Archived copy is here: https://archive.is/DqZ6m
The article says this:
“Immediately withdraw from NATO’s integrated command and then, in stages, from the organization itself. Reject the tribute demanded by the United States of 5% of GDP devoted to defense spending,” read France Unbowed’s 222-page program.
However, France under Mélenchon would still provide assistance to European Union countries under EU treaties, the document added
Is Melenchon right? Is it better for the EU to be the organisation of mutual defence guarantees for Europe, rather than NATO?
Even in a best case scenario, where the US is fully invested into supporting NATO, unlikely as it is, NATO as a whole remains unreliable.
The Article 5, which is supposed to be the security guarantee of all members, doesn’t provide any guarantees at all.
This assistance may or may not involve the use of armed force, and can include any action that Allies deem necessary to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/collective-defence-and-article-5
Core part here - “any action that Allies deem necessary.” This can be literally nothing, if a country deems nothing is necessary. There are no minimum requirements when it comes to supporting a member invoking article 5.
As opposed to Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union, which legally binds all member states to do everything in their power to support a member that got attacked, who doesn’t even need to explicitly ask for it first.
This clause provides that if a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States have an obligation to aid and assist it by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-defence-clause.html
Unfortunately, this only helps EU countries. Although it could potentially be extended to other close allies like Canada or the UK. That remains to be seen.
It’s also nowhere close to a full ‘guarantee’, especially due to all the American assets rotting the EU from within, but it’s still more meaningful than NATO ever was.
At this point, I can’t quite comprehend why ideas of leaving NATO are still sometimes seen as extreme. The US is the evil guy. NATO is its own alliance. By supporting it, we quite literally are the baddies. There already exists an alternative, at least for 84% of NATO member states, and potentially coming for more.
I like moving towards a stateless classless future but I’m not so naive as to deny that Russia is actively pursuing Nationalist conquest and directly opposed to a stateless classless future
Putin really doesn’t care if the far left or the far right wins power in France. They are the same picture to him.
I’m surprised to see so much Atlantist sentiment on Lemmy.
The US has proved not only that their security umbrella means nothing, but that it in fact invites foreign aggression. And once you’re attacked they’ll probably shit on you and go back on all their commitments. What’s the point exactly?
we should continue to work with the Canadians, also guess who won the midterms.
I’ll be honest, as a European, I don’t care who won the midterms until the US cleans up all the grief it caused. Some of it is unfixable, people died.
The US does not to be the bad guy every 4-8 years and just say “hey it’s Dems in power now, we’re the good guys again”.
Throw the idiots who did this into jail, stop surveilling the world, stop enriching yourselves and causing a recession every 8 years, then on 15 years we can talk.
guess who won the midterms
This means nothing and you know it. Tech oligarchs will never give up their power, and the Dems will never make them.
we should continue to work with the Canadians
Yeah canadians are cool and they are already Europe’s special little friend. But i’d argue that :
- from a military perspective they are inside US Lebensraum
- and from a political perspective they could fall to Trumpism at any time
So i’d be wary of any deep integration with their military. Nothing personal but strange things happen to countries that are on the doorstep of the Empire, and being too entangled with them is a long term liability.
Most of the NATO members are not the US, also in terms of population. If you propose leaving NATO without a realistic alternative of a kind of NATO without the US for example all you are doing is selling out Europe.
Um, but the “kind of NATO” is called EU already. The mutual defense wording in the EU treaties is by far stronger than the wording in the NATO contract. I mean, in the end it’s all words on paper anyway, but there’s that.
He is also against the EU though.
I am all for the EU as a meanginful defense union but capabilities need to exist and they don’t yet. Blowing up the one thing while not having a working replacement at the same time means inviting hostile powers to carve up Europe.
He is also against the EU though
No he’s not, what the fuck. You’re thinking of his main political opponent, Marine Le Pen, who wants to exit NATO and the EU.
FI’s platform is explicitly against exiting the Union or the Euro Zone.
