President of Croatia says that Croatia should vote no to Sweden's Nato application. Unclear what ability he has to make it so. Article I'm reading is very bare-bones but seems to be about some sort of domestic dick-waving to enact election changes he wants.
President of Croatia says that Croatia should vote no to Sweden's Nato application. Unclear what ability he has to make it so. Article I'm reading is very bare-bones but seems to be about some sort of domestic dick-waving to enact election changes he wants.
NATO meetings are done on a Head of State level or an ambassadorial level.
If the meeting is done on a head of state level that means the president of croatia has the ability to vote no (and since he's directly elected nobody can do anything about it). If it's done on an ambassadorial level then the ambassador represents the Prime minister, who isn't against Sweden's NATO application.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
NATO should classify not only the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but also the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) in the alliance’s list of threats.
The United States should then extradite Pennsylvania-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey.
All NATO members, including Sweden and Finland, must cease any activity by the PKK, SDF, or FETO on their territories.
The United States and other NATO bodies must lift all sanctions related to Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, including sanctions upon the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate.
Turkey would not only receive the new F-16s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet, but Turkey will also be able to rejoin the F-35 program from which it was expelled after activating the Russian S-400s.
Lastly, the United States would cease preventing Turkey from exporting military products containing Western components.
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
NATO should classify not only the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but also the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) in the alliance’s list of threats.
The United States should then extradite Pennsylvania-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey.
All NATO members, including Sweden and Finland, must cease any activity by the PKK, SDF, or FETO on their territories.
The United States and other NATO bodies must lift all sanctions related to Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, including sanctions upon the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate.
Turkey would not only receive the new F-16s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet, but Turkey will also be able to rejoin the F-35 program from which it was expelled after activating the Russian S-400s.
Lastly, the United States would cease preventing Turkey from exporting military products containing Western components.
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
The chance of getting the concessions about damaging Erdogan's political enemies is higher than him getting to fuck over the US MIC
NATO should classify not only the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but also the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) in the alliance’s list of threats.
The United States should then extradite Pennsylvania-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey.
All NATO members, including Sweden and Finland, must cease any activity by the PKK, SDF, or FETO on their territories.
The United States and other NATO bodies must lift all sanctions related to Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, including sanctions upon the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate.
Turkey would not only receive the new F-16s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet, but Turkey will also be able to rejoin the F-35 program from which it was expelled after activating the Russian S-400s.
Lastly, the United States would cease preventing Turkey from exporting military products containing Western components.
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
I agree. So what does that mean for Sweden and Finland vis-a-vis NATO membership?
NATO should classify not only the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but also the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) in the alliance’s list of threats.
The United States should then extradite Pennsylvania-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey.
All NATO members, including Sweden and Finland, must cease any activity by the PKK, SDF, or FETO on their territories.
The United States and other NATO bodies must lift all sanctions related to Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, including sanctions upon the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate.
Turkey would not only receive the new F-16s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet, but Turkey will also be able to rejoin the F-35 program from which it was expelled after activating the Russian S-400s.
Lastly, the United States would cease preventing Turkey from exporting military products containing Western components.
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
I agree. So what does that mean for Sweden and Finland vis-a-vis NATO membership?
Blocked for now. Maybe Biden can get Sweden and Finland on a country to country mutual defense pact.
It would be hilarious if every NATO country outside of Hungary and Turkey ended up signing mutual defense pacts with Sweden and Finland.
A defence specialist from the Clingendael Institute thinks it's a good old bit of haggling. This is Turkey's ultimate wishlist and now they are going to meet somewhere in the middle. The specialist assumes that a few weapon sales embargos will be lifted, but not much else. https://nos.nl/l/2429353
A defence specialist from the Clingendael Institute thinks it's a good old bit of haggling. This is Turkey's ultimate wishlist and now they are going to meet somewhere in the middle. The specialist assumes that a few weapon sales embargos will be lifted, but not much else. https://nos.nl/l/2429353
I guess that depends on if Biden is willing to talk Turkey.
