Helme about Trump and NATO

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Sigbold
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23 Jul 2016, 7:17 am

The Baltic Times

Quote:

In his comments to The New York Times, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said aloud what others in NATO are thinking but leave unspoken — that the Alliance may not keep its vow to defend the Baltic States if Russia were to invade them, deputy chairman of the opposition Estonian Conservative People's Party (EKRE) Martin Helme said.

"What Trump said is what everybody in NATO thinks and knows, but nobody says out loud — that the treaty is a nice political declaration which will not necessarily work, especially when we are doing absolutely nothing ourselves," Helme told BNS.

Questioned by The New York Times about Russia's aggressive activities, which have unsettled the Baltic nations as well as other more recent entrants into NATO, Trump declared on Wednesday that if Russia were to attack, he would decide whether to provide assistance only after reviewing whether those countries "have fulfilled their obligations to us."

(...)

Rest at the above link.

Mikah
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23 Jul 2016, 10:36 am

What is truly not being said about NATO/Russia tensions is everything that NATO and its concomitant institutions (the EU being the most important) are doing to piss Russia off. When you take off the 3D Hitler-glasses the Western media hands out whenever they are talking about Putin, Russia's actions look a lot more like defensive responses to American-led fiddling around the world and especially in Moscow's area of influence.

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Sigbold
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26 Jul 2016, 9:08 am

Mikah wrote:

What is truly not being said about NATO/Russia tensions is everything that NATO and its concomitant institutions (the EU being the most important) are doing to piss Russia off.

I think there is a former US-ambassador who bluntly stated that US policy towards Russia after the Cold War can be described as a series of kicks in the balls effectively wasting an opportunity to turn the country into an ally. And I also remember an alleged quote of Brzeziński, where he stated "we tricked Gorbatsjov".

Jacoby
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26 Jul 2016, 9:37 am

NATO is a dying rotting institution, if these Baltic states were so afraid of getting invaded then you'd think they would at least spend the bare minimum that NATO requires for their defense budgets which is a measly 2% but they can't even do that. It's all nonsense, the US has aggressively expanded NATO and spent billions on 'democracy building' NGOs since the end of the Cold War to surround Russia with enemies yet all we hear about is when they respond like any rational country would to such aggression.

Mootoo
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26 Jul 2016, 12:25 pm

If the US ever refused to help with NATO (like they're currently doing by posting people around) and then Putin occupied more than just Crimea, what could possibly happen? Other countries get involved and - yes, the comparison is inevitably compared to Poland's invasion, Putin seems to want his USSR back, so Eastern European countries are almost certainly the ones to be invaded... and, what happened in Poland was like dominoes which despite the US (even back then) refusing to take part it did end up doing so, since Poland wasn't the only occupied country.

In other words... Putin has a hundred reasons to back Trump, of course...

Jacoby
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26 Jul 2016, 1:06 pm

Mootoo wrote:

Russia took Crimea back because of the illegal coup in Ukraine, it was never truly theirs and the people there would rather be apart of Russia than Ukraine. Unsurprising since the Ukrainian nationalists are rabidly anti-Russian and wanted to force the entire of the country to speak their language and cut them off from their neighbor , I believe in self determination don't you? Any other fears only come from the paranoid mind, I don't think Russia is just biding its time to invade eastern Europe and I think it's proof positive that we must in fact repair our relationship with Russia in light of our shared interests and current realities. My question is why do you want another Cold War? Do you want to spark WWIII and the Armageddon?

Kraichgauer
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26 Jul 2016, 8:31 pm

If Trump is actually willing to let Russia invade the Baltic states, no wonder Putin is trying to cozy up to him even before the election is won or lost.

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Mootoo
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26 Jul 2016, 8:42 pm

Jacoby, Putin invaded Crimea before holding a supposed referendum... who exactly does things in that order? How is it self determination when you get invaded first? How would you vote in some nominal referendum with "Russian masked troops"? How is it paranoid when it's already happened and he's already invaded Georgia (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... egins.html - usually right-wing, but, y'know how powerful pictures are...) - Putin single-handedly created 40,000 refugees. Would a Trump government help with that? Riiiight... Europe would be the only one taking anyone. Also, "a build-up of Russian forces on the Ukrainian-Russian border caused NATO commander Philip Breedlove to speculate that the Russian Federation might attempt to attack Moldova and occupy Transnistria." - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat ... story.html - unless, of course, you think the Washington Post and all of NATO is paranoid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_p ... imir_Putin

You really think a cold, or actual war could be prevented by simply abolishing NATO? If it did why isn't anyone proposing it? It came into existence four years after WWII, and whether it prevented conflict in the interim is debatable, mostly because a lack of something can't be proven otherwise, but without it (and the EU, ultimately) all of Europe and the US (presumably even more intertwined since seventy years ago) went into not just one, but two world wars...

Jacoby
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26 Jul 2016, 10:46 pm

Mootoo wrote:

It is the same as Kosovo, the precedent has been set. Do you not believe the Russian peoples of Crimea wish to be apart of Russia rather than Ukraine? Trust me when I say I know a good amount about this conflict. Georgia was a conflict forced upon the Russians by the way, they made the stupid mistake of trying to invade South Ossetia and attacked Russian peacekeepers. I really do not care about Transnistria, if the people there want to join Russia then more power to them but I am not too worried since I doubt Moldova will do anything to provoke a response like that unlike the Ukrainian Nazis who are anti-Russian to the extreme.

NATO has outlived its usefulness, what purpose does it have? It was to defend against the 'inevitable' invasion of Soviet troops into western Europe but obviously that time has passed. The idea that NATO requires a shared defense is a joke since the member countries don't hold up their end of the deal and lets be honest, we're not starting WWIII for frigging Estonia.

I believe we should find common ground with Russia, we'd make better allies than enemies.

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