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Turkey is making demands for a Swedish accession to the North Atlantic Treaty.
I've seen very negative opinions about this. It's understandable that people oppose this Turkish decision, but Turkey is a sovereign country. It can refuse to ratify a treaty at will, without giving a reason. That's not unreliably, that's not irresponsible, that's not evil, that's not in any way indicative of being a bad treaty partner. It's a sovereign privilege of Turkey to make its own decisions.
Some of the criticism seemed to go beyond mere displeasure. I perceived hints of an attitude behind the criticism; some people are applying a collectivist mindset in which Turkey has to do what the crowd wants instead of making its own decisions.
That's an attack on the Turkish sovereignty, and a systemic one that needs to be opposed for the sake of the sovereignty of other NATO members. It reminds me a bit of the hatemongering against those countries which did not follow the Neocon lie-based warmongering against Iraq in 2002/2003 (especially France). This shows how potentially harmful and evil such a collectivist attitude can be.
Moreover, the EU appears to be built on the ideology that doing things together is always better than doing them nationally, and thus appears to be especially prone to similar collectivist attitude and pressuring. There's in my opinion great potential for harm in this, and I consider these collectivist attitudes to be a kind of national security threats.
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Do you consider the Turkish demands placed upon Sweden & Finland regarding their accession to NATO, as violations of their Sovereignty?
ReplyDeleteBlocking Sovereign countries from joining a defensive alliance with other countries...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/10/nato-sweden-pm-to-meet-with-turkeys-erdogan-in-last-ditch-bid-to-seal-membership
They can ask for whatever they want. Sweden wanted Turkey to sign a contract (ratify a treaty / accession protocol), so it has to make a convincing offer. It's within the rights of Turkey to demand whatever it wants for its signature and ratification.
DeleteBesides, Turkey felt safe without being allied to Ukraine. There's hardly any case to argue that the additional alliance obligation for Turkey is going to improve Turkey's security in any way.
Personally, I say we should tell Orban & Erdogan to eff off and simply do stuff without them. The EU's 'arms for Ukraine' program was bollocks. We should have done it nationally only, without Orban having a say. Sweden didn't need to get into NATO to get allied. We could have emphasised article 42 Lisbon treaty and dragged it into the public's mind:
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/03/germanys-alliances-ii.html
or just conclude a separate alliance treaty without Turkey, NATO 2.0.
IMO our politicians are unimaginative wimps.
Would we keep a state in NATO that violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Poland and Turkey are candidates for this.
DeleteNeither has a proper supply of uranium or much of a nuclear industry base.
DeleteThere's some uranium ore in both countries, but no operating mines. The projected reactors won't get large amounts of fuel, and removing that fuel for enriching would immediately be visible by reduced electricity production.
Maybe they could make a few gunshot fission devices in the 2030's, but those wouldn't scare Moscow.
Besides, one can also leave the NPT. Violation isn't the only path to nukes.
If at all, Poland wouldn't bother with a simplistic fission design like you ignorantly think. It would go straight for a hydrogen bomb. Stanisław Ulam, who created the first hydrogen bomb design in history, was Polish and educated in Poland. It worked right first time. Be assured that it is well known in Poland how it worked. So even demonstrative testing isn't necessary for it to be credible. However this is of course something the arrogant mindset of the uebermensch can't fathom.
ReplyDeleteMost countries know how to build a fusion bomb. Almost every physicist can figure that out nowadays.
DeleteThe problem is that you need materials created in a nuclear reactor to build one, and Poland doesn't quite have that capability. Its one ancient research reactor is unlikely to be able to provide enough tritium, for example. It cannot breed plutonium in a useful quantity, so the first stage would have to use uranium, which is suboptimal.
There's only one research reactor running, so Poland could hardly import enough uranium and would have to restart uranium mining in largely depleted mines.
https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/energy/se/pdfs/UNFC/ws_IAEA_CYTED_UNECE_Oct12_Lisbon/12_Chajduk.pdf
So much about ignorance.
First you where assuming a very simplistic design. And it is by a long shot not almost every physicist that could figure it out. Heisenberg just didn't and Ulam himself for example was a mathematician. The required mathematics is not accessible to most of physicists at all. And you won't be able to just google it. The materials required can be acquired by other means. So much for your ignorance.
ReplyDeleteI assumed gunshot principle because it works fine with Uranium and was the South African design (which was developed and built 6x in total secret).
DeleteThe difficulties of developing something for the first time are irrelevant to developing a new model 70 years later. Only one person was able to figure out the diesel engine originally, now there are hundreds of thousands of engineers who can built one.
The design of a fission bomb is simple by modern standards
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/09/archives/student-designs-2000-atom-bomb.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
but a large thermonuclear weapons program for dozens of compact thermonuclear bombs could not be kept secret or be done in face of serious embargoes.
A program for a dozen gunshot uranium bombs doesn't require much more than one physicist, a couple engineers, a couple metal works craftsmen, centrifuges, access to uranium, a few years and a budget of 100M Euros (on top of getting the uranium).
Access to Uranium is the most troublesome requirement, and Poland could not secretly restart mining.
Mining is not the only way to acquire corresponding resources. And it has been demonstrated by North Korea, Iran, South Africa and partially Israel and Pakistan that corresponding programs can be successful regardless of more or less strict embargoes. Due to typical german hybris you are again missing the actually quite obvious. Of course a fission bomb is not that difficult to design. However a fusion bomb, which is the only really effective deterrent, is not that easy. Not by a long shot. It's not just a technicality. The talent required to solve those equations is exceptionally rare.
DeleteWhich would support my assertion that Poland would not do it.
DeleteLook, this is not a length contest. I don't care whether Poland has very smart people or not. It's a too open society with too much international trade relationships to run a covert thermonuclear bomb project without getting stopped. I also insist that Poland likely doesn't have the resources for a thermonuclear bomb project. Its nuclear industry is near-nonexistent. Poland has a "research" reactor, those things are de facto factories for elements that the medical industry needs and not much of a research centre.
"Moreover, the EU appears to be built on the ideology that doing things together is always better than doing them nationally, and thus appears to be especially prone to similar collectivist attitude and pressuring. There's in my opinion great potential for harm in this, and I consider these collectivist attitudes to be a kind of national security threats."
ReplyDeleteWe already regulated ourselves into an economic stagnation, and apparently lost any capacity to politically maneuver.
There's no economic stagnation, but there's a slowing rate of technological progress (in all the Western leading economies).
Deletehttps://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2013/09/blog-post.html
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/01/populism-and-tough-political-challenges.html