canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Since I wrote about NATO and international politics yesterday with Sweden's bid to join NATO moving forward, a few months after Finland's bid to join moved forward, it's been in the news that Ukraine is pressing its case again to join NATO. During the NATO summit in Vilnius this week world leaders have paid lots of lip service to supporting Ukraine's defense. Some, like the US, have already put action behind their words with billions of dollars of material support, while other nations have talked big but then found bureaucratic excuses not to follow through. When it comes to NATO membership, all the talk remains positive— but as a future thing, not now. Why later?

Well, under the principle that you can't insure a burning building, NATO is a mutual-defense alliance, and Ukraine is currently in an active state of war with Russia. To admit Ukraine to NATO now would be to commit all 31 of the current NATO members to a military conflict with Russia. That sure seems unwise, doesn't it?

The thing is, maybe not. Imagine what Russia would do if suddenly 31 other countries, with significant armies and massive economies, said, "Hey, you want a piece of Ukraine? You've got to come through all of us." They would stop the war. ...Well, if they were rational, and concerned with self preservation, they would stop. Like when Khrushchev backed off during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But it took real guts on Kennedy's part to force that confrontation. It's not clear than any NATO member country today has such guts. So instead we'll wait until Russia is finishing wrecking as much of Ukraine as it can, and then consider admitting whatever's left. If anything is left.

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
In recent news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Turkey dropped its opposition to Sweden joining NATO.

"LOLWUT?" you might ask. "How is Turkey's opposition to Sweden joining an alliance a matter of Russia's war on Ukraine?"

The fact is, Sweden's effort to join NATO is entirely about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Sweden, like its neighbor Finland, was happy to remain politically neutral outside of NATO for decades. Russia's (second) incursion, which started early last year, set alarm bells ringing, swinging enough popular support behind joining the Western alliance. Finland gained a clear path to join NATO in March.

Permission to join NATO requires unanimous approval from its member countries. Turkey was the last to grant approval for Finland's bid earlier this year. They demanded, and got, concessions to classify rebels opposing the autocratic rule of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as terrorists. Turkey demanded similar concessions of Sweden, which just recently granted them.... But then, in the past week, Turkey added to its demands. It wants EU membership, too.

Diplomatic negotiations managed to unblock Sweden's bid to join NATO from waiting for EU membership for Turkey. Sweden did promise to support it, it seems. Frankly I'm opposed to Turkey joining the EU. The EU is not just about geography or free trade but about shared political bedrock values. Turkey has become a sham democracy. Yes, there's voting, yes there's a parliament and a judiciary, but President Erdogan has refashioned all of them, plus the country's laws, to support his authoritarian rule.

canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Turkey today ratified Finland's petition to join NATO. The vote in Turkish parliament, which was hardly a sure thing, now goes to president Tayyip Erdogan, who has signaled he will sign it. Erdogan's approval was also hardly a sure thing. He demanded, and won, a few concessions from Finland as a condition of the vote. Turkey is the last of 30 NATO member countries to approve Finland's petition. Finland may officially be inducted at the next NATO member meeting in July. Example news coverage: Reuters article 30 Mar 2023.

This may sound like wonky, unimportant international news, so let me put it in context. It's about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.


  1. One of Russia's stated goals for invading Ukraine was to prevent a country on its border (i.e., Ukraine) from joining NATO.

  2. Russia's invasion prompted more countries to want to join Russia; principally Sweden and Finland.

  3. Finland joining NATO greatly increases the Russia's border with NATO members. See map below.

  4. Own goal: Russia.


Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Pushes More Nations to Join NATO (map adapted from BBC image)

Prior to Russia's invasion in 2022 the country had very little border with NATO states. There was a bit with Estonia and Latvia. Counting in Kaliningrad, it shares a bit of border with Lithuania and Poland. And if you consider Belarus basically part of Russia (it has basically a sock-puppet government) it has more border with Lithuania and Poland.

One of Russia's stated goals/justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022 was to limit its border with NATO. Russia contended (i) Ukraine was going to join NATO, (ii) NATO represents a military threat to Russia, and therefore (iii) it had to annex Ukraine to keep NATO further away.