NATO should classify not only the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but also the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) in the alliance’s list of threats.
The United States should then extradite Pennsylvania-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gülen to Turkey.
All NATO members, including Sweden and Finland, must cease any activity by the PKK, SDF, or FETO on their territories.
The United States and other NATO bodies must lift all sanctions related to Turkey’s purchase of the S-400, including sanctions upon the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate.
Turkey would not only receive the new F-16s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet, but Turkey will also be able to rejoin the F-35 program from which it was expelled after activating the Russian S-400s.
Lastly, the United States would cease preventing Turkey from exporting military products containing Western components.
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
I agree. So what does that mean for Sweden and Finland vis-a-vis NATO membership?
Blocked for now. Maybe Biden can get Sweden and Finland on a country to country mutual defense pact.
It would be hilarious if every NATO country outside of Hungary and Turkey ended up signing mutual defense pacts with Sweden and Finland.
Well Sweden and Finland are in the EU so they already have a defense pact with most NATO nations
No, they have the one of the most important marine chokepoints in the world (Gibraltar is jealous). Turkey on side means that Russia vs Nato is not really a ship thing.
You could dive to the bottom in one breath without more than 20 seconds training, and that's the water the Russian Black Sea Fleet has to cross.
That list is likely going to get whittled away on negotiations and my guess is the sanctions going away being the real objective, since everything else is unjustifiable domestically and everybody knows it.
President of Croatia says that Croatia should vote no to Sweden's Nato application. Unclear what ability he has to make it so. Article I'm reading is very bare-bones but seems to be about some sort of domestic dick-waving to enact election changes he wants.
NATO meetings are done on a Head of State level or an ambassadorial level.
If the meeting is done on a head of state level that means the president of croatia has the ability to vote no (and since he's directly elected nobody can do anything about it). If it's done on an ambassadorial level then the ambassador represents the Prime minister, who isn't against Sweden's NATO application.
He's the head of state and is instructing the ambassador to NATO to vote no unless they're demands are met. He's literally saying "if Turkey is getting a sweet deal we want our pound of flesh too". And his sweet deal is that he wants special rights for Croats living in next-door country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't know what exactly those rights are, the article i read didn't specify. He's also threatening that if this doesn't lead to those special rights, the Croats in Bosnia will restart the 1990s Civil War there.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
President of Croatia says that Croatia should vote no to Sweden's Nato application. Unclear what ability he has to make it so. Article I'm reading is very bare-bones but seems to be about some sort of domestic dick-waving to enact election changes he wants.
NATO meetings are done on a Head of State level or an ambassadorial level.
If the meeting is done on a head of state level that means the president of croatia has the ability to vote no (and since he's directly elected nobody can do anything about it). If it's done on an ambassadorial level then the ambassador represents the Prime minister, who isn't against Sweden's NATO application.
He's the head of state and is instructing the ambassador to NATO to vote no unless they're demands are met. He's literally saying "if Turkey is getting a sweet deal we want our pound of flesh too". And his sweet deal is that he wants special rights for Croats living in next-door country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't know what exactly those rights are, the article i read didn't specify. He's also threatening that if this doesn't lead to those special rights, the Croats in Bosnia will restart the 1990s Civil War there.
Both Bosnia and Herzegovina are also in the process of getting into NATO. Croatia threatening to destabilize that region sounds so dumb.
Due to the vastly spread #disinformation about 🇸🇪 and PKK, we would like to recall that the 🇸🇪 Government of Olof Palme was first after 🇹🇷 to list PKK as a terrorist organization, already in 1984. EU followed suit 2002, when Anna Lindh was 🇸🇪 FM. This position remains unchanged.
Ann Linde is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden.
Due to the vastly spread #disinformation about 🇸🇪 and PKK, we would like to recall that the 🇸🇪 Government of Olof Palme was first after 🇹🇷 to list PKK as a terrorist organization, already in 1984. EU followed suit 2002, when Anna Lindh was 🇸🇪 FM. This position remains unchanged.
