I’m sure they’re good guys but the Latvian Army has 6500 soldiers and their air force has five planes. They’re not exactly going to turn the tide against the Russian army.
and the thing is, his nato complaints are 100% at odds with his (overt) policy goals (and those of his base). If you want the US to project as much military power as possible, you NEED nato. It’s a MASSIVE force multiplier.
But as you point out, Trump was hoodwinked by Putin into doing this, which was probably pretty easy since Trump is literally too dumb to understand multilateral agreements (his inability to understand them is almost certainly exasperated by thinking that every agreement is a zero-sum transaction). Literally everything he actually did foreign-policy-wise was bilateral, and literally every multilateral arrangement he saw he derided.
increased russian containment
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It’s not about the size of the Latvian military, it’s about the potential to use Latvia as a base.
It’s China/Russia vs the rest of the world. We don’t just need India, South Korea, Japan, Aus and the EU, but the Latvias, Perus, and Central African Republics of the world. America first is such short-sighted vision of the world. We don’t want to be the best poker player, we want to run the casino.
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When they get to places that are natural gas and oil consumers instead of reserves.
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It’s a complex question and the answer would look something like “yes, but…”. The way to keep Russia’s and China’s expansionist policies in check is economic sanctions in my opinion. We should stop buying their oil, gas and products.
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Given Latvia’s location, seems like Russia interpreting this expansion of NATO as antagonistic isn’t entirely unreasonable.
they are an ally during 99% peacetime too.
6500 is half of US deployment in Afghanistan. it’s a significant resource any way you look at it.
Why you gotta stan for Vlad, a typical russian tsar with a small pee pee? he literally needs to cultivate a sentiment within russia that they ought to occupy every neighbor, which Latvia was since the 40s! that’s some serious inferiority complex.
Sure. And maybe it was worthwhile with the Baltic states. But if you add more and more countries to NATO that are closer and closer to Russia’s sphere of influence, you’re doing two things. Being more and more provocative towards Russia, but also making the alliance more and more brittle. Like, say we admit Georgia and Russia says fuck it and invades. Are Americans really going to go to war for a country that has to be clarified with no, not that Georgia.
It’s not unreasonable at all. Neither is interpreting the 80,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border as antagonistic. Both seem like pretty bad ideas.
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nato as a military alliance has an unequaled successful historical record. its power of deterrence brought the long peace (yet increased proxy wars).
let’s put it this way. you’d rather ally and support latvia/georgia/ukraine/afghanistan before russia invades, than scramble to funnel money and weapons to local insurgents after russia invades.
If Russia actually is going to invade, hell no I don’t want to be burdened with those alliances. War with Russia in their own backyard would be extremely dangerous and unpredictable.
russia has never (attacked). err… invaded a nato country.
poisonings in europe are attacks obviously
It’s not possible to say this without knowing there would have been a war without NATO.
Look at what Russia has done to non-NATO countries compared to NATO countries and even with NATO countries Russian jets are constantly violating their airspace.
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There’s some selection bias here though. NATO is going to be reluctant to admit the most provocative countries.
True, but the “world” almost ended over some USSR missiles in Cuba despite/because of the presence of the US a few miles away. The assumption that NATO deterrence will continue isn’t right.
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You think that might have something to do with tens of thousands of tanks and planes, millions of soldiers and who knows how many nuclear weapons in Europe ready to go at a moment’s notice?
Edited to add: Do you know what NATO’s defensive plan was if Russian tanks started moving west?