We’ve caught on to how this works now. I anticipate about two more iterations of tedious, drawn out flip-flopping and misinformation during the remaining steps before we are either finally let in or the whole thing fizzles out.
There is already very heavy pressure on Turkey to let Sweden in, so I don’t see this having any chance to fizzle out, Turkey may be a valuable member, but there are limits to their value.
Zero chance NATO lets the Black Sea and Bosporus + Dardanelles fall into russia’s sphere.
I think getting out of Mediterranean at Gibraltar is worth more than getting into the black sea. If Turkey wants to play hardball with EU USA and NATO, they will quickly realize how much they are the underdog, and no idiot dictator shouting his stupidities can prevent that.
Turkey is not playing by the rules, but is exploiting a situation, despite the it would benefit Turkey too to have Sweden in NATO.
If Turkey can’t respect the mutual interests of an international institution they themselves benefit from, they can go fuck themselves.
Some things can be bought at too high a price.It’s very different. Turkey completely controls access to the Black Sea, which ties into several MAJOR river networks across Europe. The strait of Gibraltar is much wider, and also not controlled by a single nation, so it’s far less feasible to block, for a lot of reasons.
There is no limit to the geographic value of Turkey against Russia
Oh we’re still on about this NATO stuff? We’re halfway to another election and they’ve still not sorted it out.
Like I don’t blame the current government for Erdogan and whatshisface in that shithole being obstinate, but at this point I’m sure we could’ve put all that money and energy on more useful things than trying to appease a fickle dictator.
If this hasn’t been a wakeup call to NATO that their membership process is broken then I doubt we’ll ever see a new member. The time, energy, unpredictability, and susceptibility to influences from bad actors is a huge deterrent already, and it’ll only get worse over time.
If they can’t do away with the veto system there should at least be a mechanism in place for ejecting bad actors. Maybe Turkey is too strategic to face such a risk, but backsliding countries like Hungary would at least need to stop exploiting/blocking the system without legitimate cause. Far too easy for Russia/China/etc to buy off a handful of politicians to block any future expansion.
Common to many of our institutions, international and national, are that they were designed based on an expectation of some sort of correctness and decency and respect towards the institution by members and associates.
But way to many players have thrown away the rule book, and are working the system on the borderline insane. This goes to the extreme for instance for these notable examples: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Trump, Orbán. (Russia, China, Turkey, USA, Hungary) Draging their entire country with them. Making this insanity ancompass at least a third of the globe! We need to guard our democracies and institutions against the outrageous even borderline insane populists, even in well established democracies and international organisations that are a huge benefit to all member states. There are examples of people who threaten to tear it apart.
We will see if Netherlands and Gert Wilders will be added to the list of declining societies, in many ways he is not unlike Orbán, and could create huge problems for EU too.
Orban is a cunt, but Hungary is far from being a shithole.
Right. I’m not talking about it geographically. I know that it’s not a literal hole of shit.
No, I get that. I just wanted to point out that the standard by which you throw around that label would apply to any country in the world. Cunty politicians are not a Hungarian speciality.
Removed by mod
Yay can’t wait to go die for globohomo and wars started by Isreal and the USA!
Said no Swede ever
