honorentheos wrote:Yes, if Montenegro invoked article 5, we should hit the idiots attacking them hard and send them back to wherever they came from.
Should we start a war with Russia is a different question. Article 5 is defensive. If Montenegro started a war with Russia and then asked for help, they wouldn't be able to invoke Article 5.
Feels like you want to have your cake and eat it too. We can game out plenty of scenarios where someone provokes another into attacking.
How about this situation?
I don't want to get too far off into the weeds, though. Here's where I really wanted to take this. The response seems to be unanimous, everybody is saying, yes, we will send our children off to die for Montenegro if they were hypothetically attacked by Russia. If that's true, we really mean it, those aren't just Big Words, kindly explain the Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_ ... AssurancesPerhaps a quick review is in order. We screwed the Ukraine. We entered into an agreement with the Ukraine, very similar to NATO article 5 obligations, promising we'd protect them. In exchange, as part of the agreement, they did things like turn over huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland, and the United States Of America. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
As a result, between 1994 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. Before that, Ukraine had the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical if not operational control....
Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, the US, Canada, the UK, along with other countries, stated that Russian involvement was a breach of its obligations to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, a Memorandum transmitted to the United Nations under the signature of Sergei Lavrov, amongst others, and in violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Not only that, but then fast forward several years. Russia starts flexing its muscles at the Ukraine. Ukraine goes to EU for help, EU responds by discouraging them from resisting Russia. EU is honest with the Ukraine that they aren't going to lift a finger to help. The USA does the opposite, beats the drum, and talks the Ukraine into starting a big fight. Ukraine assumes USA has its back, I mean we have a treaty after all, and we're talking them into this. Russia calls the bluff, invades, we do nothing. Ukranians die. Lots of them. Russian special forces stage a fake indigenous uprising, even shooting down a passenger jet at one point. Crimea is taken over, a referendum is held where armed mercs are stationed at polling centers, etc. Crimea "freely" votes to be a part of Russia.... which is how things stand today.
Where was Obama during all this? Oh that's right, not giving a crap, and for sure not going to war with Russia over it, our treaties and obligations be damned.
How is this different than the hypothetical situation with Montenegro?
If you all say, which you have, that we should go to war with Russia IF they were to attack Montenegro, owing to our Article 5 NATO obligations, why aren't you already calling for war against Russia owing to our obligations to the Ukraine?
