Tuukka R

We’ll see how that will go in the States. I just read a text about why there are so few pickpockets in USA, and someone mentioned that during the Paris Olympics people had tried pickpocketing spectators from USA, and got so frequently immediately beaten up by spontaneously formed mobs of Americans that the French police had to start actively intervening on the side of the pickpockets O.o

Not everyone on this planet is like the Chinese and Russians. But, we are about to see.

Might be a cultural difference.

A Finn would be too scared not to react under the contemporary Russian circumstances. They’d work with the motto “I’m basically dead anyway, so this way I at least bear a chance to maybe survive.”

Can someone explain why the inner circle doesn’t take this as a warning sign that Putin is dangerous and must be liquidated as soon as possible?

They will all get killed (or “persuaded to suicide”) one after another if they don’t end the madman. Appeasing Putin will bring you nothing good in the longer term.

Some people remember things as images and see stories in books as images. Do you have a memory from that time that is preserved as images so that you can actually see what the world looks like from the perspective of a 2-year-old? Also, can you recognise things in that memory that have caught your 2-year-old attention that would not catch the attention of an adult who already has answers to many questions? Or the other way around, is something missing in the memory that by all logic should be there, because a two-year-old doesn’t recognise it as significant?

(My oldest memory is from about that age as well. It’s me looking at a pavement made of 30 cm (~1 foot) wide concrete slabs while sitting in a stroller, observing how the lines between the slabs are recognisable when I look further away but turn into a blur if I look as straight down as I can)

If we don’t win this war now that it’s limited to Ukraine, Putin will spread it to first Baltics and then Finland once he his army has regained enough strength. Unless we have developed our defense capabilities sufficiently by that.

We need to be ready for the event that France and Germany decide that Ukraine should fall. And if at that point the only countries that have a serious ability to defend against the Russia are Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then the economy of northwestern EU will be in shambles. And that will definitely affect the rest of EU, including whatever country you are from.

If the whole EU is interested in repelling the Russia when it attacks, then it probably won’t even attack. But if only the countries bordering it are interested in that, it abaolutely will attack the northeastern EU. And then your bread will get a lot more expensive.

Using mines is not necessary for repelling a Russian attack, but it makes it possible to repel it with less land area lost in the initial phase. The Russia is very weakened by its crazy war, but that is not a situation that will stay that way forever. In something a bit more than 5 years after this war ends, the Russia can very well have enough material to attack Finland. (It will probably attack Estonia or Latvia first. Most likely Estonia, because Narva is located in a very precarious location and taking Narva without NATO reacting would decrease NATO’s political ability to react to bigger things in the future.)

NATO is good to have, and it probably will help if needed, but for example Germany and France have shown that if the Russia says the word “nuke”, they reduce their help dramatically, and the country under attack is largely left to its own devices. It would be idiotic of western countries not to support Ukraine as much as possible, yet they do indeed only support it at a minimum level. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania must be able to defend themselves adequately even without external support, because there’s not much reason to assume central European countries’ thinking about supporting a country in a war against the Russia would be very different in the future than it is now.

It’s theoretically possible that a country uses mines and still gets conquered, yes. But the likelihood is smaller. Also, what is much more important is that it’s not a black-and-white “you get conquered or you don’t”. There’s also the middle ground of “part of your country gets conquered for a while, then you regain that territory”. As is the case in Ukraine at the moment. The smaller that conquered part is, the less demining you need to do to remove the mines sown by the orcs. And if you are a small country like Finland fighting the Russia alone, fighting with other systems plus mines slows down the Russia more than fighting with those other systems only.

Also, mines are indeed generally not as useful as they were 100 years ago. But against the Russia they have been proven very useful in this war now. Not as useful as 100 years ago, true, but extremely useful all the same. Because the Russia is a country that works about the same way civilized countries worked some 100 years ago.

And, to your last point: You’re saying it’s unlikely that Finland would use mines in a responsible way. Why wouldn’t it? Remember, it’s Finland’s own people that will suffer from the mines. If we are irresponsible with them, it’s us that will suffer. This is a country where people take responsibility much more seriously than in any other country that I know. I do trust that the Finnish army does make maps of the minefields. What is the extreme thing that you’re claiming Finland would do, actually? Lay a minefield but somehow decide not to make a map about the mines’ locations? Why?

I cannot recognize it as such, because I’ve just described what is currently taking place in Ukraine. So, I suppose you have probably misinterpreted something I’ve written, but in case the problem is at my end:

Please tell what makes it a false dichotomy.

Well, what can one do, if one has the Russia as one’s neighbour.

Anything the Russia conquers, it mines extremely thoroughly, with zero maps. Several mines on every single square metre along the front.

If you have mines, the Russia will advance much slower, and that means you will have less mines to worry about.

The question is: do you want an area to have 5000 mines of your own with a map showing each one’s location or 30 000 Russian mines with no maps of their location whatsoever?

I prefer having less mines. Therefore, I am happy that Finland left the Ottawa agreement. And any other country neighbouring the Russia should definitely do the same, because mines are horrible things and the less of them are in the ground, the better.

Not really. European NATO countries are currently strong enough to repel a Russian attack if we so wish. Taking into account how strong the Russia is at the moment. It will be stronger in the future, but we are easily able to increase our strength more than the Russia can.

And if USA withdraws from NATO, then the rest of EU, not only Finland, Baltics, Sweden, and Poland will be forced to take defence seriously. This will make NATO more like it was supposed to be, and it will no longer be used for offensive wars.

But… USA withdrawing from NATO would of course have negative sides:

• a war with the Russia would not end in two days with a decisive victory for us as it would with USA in, but would drag on for weeks at least, likely years. And thousands or tens of thousands would die.
• USA’s allies in Asia would not dare to trust USA anymore and would turn towards China for coöperation, regardless of China’s imperialism. This would make China stronger, which would be bad for Europe.

But still: The EU is the biggest economy on this planet. We are absolutely able to win a war against a country with an economy only as big as one of our 27 member states. We just need to bother to do so. Which means we’ll need to change our mindset. Heh.