Claim (i) was false. Ukraine did not want to join NATO— though it started talking about it more seriously as Russia built up for the invasion. Claim (iii) is ridiculous logic as if Russia did annex Ukraine it would add borders with NATO member states Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

...Not that any of this would justify invasion even if it were true, but it didn't even make sense. And now Russia has achieved the opposite of its stated goal. Finland and Sweden, which were content being outside of NATO prior to 2022, petitioned to join. Now with Finland's membership imminent (Sweden's is still blocked on approval from Turkey) there soon will be hundreds of new miles of NATO member countries on Russia's border. Russia's aggression provoked the opposite of one of its stated goals.



canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
Today marks the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The war, still ongoing, began on 24 Feb 2022 when Russia rolled tanks and soldiers across the border with the intent to crush Ukraine's government and annex the country's land.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. It's evident now that Russia made two enormous miscalculations in invading Ukraine.

— First, Russia massively underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainian people. Far from welcoming the Russians— though the argument that the Ukrainians would do so was part of Russian propaganda— Ukrainians fought back, tenaciously. The Russian military, which prepared and moved as if it anticipated being able to sack the capital, Kyiv, within days, instead got bogged down in the country's east. Supplies ran out and supply lines fell apart. Even as Russia switched from a classic military campaign to essentially a terrorist campaign deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, Ukrainians have not been cowed.

— Second, Russia massively underestimated the will of the international community to push back against them. The US led EU member countries and a few other western-style democracies in enacting punishing sanctions against Russia. That happened, too, after Russia's annexation of Crimea (a part of Ukraine) in 2014... but what's different this time is that the sanctions have stuck. In 2014 EU members abandoned sanctions after a few months and resumed trade with Russia. Not only are the sanctions sticking this time but countries are also pouring military aid into Ukraine to help it defend its sovereignty in the face of this naked, unprovoked aggression.



canyonwalker: Malign spirits in TV attempt to kill viewer (tv)
The fourth episode of HBO's miniseries Chernobyl (2019) is entitled "The Happiness of All Mankind". It's a slogan from a propaganda banner left hanging at a civic center in one of the towns in the exclusion zone near Chernobyl that were evacuated after the nuclear reactor explosion. Showrunner Craig Mazin notes that the banner is described in first-hand accounts from liquidators as described in Svetlana Alexievich's book, Voices from Chernobyl.

"Liquidators" are what the hundreds of thousands of men sent to Chernobyl in the weeks and months after the explosion called themselves. If "liquidators" sounds more ominous than "cleanup crew"... well, it is. I'll get to that in a subsequent blog.

First I want to write about the opening scene of episode 4. Soldiers are evacuating people from the 30km exclusion zone. Not everyone wants to go.

An old woman refuses to evacuate in "Chernobyl" (2019)In this scene one soldier confronts a babushka who doesn't want to leave. Babushka, BTW, is a transliteration of the Russian word for grandmother. It appears in Polish, too, as a borrowed word. It's used in both languages more loosely than in English as a term for any older woman.

Babushka doesn't want to leave. The soldier tells she must and explains it's for her own safety. She refuses again, giving a litany of all the deadly hardships she's lived through on this land: the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin, the Holodomor, World War II, etc.

While she's arguing with the soldier she continues milking her cow. The soldier grabs the milk pail from her, steps outside the barn, and pours it out on the ground. BTW, the soldier is not doing this to punish her for disobedience. The reality is cows in this region are eating irradiated grass, and their milk is dangerously irradiated. It's poisonous to drink. That's why people have to be evacuated.

But the babushka is undeterred. She picks up the empty bucket, sets it back under the cow, and starts milking again.

The soldier, seemingly in a fit of anger and her stubborn disobedience, pulls out his pistol. We hear the BANG! of a shot— followed by WHUMPF! as the body hits the ground.

Spoiler! (Open to read more...) )

It's worth calling out a word the babushka used in this scene. A single word. Holodomor. The miniseries doesn't explain it but instead leaves it there like a clue, an easter egg for curious people to use as the starting point for further research. And OMG, what a terrible easter egg. Holodomor was a genocide Stalin perpetrated against the people of Ukraine in the early 1930s by starving them. It's estimated that up to 5 million people died.

For this episode, for this scene, that background puts into better context why a person who lived through that isn't afraid of invisible radiation or a soldier with a pistol.

Next: Find out what else they shoot in Our Goal is the Happiness of All Mankind



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