Vilken originell analys.
Fem punkter som med lite god vilja passar på ungefär varje stat som någonsin funnits, plus varje opposition som vågar säga att gränser, brott och lagar faktiskt betyder något. Men visst: kalla det fascism. Det sparar tid.
Nationalism var inte någon hemlig källaridé tills för femton minuter sedan. Det var den självklara ramen för nästan varje europeiskt land, inklusive Sverige. Folk betalade skatt, gjorde värnplikt och förväntade sig att staten prioriterade de egna medborgarna. Det kallades inte “flaggdyrkan”. Det kallades politik.
“Land ska med lag byggas.” Inte med stämningsläge, inte med checklistor från x och inte med att den som påpekar att integrationen havererat automatiskt är syndabocksjägare. Att peka ut verkliga problem — grov brottslighet, parallellsamhällen, systematiskt missbruk av asylsystemet — är inte fascism. Det är det minsta man kan begära av en regering som påstår sig styra ett land.
Besatthet av nationell säkerhet, brott och straff?
Ja, det tenderar demokratier att ha. Alternativet är att låtsas att våldtäkt, skjutningar och klankontroll är “sociala utmaningar” man löser med en ny myndighet och en folder.
Förakt för mänskliga rättigheter?
Märkligt hur just de som skriker högst om rättigheter sällan räknar in offrens rätt att inte bli rånade, knivhuggna eller pissade i munnen.
Och så den eviga poängen om förakt för intellektuella, konst och fri vetenskap.
Vilken bekväm definition. Fri vetenskap är tydligen bara fri så länge den levererar rätt slutsats. Konst är bara konst så länge den inte ifrågasätter den rådande moralen. Intellektuella är bara intellektuella så länge de håller sig till den godkända fiendebilden.
Sverigedemokraterna är, för den som orkar titta på program och röstningar istället för känsloord, ett ganska ordinärt nationalistiskt-konservativt parti i europeisk jämförelse. Mellanmjölk om något. Att kalla det fascism säger mer om hur urholkat ordet blivit än om partiet. Det är inte särskilt imponerande att sitta med en lista som skulle kunna klistras på Churchill, de Gaulle, Palme i vissa lägen och halva efterkrigstidens socialdemokrati, och sedan tro att man avslöjat något djupt. Det är bara slött. Och tröttsamt.
@Zeusislord7@rshereme Secret? It was totally the opposite. It was out in the open. In every media. Everywhere. It was obvious to anyone that payed attention at the time and I did because it was my job.
G8 membership and German gas dependence were real. They were also the exceptions, not the whole story. Russia was invited into the G8 in 1997–98 as a political gesture after the 1990s collapse. It was never treated as an equal economic member, and it was thrown out after Crimea. Cheap Russian gas was German Ostpolitik: “change through trade.” That was engagement. It was also German self-interest. What many Russians experienced after 1991 was something else: shock therapy, a collapsed state, NATO expanding east while Moscow was weak, Kosovo 1999 without UN approval, and a security order built around NATO rather than a shared European system that included Russia as a great power. You can debate how binding the 1990 “not one inch” talk was. You cannot debate that Moscow heard it as a promise and later saw it broken. Russia was never a normal mid-sized European state. Sweden knows that. Hell, we fought them most of the time. Introspection still matters. The West mixed outreach with the habits of a victor. That does not justify what Russia later did. It does explain why “we invited them to the club and bought their gas” is not a complete answer.
I have a problem with people being binary. We can dislike what Putin/Russia does and at the same time acknowledge that the west also have been assholes. Its not a contradiction. It is a fact.
I am not sure what you are implying or what your point is.
The West pushed Ukraine to give up its inherited nukes because it was a brand-new, economically collapsing state sitting on thousands of warheads it did not fully control. Washington’s explicit policy after 1991 was “only one nuclear successor to the USSR.” Officials feared a “Yugoslavia with nukes,” loose warheads, and proliferation. Baker called it “extraordinarily dangerous.” The U.S. made clear a nuclear Ukraine would be isolated and cut off from IMF/World Bank help. Nunn-Lugar existed to get the weapons out of “the wrong hands.” That was the priority at the time—not maximizing Ukraine’s future deterrent against Russia.
@owenil Du är medveten om att folk förlorar jobbet och värre för hur din sida skrupellöst försöker förstöra sina motståndares liv bara för att de tycker olika.
Ni har inga argument. Bara påhopp och epitet i bästa fall och krossade liv i värsta fall.