Ann Linde is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden.
So I would run very fast if I was a Kurd there.
Ann Linde is simply stating the truth. Sweden was the first nation after Turkey to list the PKK as a terrorist organization.
But if you think that means "Sweden will cave in" you're delusional.
a. Sweden will fucking never hand over anyone to Turkey based on political crimes, especially not on claims as baseless as Turkeys.
b. Sweden does not consider the PYD or the YPG an arm of the PKK, even if they share political roots.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I could see Sweden ending support for the PYD being more likely than other concessions. And that might be enough to satisfy Turkey.
Question: what EU countries are represented in this board's active user base? I know we have people from Sweden and Germany. Are there posters here living in Spain, France, or elsewhere in the EU?
I could see Sweden ending support for the PYD being more likely than other concessions. And that might be enough to satisfy Turkey.
Question: what EU countries are represented in this board's active user base? I know we have people from Sweden and Germany. Are there posters here living in Spain, France, or elsewhere in the EU?
<-- The Netherlands
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
Sweden has a decent number of Turkish and Kurdish populations and politicians here and there in municipalities. Our government is in no mood to give any combative people in either group any new triumphs or grievances, and will likely just offer Erdogan some pro forma concessions he can show off for the hot-blooded at home.
Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
I can't see the Swedish government hand over journalists to be tortured and imprisoned in Turkey. No way in hell is that going to happen. There will be some horse trading - my bet is that the biggest thing Erdogan is after is the removal of the weapons embargo. So this has actually little to do with Sweden and Finland, and more to do with the US.
Btw fuck Erdogan, he has more in common with Putin than with any other European leader, and they wonder why Turkey wasn't let into EU? Well, they could start by ending the frozen conflict in Cyprus and draw back their occupation forces.
PKK has killed a fair number of kurdish swedes. How on earth you're getting "they're about to cave" from "our position remains unchanged" is beyond me.
I could see Sweden ending support for the PYD being more likely than other concessions. And that might be enough to satisfy Turkey.
Question: what EU countries are represented in this board's active user base? I know we have people from Sweden and Germany. Are there posters here living in Spain, France, or elsewhere in the EU?
Norway, so not in the EU, but also in a lot of ways, pretty much in the EU.
President of Croatia says that Croatia should vote no to Sweden's Nato application. Unclear what ability he has to make it so. Article I'm reading is very bare-bones but seems to be about some sort of domestic dick-waving to enact election changes he wants.
NATO meetings are done on a Head of State level or an ambassadorial level.
If the meeting is done on a head of state level that means the president of croatia has the ability to vote no (and since he's directly elected nobody can do anything about it). If it's done on an ambassadorial level then the ambassador represents the Prime minister, who isn't against Sweden's NATO application.
He's the head of state and is instructing the ambassador to NATO to vote no unless they're demands are met. He's literally saying "if Turkey is getting a sweet deal we want our pound of flesh too". And his sweet deal is that he wants special rights for Croats living in next-door country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't know what exactly those rights are, the article i read didn't specify. He's also threatening that if this doesn't lead to those special rights, the Croats in Bosnia will restart the 1990s Civil War there.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think NATO has any hard rules about these things, because it covers so many political systems that it wouldn't make sense to. I think in Croatia the prime minister is the one who is de-facto in charge of Croatia, anyway (and it seems like it's the case for the NATO ambassador as well - ambassadors are formally the representative of the head of state, the president, but only formally, it seems.)
but anyway, it's not a matter of which of them has the vote. A unanimous NATO meeting saying yes is just step one, each national assembly of each member nation then has to approve of it according to how each functions.
Appreciate today’s talk with Turkish President @RTErdogan on Sweden’s NATO application. We look forward to strengthening our bilateral relations, including on peace, security, and the fight against terrorism.
Official account of the office of the Swedish Prime Minister.
Ok, maybe Sweeden won't literally deliver people to Turkey so they can get Khashoggi'd, but every signal so far screams "major concessions".
