into NATO along with the other Eastern Bloc nations"
 
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longsword14

Banned
Now it can be argued that the intent was lukewarm but we can't say there was zero intent
If there was any, then they definitely showed very little insistence.
All this talk of NATO denial is a red-herring. It is all about ex-Warsaw members getting in.
 
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Perhaps I did no make myself clear enough: I'm not discussing Russian-Ukrainian relations as a matter of principle. Not here, not in a real life with my friends: we decided that the issue is contentious and, as such is declared a taboo. Of course, you can write whatever you want on the subject but I'm not going to read or respond.

I do personally consider your attitude about discussing the matter as a somewhat curious one, especially as your initial comment showed that you have a rather strong view about the power change in Russia.

But to each their own, I guess.

I quite agree that all points of view matter but I was addressing a narrow issue of the Russian attitudes toward the US and why it is what it is now. It has little to do with the realities of life or up to which degree expectations on both sides had been justified.

I understand what you are saying. The point of my writeup above is to argue it would be difficult to change things so in the 1990s so that Russians would not see themselves and their nation as being screwed by the US and NATO. To achieve this would mean that "the West" would go over and above the call of duty to commit to helping Russia weather the economic and societal trouble caused by the fall of the USSR and its system. Like I mentioned above, I see the window of opportunity to do this as a very slim one, as the political will for it and resources available for it would be limited.

And then there is one important point I did not address above: even if the West would be ready to invest heavily in helping Russia in the 90s and 00s, Russians themselves would have to be ready and willing to accept that help. Given what I know about Finnish projects with the Russians since the 1990s, ones that often have been about Finns basically giving away money and various goods to help people in Karelia, the Russian local and state bureaucracy has some pretty big trust issues when it comes to Western governments and companies. These issues with trust, and paranoia towards Western motivations existed already in the 1980s (no surprise after all Cold War confrontation and propaganda on both sides), they have not been created only in the last three decades. So - there definitely would be friction between Western organizations and the Russians even if the truly West committed to helping Russia. If such Russian mistrust and paranoia leads to a lot of bureacratic opposition/friction towards Western assistance programs and their staff, this could put a big dampener on the Western willingness to keep those programs going nevertheless. Building mutual trust would require some work on the Russian side as well, and for this work the Soviet heritage would present certain obstacles.
 
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Roosevelt didn't just thought he could control Stalin, he literally liked him a lot and felt that the US and the USSR were in some way related
really whats the dif between Russians and americans? from an anglo perspective .. besides language.. nothing .. you would be hard pressed to pick the Russian out of a lineup of otherwise euro - americans.

as to the control part.. eh.. I think it was one of trying to bring two powers together and mellow the communist rhetoric. bringing them into the fold.
 
I understand what you are saying. The point of my writeup above is to argue it would be difficult to change things so in the 1990s so that Russians would not see themselves and their nation as being screwed by the US and NATO. To achieve this would mean that "the West" would go over and above the call of duty to commit to helping Russia weather the economic and societal trouble caused by the fall of the USSR and its system. Like I mentioned above, I see the window of opportunity to do this as a very slim one, as the political will for it and resources available for it would be limited.

You keep missing the point. A person (or a country) is not under a general obligation of helping other person (or a country) unless there is some valid reason for doing it. However, a non-receiver of help has no obligation to like a non-giver regardless of the reasons, however valid, by which help was not provided.

Of course, if non-receiver is more or less reasonable person/entity he/it may understand that you don't really have to give him money for no reason and while there is no love, there is not necessarily an animosity. However, if after not giving him money you are openly gloating over his problems and lecturing him on how he must behave and never missing a chance to screw him up one way or another, then your expectation that this person has to like you and not to try to screw you back at the 1st opportunity is rather naive or even idiotic.

So both sides did what they did and the results are what they are now and there is absolutely no reason for us (specifically US ;)) right now to expect anything good from the Russian side except for the cases when <whatever> is in their own interests as well. And vice versa.

And then there is one important point I did not address above: even if the West would be ready to invest heavily in helping Russia in the 90s and 00s, Russians themselves would have to be ready and willing to accept that help. Given what I know about Finnish projects with the Russians since the 1990s, ones that often have been about Finns basically giving away money and various goods to help people in Karelia, the Russian local and state bureaucracy has some pretty big trust issues when it comes to Western governments and companies. These issues with trust, and paranoia towards Western motivations existed already in the 1980s (no surprise after all Cold War confrontation and propaganda on both sides), they have not been created only in the last three decades. So - there definitely would be friction between Western organizations and the Russians even if the truly West committed to helping Russia. If such Russian mistrust and paranoia leads to a lot of bureacratic opposition/friction towards Western assistance programs and their staff, this could put a big dampener on the Western willingness to keep those programs going nevertheless. Building mutual trust would require some work on the Russian side as well, and for this work the Soviet heritage would present certain obstacles.

