NoneOfUrBusiness

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Netanyahu would be nice to get rid of, but Israeli society is more or less united against Iran so it wouldn’t matter much in the big picture.

They’re not benefitting now, but any realistic settlement for this war will give them a lot of things they wanted (sanctions relief being a big one).

Pedantry incoming:

“Salting the earth” doesn’t actually ruin the land in the way popularly imagined. Now truly massive amounts of salt might do that, but nobody’s actually done that. The thing about salt is that in relatively small quantities it acts as a fertilizer, so salting the earth in enemy settlements encourages plants to grow there, but without someone to actually farm the land you get wild flora instead. The desired end result here isn’t to turn the land into a barren wasteland, but to turn it from civilized territory into wilderness.

TIL, but also literally yes.

That might count as support, but do you have examples of this?

True, but it’s not support. China’s posture towards the Ukraine war is much closer to neutral than pro-Russia. The top comment implies that China is somehow giving aid (or something analogous to aid) to Russia, but that’s just not happening; what China is doing regarding the Russian invasion the default and it’s what most of the rest of the world is doing: nothing.

I mean China isn’t supporting the Russian economy per se; they’re just trading with them.

True, but again unless something fundamentally changes (which, to be fair we are living in a pretty “interesting” era in history) the calculus that made Trump conclude picking a fight with Canada is a bad idea isn’t changing anytime soon. Hence, he backed down.

Well that’s disappointing. I don’t think I said anything to warrant this kind of response, so I’m just going to conclude you’re an asshole. Just in case though, for anyone reading this far down:

LMAO this was already addressed.

No it wasn’t. Your argument is that it’s better to fight Russia now than fight Russia later, but it doesn’t prove it’s necessary to fight Russia at all. The idea that Spain’s territorial integrity would be threatened by an expansionist Russia is completely unrealistic. Now its interests would certainly be, but that’s not usually what people mean by a defensive war.

And lol we see why with what you say next. “Anything Britain does is offensive”. LOLOL.

Failing a hostile army crossing or threatening to cross the English Channel, yes it’s almost impossible for Britain to engage in defensive military activity.

That’s a great example, and it illustrates clearly my point here: Russia aside, the era of intra-European wars of conquest is over. Germany isn’t going to declare a thousand years Reich over Poland, and neither will Italy pick more fights with the Balkans, at least for a generation or two. This is a result of European integration and has nothing to do with NATO per se. So really the only military threat to the Pax Americana in Europe is Russia, which as I said don’t require anything as big as NATO to stop it, so the question becomes “what’s in it for (for example) Britain.”

This leads us to my other point: Britain and France didn’t declare war in WWII because Germany was coming for them. Not that they shouldn’t have intervened, but that what they did was an intervention; they didn’t want Germany to have hegemony over continental Europe and so they declared war. The existence of the Allies wasn’t defensive. Similarly, any war Britain fights with Russia would be offensive, not defensive, because there’s no plausible reality where Russia tries to cross the English Channel. British participation in such a conflict would be to protect a status quo that serves its interests, not to preemptively defend British soil. This means it’d be wrong to say British is in NATO for defensive reasons; its membership in NATO is both unnecessary for its not-quite-stated goal (defending against Russian aggression) and this goal wouldn’t be any more defensive than America declaring the Gulf War on Iraq. There’s a lot more mutual back scratching to keep states not directly threatened by Russia in the alliance than just mutual defense, even if we assume that NATO’s primary goal is defending member states (which is certainly arguable considering NATO hasn’t conducted a defensive operation in its entire history).

Trump hasn’t backed down from the 51st state thing permanently, he just gets distracted.

Maybe not permanently, but definitely for the foreseeable future. If you’ll remember, Trump’s official line on the 51st state business is that he will not force the issue militarily. This is as opposed to Greenland, where he has said no such thing. In effect he has backed down, because he’s ruled out the one thing that could even plausibly make it happen.

Edit: Accidentally deleted the above reply, so I’m reposting it here:

I strongly doubt the reason Trump backed down from the 51st state thing was NATO militaries. Again, no member of NATO was ever going to actually fight America for Canada. They (the European side at least; no way Turkey was getting involved) would’ve retaliated in other ways, but those ways, being non-military, have nothing to do with NATO.

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Not by anybody NATO would get into a fight with.

I mean, who’s gonna fuck with Spain? France? Britain? Germany? Italy? Canada? Many countries in NATO are safe from foreign aggression for decades to come, NATO or no NATO. If so many of the major members in the defensive alliance don’t need defending, then it’s probably not a defensive alliance.

Sure, but those places would be in some kind of military alliance anyway, the Treaty of Brussels being the most obvious candidate. It’s also important to remember that they’d be overrun anyway; what’s keeping them safe is the threat of retaliation by the rest of NATO, but even at worst Central and Eastern Europe would be more than enough to provide that threat on their own. My point isn’t that a defensive alliance (mostly against Russia) is unnecessary, but that NATO is way, way too big to be only that. Countries like Spain and Britain aren’t part of NATO for mutual defense, because there’s nothing to defend them from.

I mean, do you really see Russia beating countries with well armed and trained Western style militaries? Because I sure as hell don’t. At worst, an “everyone west of France” alliance would absolutely wipe the floor with Russia if it came down to it. The threat Russia poses to an even somewhat united Eastern and Central Europe is highly exaggerated.

It’s because NATO was never just about mutual defense. It’s part of the broader Western Bloc, which absolutely doesn’t make sense without America at the helm. In the first place none of NATO’s member states have had defensive problems that require anything that massive since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Intellectual property is fucking stupid exhibit 28901:

And then Zionists will be like “but why don’t they negotiate.”