Worth noting that the PKK's stance on Ukraine (IE: Fuck Ukraine for resisting Mother Russia) has made my Ukrainian friends go "Fuck 'em, Turkey should get what they want, that way Finland and Sweden have a clear deck for being admitted to NATO"
The PYD and YPG as far as I've been able to tell haven't been particularly forthcoming in condemning the Russian invasion, also reducing the standing of them in the eyes of my friends considerably.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Is that stance because Russia is in opposition to Turkey, or something more ideological
I wouldn't blame the YPG too much.
When Trump decided to screw the Kurds and no one else did anything to rein in Turkey...well, it drove them into the hands of Russia and they're now very dependent on russian goodwill. Russia is basically the power that politically enforces a somewhat demilitarized buffer-zone between Turkey and kurdish-held territories (being the guarantee state for a political deal back in...2018, 2019?) and keeps Assad focused on Syrian National Army (which is backed by Turkey). Which means that the corner of Syria that belongs to the kurds and their allies can focus on fighting IS and making their territory a little less hellhole and a little more civilization.
They can't afford to antagonize anyone they don't have to, Russia in particular.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I don't really know what else can be done with regards to Turkey. They are one of NATO's most important members, especially to the US. I don't think there are mechanisms to kick them out of NATO, and I'm not sure if it would be wise.
Probably a lot of concessions and money coming their way. The two red lines I see are handing people over, and being allowed to buy the F-35. Neither of those is happening.
German government and opposition have come to an agreement on the outlines of the 100 billion € special fund for the army. It needs a change to the constitution so the opposition had to be on board.
It's supposed to be spend over the next 5 years, with 40 billions going to the airforce, 20 to the navy, and 17 to the army. Other procurements are supposed to be command and control systems and encrypted communication systems (right now German forces are borrowing those from allies when they get deployed)
A short article I just read about a referendum in Denmark really shows how convoluted the relationships of the scandinavian countries are with EU and NATO:
Denmark has four reservations/excemptions from the treaty of Maastricht, the treaty that transformed the European Community to the European Union, one of them is that they rejected military commitments. Most obvious result of that was in 2004 when EU assumed responsibility of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia from NATO - danish soldiers left. We (Norway), remained, though.
So out of the three kingdoms:
Norway and Denmark are part of NATO, Sweden is not
Denmark and Sweden are part of the EU, and Norway is not
but with EU military commitments, Sweden takes part, Denmark is not part of it, yet the non-member Norway does
while only Sweden is part of the EU military cooperation (CSDP and attendant... stuff.)
All three have defense cooperation with each other, formally through the Nordic Defense Cooperation agreement (along with the other two Nordic Countries, Finland and Iceland - at least Iceland is relatively uncomplicated here because they don't have a military)
It's always been rather confusing. When I was in the army and on a NATO exercise in 2011, we had lots of swedes with us. And the finns have joined in on our regular NATO exercise on occasion as well.
Sometimes I wish that the nordic military alliance had become a thing back in the 40s solely so one could actually draw a neat map.
geography notes:
Scandinavia = The mainlands of Sweden, Denmark, Norway.
The Faroe Islands and Greenland, parts of the danish realm, and Svalbard and various cold norwegian rocks, are not in Scandinavia - but in most contexts, doesn't matter.
the Nordic countries = Scandinavia (and the other parts of the danish realm) + Finland and Iceland.
this post doesn't really fit under the heading "useful notes" maybe just more in... "notes of dubious use" but anyway
German government and opposition have come to an agreement on the outlines of the 100 billion € special fund for the army. It needs a change to the constitution so the opposition had to be on board.
