{"id":81143,"date":"2022-03-16T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81143"},"modified":"2022-03-14T18:10:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T23:10:09","slug":"in-retrospect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81143","title":{"rendered":"In Retrospect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former secretary-general of NATO Anders Rasmussen notes the grievous mistakes NATO made<\/a> in the late 2000s on his watch w\/r\/t Putin and Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I took office in 2009, I reached out to the Russians and told them it’s one of my priorities to develop such a strategic partnership, despite the fact that one year earlier they had attacked Georgia. So we have done a lot. But maybe Putin misread our thoughts and I think [that a] lesson learned from history is that appeasement with dictators does not lead to peace, it leads to war and conflict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I mean, when it comes to learning lessons, better late than never. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it’d seem some traditionally neutral countries are learning from others mistakes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NATO is prepared to welcome both Finland and Sweden. I would say an application from Finland and Sweden could be approved more or less overnight. And let me add to this: I think it would be in the self-interest of Finland and Sweden to join NATO right now. Because now they have a window of opportunity. Putin is engaged [somewhere else], so that window might soon close again.<\/p>

So it’s right now that Finland and Sweden should use the opportunity to join NATO. And that would send an extremely important signal to Putin, and<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And it appears that, after three decades of lukewarm pragmatism that followed four decades of treaty-mandates neutrality, public opinion in Finland is turning toward joining as well<\/a> (you’re on you own for the translation). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former secretary-general of NATO Anders Rasmussen notes the grievous mistakes NATO made in the late 2000s on his watch w\/r\/t Putin and Russia. When I took office in 2009, I reached out to the Russians and told them it’s one of my priorities to develop such a strategic partnership, despite the fact that one year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-and-peace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81144,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81143\/revisions\/81144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}