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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It's not that easy. Triggering article 5 requires some serious sh... going down, which is exactly why it has happened only once in the while history of NATO.
over 70 years and in all this time NATO has moved as one unit in a war only ONCE, and that required an attack on US soil in which hundred of civilians died. And even THAN the NATO states initially disagreed about how the retaliation actually should look like.
So, yeah, the whole concept of NATO being a giant threat to Russia is BS. It is only threatening one thing, Russia's abilities to nibble territories out of the Eastern Europe.
And, btw, even if NATO didn't exist, the EU has its own defence agreement, too. Which ironically results in Russia p... off two organisations at once should they decide to attack an EU country (since not all EU states are also NATO members and not all NATO members are EU states).
So since next year will see Democrats back in the driving seat of the lower chamber of the US parliament, they have already a bunch of changes to the parliament rules ready
:
- Requiring bill text to be available for a full 72 hours before the bill can go the floor. (There’s a three-day rule now, but it’s enforcement is counted by calendar days between posting the floor vote, not the actual number of hours.)
- Reinstating the Gephardt rule that provides for the automatic engrossment of a House joint resolution changing the statutory limit when Congress has completed action on a budget resolution.
- Ending the Holman rule that Republicans reinstated two years ago to allow members to offer amendments to appropriations bills designed to reduce the scope and size of government.
- Eliminating so-called dynamic scoring, another Republican-used tool that allows the Congressional Budget Office to provide macroeconomic analyses of bills that factor in projected economic growth resulting from the policy.
- Requiring a three-fifths supermajority to pass legislation that would raise income taxes on the lowest-earning 80 percent of taxpayers.
- Granting voting rights to delegates of U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
- Mandating all committees to hold a members-day hearing so that people who don’t sit on the panel can provide input on its agenda.
- Creating a diversity office to help offices with hiring qualified candidates from a wide array of backgrounds.
- Preventing members and staff from serving on corporate boards (a proposal that came up after New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins was indicted for insider trading of information he learned as a board member of Innate Immunotherapeutics).
And yet no NATO country has ever attacked Russia or a country close to Russia - but Russia does it all the time (attacking other countries, they so far haven't dared with NATO or EU states).
So, who it threatening whom there? And now that Trump basically signals that he doesn't care, Russia is testing the waters again in the Ukraine.
Edited by Swanpride on Nov 26th 2018 at 7:43:29 AM
Wait, are you seriously implying that NATO isn’t a military threat to Russia because we haven’t attacked them yet? Because that logic is nuts.
Russia knows they couldn’t stand up in a fight with NATO, which is why they rely on half measures, deniable operations and needling.
Well, yeah.
Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 26th 2018 at 7:56:21 AM
They should have sent a poet.![]()
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- Requiring a three-fifths supermajority to pass legislation that would raise income taxes on the lowest-earning 80 percent of taxpayers.
This is a stunt for publicity. I'm not impressed.
NATO is a defensive alliance, full stop. It's a threat to Russian sovereignty only if Russia considers its "sovereignty" to extend to the military annexation of its neighbors.
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 26th 2018 at 10:56:03 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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I'm implying that neither Russia nor any other country in the world has to fear NATO as a whole if they are interested in peace, because NATO doesn't attack unprovoked. We even had this tested out when the US attacked Iraq, because back then they tried to lure the NATO as a whole into joining them and in the end of the day, only a few close allies actually did while powerful NATO members like France and Germany did not.
Now, what the US does on its own is another story. But unless you have territorial ambitions yourself, there is zero reason to fear NATO.
Russia may have a reason to fear NATO yet then, given their designs on the Baltics and parts of Eastern Europe.
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Based on their actions up until now it seems likely the do feel that way. We’ll have to see how the current situation with Ukraine shakes out.
Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 26th 2018 at 8:11:06 AM
They should have sent a poet.Vladimir Putin has managed to win military gains through methods other than straight up combat. Basically, small groups of Special Forces fuck up shit tremendously and they intimidate who is left politically.
I'd say it was like Dungeons and Dragons logic but that'd be disrespectful to the real life losses.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah the reason we haven’t seen the little green men recently is because the situations they exist to exploit haven’t been occurring recently, if such a situation occurs they will appear.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Anyway, the idea that NATO is a giant threat to Russia is laughable, since the majority of the NATO states don't really have any interest to go to war anywhere, and if the US would just attack Russia, the defence pact of NATO would not apply.