• 7 Posts
  • 65 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 27th, 2023

help-circle
  • First, what the fuck, but second, how ready is NATO to turn on supposedly one of their own?

    Turkey has been threatening to invade Greece since forever. Thats why both countries joined NATO together, at the same time(in 1952). And while there is some confidence regarding article 5, you cant have your country existence depend on “hope”. Thats why recently Greece signed a separate defence agreement with France.

    And generally Greece is one of the few NATO countries that consistently spends more than the required NATO 2%. It generally tries to maintain a 1:3 ratio when it comes to Turkey military spending which might not be enough to beat Turkey 1:1 but it is enough to make Turkey think twice about doing anything weird. The issue is that Turkey is 8x bigger and not that poor anymore(while Greece is smaller and poorer than in the past).

    I keep getting told that the “magic Article 5 argument isn’t a guarantee of support. There are no requirements to go to war for an ally, just pre-emptive permission to join in. It’s still voluntary, and few are so stupid as to stand against the [Empire!] USA!” (Brackets mine).

    All agreements between nations are “voluntary”. You cant force a country to do anything, they are a sovereign state, ie they can do whatever they want. The article 5 has very strongly written language and it is one of the most “mandated” agreements you can have. But ultimately, it is about trust and belief in it.

    Thats why Russia’s plan is to erode the belief in article 5 though hybrid warfare(and trump, if you think trump is compromised). Let’s say Russia goes and occupies 500sq meters of a baltic state. Would the US send 10 aircraft carriers and declare war on Russia? Maybe they will and then Russia would go “oups, my bad, didnt notice the map line”. Or maybe they wont. But even the discussion over whether NATO allies would strongly react to such a development, would corrode belief in article 5.




  • There is nothing to get. It is even more basic than philosophy 101, yet it thinks it is some sort of insightful writing. It is cringe and embarrassing, kinda like a 15yo who just read a reddit post on /r/philosophy and then got high and wrote a movie script.

    I do think it is a “so bad, it is actually good” kind of movie. It is almost like a sarcastic movie, making fun of pretentious movies. Maybe this will become the narrative in the future, especially once Coppola is dead.

    It will become a cult classic, but not for the reasons Coppola wants.





  • I dont understand what you are trying to say. Too big to fail is used to describe something that is failing but cant be allowed to fail because it is too big.

    As i wrote, the F-35 is far from failing, it is one of the most successful airplanes ever made, at least in terms of sales. Many european countries, which were big proponents of the Eurofighter and kinda ignored the F-15/F-16/F-18 platforms, are buying the F-35 simply because it is not only better than the Eurofighter/Rafale/Gripen, but it is also cheaper.

    If the F-35 was bad or even medicore, those countries wouldnt be so willing to buy it, in mass quantities, with deliveries all the way into the 2030. Many of these countries also intend of creating a similarly featured plane but they wont be able to make one for another 10-15 years. So in the meantime, they are dependent on the F-35. They could use their older planes but they obviously see something in the F-35 that makes it a must have in the meantime.





  • I mean anything is possible if one side is basically ignored. The UN Plan offered was just terrible.

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

    The only reason it even got to where it got was because Turkey wanted to join the EU and Greece wanted to normalize relations with Turkey. But ultimately, Cyprus(greekcypriot state) is an independent and democratic state, so it decided against it(and Greece follows whatever Cyprus decides).

    If Turkey was a normal country, you could say that all the disadvantages of the plan wouldnt be relevant in the long term. But Turkey is a mini-Russia and as Russia has shown us, appeasing nations with imperial ambitions doesnt work in the long run.

    Imagine any european leader saying to their neighbours “We could come one night”. Or “our neighbours are scared because our missiles can reach their capital”. Both statements were said by Erdogan. Only in the last year, he has chilled, mostly because of the invasion in Ukraine. For once, the West did something good, instead of writing “stern letters” so Erdogan is afraid that the West might actually military support Greece in case of a turkish invasion.

    Also because Greece is getting f-35 jets and Turkey needs american engines for their homegrown ghetto “f-35” equivalent(so the US told him to shut up and be nice or else no engines for their “f-35” or upgraded f-16).



  • It is down for the over the Mediterranean Sea routes and up for the from Turkey into Greece routes. And through the Canary Islands.

    How long the downward trend will hold remains to be seen, however. Smugglers are always quick to adapt and find new routes around border controls. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the second-most-used route, smuggling networks are now using speedboats in increasingly aggressive ways to avoid controls and targeting islands farther away from the Turkish coast in the central Aegean, according to Greek authorities.

    The number of migrants arriving in Greece by sea and overland during the first eight months of the year rose by 57%, U.N. data shows.