An early indication of NATO fracture?

[titan]

Turks applying for visas to the 26 Schengen countries are increasingly being rejected, data shows, and tours are being cancelled. Ankara said this week it was a deliberate effort to put President Tayyip Erdogan in a difficult position ahead of tight elections next year, a charge the European Union denies.
According to data from schengenvisainfo.com, 16.5% of applicants from Turkey last year were denied a visa, up from 12.5% a year earlier. Schengen rejections were only 4% in 2015 and started ramping up in 2017 for Turks, it shows.

Turks frustrated by 'deliberate' increase in number of European visa rejections

Turkish sports presenter Sinem Okten was surprised to see her visa application to Europe's Schengen area rejected twice, having visited often to cover matches and interview figures like Italian keeper Gianluigi Buffon and Liverpool's Juergen Klopp.

www.reuters.com

There's an obvious international overlay here with the European Union (E.U.).
The E.U. not only created the Euro, a common currency to promote economic prosperity among member nations. E.U. membership also helped reduce travel restrictions between E.U. member nations. The Muslim population in Turkey raised concerns within more Westernized E.U. member nations, because Turkish E.U. membership could potentially function as Turkey serving as an immigration portal from Islam, into less religiously radicalized nations in Western Europe.

What's the real story here?

 

[sear]

t #1,
I was up before 7:AM/ET today to spend a few hours outdoors, before the temperature climbed too high.
Local TV weather looked OK, but local NBC-TV news also reported:

Two Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers transited the Taiwan Strait, action the U.S. Navy conducts occasionally, calling it a "routine transit", claiming it's in accordance with international law, & demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

It's probably not a tit-for-tat response to China's sabre-rattling over Speaker Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan. The U.S. Navy imposes a deliberate presence there and elsewhere, with some legitimacy, to support global maritime commerce & travel.

I realize this is not NATO per se, but rather more a unilateral U.S. Navy operation. None the less, if push comes to shove, since NATO is a mutual defense pact. And if China were to over-step, even unintentionally, and U.S. assets or personnel were harmed, it could invoke NATO's Article #5:
an attack against any one NATO member nation is considered as an attack against all NATO members. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm

I don't mean to exaggerate the alarm here.
But NATO expansion is not something that should be done without complete long-term consequence / risk evaluation.
In August 2022 NATO expansion might seem to be a means of solidifying global prosperity. But we must not overlook the possibility extending NATO can potentially function as a casus belli chip on our shoulder.

 

[Rampage]

Putin obviously dislikes N.A.T.O.
Putin may have realized his invasion of Ukraine has actually strengthened N.A.T.O., increasing N.A.T.O. membership by two additional members. Still a mystery how Putin and Russia get out of this Ukraine war. Face-saving may be impossible for Putin.

 

[mark mywords]

The EU is not NATO
The EU isnt even the Schengen area
The EU isnt even the same as the Euro Zone
So there are things being conflated which are actually separate and distinct
Turkey has wanted for many years to join the EU they have not met either the economic or politicall criteria and probably never will

 

[sear]

mm #4
mm, champion of lack of specificity?

"The EU is not NATO" mm #4

a) They are both Western European alliances.
b) It has been asserted that healthy trade relations between nations may help reduce the risk of war between them.
c) I know of no substantial open warfare within either of these two great alliances.

CERTAINLY there are ENORMOUS differences between EU & NATO. BUT !! !!
1) Those differences are immaterial to Putin here, Rampage's point perhaps.
One common benefit they each contribute to within them and beyond is stable peaceful prosperity.
2) They also help realize, formalize, substantiate the metaphorical and matériel bulwark against antagonistic foreign military adventurism.
Napoleon has been quoted as having said armies travel on their bellies, his command experience granting grudging acknowledgement to essential supply lines to the battle front.

Putin is stuck in a Cold War rut. The Soviets lost the Cold War because production was substituted for active combat. No need to actually use the weapons directly, despite client State exceptions. The West vastly out-produced the Soviets, and The Wall collapsed. The West had Toyotas, Nissans, Buicks, and Rovers. The Soviets had the Trabant.

parabellum can cepic .... : to insure peace, prepare for war

You may pretend it's unrelated. Would it surprise you to know there's Venn Diagram style overlap membership in Western Europe between NATO and EU?