It's supposed to be spend over the next 5 years, with 40 billions going to the airforce, 20 to the navy, and 17 to the army. Other procurements are supposed to be command and control systems and encrypted communication systems (right now German forces are borrowing those from allies when they get deployed)
Out of curiosity about how it worked - in Norway any changes to the consitution have to be ratified by 2/3rds majority of two subsequent Storting/parliaments, so it takes a minimum of four years to change it - I looked it up and it seems to be rather quick, just needs to be ratified by 2/3rds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat
another thing I learned: the constitution of germany is not formally a constitution, it's the "basic law" (the idea was that it would be a "provisional constitution", not wanting to make a proper constitution while still disunited)
which gave me a headache because the norwegian term for constitution - grunnlov - is directly translated as "basic law" (in the sense of base as fundament) and I understand perfectly well why I have never learned this before (germany doesn't have a grunnlov but instead a grunnlov because a grunnlov was feared to deepen the divide more than a grunnlov aaaaargh)
German government and opposition have come to an agreement on the outlines of the 100 billion € special fund for the army. It needs a change to the constitution so the opposition had to be on board.
It's supposed to be spend over the next 5 years, with 40 billions going to the airforce, 20 to the navy, and 17 to the army. Other procurements are supposed to be command and control systems and encrypted communication systems (right now German forces are borrowing those from allies when they get deployed)
As I've said before, imho Europe was already on its way to a US style deal between neoliberal politics and the military-industrial complex. This should be understood in a wider sense, as the SocDems are not averse to porkbarrel or kickbacks. The big enemy here is the far-right and far-left populism, who tend to be anti-establishment (duh) and anti-NATO if not precisely anti-militaristic on the right at least.
The greens are an unlikely part of that deal, not in the least because of its initial focus on securing EU borders from refugees and the interior from immigrants' cultures. The far right is the target of that focus, with the idea likely to split off and attract populist voters who favor centrist financial politics.
I doubt the German Greens would have been on board if the Socialists hadn't bet so damn hard on Russian fossil imports.
Needless to say this windfall is going to bring jerbs. Hard to predict if those jerbs will be in creating useful materiel or more clusterfucks of the Airbus A400m type... but in a country shackled by its aversion to government spending, this is a gamechanger. I wouldn't be surprised if an infrastructure bill (gotta ship those tanks somehow) follows.
That aside, it's security theatre. War with Russia or China is still going to bring total thermonuclear annihilation, war as an extension of EU foreign policy is going to require an EU foreign policy, and war as part of peacekeeping operations is something we've offloaded onto lower wage countries.
German government and opposition have come to an agreement on the outlines of the 100 billion € special fund for the army. It needs a change to the constitution so the opposition had to be on board.
It's supposed to be spend over the next 5 years, with 40 billions going to the airforce, 20 to the navy, and 17 to the army. Other procurements are supposed to be command and control systems and encrypted communication systems (right now German forces are borrowing those from allies when they get deployed)
Out of curiosity about how it worked - in Norway any changes to the consitution have to be ratified by 2/3rds majority of two subsequent Storting/parliaments, so it takes a minimum of four years to change it - I looked it up and it seems to be rather quick, just needs to be ratified by 2/3rds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat
another thing I learned: the constitution of germany is not formally a constitution, it's the "basic law" (the idea was that it would be a "provisional constitution", not wanting to make a proper constitution while still disunited)
which gave me a headache because the norwegian term for constitution - grunnlov - is directly translated as "basic law" (in the sense of base as fundament) and I understand perfectly well why I have never learned this before (germany doesn't have a grunnlov but instead a grunnlov because a grunnlov was feared to deepen the divide more than a grunnlov aaaaargh)
Yeah, I just wrote constitution, because the difference to an actual intended constitution are a bit academic and historic. It works like a codified constitution since reunification (why there wasn't a public vote on that is another rabbit hole).
It had over 60 amendments since 1949. Although some parts cannot be ammended or touched like articles 1&20, german federalism, democratic form of government, etc.
Posts
NATO meetings are done on a Head of State level or an ambassadorial level.
If the meeting is done on a head of state level that means the president of croatia has the ability to vote no (and since he's directly elected nobody can do anything about it). If it's done on an ambassadorial level then the ambassador represents the Prime minister, who isn't against Sweden's NATO application.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The sum of these demands read like "snowball's chance in hell of happening".
