EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 3735
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23912 Posts
On July 20 2022 08:49 KwarK wrote: Every additional member of the alliance represents additional obligations and entanglement. Ukraine joining massively increases the risk of a NATO Russia war, for example. Given how Russia is faring given an admittedly bolstered via various mechanisms Ukraine flying solo, surely more NATO members make the prospect of such a war absolute lunacy? I mean as members/prospective members go Finland and Sweden are as prospectively defensive and come with fewer additional political baggage than basically anyone already there As EU members anyway it’s almost inconceivable that if they were attacked by Russia, that there wouldn’t be some kind of collective response as things stand, NATO member or not there would be that escalation. Finland or Sweden aren’t likely to incur extra risk of incurring the wrath of various folks provocatively given how they generally approach foreign policy, if they were attacked things would escalate anyway and embroil various NATO countries so that spiral would happen regardless. Having them in gives a bit more meat to NATO so I’m not really seeing many downsides with their potential accession. With Ukraine, yeah I get the arguments that NATO membership is effectively waving a red flag in front of a particularly angry bull, but those two countries I don’t think the same arguments particularly apply. | ||
KwarK
United States42008 Posts
On July 20 2022 09:17 WombaT wrote: Given how Russia is faring given an admittedly bolstered via various mechanisms Ukraine flying solo, surely more NATO members make the prospect of such a war absolute lunacy? I mean as members/prospective members go Finland and Sweden are as prospectively defensive and come with fewer additional political baggage than basically anyone already there As EU members anyway it’s almost inconceivable that if they were attacked by Russia, that there wouldn’t be some kind of collective response as things stand, NATO member or not there would be that escalation. Finland or Sweden aren’t likely to incur extra risk of incurring the wrath of various folks provocatively given how they generally approach foreign policy, if they were attacked things would escalate anyway and embroil various NATO countries so that spiral would happen regardless. Having them in gives a bit more meat to NATO so I’m not really seeing many downsides with their potential accession. With Ukraine, yeah I get the arguments that NATO membership is effectively waving a red flag in front of a particularly angry bull, but those two countries I don’t think the same arguments particularly apply. The argument always applies. On the one hand you have the obligation to defend a country if it is attacked. On the other they have the obligation to defend you if attacked. There are clear winners and losers here. A promise of mutual defence from Sweden does not make America any safer from geopolitical foes. A promise to defend Sweden does make America more likely to find itself in danger. That’s not to say I oppose NATO enlargement, Sweden and Finland are unlikely to noticeably change the odds. But there’s absolutely a case to be made against NATO expansion, especially for the safe nations expected to do the heavy lifting. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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KwarK
United States42008 Posts
On July 20 2022 09:44 JimmiC wrote: Except both those countries will do their share of lifting and NATO would likely get involved anyway this just makes it official and adds commitments to them. Lifting against who? In support of who? What are the odds that Russia opens a conflict with an attack on the Atlantic coast of the US? Because that’s the only scenario in which Finland would be coming to America’s aid against Russia. Unofficial is much safer as we’re seeing with Ukraine. The US can fuck Russia up without much risk of nuclear annihilation. I support NATO expansion because the bigger NATO gets the less likely it’ll be invoked but let’s not pretend a promise of help from Finland is of equal value to a promise of help from the US. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28561 Posts
On July 20 2022 09:30 KwarK wrote: The argument always applies. On the one hand you have the obligation to defend a country if it is attacked. On the other they have the obligation to defend you if attacked. There are clear winners and losers here. A promise of mutual defence from Sweden does not make America any safer from geopolitical foes. A promise to defend Sweden does make America more likely to find itself in danger. That’s not to say I oppose NATO enlargement, Sweden and Finland are unlikely to noticeably change the odds. But there’s absolutely a case to be made against NATO expansion, especially for the safe nations expected to do the heavy lifting. Not really disagreeing with your overall point, but mentioning for the thread that article 5 has been invoked once - by the US. The US has a 50 50 shot at caring about their legitimacy, and thus does favor broad coalitions, even if the numerical contributions from countries with 5-10 mill inhabitants are insignificant. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17852 Posts
