Okay… as per the misanthrope FC, and his bizarre rewriting of history (ideology should be crafted to reflect history, history shouldn’t ever be crafted to fix ideology, especially stupid ones)… as the sole representative of Europe…
I say leave the place, nuke it into oblivion. It would be a act of mercy, if they think as lowly as Fixed Cross does.
Problem solved.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Yeah Ucci… I think we can make exceptions, but it has to be within mind of performing a the task at hand, which is being able to get on track to bring a functional member.
Luxumborg has a interesting military history… it has the most advanced system of fortification in all of Europe… they once put their all into the fight. I’ve looked over their military spending, think it would make financially more sense to dispense with the 2% and just focus on making them punch well above their weight as Europe’s Go-To A Team.
Lets say the Vatican joined NATO (don’t want it to), do we really need to have a micro state with gold plated swift pikes? What should it do, just start buying patriot missiles each year, a dozen or so and stack them up on one another year after year? It would just be a bizarre mockery to follow the 2% GDP rule in that case… but the vatican would be able to cobble together one hell of a elite Gendarmine force… Europe’s finest, stationed in places like in Greece or border of Syria-Turkey. I’m looking for functionality of a eurostate even if it can meet it the GDP, but really shouldn’t, or for a broke-ass state, simply can’t for understandable and legitimate reasons… their economy just imploded.
We need a strong coast guard for states like Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. We need a strong Navy for states like England, Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark. England and sometimes the Netherlands do join in for Anti-Piracy operations in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea… I really don’t expect a state like Greece to limp out to the red sea in it’s current financial state to join in, even though I know it’s sailors are competent, and obviously would be welcome at out vase in Djibouti, or heck, the Chinese base there even, to base operations out of. They have a much better role on the strategic map closer to home.
Countries like Norway, United States, Italy, Canada, and Turkey do a lot of good with their cold weather troops, and if Europe doesn’t implode in a FX Retard Frenzy, survives Trumps scrutiny, balance their accounts and start behaving responsibly like adults in a proper alliance, think we should seriously consider Sweden’s Flirtation with NATO, it has been borderline about joining giving Russian provocations. Norway and Sweden already have a similar, parallel defensive track to fighting off a Russian Advance, we use Swedish tech (why, no one ever explained to me why SUS-Vs are so great) in Arctic environments already… It would double our front, but also substantially increase our force… and we would be able to do lateral movements between the two countries, while Russia would be forced to push the length of it. So long as we could contest Russian localized air superiority over the Baltic, they would have to fight a depth war, head on… and they don’t have the artillery advantage of WW2 (artillery and shells US made) anymore. Like I said, it is true Sweden is a socialist state… unlike Fixed Cross and his absolutely bizarre Communist vs Socialist reasoning, they are socialist because of Nietzsche… guys like Axel Hägerstrom built upon his ideas, went in a different direction. It doesnt fit FC’s synthesis. While being a socialist state, they are one that meet their own military obligations. Just… how can a puny state hold out against Russia, but their own calculations, they can’t last a week. Norway can last much longer, but only because NATO as a whole planned it that way… we have catacombs full of tanks in the country, ready for a sudden troop surge brought in anyway possible.
This would be a smart inclusion in a healthy NATO. Think their steakth tanks are a joke (little thrown gravel can break their thermoplating, kind of odd if a brick is flying above a Volvo driving down the road). They would be another voice for socialist states to lean towards fiscal responsibility… Nordic states tend to get that when portions of the population have to give much more than the rest of socuety, it causes anger and distrust. US gives way more than Europe does, we expect obligations to at least be met. We wouod be wonderfully thrilled if states looked at what traditionally was their strongest skillset, and see if it coukd be made to fit into tge European Tactical Synthesis better… and not just on paper in a hypothetical war, but also in reality… the immediate, the now. Im talking Rapid Reaction Forces, Denmark always having a portion of it’s Navy on patrol in the Baltic. Italy or Turkey always having light Infantry on patrol in Nowway, or the Canadian Arctic (Denmark has a pretty elite, yet very small Arctic force)… but when these units need to be tapped for deployment on a peace keeping or NATO mission, do so unhesitantly.