Everything above is nice and correct but hardly an ultimate argument in a view of our (American) enormous investments into the economy of the communist China. They are cheating in their trade practices, stealing our intellectual property on a scale that Russia could not even imagine, asserting themselves aggressively against our close allies (who don't want to spend money on their own defense or pay adequately for us defending them :teary:), suppressing minorities and political opposition and we are still extremely nice with them.

In the terms of a Realpolitik are we better with having Russia siding with them rather than with us?
 
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Ok, so; I will preface this by saying that my perceptions may be coloured as a second generation Russian immigrant into the UK, and that I am far from an expert.

So one thing I noticed is that some people said that Russia did not transition well to a democracy, and I think people are looking at this slightly incorrectly. Why did Russia fail to transition to a democracy? You could push my family's argument, that Russia is destined to always be autocratic, but I find that a better explanation is because there was foreign pressure against a fully democratic system. I realise I sound like I have a tin-foil hat, but bear with me here. After the collapse of the USSR, life became drastically worse in Russia. This, understandably, lead to nostalgia for the old communist system; and furthermore the loss in national prestige only supported this. This meant that the communists received a vast share of the vote, and still held the Russian Upper and Lower Chambers. At this point, the USA was more concerned with stopping the USSR from returning - it would be humiliating to have 'triumphed' only for the defeated enemy to get right back up. Thus, they supported Yeltsin. Yeltsin... was a nightmare. He was an awful president. He bombed the Russian white house, ignored referenda, blatantly rigged votes (see Medyedev's comment on how Yeltsin did not win in 1996), failed foreign policy, was drunk at important diplomatic events, destroyed the Russian economy, the list goes on and on. His approval rating, by the end of his tenure was, I believe, a measly 3%. But. Because the alternative was communism, the USA supported him. This meant that, yes, they had democracy as a secondary priority (really not surprising, look at Latin America in the past century), but furthermore, it is interesting that many Russians see that period as a failure of democracy. Not in the sense that the democracy was not able to take hold - although that too - but also in the sense that the democracy failed them. This lead to a surge in support for Putin's autocratic governance, though here I wish to segway into my second point. Many people here seem to see Putin as inevitably anti-west and autocratic. I would disagree with this. Putin, at the beginning of his presidency, seemed to be somewhat of a blank slate; while he pushed for increased interaction with the west he simultaneously pushed for strengthening Russia. I feel that Putin is a very intelligent oppurtunist - whatever your personal feelings, whether you see him as a devil or as a hero, we can certainly say that he is intelligent - who realised that A) the west wasn't really too interested in helping Russia and B) that if he pushed against the west, he could get more votes. He also clearly felt that pushing a more autocratic outlook would garner him more votes. Putin's objective, in my opinion, was to stay in power; if the circumstances dictated that democracy and pro-western policies got him more support, he would support those values. Thus, I feel that in many ways, had the west supported Russia more, and Russian opinion was more pro-western (perhaps if a more competent president than Yeltsin was in power?), then Putin would have pushed harder to get into NATO. This isn't to lay the blame on the west; I certainly understand why they took the decisions they did, and I probably would have done the same.

I will also note, on the topic of trust and promises that I saw come up a few times, that Russia has always been pushed towards believing that the West is their enemy; and in some ways this really is justified. Example 1: Russian Civil War, Brest Litovsk, WW1; Russia had fought hard in WW1 and lost. They rather expected that they would be repaid for their losses; and as they were the greatest of any country, that is not too surprising. Instead, America, Japan, UK, France and so on all encouraged the RCW with support to the Whites, and then when the Bolsheviks won they did not exactly welcome them with open arms. This issue then carries on effectively to example 2: WW2. Hitler, at least in part, rose to power and expanded in the 1930s due to UK support. Now, whether you believe appeasement is justified or not, it cannot be denied that it looked to Russia like the West was strengthening Hitler to fight the USSR. Furthermore, during the war, the USSR certainly did the most ground work and all the heavy lifting. The USSR then felt like it did not receive a fair share of the spoils and vengeance on Germany (which had killed 30million USSRians total, and had waged a genocidal campaign against the slavic peoples), and immediately after the West began working against the USSR. Unsurprisingly, this caused immense resentment and distrust. There are more examples, but effectively, what I am saying is that Russia simply doesn't trust the west to be fair to it and to keep their promises. (Whether this is fair is not an opinion I'm prepared to state).

Apologies, this was rather rambling, but I felt that these points were rather intriguing from my point of view.
 
(^^^) I read very little content with which I disagree. I am somewhat amused that the US is listed at the head of the queue in the RCW White Russian supporters though,. That from my understanding was a British led effort. The US and UK did not exactly see eye to eye at that time about that issue and a lot of other things ongoing, and not just in Russia.
 
You keep missing the point. A person (or a country) is not under a general obligation of helping other person (or a country) unless there is some valid reason for doing it. However, a non-receiver of help has no obligation to like a non-giver regardless of the reasons, however valid, by which help was not provided.

