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DECEMBER 2024

NATO’s Appetite To Unlimited Expansion Continues To Grow

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NATO’s Appetite To Unlimited Expansion Continues To Grow

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Written by Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

On June 12, Swedish authorities in Stockholm decided to extradite a Turkish national who had been convicted of a drug crime in his home country in 2013. The man is a self-proclaimed supporter of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and claims that the real motivations behind his deportation actually lie in his Kurdish politics, the PKK being an outlawed party in Turkey. The West, in any case, remains bent on having Sweden join NATO, following the steps of Finland, and Turkey in turn remains the only obstacle, making good use of its vetoing power within the Alliance’s structure to obtain leverage.

As I wrote, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not allow the Nordic country’s accession into NATO unless Washington changes its Kurdish policy in the Middle East. The US ambassador to Turkey, Jeff Flake, has acknowledged, in an interview with Axios, that it is “unlikely” Sweden will join NATO before next month’s Vilnius summit (as Washington had hoped). There is, however, some room for political and diplomatic bargaining, as Ankara is trying to purchase a new batch of F-16 fighter jets from the US, and, although the American presidency supports it, Congress still needs to approve the deal. Thus, US lawmakers are trying to use the $20 billion sale as leverage to have Ankara dropping its opposition to Stockholm’s accession.

This Swedish development is part of a larger context of Stockholm trying to “appease” the Turkish authorities in Ankara. Just last month, the country  tightened its anti-terrorism laws, in a clear response to Turkey’s allegations about Sweden being a safe haven for (Kurdish) “terrorists”. The political and diplomatic pressure on Ankara, however, has increased: during talks at the White House on June 13, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and US President Joe Biden himself all called for Turkey to approve the Swedish application.

The pressure, in fact, is not upon Ankara only. American Senator Jim Risch, a powerful voice within the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has threatened to block a $735 million arms sale to Hungary over the latter’s delay in approving Sweden’s accession. He said:

“Given promises that were made to me and others last year that this vote would be done, and the fact that it is now June and still not done, I decided that the sale of new US military equipment to Hungary will be on hold.”

The US and the EU have been accused of meddling into Hungarian internal elections in 2022, by backing the opposition against Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Moreover, the Western bloc and NATO’s appetite for expansion extends to the Balkas also. In the region, there are four NATO members (Greece, Spain, Romania, and Slovakia) that do not recognize the state of Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, after a referendum. At the time, the  UN International Court of Justice on Kosovo ruled that the territory of a given state is not obliged to apply for permission to the country’s central authorities in order to declare its sovereignty away from it. This of course is yet another instance of Western double standards and hypocrisy on Crimea, for example.

Last month, amid the increasingly tense Kosovo-Serbia dispute, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić demanded that NATO-led troops stationed in Kosovo protect Kosovo Serbs from ethnic violence. Kosovo, a new state not recognized by Serbia, is also pursuing NATO membership. American senators Gary Peters, of the armed services committee, and Chris Murphy, a foreign relations committee’s member, during a visit to Kosovo’s capital city Pristina, have urged the country to implement a Western-brokered peace deal with neighboring Serbia, so that it can join both NATO and the European Union.

The Finnish and Swedish NATO bids are thus part of the continent’s militarization (its “NATOization”), as pursued by the US, which has also made clear it desires an increasingly nuclearized Europe. The two countries’ membership, As a matter of fact, will result in extending the Alliance’s territorial reach as far out as the Russian eastward Arctic flank, thereby making Russia the only non-NATO state in the Arctic. This can be described in no other way than as the further “encircling” of Russia.

Considering the Atlantic Alliance’s well-known will to expand, since 1999 at least, which was, by the way, a notorious breach of the 1990 promise, one could even reason that Russia’s key goals have been defensive in nature and mostly a response to that, and that NATO’s enlargement was one of the main causes of the Ukrainian crisis 9 years ago and remains so today.

The US-led political West’s willingness to work with the opposition in Hungary (a NATO member) indicates just how comfortable it feels with depriving Budapest of sovereignty in making both external and internal political decisions. Washington’s actions to promote its own interests without even taking into account the positions of its own partner and allies has consistently been a characteristic feature of US foreign policy.

The decision taken by the political leadership of Finland and Sweden in turn to apply to join NATO without holding a referendum is a clear indication that the authorities in these nations ignore the views of their own populations on key issues pertaining to the development of these countries. Amid the still ongoing energy crisis and the rising costs of accommodating the waves of Ukrainian refugees, upon applying to join the world’s largest military alliance, these Nordic countries are basically signing up for enormous increases in national budget expenditures in order to fulfill NATO membership requirements. This will also have social and political costs domestically.

