Basically the rules are, you can’t be in a fight already if you want to join.
Which makes a lot of sense. If you could wait until you need backup to join, you’d just never join until you need it. No country wants to get sucked into someone else’s war.
At least, that’s the mentality. The truth is, no war is “someone else’s war”. We’re all in this together globally, and oppression anywhere is a threat to everywhere.
There is no such rule. The rule is everyone else already in has to agree to you joining. Practically most people don’t want to go to war and so nobody will agree, but there is no rule stating they can’t agree.
An unwritten rule, then.
Not anymore, you wrote it down
pulls off monster mask it was me, NATO all along!
Nato is a defensive organization. If any member is attacked, every other member has to come to their aid. You can’t join if you’re currently being attacked. That’s a pretty fundamental assumption. Nato exists to prevent future wars by acting as a bloc, not to force their members to join existing wars.
To join nato, ukraine needs to win the war and recover all their territory, release their claims on any russian occupied territories, or get enough of nato’s membership on their side to be agree to be forced into the war. None of these are possible anytime soon.
If any member is attacked, every other member has to come to their aid.
They don’t have to. It stipulates that a war on one member is viewed as a declaration of war on all members. But there’s no protocol that forces members to act.
For example when the Cypriot war broke out between Greece and Turkey, both NATO members.
Then it would make such membership meaningless and will only undermine collective action within NATO?
It is what it is
Yeah, in practice this is interpreted as as everyone must join to retaliate, except maybe in niche cases like the aggressor also being in NATO.
NATO is a group where everyone agreed if one of them gets punched, they all punch the bully back. Because of this, the bully doesn’t punch anyone in the group. The bully could make the punches painful for NATO, but NATO could do the same to the bully.
Ukraine is being punched. If they join NATO, all the NATO states have to punch back, and then the bully punches NATO because they’re already being punched.
The threat of being punched keeps NATO and the bully away from each other. If one side actually starts punching, the other side would too, and both would be punched. So NATO isn’t willing to let Ukraine in and immediately start a fight
Article 10 of Nato
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession
In the end people don’t want to sent their sons to the meatgrinder if not absolutely necessary. There are the obvious exceptions of the rule.
Russia has a bomb strapped on itself, saying “If any one tries to beat ME up, I’ll blow us all up!”
Today it would be about the best for me - I’m old enough that I wouldn’t be drafted, my kids young enough that this would likely be over before they are old enough. However I have nieces, nephews, and cousins of military age, some currently serving - all of them are in danger of getting killed if we were to let Ukraine join and thus I cannot be for it. I have a lot of sympathy for Ukraine, but not so much that I want my close friends and family to die for them.
The above or some variation represents most of the people (not countries) who are in NATO.
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that is russian propaganda, and not more or less why they invaded.
That is shifting the blame away from Russia, which is the fascist aggressor. Ukraine did not enter NATO; Russia rejected Ukraine seeking more economical independence.
Yanukovych, who was pro-EU, was originally supposed to sign an association treaty between the EU and Ukraine; but last minute he didn’t sign, while parliament had voted with an overwhelming majority for yes.
Yanukovych probably didn’t sign due to Russian pressure, which proposed instead that Ukraine become a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. Protests grew into Euromaidan, but the anti-protest laws instated by Yanukovych’s party of oligarchs, repressed it, until he was deposed.
And then Russia invaded Ukraine and took the Crimea + the Donbass, and shot down MH17. For which Putin and Girkin still haven’t paid with their lives.
Since Putin was the one to pressure Yanukovych in not signing, and since Putin was the one to invade, he’s to be blamed for everything.
Ukraine would’ve been able to remain neutral – and negotiate favourable terms for transporting goods to Russia. All that without joining the Eurasian Economic Union. Thus the blame is solely and wholly on Putin for rejecting any such option.
The EU explicitly provides for a neutral nation to join (like Austria did), and even provides for interoperability with other common markets through the EEA. Though that is less favourable than being in the EU, as you then cannot vote in EU parliament about laws affecting you; a deal that Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland took. It also doesn’t come with the advantage of the mutual defence clause.
Yes it is; no it didn’t. Get out of here with your Putin apologia. Russia getting “spooked” by stupid shit and threatening to nuke things is in the first paragraph of the first page of their geopolitical playbook.
That’s incorrect.
You have fallen for Russian propaganda. It didn’t start because of that in the slightest. In fact Russia has removed most of its defences bordering other NATO countries during the Ukrainian war, showing that they are not afraid of NATO attacking them at all.
sure but where’s the profit in that?