Of course, if non-receiver is more or less reasonable person/entity he/it may understand that you don't really have to give him money for no reason and while there is no love, there is not necessarily an animosity. However, if after not giving him money you are openly gloating over his problems and lecturing him on how he must behave and never missing a chance to screw him up one way or another, then your expectation that this person has to like you and not to try to screw you back at the 1st opportunity is rather naive or even idiotic.

So both sides did what they did and the results are what they are now and there is absolutely no reason for us (specifically US ;)) right now to expect anything good from the Russian side except for the cases when <whatever> is in their own interests as well. And vice versa.

A non-receiver of help has no obligation to like a non-giver, sure. But then how far can this be used as an argument to coax someone to give help? If the US government or the leaders of the Western nations in general would have been told in c. 1992 that "we need to help the Russians now, in various economic and institutional ways, or otherwise they will come to resent us, be bitter and not like us in the future", would that have, alone, been a sufficient argument to make Western leaders commit to a comprehensive assistance program for Russia? I very much doubt it.

In Finland, many older people still resent the Swedish for not coming officially to Finland's help during the Winter War. Among my grandfather's generation, the Swedish decision not to intervene in the war on Finland's side was seen as a "betrayal" by a Nordic "brother nation", and many people then in the spring of 1940 blamed the Swedish for the fact that Finland had to give over precious land to to the USSR, and a major part of the national population had to leave their homes. But would pointing this possible future bitterness by the Finns against Sweden at the time convince the Swedish government to break its traditional neutrality and practically declare war against the USSR? Most likely not. "They will not like us in the future" is not very often an argument that can be used to override entrenched national policy based on long-standing interests or the primacy of domestic politics.

Nobody really expects Russians to like "the West", anyway. What is merely expected is that they can work with other nations in a responsible manner, respecting international law and the agreements they sign with other sovereign states. Countries don't have to like each other to be civil with each other.


Everything above is nice and correct but hardly an ultimate argument in a view of our (American) enormous investments into the economy of the communist China. They are cheating in their trade practices, stealing our intellectual property on a scale that Russia could not even imagine, asserting themselves aggressively against our close allies (who don't want to spend money on their own defense or pay adequately for us defending them :teary:), suppressing minorities and political opposition and we are still extremely nice with them.

In the terms of a Realpolitik are we better with having Russia siding with them rather than with us?

What people have been arguing here is, essentially, "the West" giving major assistance to Russia in the 1990s to offset the negative consequences of the fall of the USSR. What this would amount to, then, would practically be humanitarian aid given by Western governments without an expectation of a quid pro quo, to help Russia back on its feet as a functional sovereign nation as soon as possible. Later on, business cooperation (on an equal basis) could follow, according to such thinking.

Investment in the expectation of future profit is a different issue from this kind of a vision. In the last few decades Western companies have invested heavily into China because they thought they could turn a profit there, not because they wanted to give humanitarian aid to China. And since 1991, many Western companies have invested a lot into Russia as well. I know for a fact that many Finnish companies have tried to find growth for themselves in the Russian market. The thing is, though, that in the view of many Russians, this kind of Western investment appears to be seen negatively, as a way of the West trying to profit from Russia and benefit on the Russian expense, to make Russia into a "neocolonial" holding of "the West".

Many Western companies have come to see that Russia is not an easy country to work in, in the 1990s due to the instability and growth of organized crime that accompanied the years following the dissolution of the USSR, and since then due to frequent unexpected actions of the authorities that often served to "pull the rug" from under arrangements foreign companies think have been enshrined in solid agreements with the state or with Russian companies. In Russia, the atmosphere is not very good for foreign business due to a lack of predictability by the authorities on many levels. This is probably connected heavily with the problems Russia has with the rule of law and consistent, independent property rights. For Western companies, this kind of "institutional friction" can be something that drives them away. This is a constant theme I see in Finnish discussions about doing business in Russia. The issue is not the strong position of the government or, say, high taxation. Business can generally withstand such matters (like in the Nordic countries) if there is institutional predictability, rule of law and a level playing field that does not hurt foreign companies excessively in comparison to domestic business.

In China, it seems, the benefits for foreign business are better (if alone due to lower salaries and lesser workers' rights, and apparently comparatively more predictable government policies) and thus capital has seeked growth there more likely than in Russia. This Western investment has not been happening because these Western (or global) corporations like China or the Chinese people better than Russia or Russians. It is just that they seem to see more benefits (and comparatively less obstacles) in investing to China than in investing to Russia.
 
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(^^^) I read very little content with which I disagree. I am somewhat amused that the US is listed at the head of the queue in the RCW White Russian supporters though,. That from my understanding was a British led effort. The US and UK did not exactly see eye to eye at that time about that issue and a lot of other things ongoing, and not just in Russia.
I feel that quite a large proportion of people in Russia buy into the theory that the UK and USA are joined at the hip - if the UK does something, its clearly supported by the USA in their eyes. (Yes, this theory is ridiculous, especially in a pre-WW2 context).
 
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