Is it time to join Nato

Here's the facts of the matter. Berlin and Merkel in particular got cold feet with advancing Ukrainian NATO membership (not even membership, a membership action plan).

The residual naive Ostpolitik and accompanying pacifism and axiom that autocracies can be managed and changed through trade that runs deep in German political life has been proven dead wrong. That the convergence through trade notion predominanted in the captains of industry industry as well as the political fringes is not a coincidence led us to where we are today. It was a self-dealing and self-serving German national outlook that weakened Europe's defences as a whole, particularly her eastern neighbours.

Ostpolitikers have gone into deep hiding in Germany in the past month. The notion that if you stroke the likes of Putin like a cat and give him a saucer of milk that he'll abandon destructive war tendencies has all of a sudden become a deeply embarrassing position to hold.

The above is not a sign NATO as an institution is wrong. In fact, It's evidence that defence and security and fundamental principles should not be held hostage to trade priorities.

What's with the revisionist love-in on the "anti-war" left for Milosevic's Serbia?

That was a militarized state ran by Serbian fascists determined to settle ethnic scores by genocide. This wasnt some untouched hilltribe picking berries and making daisy chains all day, it was a state run by the worst of men with a record of the worst of crimes content to continue their form forward.

This is the moral bankruptcy of empty-headed "anti-war" types. Head in the sand until an ethnicity is getting wholesale murdered by a militarised state, and then all of a sudden its sanctimonious "swords into ploughshares" when the likes of NATO comes knocking to remove the fascism like a scalpel.

NATO doesn't get everything right, but it has kept Europe from tearing itself apart for three quarters of a century. It's not a luxury - it's the cornerstone of the continental peace and thankfully, a thorn in the side of autocrats.

It's pro Kremlin because it's become Putin's pretext for this disgraceful war. And you're repeating it day after day.

NATO isn't even 10 percent of the things you or Putin claim it is. It's an overwhelming net good for Europe, and an overwhelming net good for European peace.

What Putin fears is a a democratic Europe with a cohesive defence and foreign policy orientation backed by American power.

Not because it represents an existential threat to Russia, but because it radically limits his ability to coerce, bully, intimate neighbors and create partner client autocrat states.

He fears the EU because it is an economic giant, an alternative open liberal democratic bloc and option for former eastern bloc states to gravitate to on a consensual basis, and he resents NATO because it's a treaty that stands ready to defend it.

It's not a coincidence you've become so outspoken against NATO at the precise moment it's needed most in Europe and is showing its worth in the most explicit terms. You're just repeating Kremlinite nonsense and conspiracies about the treaty because you're of the crank political tradition that doesn't know or care where our stability, democracy and wellbeing comes from - and ultimately how it's defended and must be defended.

A Europe without NATO is a Europe that would rapidly hurtle back to war from the Atlantic to the Caspian. You're just too blind to see it because of a diet of simple Simon anti- Americanism that has been cultivated and sponsored for years in Europe. Including in the political movement you hold dear.

You haven't even read my contribution from page 1. You're not going to paint me as having a position I don't hold.

My contributions over the last few pages have been to debunk the Kremlinite conspiracy theories and boogyman making that the naive and unthinking on the "anti war left" have been parroting.

You're coming to the thread with this woolly and empty notion of "anti-war" refusing to lay the blame where it needs to be blamed.

Europe is on the precipice with a classic 1930s fascist in search of real estate opportunities and willing to use violence to get it, and you're more interested in pointing the finger in the exact opposite direction peddling hard-wired political nonsense.

That's not "anti-war" that's wingnut crap that gives shelter to the person, the state and the bitter Russian nationalists that are attempting to tear down the European peace built by consensus over the last 75 years.

Not only are you being used, you're content to be used. Which doesn't make you "anti war" in the least. I'm not going to insult your intelligence here, it must be obvious to you that you're being used - but I won't give you any credit because it's a fundamentally dishonest position.

What a numpty laded post. Of course Europe is on the precipice of something far more dangerous. Open a newspaper or turn on the news. Millions of refugees streaming across the continent and Russian news openly speculating on invading further countries.

AND what's more, the only thing holding things back for now is NATO.

You're so ridiculous and so wilfully blind.