Do the math mm.
If a Western NATO member nation invests 5% GDP of its half-trillion Euro economy on military, that's a 25 billion Euro military budget.
If that same NATO member invests 5% of a full trillion Euro economy on military, that nation's NATO contribution doubled.
Thus prosperity is a deterrent to war all by itself, without a shot being fired. "Parabellum can cepic".

I'm mostly with R #3 on this. I don't think Putin invaded Ukraine because Putin thought he'd get his butt handed to him on the battlefield.
I find plausible the reports that before and at the initial Russian invasion the Russian troops were duped into believing their victory, vanquishing Ukraine would be so swift, that they left combat gear at home so they could have with them formal dress military uniforms so they could show off at the victory parade.

I'm not talkin' bad about being tough. I'm merely observing that in addition to being tough, lookin' tough, appearing formidable can spare a lot of bloodshed.

"The EU is not NATO" mm #4

You're smarter than that. Lonely & bored? "Children would rather be praised than punished, but they'd rather be punished than ignored." psychologist Joy Browne I know you can do better mm. I sincerely believe you will. Enjoy the weekend.

 

[mark mywords]

The EU is not NATO" mm #4

a) They are both Western European alliance

and?
they are not equivalent and although they share SOME members (Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta are EU countries not in NATO) they dont share all (Some NATO members are not even on the European land mass) one is a military defence alliance the other is a economic alliance

I know of no substantial open warfare within either of these two great alliances.

So what?
I know of no "open warfare" between Australasia and the EU does this mean that there is some equivalence between the two?
As a former president of yours once wisely stated "I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.” yet fish are not human beings and human beings are not fish.

Do the math mm.
If a Western NATO member nation invests 5% GDP of its half-trillion Euro economy on military, that's a 25 billion Euro military budget.
If that same NATO member invests 5% of a full trillion Euro economy on military, that nation's NATO contribution doubled.
Thus prosperity is a deterrent to war all by itself, without a shot being fired.

"IF" being the important word there the bar is set at 2% and many EU (and NATO) countries are well below, the average across the EU being just 1.2% (only the former soviet states of Romania Latvia, Estonia and Greece spend the requisite 2% of GDP) and they are all poor countries 2% of not very much isnt a great deal.
If you were to stand for election on a platform of increasing defense spending by a factor of 4 good luck with being elected.

 

[sear]

"they are not equivalent" mm #6
"CERTAINLY there are ENORMOUS differences between EU & NATO." s #5

I welcome your additional voice to the choir mm. But our tune is so similar I'm not sure we can consider your contribution "harmony".

You may be making my case more persuasively than I have. The 3rd Millennium reformulation of Napoleon's -armies travel on their bellies - may well be: - armies travel on their wallets - . A thriving economy is certainly insufficient on its own to preserve a nation's sovereignty. BUT !!
A thriving national economy can certainly be the backbone of a competent national defense. That may not be clearly understood without first understanding 3rd millennium realities on military force multiplication. One troop with a NATO carbine can vanquish a dozen mercenaries flailing broadsword.

""IF" being the important word there" mm #6

Not sure why you think so. It's a principle. At a fixed percent, the larger the GDP, the larger the budget. The validating sanity check is history. The Soviets tried to maintain approximate parity with NATO, and it bankrupted them. As you say, NATO spent ~<2% GDP, the Soviets apparently spent multiples of that in terms of %GDP. It was reduced to how the resource $pie was sliced. The Kremlin took more, leaving Soviet prisoners (civilian population) to the meager remains. And the standard of living completes the story.

The Soviet example is not a fluke. We see the same in North Korea today. Porky Jong Un is frantically expanding his arsenal,
and the good people of North Korea cower in the dark.


Putin doesn't want nations bordering Russia to join NATO.
You think Putin wouldn't mind if nations bordering Russia join the E.U.?

You realize:
The Berlin Wall was not built to keep "enemies" out, but to keep resident subjects of Soviet totalitarianism in. Now that "The Wall" has fallen, and there's a semblance of freedom of choice, you think the migration gradient between Russia and an adjacent E.U. State would be less than that across the DMZ?

 

[sear]

Putin has introduced the idea of nuking Western Europe / NATO.
That undoubtedly has got NATO's attention.

Such external adversity / threat tends to unify the group at risk. But it's possible there may be a split:
- one faction taking a stern, line in the sand position against Putin, but
- another faction might succumb to the nuclear blackmail, on the premise it's simply too severe to risk.