No, I am not. Mekechon’s opposition comes from a different, leftist, direction but it is opposition all the same. He is a staunch critic of the “neoloiberal European Union” and demands a fundamental renegotiation of the treaties. Are you seriously denying that?
Guess what, the far right in many member states is demanding the same. It is hard to keep track though with the far right, as the are oscilating between demanding leaving the EU, and “reforming”, ie destroying it. To my understanding Le Pen is currently demanding to “reform”, ie destroy the EU from within. As such a fundamental “reform” will fracture the Union or at least lead to a massive weakening of its political structure and its ability to act.
So your point is that any attempt at reforming the (grossly ultra-liberal) European Union would fracture the Union, and also that any criticism of its (grossly corrupt) operations is just playing the same team as the fascists ? How fucking convenient, especially for the fascists who actually spawned and bankrolled the whole Frexit movement.
How are you supposed to make something better when you’re not allowed to formulate any criticism of it ?
No, I am claiming that it doesn’t need any major treaty changes to change the political direction of the EU to a left leaning position. It would need however a left majority among voters, currently there is a clear right majority on EU level and most national capitals are right/conservative as well.
The EU’s operations are not “grossly corrupt”, corrrupt maybe but less so than most member states, certainly less corrupt than Germany or Austria, not sure about France but I would be surprised if things were different there. Most of the corruption is taking place on local level with EU funds. Fighting corruption on both levels is possible without any treaty change, as the creation of EPPO has shown. Great institution that has a mandate to fight corruption on both, European and national level, as long as it has something to do with EU institutions, policies or subsidies.
It’s against leaving, everyone’s is. But they’re very much eurosceptics.
That is a very strange position to take because LFI euro-députés engage very hard with the system. There are actual euroskeptics who barely show up, vote once a year and never bring anything to the table. But that’s not LFI, I mean Aubry is leader of the European Left coalition ffs, and they don’t bullshit around. Do you have any elements to the contrary ?
FYI the party’s official line is : “we stay in the Union & Eurozone but we might disobey some treaties if they lead to worse social or ecological outcomes than our local laws”. Happy to debate all day long but i don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with this position.
It makes little difference if you demand exiting the EU or destroying it from within, maybe the latter being worse. Both serves Putin’s agenda.
Yeah but we already have close diplomatic ties with most of those countries, including some active defense treaties. There’s nothing complicated about expanding that, we have nuclear deterrence and a good-ish army it’s not like countries are going to give us shit. We certainly don’t need the US to achieve that, in fact we specifically need the US to not be involved in it if we want to keep it aligned with our interests.
That is the kind of narrow nationalist perspective Putin is counting on. Yeah, no one will try to attack France directly. Once the EU is functionally dead (either by “reform” to Melechon’s liking or “reform” to Le Pen’s liking), and NATO is gone the rest will fall in place and once Le Pen is elected, there will be no need to attack France, as it will be already under pro-Russian autocratic rule.
narrow nationalist perspective
It is bizarre that in your comments, anything that is not abject submission to United States interests is seen as destructive nationalism that will bring about the end of everything. Come on man, the world is free to suck Donald Trump’s dick if they like the taste of it but France is a big enough player to say fuck off and go our own way. We have amazing international relationships which we’ve been cultivating for centuries. We don’t need the US payola system to intercede for us with other global powers.
You are completely misjudging my position, to absurd levels. I am actually supporting rapid emancipation from the US and strengthening of European sovereignty. I am against balkanisation of the EU, which incidentially is what both, Trump and Putin want to see and both Melenchon and Le Pen will facilitate.
I see that you are pretty much on that line as well. Congratulations, your position is more in line with what Trump wants than mine. Tragic, isn’t it?
I am actually supporting rapid emancipation from the US and strengthening of European sovereignty
But doing or even saying anything to that effect is “balkanization” and “carrying water for Putin”. How fucking convenient.
your position is more in line with what Trump wants than mine
Oh yes i’m sure Trump would love if a country like France fell to a popular anti-american pro-socialist movement with enough parliamentary chops to rally other countries in Europe. Must be his wet dream.
