this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2022
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See my original argument at the very beginning of this long thread. Germany vetoing the NATO expansion would have likely meant NATO becoming irrelevant and the US starting a different defensive alliance with the eastern European states (and the UK) in the early 2000. This would have been a worse outcome from the Russian perspective any way you can look at it.
We don't know what would've happened with NATO, but we do know that a war may have been avoided. Your concerns for the fate of NATO feel somewhat hollow in face of real human suffering that unfolded.
In fact, it's very likely that had NATO become irrelevant then Europe could develop much better relations with Russia going forward creating far better stability and security in the region.
This is exactly what both Germany and France tried hard all these years. Why do you even post on the /c/europe community when you have clearly not followed European politics at all? The problem is that the east European states with support from the US and the UK ran a hard-line anti-Russian defensive policy.
That is literally not what both Germany and France tried all these years. In fact, there is no trying involved here. Both Germany and France could have vetoed Ukraine's membership in NATO at any time. There is literally no trying involved here.
Again, vetoing their membership would have by all likelihood meant that a new NATO without Germany and France, but with Ukraine would have been started. Better to be on the boat and silently block it than leaving it all to the hardliners... you clearly don't understand German Realpolitik at all.
NATO wouldn't really be an organization worth of note without France and Germany. This is precisely why Germany was in the position to act. You're engaging in speculation about something that may eventually happen as a justification for not taking action to avert a real war in which people are currently dying.
You are deeply mistaken. Germany has no functional army at all and is a dead weight on NATO, and France has always had a "we would rather not be in NATO at all" stance. Why do you think Trump pushed so hard for Germany to increase military spending instead of relying on US troops stationed there?
I'm not mistaken at all. You're arguing against a scenario you literally made up to justify doing nothing to avoid a very real war. There's clearly no point continuing this.