I don't understand the comments about NATO. It is basically an alliance that is supposed to preserve western democracies and freedoms.
I agree that these countries may have their issues, but what is the alternative?
It can't be every country for itself, when it comes to national defense.
It should also be noted that non-NATO countries are enjoying the benefits of its alliance, simply because of their geographic locations.
Soviet Communism and the Warsaw Pact, as well as exporting revolution were serious threats in the real world in the past,
and now Russia is demonstrating that it will take military action to extend its borders. It would be realistic to think that this would continue
and not be contained, if there was no counter to it. Terrorism is a continuing threat, and is being financed and exported by bad actors. The Rise of China is changing and will continue to change the economic power structure
and the political power structure worldwide.
I am not suggesting that there can never be a thoughtful analysis and evaluation of how to improve NATO,
but what is the alternative?
The reality of war between Russia and the Ukraine is that people are dying and suffering from
incalculable misery. I don't know all the factors that led to this, but now that it is here,
there has to be some process for dealing with it,
even though it hasn't resolved the situation
I am not dismissing other opinions. As you say, these things can be complicated.
I am suggesting that NATO is probably the best entity that we have for dealing with those
who would attack us, at least until someone has a better idea.
The problem is that the US and NATO broke their promise to Russia. Here's an excerpt from a Salon article:
The most critical events that have been airbrushed out of the West's political narrative are the violation of
agreements made by Western leaders at the end of the Cold War not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, and the
U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014. Western mainstream media accounts date the crisis in Ukraine back to Russia's
2014 reintegration of Crimea, and the decision by ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to secede from Ukraine as the
Luhansk and
Donetsk People's Republics.
But these were not unprovoked actions. They were responses to the U.S.-backed coup, in which an armed mob led by the neo-Nazi Right Sector militia
stormed the Ukrainian parliament, forcing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and members of his party to flee for their lives. After the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, that scenario should now be easier for Americans to understand.
Source:
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/02/in...asco-the-us-is-reaping-exactly-what-it-sowed/
Here's a lengthier excerpt from another Salon article detailing how several government officials expressed their concerns about NATO expansion:
Putin's central demand is that NATO remove troops from countries that joined the group of U.S.-allied nations after 1997. In 1990, under George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker repeatedly promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if the USSR let the Warsaw Pact nations leave, NATO would not "move one inch eastward." As is
detailed in declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents released in 2017, Bush and the leaders of West Germany, the U.K. and France gave similar assurances.
When the German magazine Der Spiegel examined these documents and interviewed those involved,
its reporters concluded that "there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia."
Today, those three former Warsaw Pact countries and two others, in addition to the three former Baltic Soviet republics and several formerly neutral countries, are members of NATO.
Putin and other Russian leaders have complained bitterly about this Western duplicity, complaints echoed by Gorbachev. Numerous others have made similar criticisms, including former CIA Director Robert Gates, Cold War diplomat and historian George Kennan, and Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.
In 1995, 18 retired U.S. foreign service and State and Defense Department officers
signed a letter denouncing these NATO recruitments, saying they would convince Russians that the U.S. was seeking to "isolate, encircle, and subordinate them." It is this NATO penetration into Russia's sphere that is the root cause of the current conflict.
Some justify NATO's expansion by claiming Russia was a threat to its neighbors. Yet in the decade after the fall of the USSR, the Russian economy and military were in catastrophic condition.
Source:
https://www.salon.com/2022/01/30/ye...nt-mean-his-ukraine-demands-are-unreasonable/
As far as Roger Waters, he seems to attract a lot of objections to his politics.
In 2020, Major League Baseball stopped advertising his concert, due to his criticism of Israel, for one example.
With regard to Poland, if RW expresses his opinion on a matter that Poland finds offensive,
then Poland has the right to cancel his shows.
Criticism of Israel is often conflated with anti-semitism. However, there's a difference between criticisms of the Israeli government and the Jewish people.
Poland may have the "right" to cancel an artist's shows because they find the artist offensive. However, I certainly wouldn't perform in a country that doesn't respect free speech if I was an artist. That's the problem with cancel culture, which is clearly a global problem. Nobody should have to restrict their views to a pre-approved narrative.