To sum it up, NATO’s reckless expansion is bound to increase domestic tensions within the European bloc and to further provoke and antagonize Moscow, thus making peace an increasingly distant prospect.

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A buktee

nato will continue expanding until the retards in moscow make their first and final move on the organization. then no more russia and no more belarus. russia will become a us colony and most putin loving cokaroches and rats will be placed in america and german “re-education” facilities to westernize them. after that the chinese will be conquered and thrn north korea and any other degenerate state that dares to oppose the might of the free world.

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US is becoming a shithole

there will be no more nato expansion eastward, it has been stopped at ukraine. us has no chance to conquer 1.3 billion chinese lol.

SHOIGU, GERASHIMOV, PRIGOZIN AND PUTIN LOVE DICK

failed winter offensive, lost kherson, lost over 150 000 troops, lost more tanks than you did in ww2, lost 22k in bahkmut, jets get shot down left and right, you rely on iran and north korea and africa for military support, you rely on china for winter clothing and protective gear and now you’re going to lose zaporizhia and crimea. you faggot loving retard. go educate yourself

SHOIGU, GERASHIMOV, PRIGOZIN AND PUTIN LOVE DICK

couldn’t take kiev in 3 days like yiu claimed lost the “mighty moskva” khinzal is a shit missle s-300’s that ukraine has is shooting down your top jrt after the su 57 ( which is why yiu wouldn’t dare bring it to ukraine) t-14 armada is junk and propaganda… like what is russia other than a failed mafia state at this point

SHOIGU, GERASHIMOV, PRIGOZIN AND PUTIN LOVE DICK

bitch please those 1.3 billion commies whom putin sucks off at night woukd get smacked by a single us and british carrier strike group and yiu know it. thry wouldn’t even be detected by radar before most of the critical damage is done and they’d be long gone, after that yiu just drop bombs from 70 000 feet until thry submit. sooner or later they will. after that they’ll go turn moscow into bahkmut 2.0 and let the cities citizens do putin and shoigu like they did gadafi and sadam

bla bla bla bla…waste time, if really true then just do it.

MonkeyMagic

russia is fighting nato and winning!

MonkeyMagic

all this and russia’s gdp increases by 3.3%, having difficulty with cope kholhol?

Martillo

us was always a shithole for the vast majority at sphincter level in that sewer.

sawyer cum bucket

arestovich admits amerikan lgbt military inferior to russia—hohol offensive complete failure🤣😂😭🇷🇺

russhaveto

dont forget … drake sing song guns seller now —- forver !!!!! you can’t kill me. [ ivar the boneless ] – eminem , 2pac

MonkeyMagic

it’s rabid dogs like you that should have been euthanized at birth and the bitch that bored you sterilised.

Dean

wake up and take your medicine first.

aamater

je priam zarážajúce ako darebácky štát usa používa voči svojim spojencom taktiku biča a cukru!!! otázkou je do kedy im to ešte vydrží? erdogan by sa mal poučiť, ak sa nepoučil dopadne ako husajn, či kkaddáfi. darebácky štát usa neodpúšťa svoje poníženie. a erdogan ponížil usa, veď sa ho tí pokúsili dokonca zosadiť vojenským prevratom.

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V Molotov

nato is weak paper tiger–cowards cannot challenge russia –they will be nuclear ashes–a military of inferiors –ontologiclal fear. poland will benefit from a few nuclear bombs

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Martillo

natostan aka the armed gang of the eussr, run by the pentacon filth and washing town vermin, is getting its wobbly ass kicked in the rump ukrap dumpster fire, yet the girly men and manly girls of this flaky cabal of pedovores still hasn’t figured out that erdogan and swedenstan is just a sideshow. the future is already clear to anyone who knows their history.

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Martillo

the circus has moved on and the anglozionazi empire of shit is being flushed with the end of the iou fiat filth ex saudi mercan toilet paper dollah and its gimp basturd €urodollah and with it all their genocide on chinese credit.

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russhaveto

maybe get a brand new zizzo …. fat ass fuck trambilne killa guns hahah form usa … hear top us general’s evaluation of russia’s military leadership

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Душан Мирић

i really likes recent comment by douglas macgregor about people who are pushing aggressive policy that they are creating circumstances in which they are going to spend insane amounts of military budget money because otherwise they wouldn’t have job at all. it reminded me on eu bureaucracy which is making insane rules

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