Nothing convenient, emancipation needs the building of alternative capabilities first, then you can burn down bridges. As it happens, that is exactly what the EU is doing right now, even if one could argue that even more effort should be put into it. Doing it the other way round just means making it easier for enemies to take Europe apart and yes, that is doing Putin’s job then.
If Trump could choose between a far-left nationalist France that blows up the EU and more Macron with an increasingly independent EU standing, yes Trump would choose the former. Are you really believing the opposite being the case?
I certainly like the sentiment. I don’t know about the timing though.
the only issue with NATO is Article 1. Waive that requirement and it would be perfect.
Article 1
The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
what’s the problem with this?
Look at when and why it was used. Needs to go because it can be easily abused by countries like the US.
…how?
I’m not trying to be obtuse, I’m genuinely curious how it works tho - I’m sure anything can be abused, I’m just having trouble understanding the mechanism.
I’d like to think of myself as pretty far on the left - but this dude is a straight up tankie.
Not just tankie but in denial tankie
No. We need to move towards globalism not back to tribalism.
NATO is tribalism
I think you need to go and look up what NATO actually is because you clearly have no idea.
I’m curious how you can argue it’s not tribalistic. I’m not arguing against it I think it’s actually serves a very useful purpose. But I’m just stuck on how it’s not tribalistic because by definition it’s an Us Versus Them organization. The whole point is to defend us against them. That’s literally why it was founded. That’s absolutely tribalism.
What NATO is, is a defensive Alliance.
NATO was founded to stop the possibility of another Hitler. Of another Nazi Germany coming to power and using military force to seize land in Europe or the Americas. In short it was built to stop what’s happening in Ukraine right now. Which is why Putin moved on Ukraine before they could join NATO.
NATO was built to stop tribalism.
No, that isn’t even remotely true. NATO was in no way built to stop fascist strong men. Even a cursory look at the history of the 20th century shows that to be laughably untrue. Hell the biggest sponsor of fascist strong men in the 20th century was the United States so I cannot even fathom how you came to that conclusion.
NATO is, and was, a defensive alliance. This is not in dispute. You can look at the charter, this is spelled out explicitly.
source?
sadly, you’re not gonna convince many people on lemmy that “this implementation isn’t perfect, so therefore the entire idea is bad from first principles” is a stupid and misanthropic worldview.
Is Melenchon right? Is it better for the EU to be the organisation of mutual defence guarantees for Europe, rather than NATO?
That’s not what Mélenchon is advocating. The platform chapter on this topic doesn’t propose replacing NATO with the EU. The policy described in that chapter is reactionary, not progressive. Mélenchon is old and hasn’t really let go of the past. In many ways he’s the French version of Jeremy Corbyn.
Indeed. He is almost as much anti-EU as he is anti-NATO, even if I don’t know if he stops form demanding leaving the EU as well, or not. He stands for a left nationalist ideology that just makes sure Europe is an easy prey.
Lemmy summarise:
- The far right wants to “normalise” relations with Russia and weaken cooperation within, if not leave the EU, thus emboldening Russian aggression.
- The far left wants to abandon any meaningful deterrence and leave NATO, thus emboldening Russian aggression.
Could it be that both get their talking points from the same source, along with their funding…?
Russia doesn’t really care for their ideologies, the only important thing for Russia is that these parties weaken their home nations and destroy European cooperation. Those two things are crucial for them to be able to dominate Europe, as they stand no chance against a united Europe.
So far left, they have come a full circle are kissing thr far right
It’s called Campism. They take the side of anyone opposing the US even if those countries are objectively shit. It’d be one thing if they had a “the enemy of my enemy” attitude but they go full apologist instead. Russia has a Far Right nationalist government run by a dictator with a Far Right Ultra Nationalist powerbase but people will pretend they are the spitting image of Leftism in a way that even the USSR was not.
Horseshoe theory
That’s a bizarre theory, I can’t imagine two ideologies being more dramatically different than anarchy and monarchy
It should be, but then you meet real people and some of them are insane reactionaries with no consistency. Especially if they have an authoritarian lean it’s easy to jump from lefty authoritarian to right after they simply changed who they blame for all the problems
The incumbent powers need to make people believe absurdities to maintain the status quo.
