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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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I don't think I follow your arguments. Is there a way you can rephrase your point such that a dummy like myself might understand it?
About rogue member states not being thought of when NATO was being created - when NATO was being created, even France and UK were more likely to behave like "rogue member states" and they did in some little known cases (Biafra, for example, or the Suez crisis). And Turkey was full-blown fascist (well, it didn't stop being that at any point since then till now, just Westerners conveniently assumed that it changed like Japan, say, one my relative in the US from Jewish side is just in complete denial that it hasn't as it wasn't civilized by bombs, while at the same time uneasy with my cousins going to Germany).
About NATO having its hands tied against Turkey due to Ukraine - if A happened before B, you can't justify A with B. So you can't justify Turkey getting away with everything it does by Russia vs Ukraine taking all the attention.
I'm not talking about anyone being justified; I am talking about realpolitik and the fact that in international relations it's often the case that what ought to be is often in direct conflict with what actually is.
It would be awesome if we could live in a world of absolutes wherein national interests never conflicted with moral ambiguity, but that's just not reality at all, sorry to inform.
And why then it's a problem that Russia wreaks havoc in Ukraine?..
And I don't see Western states acting in their best interest anyway. I actually see something between slow surrender to the worst of their competition and some weird kind of "let no one win", trying to empower the worst savages while simply not working with those of competitors who shouldn't necessarily be their adversaries. You can also take a look at the people which reach the top in European and US political classes, these are of, eh, declining quality.
Also for my second point - an event in the future still can't be the cause for an event in the past, justification or not.
Other than that - large parts of NATO \ West "civilization offering", so to say, were about freedom and human rights.
And large parts of the Soviet alternative were about humanism and equality and unification.
And if it's casual for you that people were not supposed to believe in any of that in either case, then I don't get it why people here are so eager to point out Soviet hypocrisies as if they were any different.
It'd be probably also awesome for realpolitik fans to not forget how real world works in terms of errors. Right now an error in your security systems means some protest, some Assange or Snowden, some scandal. Getting into realpolitik too much would shift those errors to justified terrorist acts. Well, I suppose that may be one reason why some countries are so eager to get rid of nuclear energy despite all the green agenda in PR. Single point of failure and all that.