by brabel | 2026-01-13 22:53:22+00:00
> You can point to George W. Bush opening the door to NATO membership in 2006 [1] as a turning point but NATO had been gobbling up former Communist bloc countries for more than a decade.

The 1990's Russia was a hugely struggling nation that could barely feed its population, but even then they opposed NATO expansion strongly!

> The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.

Source: (Gorbachev in interview from 2014) https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbac...

> Based on what? Personal anecdotes? The EU acknowledges a housing crisis [2].

The housing crisis is mostly limited to inflated prices in large cities and is itself evidence that people have a good purchasing power, since it's not being driven by foreign capital (at least where I live, in the Nordics).

Which statistics show the EU is NOT affluent?? If we look at GDP (+1.35% yearly in the last 10 years [1], not too bad for developed economies) and unemployment (currently around 6% for the whole EU [2]), it's not bad, especially if you consider the huge number of recent immigrants (unemployment among the native population is much lower than the total figures show, in Sweden, for example, native Swedes have near full employment).

But yeah, I think personal anedoctes are also helpful to establish whether a country looks like it's going down... and everywhere I go, I see only good signs: shops expanding, lots of new buildings, full bars and restaurants, people are driving the latest electric cars... what I don't see is things like businesses closing down, struggling local shops etc. which are normally very visible (I know, I've seen that) in economies that are in dire straits.

> There is a significant Russian population in Latvia who are stateless. IIRC it's estimated there are more than 200,000 of them.

Yes, I've been to Latvia and Russian is clearly spoken by a large percentage of the population (to my surprise, including the young generation). As long as they are not suppressed from speaking their language (as is happening in Ukraine right now and even before the war, and in some areas in the Baltic countries) and they're not made second-class citizens (as is happening in Estonia, where they can no long vote [3]), Putin will not have any excuse to do that, and those countries would be wise to not provide such excuses! Anyway, I think that regardless of that, NATO will survive even without the USA (as something else, perhaps, but the union between European states is extremely important to maintain) and I really belive Article 5 will exist even if NATO evolves into a Europe-only alliance.

> I'm not sure you truly appreciate just how much US foreign policy is designed to advance the interests of American corporations.

Not sure what you're referring to... I think I do appreciate it. The interview Trump had with the American oil companies after the partial "annexation" of Venezuela couldn't be a better example of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#...

[3] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/russia/article/2025/03/26/estonia-...