France, US, UK, Germany, and Turkey, and in time Poland really should be the workhorses of the alliance for ground troops. I really would prefer Italy have less tanks and more coast guard and air force. Why? It is a giant aircraft carrier in the middle of the Med. Most of those tanks are useless.
Baltic states need more formal fortifications with Russia… Russia has been in a absolute free fall collapse for decades, Putin… contray to FC’s inept outlook, has done very little to change the fundamentals of the collapse. Russia is suffering from a ongoing demographics collapse. They may be able to stop it someday, but by that point they will be able to move the whole population of what remains if Russia into the Crimea. It takes a hell of a lot more than a Strongman to ensure a vibrant, reproductively sound society. We only got to look back at feudalism to grasp this.
Prior to the conflict between Emperor Thrax (none more Nietzscgean in history than he) and the Roman Senate, Rome was still under emperors, but the laws reflected that of a Republic, including their property lass, individual rights as a Roman citizen, the freedom of movement (they did use internal passports even then, wasn’t absolutely free movement for anyone). Their state policies reflected this… aggressive court systems, well maintained road systems, mass enlistment in the army.
Afterwards, Roman citizenship mattered increasingly less… the lower portion of the population slipped off into serdom, the Coloni becoming serfs. The economy switched from merchantile to rural agricultural plantations. Nobility became rooted in the soil, like it was in the early republic, but by this point that nobility substantially outnumbered the ability of any Senate to hold them in session, and by degrees and generations asked simply to stay out of Rome and Constantinople and just enjoy their rural privledges.
What we ultimately got was a transition into Manorism… a very sleepy dark ages, that only through a great deal off effort by Charlemagne’s state and the Byzantines morphed into medieval feudalism… the entire era was characterized by very low populations, and plagues were only a occasional check on population growth, doesn’t explain it.
Only reason I can point to is, feudal estates remained stagnant, while free towns grew fast. You had a lot of people roaming around as squatters too, but far too often they were evicted and killed, or simply displaced and kept impoverished.
Russia resembles in many, though not all cases, this downward decline. The Soviets allowed a brief explosion by rearranging everything, inspiring the local population by forcing migration and new possibilities on them… this is exactly what we do when we individual call shit locally and seek a better life elsewhere… but once moved, it became even more stagnant than under the Russian Czars. Many saw a increase of goods (which is good) but it wasn’t enough, they felt far more stress and antagonism, inability to do with their lives as they saw fit. It was a industrialization of Manorism.
Not much has changed across Russia. People now have the ability to vote on lower regional politics… think everyone is cynical about that reality on the national level… be you for Putin or Not, your vote doesn’t really count. You can migrate wherever you want, but the land is still stuck in the old Soviet grip of stagnation. Wealth is possible, a middle class kind, if you fight tooth and nail. It can take 3-4 generations from the fall of the soviet union for a sound, vibrant muddle class to form. Until then, it is a population decline.
Putin has respinded to this as the Byzantines had whenever a province or themes population collapsed… they went and got sone more.
Only place Putin has to find population is from former Soviet lands, those regions still nostakguc for Russia… far fewer than he would like. Everytime he invades a region, it us because it has Russian Population, or Russian Friendly population… and this has to be balanced against his ability to hold it long term with the absolute mininum of causalties… so it is typically border areas within easy reach.
This causes a feeling of good will, gives the “abstract russia” a population increase, but that doesnt change the larger picture, it is still in massive decline… these regions already traded with Russia, inherited the same Soviet mess, and have the same sufficating liabilities in a unresponsive strongman state as the rest of the russian federation.
