End of an affair?

[Martinus]

The US is leaving NATO?

Good riddance.

[Martinus]

Janusz Onyszkiewicz, first non-commie leader of Poland

Errr what?

He was just a minister of defense. The most recent post he had held was a Polish MEP, but he lost the last elections, and the party he is a member of is pretty much defunct (no MPs or MEPs). So in essence his voice is that of a "Polish academic" and shouldn't really be read as anything more than that.

[Martinus]

Anyway he makes good points, but this in no way supports the thesis of the German retard that Article 5 is "fiction". I mean, by the same token you can declare the Treaty of Rome (for the Yanks - the foundation of the European Community) "fiction" because theoretically each country can pull out at any moment and the rest of the EU can't do anything about it.

Article 5 is a fiction in the same way any piece of international law is.

[Syt]

Janusz Onyszkiewicz, first non-commie leader of Poland

Errr what?

He was just a minister of defense. The most recent post he had held was a Polish MEP, but he lost the last elections, and the party he is a member of is pretty much defunct (no MPs or MEPs). So in essence his voice is that of a "Polish academic" and shouldn't really be read as anything more than that.

Yeah, I misread before my sunday morning coffee. He's introduced as Soldiarnosc's speaker when the first non-commie government took over.

[The Brain]

Anyway he makes good points, but this in no way supports the thesis of the German retard that Article 5 is "fiction". I mean, by the same token you can declare the Treaty of Rome (for the Yanks - the foundation of the European Community) "fiction" because theoretically each country can pull out at any moment and the rest of the EU can't do anything about it.

Article 5 is a fiction in the same way any piece of international law is.

I haven't seen Rumsbush dragged to The Hague so I guess he was right.

[Alexandru H.]

Uhm, good morning, welcome to reality. General population in this part of the world looks at the USA with -at the very least- contempt. Usually it's hate. Why? Envy, of course, altough the people would cite stuff like "ignorance, obesity, agression" etc. all the stuff you can find aplenty in East Europe as well, but hey, you have to hate what you are not (citizen of an advanced country) to like what you are.

So, the rampant and unconditional love of the 'States have been always a government-only project here, showcasing a rare occassion when they don't succumb to populism.

Maybe it's true for russophile countries. The Baltic states, Poland, Romania have sizeable majorities of pro-american conviction. For a decade after WW2, a large part of Romanian population was obsessed with the coming of the americans and the liberation of Eastern Europe. And this takes into account the bombing campaign of the US against the oil fields and rafineries.

[Warspite]

Anyway he makes good points, but this in no way supports the thesis of the German retard that Article 5 is "fiction". I mean, by the same token you can declare the Treaty of Rome (for the Yanks - the foundation of the European Community) "fiction" because theoretically each country can pull out at any moment and the rest of the EU can't do anything about it.

Article 5 is a fiction in the same way any piece of international law is.

Yes, and? Article V is presented in the general imagination as some kind of hard-and-fast weapon in and of itself, bringing the full might of the Western militaries to bear in an instant.

In fact, no one is quite sure what would really happen in the event of its use in a full-blown conflict. As one famous question during the Cold War posed, would America really sacrifice New York for Berlin?

So perhaps the academic was not actually questioning the letter in the North Atlantic Treaty, but rather he was questioning the belief held in it in and of itself as some kind of concrete security guarantee.

However, I agree with Zanza - without knowing who said and and what else he said, it's not really a useful quote. I suspect it may have come in the middle of a very dry, academic security/strategic studies speech. These NATO summits are not exactly thrilling.

[The Brain]

Anyway he makes good points, but this in no way supports the thesis of the German retard that Article 5 is "fiction". I mean, by the same token you can declare the Treaty of Rome (for the Yanks - the foundation of the European Community) "fiction" because theoretically each country can pull out at any moment and the rest of the EU can't do anything about it.

Article 5 is a fiction in the same way any piece of international law is.

Yes, and? Article V is presented in the general imagination as some kind of hard-and-fast weapon in and of itself, bringing the full might of the Western militaries to bear in an instant.

In fact, no one is quite sure what would really happen in the event of its use in a full-blown conflict. As one famous question during the Cold War posed, would America really sacrifice New York for Berlin?

So perhaps the academic was not actually questioning the letter in the North Atlantic Treaty, but rather he was questioning the belief held in it in and of itself as some kind of concrete security guarantee.

However, I agree with Zanza - without knowing who said and and what else he said, it's not really a useful quote. I suspect it may have come in the middle of a very dry, academic security/strategic studies speech. These NATO summits are not exactly thrilling.

Is this think like a retard day or something? Obviously he wasn't questioning the letter of the article. If he had done so he wouldn't have had to call it fiction. It was obvious from the information given in the OP what the anemic was saying, he was indeed "questioning the belief held in it in and of itself as some kind of concrete security guarantee".

Obviously this is based on the information in the OP which may or may not be correct. But it's all we got and I suspect all we need.

Yi and Mart are morons. It's OK to call a spade a spade, Warsprite.

[Martinus]

Yi and Mart are morons. It's OK to call a spade a spade, Warsprite.

[The Brain]

Yi and Mart are morons. It's OK to call a spade a spade, Warsprite.

It is not the post that hurts other people. It is the hard heart!

[Valmy]

Brits and Germans are a fickle bunch.

It just shows how shallow love or hate of the US is in Europe.  I guess the average Fritz doesn't really give us much thought.

[dps]

Brits and Germans are a fickle bunch.

It just shows how shallow love or hate of the US is in Europe.  I guess the average Fritz doesn't really give us much thought.

You did see that the graph is showing approval ratings of the US President, not the overall opinion about the US in general, right?  The 2008 Bush and 2009 Obama approval ratings aren't much different in Britian than they were in the US (though Obama's approval ratings have come down since the start of his administration).

[Razgovory]

Brits and Germans are a fickle bunch.

It just shows how shallow love or hate of the US is in Europe.  I guess the average Fritz doesn't really give us much thought.

Really it just shows British and Germans are judging a man as opposed to a nation.  If they hated the US it would be low for both of them.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Obama's politics fall within the mainstream in the UK whereas Bush is too "right wing" for most British tastes, hence the large disparity.

I put the right wing bit in quotes as I'm not at all sure that the vast majority of the British population know much about each president's policies. It can probably be summed-up as Bush wages pointless wars whereas Obama wants to set up a health service.

[garbon]

It can probably be summed-up as Bush wages pointless wars whereas Obama wants to set up a health service.

Its convenient how we can forget about things that don't fit our worldviews.