Sweden officially joins NATO, ending decades of post-World War II neutrality

Lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and hexbear in shambles.

There are good people in Russia.

It's such a bizarre thing... Communism fell in Russia probably before many of these people were born. But the support the successor state to the Soviet Union, which is an authoritarian kleptocracy, because why? Nostalgia? Ignorance?

Tankies be weird.

I guess you would call Navalny tankie too

Russian people are the biggest victims in Ukranian war,

Whew lad

Imagine people in the US electing Trump, then 10 years later writing the same thing.

Russian people are as much at fault.

Do you know what happened to Musolini? Where are the russian partisans?

Bunch of cowards.

They're forced to fight, but not forced to commit atrocities and war crimes that they did.

"Russian people are the biggest victims" - fuck right off. Just fuck off.

Dude really read a history book about Hitler fighting a one front war and somehow turning it into a three front war and said “Hold my beer”

Your comment reminded me of this video, highly worth a watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9Phc9ArpU

Side note, this is also the French spelling of Putin. So you can eat Poutine while being mad at Poutine (I'll let you guess which is which, unless you're a cannibal then everything goes TBF).

Yeah, and it made me kinda hungry too...

You're right, at least cheese curds get thrown out when the go bad. Kinda like what Putin does with critics.

Yeah, he is either stupid or desperate.

I'll pick the middle option: Putin is high on his own supply.

The man made it clear that dissent will be met with swift and gruesome consequences. This is a sure-fire recipe for surrounding yourself with yes-men that are not smart enough to get the hell out. And BTW, that's always a career where everyone's last promotion is "pavement inspector", and training starts immediately at an open 6th floor window. So there's some cocky, can't-guage-risk-for-a-damn people mixed in there too. The result is a bunch of decisions from the head-of-state that only make sense between those in his court, and fail to hold up to scrutiny outside those walls.

How is the US controlling conflicts and countries?

NATO was originally founded so that we'd stop invading each other, which should still hold true today.

I like to think of most developed nations as young adults. All of us are supposed to be mature, which means no more war. We can just talk about things like responsible adults.

Sadly, some of these younger fucks still haven't grasped the concept of "don't be an idiot", and we now need NATO for a strong message of "no, you're not going to touch us, there will be consequences". It's a sad thing that we still need to do so, but I'd rather have a large group of friends that I'm sure will have my back if someone would start shit.

So yes, Sweden joining NATO is a good thing. If anything it will lead to better cooperation and coordination between our countries. Not just in the event of war, but just sharing defense resources and intelligence as well. But the best argument is that we just like you Swedes, and we want to keep hanging out together.

As a Finn, I thought that joining Nato was the last nail in the coffin. After several decades of crawling towards it, we're finally a western civilized country now.

You swedes were there already for historical reasons though, but very nice to have you in the same military alliance.

Unless you happen to be Russian or some other power seeking to use military aggression, or the threat there of, against Europe or North America, NATO expansion is a good thing for all parties. The larger the alliance, the more viewpoints, training and speciality each nation can provide and there is less gap for something to get through. Ukraine is a perfect example of why this should have happened a long time ago but political will wasn't there.

Sweden has a lot to offer NATO and vice versa, its certainly self sufficient for its military needs but with the defense guarantee it can now afford to diversity its military a bit more than its used to with not everyone and everything needing to adhere to a total defense doctrine. There won't be any Swedish Expeditionary Forces but Sweden does have some rather unique experience and training it can exchange with its western neighbors and possible get some technology exchange and other material assistance to help shore up the northern borders of NATO. The Baltic Sea becoming a NATO lake just a bonus now if Russia tries to start or continue its usual shit.

This just means that Sweden will have send their troops to fight wars in middle east for oil companies. Russia is hardly capable of attacking Ukraine that is right next to it and has some local support of some Russian citizens. They would never make it to Sweden in the next 100 years. But a lot of lives will be lost in the Middle East in that time.

But a mööse bit my sister.

Disagree. UN is a diplomacy tool, NATO is a defense organization. Entirely different goals, and if UN was a defense organization something else would have filled the void for diplomacy and you’d say UN wouldn’t be necessary.

You don’t play diplomacy with your friends. And you cannot get your enemies to sit down if you’re aiming a gun at them. The UN not having teeth is the point.

the un and nato serve two very different and distinct purposes though.

Yeeeaahh, but this is a slightly different beast. Even if the UN had fangs ( you're right there), we're talking about a nuclear dictatorship with visions of conquest here.

Ah, yes, the scary defense-only alliance. Purely by design it doesn't have the lawful capacity to do any of the things you said, and single members (US or UK) don't represent it.

Ah yes, no advancements in Ukraine where 1/3 of the country is under occupier control and in entrenched positions.

I think this haterred towards Putin blinded most of us to let governments increase their authorariansim.