Some parts of the Russian Federarion will do better than others in the long term… as spite overtakes the local provincial sentiment. We see it in Dagastan and Chechnya… a willingness to migrate elsewhere… into Georgia, to Europe, to ISIS. These avenues of escape are being sealed off increasingly by the Russian Army. In time, they will focus the force of their population bomb into a higher form of nationalism., like in Gaza. It is something the Russians can’t compete with. Russia is dependent on it’s Muslim population, despite suppressing them. Several million work in the Moscow Area, but Moscow has very few mosques. What happens once Muslims no longer can flee? When Central European, Chinese (has a lot of Muslims) and Turkey starts pressing over any sort of dispute in a few decades, and discovers Russia is no longer a military match?
The Soviet Union and China fought a nasty border war in the late 60s… it will eventually do so again. What happens when Russia finds it has it’s ass handed to it 30 years from now? It looses a little bit if Russia, then a lot of Russia. It seeks being a large geographic country, because it’s population is so damn small.
Russia in the meantime, next 20-30 years can still lash out strongly. Putin and his successors depend on a grandiose state to compensate for the dehumanizing suck that exists elsewhere. Patriotism alone isn’t enough to keep a strong state. Oligarchs need to do more than just talk big, the people need to feel their aspirations are being met, that they have a future… capable of putting food on the table, for as many kids as possible.
Why do you think the US focuses primarily on this? We don’t have a problem fucking, or serving in militaries and fighting, because we are NOT demented, ignorant Nietzscheans. What matters more to us as a people is making sure the pathway to a good future remains open. We rely so heavily on the constitution on as a belief system, but because it us a proven document that has generally done us well in doing just that. We are fiercely capitalistic, yet fight against stagnating monopolies. When our population goes left (like Joker) it is because they feel it hasn’t worked for them (his fault, he turned to drugs and crime). A lot of our alternative ideologies cone from states that have passed away… absolute failures. Like your Nietzsche and his Nazis.
I’m concerned about Russia, but I don’t have a homosexual mancrush on Putin. His economy is deeply dependent on oil and minerals, and that market fluctuates. His closest allies are his greatest competitors in this. He has made a lot of mistakes, all for the sake of his survival. Russia will suffer much for this in the long term. You can blame Yeltsin for forcing a strong executive when he launched a coup against what was left of the Soviet legislature, but Putin could of reversed it. The state is in a population collapse, and only idiots like you find cause of celebration from his celebrity. He attacks your countries interests, you you clap. He kills your countrymen, you write him a Valentine.
I’m much more concerned with NATO in regards to a African Union, Arab League, and Chinese context. Think by the end of the century, if NATO is still around, and Russia is still too (the size of Poland by then), it will be begging to be let in NATO.
There is no predicting what these alliances will do 40-80 years from now, much less a few hundred years from now. If we take NATO seriously, we gave to assume it will be around in several hundred years (meaning states started spending 2% GDP across the board). We are talking about an era when nobody knows about Nietzsche, except briefly in a history of philosophy course… and all the craziness associated with it is a non-issue, as society has moved on with other philosophies since then. What is best for the long term NATO?
I for one am upset we didn’t take North Africa into the alliance when it first desired to do so in the 90s. The Maghrib is a excellent launch point into Europe, land, air, and sea… but I doubt the AU in Sun Sahara Africa would want to contest NATO in a war where they got to press through desert, then a sea, just to make landing in the core areas of resistance. Bringing North Africa would of substantially loosed the effects of the Arab spring a decade later.
These are my long term concerns for NATO. Short term… you never know who’s shipping lines are going to be hit, who will piss off what Islamic country, requiring a brief war for X reason. Who will get in a scuffle merchant marine wise with China… a lot of possibilities. A more militarily competent Europe also makes it more likely they can do more to defend North America too, instead of just the reverse. We have a very large Arctic border, rarely patrolled in Canada. As the ice sheets melt, we will need half the Arctic ocean patrolled. Countries like Belgium and Montenegro can pull off summer patrols, while cold weather countries can do winter. I want a little more than a few jets flying overhead on September 11th, I didn’t exactly feel secure knowing Europe was patrolling the skies for just a few weeks. Thats about all it can do, besides the odd infantry movement in Afghanistan. Thus is embarrassing for a continent, and the US is certainly not getting much out of the pact. Europe can certainly do more.
