Russian Jets Enter Estonia's Airspace in Latest Test for Nato
Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago
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Russian jets entered Estonia's airspace, sparking concerns about NATO's security and Russia's intentions, with commenters discussing potential escalation and historical precedents.
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Not that I think there's any deeper conspiracy here though. Just kind of an interesting "what if".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...
Sorry, if the country invading another European country while invading others' airspaces isn't clearly the bad guy to someone, the order of fire isn't going to matter.
Putin responds to force. Allowing these intrusions without consequence invites further provocation. Putin will bitch and moan about a downed fighter. But he'll also stop lobbing them across.
Such was the thinking that accompanied NATO expansion - Russians would bitch and moan but wouldn't do anything. Look how that worked out.
(I find it difficult to believe that Russia wouldn’t have embarked on an expansionist project if NATO had just kept out of its traditional sphere of influence after the fall of the USSR. Russia would still have rebounded from the vicious 90s with a desire for near-abroad dominance - and would have found many more avenues of advance.)
Why?
Also: Turkey. Chechnya. Putin responds to force by backing off. He responds to perceived weakness by doubling down. Same as every other expansionist dictator in history.
Only if you are willing to ignore the facts that don't fit into your model. Namely specific triggers for Putin's actions like 2008's NATO declaration of imminent NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and American involvement in 2014 coup. [0] Or many years of Putin's warnings accompanying NATO expansion.
"A war machine benefits him domestically"
No, it doesn't. Otherwise there would'be been no need for all the restrictions on the access to information, freedom of speech and assembly in Russia.
"Also: Turkey. Chechnya. Putin responds to force by backing off. "
Chechnya? You are confusing Putin with "democratic" Eltsin, West's drunken darling. Putin started and won the second Chechen war.
As for Turkey, there was no fundamental reason to start a war with Turkey. It wasn't expanding its military infrastructure towards Russian borders and supporting anti-Russian coups in Russia's neighbours.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
You are the one ignoring facts. Here's Putin's former senior advisor explaining why this narrative is garbage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFCNwGjko54
Elsewhere, he has also said that he personally attended closed meetings for senior staff as early as 2003 where Putin laid out his plans for Ukraine.
I trust that the language of the video is not a barrier for you.
So then the war has been an abject failure, right? NATO’s borders with Russia have massively expanded. Putin bamboozled.
Except, of course he didn’t, this has always been a war of territorial revanchism. Putin wants to reconquer Moscow’s old colonies. Both him and Trump are stuck in the colonial past.
(Perhaps a Marshall Plan-esque foreign policy could have forestalled their revanchism. Perhaps - chauvinism is hard to break. But abandoning the eastern former subject states would not alone have been enough.)
I wish it won't happen, but with Trump closing his eyes on Ukraine, and Trump being against NATO, this is an opportunity for Putin.
I really want to be wrong, but that's a possibility.
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