I've not been a fly on the wall so far. But news reports do occasionally provide us a glimpse, enabling us to read between the lines. None yet that I've read.

During the Cold War there was a "doomsday clock", estimating the then current severity of the risk of self-annihilation. I'm curious to know if the standards applied to that approximation were applied to the current Russia / Ukraine war, what our score would be. Difficult for me to imagine a limited nuclear war between Russia and Western Europe.

 

[mark mywords]

Putin has introduced the idea of nuking Western Europe / NATO.

That isnt really what he said.
What he said was that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory against invaders. Implicit in that is the defense of the Donbas portion of Ukraine should it decide to reunite with Russia.

The west is of course against the Donbas reuniting with Russia regardless of what the people of Donbas want

 

[mark mywords]

North Korea (since you raise the point) is a good example of keeping your enemies at a distance.
China is no friend of NK but equally they will tolerate it because the alternative is having an American satellite state (like South Korea) on their border and they really dont want that!
So they put up with the craziness that is KJU

Likewise Russia isnt keen on having NATO states (which are de facto US satellite states - although not as clearly so as SK) on its western border.
There was something of an unwritten gentlemen's agreement that Ukraine Finland Estonia Latvia and Lithuania would not be permitted or even encouraged to join NATO a verbal agreement which has proved not to be worth the paper it wasnt written on, consequently Russia is understandably concerned.
Much as Russia would like the Donbas and indeed many in the Donbas would like to be Russian (again) in reality they will be used to form a buffer between Russia and the wider Ukraine (who it seems is now a part of NATO without any of the usual formalities taking place)

 

[sear]

"That isnt really what he said." mm #9

Putin's been vague enough, not naming a specific capital, etc.
But who else is Putin threatening? He's already invaded Ukraine. So Russia would first invade, then lose, then withdraw, and then nuke Ukraine, ostensibly in self-defense?

Simply invoking the specter of nukes seems to me to be threatening enough, bad enough Putin invaded Ukraine in the first place.

"After a series of losses on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an ambiguous yet ominous threat to use a nuclear weapon. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without a doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people,” he said Wednesday in a nationally televised speech. “This is not a bluff.”
Since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Putin has routinely reminded the world that Moscow’s nuclear arsenal is the world’s largest. He has publicly placed Russia’s nuclear forces on “special combat readiness” alert, held high-profile nuclear drills and issued veiled threats to use a nuclear weapon if any nation gets in the way of his goal to overthrow the government in Kyiv.
https://time.com/6215610/putin-nuclear-weapons-threat/

"Putin has routinely reminded the world that Moscow’s nuclear arsenal is the world’s largest." time
Don't need the world's largest arsenal to nuke Kyiv. So to me this suggests Putin's made a thinly veiled threat to what Putin seems to perceive as his broader enemies. To me that means E.U. / NATO.

I appreciate your grip on precision here. But there's text, and there's subtext. I don't think the West has much trouble reading between Putin's lines.
And President Biden addressed that detail when Biden addressed the U.N. General Assembly earlier this week. Don't recall precisely but I think Biden said words akin to - a nuclear war can't be won, and must never be fought -, words that may have been spoken by President Reagan.

"The west is of course against the Donbas reuniting with Russia regardless of what the people of Donbas want" mm #9

The U.S. War of Independence was premised on "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ..." TJ / DOI.
The U.S. War between the States (aka "The" Civil War) was waged on the opposite premise.

I've wondered how a legitimate vote would turn out if a regional plebiscite were held on it. Certainly there are blood ties, cultural ties, etc.
But is there much doubt about which side of the border has the higher standard of living?

mm #10
I've read the theory of China's using NK as a buffer between itself and the West (South Korea).
Quite plausible.
What I don't understand is why China hasn't done more to prevent NK from going nuclear.

"Russian (again) in reality they will be used to form a buffer between Russia and the wider Ukraine (who it seems is now a part of NATO without any of the usual formalities taking place)" mm #10

That's how encroachment works. Assimilate the buffer, which then becomes integrated sovereign territory. The assimilate the next neighboring region as a buffer ... repeat.

It's all hog warsh.
If Putin doesn't know Russia is under no Western threat of military conquest he ain't too smart.
The West would end up taking over Russia by attraction, by commerce and our benefits of capitalism. That's not deliberate aggression. That's showing a more attractive option. The Berlin Wall wasn't built to keep NATO out. The Berlin Wall was built to keep humans from escaping Soviet totalitarianism.