The chance of getting the concessions about damaging Erdogan's political enemies is higher than him getting to fuck over the US MIC
I agree. So what does that mean for Sweden and Finland vis-a-vis NATO membership?
Blocked for now. Maybe Biden can get Sweden and Finland on a country to country mutual defense pact.
It would be hilarious if every NATO country outside of Hungary and Turkey ended up signing mutual defense pacts with Sweden and Finland.
https://nos.nl/l/2429353
I guess that depends on if Biden is willing to talk Turkey.
Well Sweden and Finland are in the EU so they already have a defense pact with most NATO nations
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
No, they have the one of the most important marine chokepoints in the world (Gibraltar is jealous). Turkey on side means that Russia vs Nato is not really a ship thing.
You could dive to the bottom in one breath without more than 20 seconds training, and that's the water the Russian Black Sea Fleet has to cross.
He's the head of state and is instructing the ambassador to NATO to vote no unless they're demands are met. He's literally saying "if Turkey is getting a sweet deal we want our pound of flesh too". And his sweet deal is that he wants special rights for Croats living in next-door country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't know what exactly those rights are, the article i read didn't specify. He's also threatening that if this doesn't lead to those special rights, the Croats in Bosnia will restart the 1990s Civil War there.
Australia is not in NATO
Both Bosnia and Herzegovina are also in the process of getting into NATO. Croatia threatening to destabilize that region sounds so dumb.
Like the great Mika said during Eurovision: "we have votes coming in from all over Europe, the world and Australia!"
Sure enough:
So I would run very fast if I was a Kurd there.
Ann Linde is simply stating the truth. Sweden was the first nation after Turkey to list the PKK as a terrorist organization.
But if you think that means "Sweden will cave in" you're delusional.
a. Sweden will fucking never hand over anyone to Turkey based on political crimes, especially not on claims as baseless as Turkeys.
b. Sweden does not consider the PYD or the YPG an arm of the PKK, even if they share political roots.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So, guess that will see. Talks are ongoing, after all.
Question: what EU countries are represented in this board's active user base? I know we have people from Sweden and Germany. Are there posters here living in Spain, France, or elsewhere in the EU?
<-- The Netherlands
Btw fuck Erdogan, he has more in common with Putin than with any other European leader, and they wonder why Turkey wasn't let into EU? Well, they could start by ending the frozen conflict in Cyprus and draw back their occupation forces.
Norway, so not in the EU, but also in a lot of ways, pretty much in the EU.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think NATO has any hard rules about these things, because it covers so many political systems that it wouldn't make sense to. I think in Croatia the prime minister is the one who is de-facto in charge of Croatia, anyway (and it seems like it's the case for the NATO ambassador as well - ambassadors are formally the representative of the head of state, the president, but only formally, it seems.)
but anyway, it's not a matter of which of them has the vote. A unanimous NATO meeting saying yes is just step one, each national assembly of each member nation then has to approve of it according to how each functions.
Ok, maybe Sweeden won't literally deliver people to Turkey so they can get Khashoggi'd, but every signal so far screams "major concessions".
The PYD and YPG as far as I've been able to tell haven't been particularly forthcoming in condemning the Russian invasion, also reducing the standing of them in the eyes of my friends considerably.
Ideological as far as I could tell based on what I could find in English, they seem to view Russia as the Soviet successor state.
When Trump decided to screw the Kurds and no one else did anything to rein in Turkey...well, it drove them into the hands of Russia and they're now very dependent on russian goodwill. Russia is basically the power that politically enforces a somewhat demilitarized buffer-zone between Turkey and kurdish-held territories (being the guarantee state for a political deal back in...2018, 2019?) and keeps Assad focused on Syrian National Army (which is backed by Turkey). Which means that the corner of Syria that belongs to the kurds and their allies can focus on fighting IS and making their territory a little less hellhole and a little more civilization.
They can't afford to antagonize anyone they don't have to, Russia in particular.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Probably a lot of concessions and money coming their way. The two red lines I see are handing people over, and being allowed to buy the F-35. Neither of those is happening.
