There is this wikipedia article with a list of all the countires in the world with their military presence outside of their countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overseas_military_bases You can google for each of these countries as well, such as France and their presence in Africa, as well as other "past"-colonial forces, US with their presence in Kosovo, Turkey with their presence in a lot of Balkan countries (also previous colonies of Ottoman empire). There is a lot of countries in the World that where past colonies that never got rid completly of their imperialist rulers. In fact during cold war they made an alliance just for that, that is where the term third world comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Obviously imperialist didn't like that and the media propaganda changed the meaning of that term to the "developing country" to excuse them staying there while they "develop". Never actually leaving of course.
bumphot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#Military_operations All of NATO wars were in non-NATO countries, all where offensive invasitions. They fight in MIddle East for oil companies. I do not sympathize with Russian government, they are just as bad when given the chance. But NATO is scarier. Calling people to support Russia when they critisize your government is insane.
They are not independent, that is the point. NATO military is still present in most of them or have puppet governments or are still at war.
In is defensive only on paper. In reality it is NATO weapons that supply wars in Middle East. Joining NATO isn't just mutual defense, you need to sign a lot of other requirements that inevitably gets you under strong influance of US military and finances. Check out military intervantions of NATO, they are all offensive, no one ever attacked a NATO country, they are too strong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#Military_operations None of these counties they invaded where part of NATO, Iraq, Afganistan, Kosovo, Bosina, Libya.
Laws don't matter when you have the military power. Laws only apply to the weak. Powerful countires (and people) don't protect them selves with laws, since they have the military. When Assange and Manning published US war crimes, militry officials didnt go to jails, but they, whistlblowers and journalists did. Don't fall for the laws for a second, they don't apply to them.
Most of the casulties are russian troops, are they not? They don't join volonterily you know, they are forcefully conscripted.
Only on paper. In practice there are many financial and military infulence that US gets when a country joins NATO that result in joining wars in Middle East.
I think this haterred towards Putin blinded most of us to let governments increase their authorariansim. Like in US after 9/11. Of course Putin is dangerous, but he can't even win a war in a small country right next to his. Lost more troops then Ukraine. Meanwhile NATO expansion across the World and US influance is truely scary and unprecedented. Most of the wars in World are started by NATO counties and here we don't hear about is as much.
All the invasions of Iran, Afganistan, Vietnam, Syria, etc where unjustfied invasions just like Ukraine and in case of Palestine, far worse. Yet, media successfully is pointing our focus on a single war in Ukraine where Russia has made no advencments and is clearly inferior military power. It reminds me of 9/11, when fear from a small group of terrorist gave the government power to spy on all of its citizens, run torture camp in Guantanamo and remove citizens rights one by one.
NATO is defensive only on paper. Almost all of the wars in the World right now started with invasion of NATO countries in middle east and african countries still unofficaly under collonial rule of western european countries.
This is classic case of fearmongering. Russia can't even win a war in Ukraine, despite local support of some of the Crimean citizens and proximity to their nations. They can't get to Sweeden by the end of this century, Meanwhile, NATO is the biggest war allience this World has ever seen and it is scary how centralized the power in the World has become and US oil companies running the whole show.
Don't be so blinded by your hatered towards the Russian government to not notice how US used this to strenghten their control over Europe. As horrible as this Russian invasion is, it is nothing compared to the decades of invasions in middle east done by NATO countries. Sweden will have to send their troops now to fight for US oil companies.
Don't be racist. Russian government is to blame, not their people who are constantly oppressed by their government. Russian people are the biggest victims in Ukranian war, lost more lives fighting for some idiot. Some successfully surrendered, but a lot of them are forced to fight and lost their innocent lives in all of this.
They actually did get Europe involved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Training_Mission_%E2%80%93_Iraq#Other_NATO_Contributions Germany,France,Spain,Poland,Norway all of them ended up training armies for US oil companies invasions. Influence is there.