I thought NATO expansion toward Russia in general, and including adding former Soviet satellites to NATO was a horrendously bad idea. It's an obvious pretext for the Kremlin. But here we are. And it seems to me Vlad has created his own problems. Apparently because Cold War offers Putin the comfort of familiarity. And Putin clearly has no clue about economics.

 

[Borg Refinery]

No, NATO expansion was ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do - we should have done it much faster & harder before Putin had the chance to strike; we should also not have let Putin attain as much power as he has in Russia when he became president in 1999. We encouraged and enabled him the whole time while he committed genocide in Chechnya.

The truth is we should have tried to get Russia into NATO and tried to get rid of Putin as leader of Russia in 1999, that would have been the best course of all.

BTW, I think China allowed NK to have nuke tech because they want someone unstable to have nukes, someone who may respond if China is ever nuked and can't respond, IIRC China mostly has an arsenal of many small tactical nukes, but I could be mistaken.

PS: Erdogan just openly called for Putin to give back Crimea to Ukraine and withdraw entirely from Ukraine, the Chinese premier has said to withdraw from Ukraine and same for Modi in India.

Regarding the points about NATO & EU overlap: both of you are making good points on that one.

I think Putin is running out of options and feels completely cornered now hence the deployment of reserves; his time is limited - he's panicking and doesn't really know what he's doing, or what he's saying and is just trying to keep things ambiguous to try and deter, wrongfoot / confuse us so we stay scared.

IMHO, we should call his bluff and fully declare the no-fly zone and go all-in in Ukraine - and liberate it.

 

[sear]

"No, NATO expansion was ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do" O #12

Emotionally I vehemently endorse this sentiment. That stems from my personal concept of right & wrong.
The victor writes the history books. If Hitler had won WWII and continued his campaign of eugenics (an idea Hitler got from the U.S.) in this third millennium Hitler might have been nearly deified as the founder of a purified human race, and a peaceful prosperous society inspired by the German industrial model of the 1940s.
Hitler lost.
And so we (including you and me) benefit from the allied victories (VE & VJ).
We might wish much if not all the world were ideological if not military allies with us. But it's unwise to ignore complementary schizmo-genesis *.

I don't view NATO expansion as an end. I view NATO expansion as a means to an end, to effectively suppress autocratic military conquest, to promote peaceful prosperity for humans 'round the world.
I ABSOLUTELY support the prosperity objective. I'm responsibly cautious about its achievement by knowingly intimidating those that would oppose us / it. Such Western encroachment has ALREADY been used by the Kremlin as an example of determined Western military aggression, ostensibly justifying Soviet / Russian aggressions of its own.
Also worth noting: it's a common error in logic to conflate military victory with ethical / moral rectitude. The "lower 48" aka the 48 contiguous United States of America is territory largely acquired by brutal military conquest. The U.S. decries Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We decry this war from territory the U.S. hypocritically acquired by military conquest from the aboriginal Americans.

"IMHO, we should call his bluff and fully declare the no-fly zone and go all-in in Ukraine - and liberate it." O #12

I would support imposing air supremacy over Ukraine, to exclude Russia.
But that gets quite complicated. One example, affording a non-NATO member nation benefit of NATO membership at the cost of NATO blood & treasure might well be expected to cause corrosive internal dissension within NATO.
- If they (Ukraine) get benefit of NATO protection without any of the costs, why must we (NATO member nations) pay the full price of NATO membership in combat attrition and $Billions? -

You and I seem to be in absolute lock-step on the ideal to be achieved.
"The devil's in the details."
For self-benefit it is wise to fully consider the full spectrum of consequence of prospective means to the end.

"When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on our land. Where are the lands today? What treaty has the white man ever made with us that they kept? Not one." Chief Sitting Bull

ref:
* complementary schizmo-genesis: manifesting a more extreme form of the behavior in reaction to objection to the behavior which provoked the objection

eu·gen·ics (y-jĕnĭks) n. (used with a sing. verb) The study or practice of attempting to improve the human gene pool by encouraging the reproduction of people considered to have desirable traits and discouraging or preventing the reproduction of people considered to have undesirable traits. eu·genic adj. eu·geni·cal·ly adv. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

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