It's supposed to be spend over the next 5 years, with 40 billions going to the airforce, 20 to the navy, and 17 to the army. Other procurements are supposed to be command and control systems and encrypted communication systems (right now German forces are borrowing those from allies when they get deployed)
Denmark has four reservations/excemptions from the treaty of Maastricht, the treaty that transformed the European Community to the European Union, one of them is that they rejected military commitments. Most obvious result of that was in 2004 when EU assumed responsibility of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia from NATO - danish soldiers left. We (Norway), remained, though.
So out of the three kingdoms:
Norway and Denmark are part of NATO, Sweden is not
Denmark and Sweden are part of the EU, and Norway is not
but with EU military commitments, Sweden takes part, Denmark is not part of it, yet the non-member Norway does
while only Sweden is part of the EU military cooperation (CSDP and attendant... stuff.)
All three have defense cooperation with each other, formally through the Nordic Defense Cooperation agreement (along with the other two Nordic Countries, Finland and Iceland - at least Iceland is relatively uncomplicated here because they don't have a military)
It's always been rather confusing. When I was in the army and on a NATO exercise in 2011, we had lots of swedes with us. And the finns have joined in on our regular NATO exercise on occasion as well.
Sometimes I wish that the nordic military alliance had become a thing back in the 40s solely so one could actually draw a neat map.
geography notes:
Scandinavia = The mainlands of Sweden, Denmark, Norway.
The Faroe Islands and Greenland, parts of the danish realm, and Svalbard and various cold norwegian rocks, are not in Scandinavia - but in most contexts, doesn't matter.
the Nordic countries = Scandinavia (and the other parts of the danish realm) + Finland and Iceland.
this post doesn't really fit under the heading "useful notes" maybe just more in... "notes of dubious use" but anyway
Out of curiosity about how it worked - in Norway any changes to the consitution have to be ratified by 2/3rds majority of two subsequent Storting/parliaments, so it takes a minimum of four years to change it - I looked it up and it seems to be rather quick, just needs to be ratified by 2/3rds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat
another thing I learned: the constitution of germany is not formally a constitution, it's the "basic law" (the idea was that it would be a "provisional constitution", not wanting to make a proper constitution while still disunited)
which gave me a headache because the norwegian term for constitution - grunnlov - is directly translated as "basic law" (in the sense of base as fundament) and I understand perfectly well why I have never learned this before (germany doesn't have a grunnlov but instead a grunnlov because a grunnlov was feared to deepen the divide more than a grunnlov aaaaargh)
As I've said before, imho Europe was already on its way to a US style deal between neoliberal politics and the military-industrial complex. This should be understood in a wider sense, as the SocDems are not averse to porkbarrel or kickbacks. The big enemy here is the far-right and far-left populism, who tend to be anti-establishment (duh) and anti-NATO if not precisely anti-militaristic on the right at least.
The greens are an unlikely part of that deal, not in the least because of its initial focus on securing EU borders from refugees and the interior from immigrants' cultures. The far right is the target of that focus, with the idea likely to split off and attract populist voters who favor centrist financial politics.
I doubt the German Greens would have been on board if the Socialists hadn't bet so damn hard on Russian fossil imports.
Needless to say this windfall is going to bring jerbs. Hard to predict if those jerbs will be in creating useful materiel or more clusterfucks of the Airbus A400m type... but in a country shackled by its aversion to government spending, this is a gamechanger. I wouldn't be surprised if an infrastructure bill (gotta ship those tanks somehow) follows.
That aside, it's security theatre. War with Russia or China is still going to bring total thermonuclear annihilation, war as an extension of EU foreign policy is going to require an EU foreign policy, and war as part of peacekeeping operations is something we've offloaded onto lower wage countries.
Yeah, I just wrote constitution, because the difference to an actual intended constitution are a bit academic and historic. It works like a codified constitution since reunification (why there wasn't a public vote on that is another rabbit hole).
It had over 60 amendments since 1949. Although some parts cannot be ammended or touched like articles 1&20, german federalism, democratic form of government, etc.