Don't you think this haterred towards Putin caused by increasing authorariansim of my country's government? Because Putin is fucking head of it.

Of course Putin is dangerous, but he can't even win a war in a small country right next to his.

I don't know what is (not) concerning to you, but for me Good Uncle Voenkom that will send me to die in trenches for Stability™ of Putin's yachts is concerning enough.

In what way has the Russian Invasion of Ukraine led to more authoritarianism among NATO member states?

There's a difference between NATO countries and NATO the organisation.

The United States would be going around the world starting wars regardless of whether it's in NATO or not. Got to feed that industrial military complex

So so dangerous to have a defense alliance. What is this world coming to.

All the invasions of Iran, Afganistan, Vietnam, Syria, etc where unjustfied invasions

• The US has never invaded Iran
• Afganistan was completely justified; the US could not let 9/11 go. Few countries in the world disputed this at the time, even among those unfriendly to the US. You can certainly criticize how it played out--I sure as hell do.
• Vietnam, yeah, not going to argue there
• Syria was a complex 13 way clusterfuck. We supported a specific side against another specific side, mostly with material and air support, and some limited ground support. It's not exactly an invasion, but this is certainly another place where it's more about how it played out than the support in itself.

Iraq was bad so let's let Russia annex any bit of Europe it wants. Checks out. I was vehemently opposed to Iraq. This is not Iraq. Not all wars are the same

Yeah but USA would have done all that with or with out NATO.

Lmfao

Putin doesn't want to win. And actually pretty much everyone benefits from this long standing conflicts. Except for Ukrainians and some dirt poor African nations.

I don't think this deserves the attack, guy speaks their mind, perhaps not from the most knowledgeable position, but I think it's valid nonetheless. There are a lot of arguments being made without really being arguments, more like spoken worries, and I agree with their trepidation, I feel kind of the same way, in that I am wary of the future and not as expediently joyous over the occasion so to speak.

Also, I felt like when the CEO Prime Minister of Sweden appeared in the House for the State of the Union address to standing ovations felt like we were bringing water and dirt before Xerxes. A half demented, half man half werewolf Xerxes, I have a conspiracy theory that Biden and Trump are the same person. Make of it what you will, the list of US atrocities committed across the world and our common history is a long and dire read, and only seems to get longer every year.

I'm glad to know that if "someone" invades Sweden the whole planet will go down in a nuclear holocaust, as a deterrent you know, but at the same time we're ironically posed before a problem common to Americans and Swedes alike- when it comes to our choices it's slim pickings.

Ireland has no chance, people here are extremely pro neutrality to the point there were protests when American Airforce jets refueled here. It's not a case of alignment, it's that nobody wants to get involved in any sort of conflict.

Have you seen their support of Palestinians? They'll never join NATO

Nothing clever needs to be invoked. It's baked into the text of the treaty. Article 5 is what's invoked to bring the whole alliance together to defend against an attack on any one member. However, Article 6 limits Article 5 to attacks within Europe, North America, Turkey, and islands in the Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer. Strictly speaking, even an attack on Hawaii wouldn't invoke it.

I guess countries outside that area could join, but without a change to the treaty, the key clause in the whole thing wouldn't apply to them.

Maybe they don't want to die in middle east for US oil companies.

Never in a million years would Switzerland condemn Israel. The state loves Israel. Maybe a strongly worder "please don't kill children in hospitals" was said, but no measures whatsoever were taken

Sings: "Did I tell you lately, that I'm neutral...!"

Lol, okay, guy.

They would get less hatred if they stopped invading their neighbors.

You must really like the taste of russian boots, jfc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden

Church of Sweden and no Religion account for 91% of all swedes. Immigrants with a different religion don't even account for 10%

Sometimes standing up for principles and what's right supersedes pragmaticism. Surely you get what it means to have ideals.

The only reply worth reading lmao

Good god y'all!

This has happened exactly zero times in the one thousand year history of Sweden. Except for when the Danes came, but they got disposed of.

I think Covid actually delayed it! I don’t think we will be as “lucky” if a second round comes.

Sell all of your assets and build a self-sufficient ranch on New Zealand. Looking at WW3 projections it's going to be one of the places untouched by a nuclear war and won't feel the effects of a nuclear winter as harsh as other places. Hmm, it looks like that the billionaires building their doomsday bunkers at New Zealand has the same idea.

NATO is defensive only on paper. Almost all of the wars in the World right now started with invasion of NATO countries in middle east and african countries still unofficaly under collonial rule of western european countries.

This is classic case of fearmongering. Russia can't even win a war in Ukraine, despite local support of some of the Crimean citizens and proximity to their nations. They can't get to Sweeden by the end of this century, Meanwhile, NATO is the biggest war allience this World has ever seen and it is scary how centralized the power in the World has become and US oil companies running the whole show.

Sweden is the black hole of Europe. They can only offer migrants