Uhm, probably. Both lepen and the far left dude are known to have Russian money connections.
The far left dude has Russian ideological connections too.
leaving NATO is probably a good idea, the US has displayed how unserious it is and can no longer be trusted BUT a better EU solution aligned with Canada etal should be in place first.
but the Ukraine stance is beyond understanding, if France was invaded would they want help from others ? there is no diplomatic solution to a bully, if he takes your lunch money and insists on more, sure ask him to stop but that won’t work and he will need a punch in the nose.
Why he have to be a tankie, I’m very left wing and a pacifist but that doesn’t mean don’t defend yourself, quite the opposite and boots on the ground is the only solution to show Europe is serious about it’s own safety, EU troops along the Belarusian border to free up Ukrainian troopps and show solidarity.
That alternative can be… NATO. If the US flakes out and doesn’t support a conflict like an invasion from Russia, the remaining countries can handle it under the existing structure. That also leaves it in place if the US straightens their shit out
There’s alot of potential for the US to betray NATO by sharing intelligence and Troop positions/movements with Russia
42.7 already exists
The Ukraine bombing and torturing its own citizens doesn’t sit well with those of us that aren’t right wingers. We generally feel torturing and killing civilians is bad.
Uh hi, it’s Russia that is bombing Ukraine.
You even use the imperialist term “The Ukraine” That Russia wants you to use.
And in what universe is your beloved Russia anything but right wing? It’s an oligarchy worse than the US.
“The Ukraine” is just a linguistic quirk of English because we say “The US” and “The UK” and “The UAE” and “The USSR”. If Ukraine started with any other letters than “Uk” it never would have been a thing. People injecting a bunch of meaning into it ala “that implies Ukraine is just a region not a country” are just wrong.
I didn’t mention Russia. Definitely not worse than the US, though. The US is by far the worst of settlers. Hell, all of Russia’s allies are leftists. The red scare has been mighty effective.
You don’t have to mention them for it to be obvious who you’re worshipping.
Worshipping? That’s a little extreme. I’d like the violence to end. The west’s support for the Ukrainian Nazi’s should make it pretty clear for everyone. Liberals aren’t even pretending to be leftish anymore.
Ukraine was a pawn, NATO knew russia would invade, they signed a border treaty in 2003 because russia does not want american military bases on it’s border.
Thank god for academics like jeffrey sachs, he wrote on this…:https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/nato-chief-admits-expansion-behind-russian-invasion
Zelensky was dumb enough to break the treaty and believe that NATO would commit to their cause, instead russia simply honored the treaty by dissolving ukraine’s border…
@Garfunkel @Hanrahan
I do agree with Sachs in his general view of US hegemony, in Ukraine & elsewhere, but his apparent justification for Russia invading Ukraine has no basis whatsoever imo. If anything, Russia’s belligerence has simply legitimised the Russophobia behind the increased membership of NATO (which has not posed, and constitutionally could not pose, any military danger to Russia).The increased membership of NATO is something that does not seem true to my eyes, Pierre Degaulle and Miterrand are both pushing for an exit of NATO and entry to BRICS because as I said prior, nato is responsible for dozens of undemocratic regime changes. Most of the global south (which constitues 6.2 billion or about 82-86% of the human population) has been disadvantaged because of these “crusades in the spirit of democracy” (Iran and venezuela being the recent ones, but chile, mexico, indonesia, south africa, etc). Something that also relates to this is the departure of germany from Ostpolitik and the re-emergence of the russia-germany relationship which in my opinion can either be attributed to christian nationalist capital through the western world at the moment or resentment of the german populations due to the loss of both world wars and accords made subsequently (like the treaty of versailles) which disadvantaged germany in the long term.
