Sweden became NATO’s newest member on Thursday (7 March 2024), upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the Government of the United States in Washington DC. With Sweden’s accession, NATO now counts 32 countries among its members.
    • @[email protected]
      31•4 months ago

      I blame the fact they built all these institutions with no clause to expel members, or which require total unanimity to do so. They really bought in to the whole “end of history” thing, I guess.

      • Troy
        23•4 months ago

        Yeah, this is an interesting element. Historically, allowing all members a veto, while also having no way to expel a member, means that any such institution is liable to outside meddling. The classic example is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto – in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, any noble could veto anything. So all it took was buying a few nobles and it shattered.

        • @[email protected]
          4•4 months ago

          Apparently, based on that Wikipedia article, they ended up making a new version with less strict veto rules, called the confederated sejm, which is also where I expect all these Western institutions to go eventually. TIL.

      • @[email protected]
        12•4 months ago

        That is an L take. Having a term limit helps increase the difficulty of making political dynasties. It doesn’t make it impossible, but it sure is gonna make it harder for a certain person or group to solidify their power base.

      • @[email protected]
        -6•4 months ago

        Not really, the difference between two people of the same ideology to fulfill your democratic needs whom one can find in a population of a few million can be very small.

          • @[email protected]
            5•4 months ago

            Doesn’t change the fact that banning people from running for election is inherently undemocratic.

            Something being democratic is not the only criterion, because you wouldn’t want your neighbors to vote in favor of collectively owning you as a slave, even if your vote against gets counted.

            It’s just one safety measure - if a politician still would win an election after 8 years (life changes entirely in only 1 year), for example, that’s likely for wrong reasons. Like using administrative resource, pro-government mass media, crooked elites etc.

    • BombOmOmEnglish
      6•4 months ago

      Reignited the West’s arms industry as well! We had gotten complacent until Putin started the largest war in Europe since WWII.

    • @can
      31•4 months ago

      hell yea

  • @SuddenDownpour
    26•4 months ago

    I don’t like the expansion of NATO, but due to Russia’s recent imperialism, Sweden’s and Finland’s reactions are completely reasonable. A much healthier alternative would have been actually advancing towards an integrated European defense system involving EU members, with a door open to certain neighbours such as Norway, but it’s pretty hard to do that when the political groups that could actually promote that alternative are schizophrenically tolerating positions such as “I’m a pacifist, so I’m advocating for my own country’s disarmament despite my neighbours starting wars very recently” and “if Ukraine didn’t want to get invaded, they shouldn’t have sought guarantees against Russian aggression from third countries”.

    • @[email protected]
      5•4 months ago

      I think Europeans in general psychologically still feel themselves weak without NATO, unable to fill the needs of their own defense.

      I’ve been reading about 1st Indochina war yesterday, so - emotionally biased.

      • @SuddenDownpour
        25•4 months ago

        EU’s population: 448 million

        EU GDP: 19 trillion dollars

        Russia’s population: 143 million

        Russia’s GDP: 1,78 trillion dollars

        Simplifying a bit here (I’m obviously taking Morocco and Belarus for granted, assuming that Turkey wouldn’t attack Greece, and so on), but it’s pretty much a “gotta get our shit together” situation, because there’s no reason why we should depend on the US for defense, or anything else.

        • @[email protected]English
          11•4 months ago

          I assume you meant trillion and not million for those gdp figures? Even then, they’re low.

        • @[email protected]
          7•4 months ago

          That’s about architecture more than resources. “Gotta get our shit together” doesn’t negate the fact that shit isn’t together yet.

          It’s good to have resources, but such a situation is still weakness. Only I think NATO in some sense is a contributing factor, and EU frankly too, both not in the least because of all those veto and consensus rules.

        • @[email protected]
          2•4 months ago

          I think it’s also been a case of “it’s nice to spend money on nice things instead of things designed to kill people”. Which it is! It’s not a non-significant part of why EU’s GDP per capita is so much higher than Russia’s.

          Which is also why fuck Russia. Governments like that make everything worse.

          • @SuddenDownpour
            1•4 months ago

            Completely agreed. The ideal defense spending is 0. The problem is that this is only possible if everyone agrees that military action is not the proper method to solve international conflicts.

    • asterroid
      -18•4 months ago

      but due to Russia’s recent imperialism, Sweden’s and Finland’s reactions are completely reasonable.

      that is, it was not NATO that staged two coups in Ukraine, put its puppet government there and began to push the country into NATO, build bases and create threats to Russia’s security, but this Russia, for no reason, attacked poor Ukraine, which did not exist at all not so long ago, and it was part of Russia

      • @[email protected]
        6•4 months ago

        Kaliningrad’s fairly strategically useless to them now that every surrounding country’s NATO though. The Suwałki Gap between Kaliningrad and Belarus used to be pivotal in potentially re-taking control of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It would have been very difficult for NATO defend them if Russia took the gap. But now those countries are protected by NATO countries all around so Kaliningrad’s a lot less useful strategically. Not to mention that there’s a strong Kaliningrad independence movement so they’re struggling to control it internally as well.

        More here.

  • @[email protected]
    1•4 months ago

    Irasshaimase~ er, welcome! This isn’t really that big of news imo, they were pretty much already a member kinda.