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Nivek
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Liverpool
Jan 2003
time: 05:26
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Why don't all the Europeans leave NATO and leave the US, Canada and the UK in it. (And no, I don't include the UK with the Europeans.)
I'd love to see how the rest of Europe would manage a Euro defence force. They'd never agree on anything!
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:26
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DanS, about NATO? Against. But you have to understand the mindset here to really understand the situation. YOu see, we think (not me, but majority) that we are safe (I think this too), and we don't need to put our noses to others business and get into trouble (here is where I disagree). We think why should we fight in others wars. We don't have professional army, so who would we send anyway?! Our laws are for ONLY defending our land and borders. No pre-emptive striking. Only if someone really crosses our borders, then we are there to meat the wrong doers with furious minds and angry thoughts.
However, we don't think Saddam is good, we think he is evil. But we also think that the US and NATO will handle it, and some of us might not agree that pre-emptive striking is the right way, since we believe in defending borders only. We don't have superpower mindset, or knowledge about the threats superpowers have. And even if we think Dubya shoudln't attack, we don't condemn it, as we think it's none of your business. And being part of western world, we keep our thumbs up for our guys, rather than others. So don't get us wrong there. And we will do everything that is possible within our laws to help, we have already promised to help rebuilding Iraq, and sending peace keepers. We think only for ourselves and for our peace here, and not globally, as I think we should think.
We are not easy with the idea of letting our defense to the hands of others, we want to do that 100% ourselves. We don't trust anyone helping us, if kaka hits the fan and we're prepared to fight ourselves against anyone for our existence if it comes to that, and not cry if we don't get others help and compassion. But naturally we would like others to help us, no question there. We just don't believe we will get help.
Actually many finns don't believe NATO would help us if we were attacked, and were members with NATO. We think there's a big chance we'd still have to fight alone.
I know it's weird, but that's the way our minds work.
Also, it would mean even harder taxation, as we'd have to increase our military budget. This one is big contributer in polls that say we're against. We hate taxes. We are absolutely sick of them.
Also we would slowly need to turn ourselves into professional army if in NATO. That is a big problem, it would be a whole new system. And we don't believe pro army could defend, our lands are big compared to population. We believe we need to keep up big army, so we can throw lots of bodies. Army is also something.. it's cultural thing here. It's something every man just does. We have very high will of defending among youth. Last poll I saw was 87% wants to go to army, pay tribute to our grandfathers who defended our country in winter war, and we see that as our responsibility. And if we don't do it, our fathers think we're gay and *****, since they had to do it too.
We also think, that if we joined in NATO, we would have to go fight wars all over the world and not get any benefits, since we're in safe place now. Why go look for troubles, even if we don't like the guys NATO is fighting? They don't need us, they can win without us, it's not like we would be deciding factor here. We don't believe our needs will be heard in NATO, rather we do what we are told and go do some combat for others. That's what we believe the case will be.
Some fear the nuke thing, if we were in danger, we'd have to have nukes in our soils, and we really don't like them. And foreign troops, that attract other enemies too, just for the sake of that. NATO is powerful already, and we wouldn't contribute a lot, so they don't need us, and we don't think we will benefit from joining. We are already in close co-operating with NATO, and in peace programs, and NATO lead peace keeping thingies.
These are the major factors why majority don't want to see our country in there. Many of them are misconceptions in my opinion though, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. So to put it in short, we don't think NATO needs us at all, and we don't think we will benefit from joining. I hope we join though.
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Nivek
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Liverpool
Jan 2003
time: 05:26
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Pekka, that's an interesting comment about a professional army. Since they stopped conscripting (drafting) into the armed forces in the UK, and went for "career" soldiers in the 1950's, armed forces chiefs have repeatedly said that it's a better system.
Is a smaller, professional army better than a bigger conscripted one do you think?
Last edited by Nivek on 01-03-2003 at 07:12
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:26
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Nivek, Tough question. In country like UK, I'd say professional army definitely. In our case.. I don't know. I really really don't know. It would be more effective, but I'm not sure if it would be able to defend the whole country if it was invaded from all fronts. It would be able to fight better, but it might have too big area to defend, and it would lose its effectiveness.. So I don't know. It would have to be at least 300 000 men active army in my opinion, and that's too large, there are only 5 million of us. But in longer run, I think we have to change into professional army, fighting has changed, and it's not all about putting million man army to trenches near the border.. I'd say right now we are better with conscript army, but in the future we need pro army.
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Nivek
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Liverpool
Jan 2003
time: 05:26
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quote:
Originally posted by VetLegion
Conscripts, easily!
A good conscript who does not fight for money but for glory of the homeland and also well disciplined and trained, is the most feared soldier!
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But a hi-tech country like Finland could surely better defend itself with the latest weaponry and professional armed forces?
Aren't large armies just "cannon fodder"?
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:26
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Nivek, That's what we are trying to figure out right now.
We are chaging slowly. We never had classical big army that does lots of frontal attacks over big fields, dying in tens of thousands. We are rather mobile, stealthy, rely on surprise and getting initiative, which we think is essential. So we can't be just big army with lots of men, and never were. We hit on those weaknesses. We can never put big amounts of men in few important places, as I said, our country is too big to defend. So when I say big army, it means comparing to our population, not comparing to the enemy. Most of them we are small.
We are trying to get somewhere in the middle of hi tech army and big army. It's a big dilemma. On the other hand we could get lots of latest weaponry, or more of them, and set up active career soldiers. But they couldn't defend the whole country in effective way. Only some cities and some country side. On the other hand, with the size of our army now, we can't so much of those hi tech weapons we'd like to have, but we have bigger capacity to defend the borders. Plus we don't need all hi tech weapons, only the ones that we need for defending ourselves.. But as I said, it's a big question and still to be solved.
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OliverFA
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Leeds, UK
Sep 2002
time: 06:26
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My opinion: Throw France out of the NATO. They don't deserve membership.
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01-03-2003 06:16
A resurgent Russian nationalism would be a great ally to insure us against the American Global Empire. 
Yummy! 
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