Apples and oranges. Stalin ran a totalitarian communist system that starved millions (Holodomor), filled the Gulag, and killed on an industrial scale. Putin is not that. He is an authoritarian, often criminal-adjacent ruler who uses force, proxies, and broken deals when he thinks Russia’s position or his own power requires it. That is bad enough. It is not Stalin. Not by a long shot.
Putin has to be painted as a unique demon so the West can sleep through how close this already is to a wider war. A great-power clash is no longer a distant nightmare; the trajectory has been visible for years. A non-trivial share of that is on us too: NATO enlargement without a durable settlement with Moscow, treating Ukraine as a civilizational prize, and pretending every Russian security claim was only propaganda. That does not wash the invasion clean. It does mean “one madman vs. the innocent world” is a bedtime story, not an explanation.
Size is not a free lunch. Russia spans 11 time zones, not 10. Most of the population and economic activity sit in the European part. Siberia and the Far East hold the resources but are expensive to settle, heat, connect, and defend. Soviet planning put cities and industry in places that make little market sense; maintaining them is a drag. Large territory plus sparse population plus harsh climate is a cost as well as an asset. Countries do not treat land as a finished product. They care about buffers, access, resources, and who controls the neighbors.
The wording “NATO expands” describes a fact. The alliance grew from 16 members at the end of the Cold War to 32. Calling the phrase itself “Russian propaganda” is a way to shut down the security argument rather than answer it.
Sovereign choice is real. Poland, the Baltics, Finland and the others applied because they wanted a U.S. security guarantee after Soviet occupation and later Russian pressure. Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty allows that. No one frog-marched them in. That part of the statement is correct.
That does not make Russian objections invented. Great powers treat military blocs on their borders as a change in the balance of power even when the legal form is voluntary accession.
The United States has done the same in its hemisphere for two centuries. After 1999 (Poland, Czechia, Hungary), 2004 (Baltics plus others), the 2008 Bucharest statement that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members,” and then Finland/Sweden, Moscow saw infrastructure, exercises, and later more forward deployments moving east.
The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act said there was “no intention, no plan and no reason” for permanent substantial combat forces on new members’ territory “in the current and foreseeable security environment.”
That environment changed after 2014 and 2022; so did the posture. Russia treats the sequence as encirclement. You can call that imperial resentment rather than a genuine invasion threat—that is a serious argument—but it is not “zero” from their side of the map.
The 1990 “not one inch” episode is contested, not a cartoon. Baker and others gave Gorbachev verbal assurances in the German unification talks that NATO’s jurisdiction/forces would not move east of a united Germany. Those talks were about East Germany, not a signed ban on future members. Gorbachev later said alliance enlargement as such was not a formal agenda item and that the written deal on eastern Germany was kept. BUT
Declassified records show a cascade of informal Western language that Soviet officials heard as a broader restraint. There was no treaty. There was a gap between what was said in 1990–91 and what happened in 1997–2004.
NATO has used force even though it has not invaded Russia.
Kosovo 1999 was an air campaign without a UN Security Council mandate.
Libya 2011 had a UN no-fly/civilian-protection mandate and ended in regime collapse.
Afghanistan followed Article 5 after 9/11.
Those operations matter to how Russia reads NATO’s “defensive” label. The alliance defined its mission more widely after 1991. Official doctrine and Article 5 are still collective defence of members, not a plan to occupy Russia. Nuclear deterrence and the cost of a NATO-Russia war make an actual invasion of Russian territory extremely unlikely.
“No interest to invade Russia. Zero” is close to official Western intent. It is not how a state that lost a sphere of influence and then watched the other bloc’s military infrastructure move to its border is required to interpret the same facts.
As long as I see no humility on how "we" behaved vs Russia et al there will be a WW3. What Russia did is blatantly obvious but the lack of introspection on our side is beyond the pale.
The west has destroyed their countries through mass migration that the leaders to blame would rather have a WW3 to divert attention from this. Military 101 on how politicians start a war.
@rabaumert@rshereme Russia wasn't treated like a potential partner but rather as an adversary. This unnecessary hostility is the seed of what we see today. I am not saying to not be cautious with Russia(at the time and today). Russia is Russia after all. But we had to poke the bear. Over and over.
NATO was specifically formed to counter the Soviet threat. WP was formed as a response. When the Soviet union collapsed the main purpose for NATO disappeared. It was not unreasonable to disband it at all. Actually it is provocative to keep it and expand it. It is easy to judge in hindsight.
Because it was a time of excitement and friendliness when the Soviet union fell. Relations quickly became normalized after decades of cold war on the brink of nuclear exchange. These were official announcements, among many, that were covered extensively in media at the time.
It was so obvious to everyone, at the time, that there is no reason for NATO to expand east. Rather the opposite. Disbanding NATO. The war was over. We won.