On July 20 2022 10:54 JimmiC wrote: Now they will support Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Croatia, Albania and others all who are at likely more risk of being invaded. On top of that they provide Canada and the US with extra support in the artic which Russia had been making moves recently due to the reasources. These are not have not countries. Exactly. US, Norway, Iceland, Demark, Canada, Sweden and Finland working together in NATO is a pretty big deal with regards to control over the Arctic. It literally means the only non-NATO country with any kind of claim or presence in the arctic is Russia. Makes it a LOT harder for them to get stuff done there. Secondly, there's the baltic sea and baltic states in general. Rather than a mostly enemy-controlled environment in the case any of the baltic states gets invaded, it is now a friendly environment with NATO ports up and down the coast, NATO airbases both near and far, and logistics for defense of the baltic states is way easier. Instead of NATO's plan for the baltic states being "well, they're fucked, but just make Russia slow down and we'll stop them in Poland", the baltic states are actually somewhat defensible with Finnish and Swedish support there. The problem isn't really Finland getting invaded. NATO would almost certainly help anyway. The EU members in NATO would anyway, due to EU defense pact. It's about an ironclad guarantee for Finland... and a pretty huge boost in the defensibility of the northern NATO members. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10186 Posts
Democrat groups are spending millions to fund and prop up fringe "stop the steal" Republican candidates and unseat some of the Republicans that actually voted to impeach Trump. The logic being that if they can get the crazies to win the primaries they can then say "see how crazy this guy is" in the general elections. + Show Spoiler + | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On July 27 2022 06:21 BlackJack wrote: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/14/democrats-republican-primaries-trump-candidates Democrat groups are spending millions to fund and prop up fringe "stop the steal" Republican candidates and unseat some of the Republicans that actually voted to impeach Trump. The logic being that if they can get the crazies to win the primaries they can then say "see how crazy this guy is" in the general elections. + Show Spoiler + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ru8DMW-grY Worked wonders for Hillary... Even if it works, it's a naked display of the cruel cynicism Democrats have made their brand. Why do better at helping people when you can just pay to make your opponents worse and keep exploiting your voters' desperation? Especially when there's a chorus of bootlicking constantly droning among Democrat supporters about how this cynical exploitation and outright threatening of people desperate for the help they were promised is actually an advisable strategy and the party doing it should be supported. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Zambrah
United States7124 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23912 Posts
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maybenexttime
Poland5452 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21377 Posts
On July 27 2022 08:22 WombaT wrote: Is it tho?It’s not particularly admirable but it’s a rare strategically intelligent move Helping the crazies on the other side win to make them look less palatable requires them being crazy to be a bad thing to voters. I don't think you can look at the last 6 years of American politics and conclude a significant part of the country isn't happy with crazy. Heck you could make good arguments that the opposite would be much more effective, push for traditional republicans and get the crazies to not come out and vote in the general election. Republicans can't win without the crazies, that is why they still keep appealing to them. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On July 27 2022 08:06 Zambrah wrote: This sort of shit would be almost admirable if Hillary losing to Trump hadn't happened, unfortunately Hillary did lose to Trump and it really put a damper on this particular Democrat strategy. It did buy McCaskill 1 more term and an MSNBC job after she lost to an even more extreme and absurd Republican in her next election. That's the example they gave in the article of this strategy working... The presumption on my part is that people suggesting Democrats play hardball meant against Republicans, not against their own voters by paying for Republicans to threaten them harder. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Husyelt
United States814 Posts
Bless Mayor Pete, he’s leading in an early poll. Also, if you want to enjoy some masochism, Glenn Greenwald is promoting Alex Jones today, but I won’t link that. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10186 Posts
On July 27 2022 08:28 Gorsameth wrote: Is it tho? Helping the crazies on the other side win to make them look less palatable requires them being crazy to be a bad thing to voters. I don't think you can look at the last 6 years of American politics and conclude a significant part of the country isn't happy with crazy. Heck you could make good arguments that the opposite would be much more effective, push for traditional republicans and get the crazies to not come out and vote in the general election. Republicans can't win without the crazies, that is why they still keep appealing to them. It's a good strategy if the average voter can overlook the contradiction of saying these fringe candidates are a threat to our democracy and will lead us to fascism while simultaneously spending millions of dollars to help them win elections. | ||
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pmh
1351 Posts
Maybe the republicans and democrats will make a pact behind the scenes. To both come with a traditional party elite candidate. I would not be surprised by this since at this point any non traditional candidate has the potential to be a threat to the existing order. I also think that if there is a reasonable 3rd party candidate,that such a candidate could score 10% of the votes if not more. The population is getting squeezed economically,they will vote for the extremes and non traditional candidates. On both the left and the right side of the spectrum. (this for the presidential elections. Locally people will probably still vote for the traditional candidates). | ||
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