more NATO means more war
top strategic thinkers warned us, and here we are
this screenshot links to the thread on Twitter – a must-read you can read unrolled*
from remarks by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on September 7, 2023:
Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member. Because at Vilnius Summit, we agreed a statement where it was clearly expressed how Sweden will do more, follow up the agreement we had in Madrid on fighting terrorism, and also address issues related to export of military equipment, and then Türkiye made it clear that they will ratify as soon as possible.
the above block quote was tweeted as an image by Arnaud Bertrand on September 9*
2023-09-10 / notes
*a link; see the about page for how posts – and copies on fw – use links
italics added for emphasis in block quote for text highlighted in tweeted image
NATO boss: “Yeah, Putin invaded because NATO expanded to Russia’s doorstep. He told us he would if we didn’t stop.” (!?)
further notes are often appended to copies on fw