Yes, Zelenskyy broke the treaty by invading Crimea in 2014 when he was still a comedian 🤡
Political battles and wars do not start this abruptly, thinking that anyone on the world stage would tolerate Putin waking up and taking over Crimea on a whim is either a misconception on your end or misplaced sarcasm. Crimea was invaded by russia due to the impeachement of the Viktor Yanukovych, which was illegal and overwhelmingly proven to be linked to US action. Furthermore, Russia had a naval base on the black sea that would have been reclaimed by the united states if the support of ukraine shifted to Nato following the impeachment of Yanukovych. It was a strategic necessity and a means of incentivizing ukraine to reconnect with Russia as an ally rather than attempt to side with NATO.
Russia had retreated back into it’s borders in 2014 and just like with Finland and Austria, it respected surrounding nations borders as long as they did not engage in Nato expansionism.But to add one last point, Europeans are insane to the rest of the world when they think it rational to prefer the united states to Russia… Who between Russia and the US participated in 70+ assassination attempts of foreign politicians, undermined global peace and countries’ senses of agency and ruined Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Venezuela? The last thing Russia needs is a regime change…
As far as ukrainian journalists spoke of it, was politically motivated since Yanukovych was on good terms with Putin and part of the senate wanted to westernize if they had US backing to engage martially with Russia. Instead the US gave a solid year of military support and cut it s costs when came the time.
@Garfunkel @boonhet
“Crimea was invaded by russia due to the impeachement of the Viktor Yanukovych” - Russia is not Ukraine’s policeman.
“It was […] a means of incentivizing ukraine to reconnect with Russia as an ally” - OK so you’re a bot, right? You invade countries & murder their citizens because you want them as an “ally”! :blobamused:Nay professor, not a bot, although maybe the more bot-like party between us is the one who internalizes political narratives without taking time to understand the pragmatic nature of these stories as seen from life inside of a western society. To hate Russia because Russia is evil is to be an absolute moron who fails to understand that power is a zero-sum game and your opponent is still very bitter about the fall of the USSR.
But if one wishes to say… “use their heads”, maybe then we can understand that these stories are compelling because of self-interest and perception of ethnic superiority. But to get back to the commies and why you think they re evil, an invasion of a country to rescue a naval base from russia s perspective is a no-brainer especially if we remember the fight for control of afghanistan and east asia (from the 80s to 2010s) and the importance of access to the black sea. Russia had no desire to invade Crimea as long as it remained in diplomatic good terms with Ukraine, which it did for decades, shit took off when 'merican freedom came to rescue those poor opressed ukrainians, and the US fucked off when it saw that Russia committed to the war.
But yeah about the ally part, yep. That s how nato has been doing it, ask the libyans maybe?
if France was invaded would they want help from others ?
France is militarily the most powerful country in Western Europe. If they’re getting attacked, none of their neighbours’ help will amount to much.
I don’t know why you were downvoted, this is right. France doesn’t have a “no first strike” policy. If we are attacked we will take down the ennemies with us anyway
The downvoting was for the shortsighted self centric perspective. Yes, France can take down the other side, but is that a preferable outcome to rather staying together in Europe and preventing that scenario to begin with in the first place?
This is suicidal considering he is not the favorite in the polls.
it does insist on the need for a diplomatic solution [in Ukraine]
The far-right has the same idea to drop our pants in front of Putin. We are fucked whoever wins I guess.
Absolutely, Russia needs to be kicked out of Ukraine, and we should do what we can to help them. You can interpret that about as far as it can go. Including EU/NATO military presence in Ukraine. We should be there to help them protect their electricity, and with logistics and for medical assistance, but Europe is a bunch at cowards, all talk and not doing the walk.
deleted by creator
Say you are bought by Putin without saying you are bought by Putin
Say you have never heard Mélenchon talk about Russia without saying you never heard Mélenchon talk about Russia
Russia doesn’t care if Mélenchon talks badly about Russia. It is enough that France is destablised, NATO is weakened or destroyed and that European cooperation damaged or better yet destroyed as well. Le Pen and Mélenchon are almost the same to him. Same with right populist parties like PiS that talk badly about Russia while also doing mostly what Putin wants them to do.
maskirovka
