I see you're resorting to your old style of making things up. I didn't say Nineham was in the pay of Russia but I have accurately reported on his comments.

STW has declined in numbers and credibility.

Not to provoke Russia no, but to appease the baltic states with an assurance that they would be willing to follow up on the puny forces should russia attack. Obviously nobody wants war with russia, evident by the failure to defend Georgia in 2008, intervention in crimea and dominance in the syrian civil war. Being bogged down in 2 other major wars and threatening iran and n korea doesnt help with available resources.
But that doesnt change the fact that nato has increased its prescense in the region recently, and historically since 1990 we saw a nato expansion against promises made to russia. Poland, hungary, other former soviet states, baltic states have all gone to nato, followed by the ukrainian orange revolution. Not surprising russia is flexing its muscles.

Obviously you didnt. But what other motive could he possibly have?
Still havent explained how you know they have declined in credibility.

So this is a long way from your original point that NATO is somehow trying to aggressively encircle Russia. if you replace the word "appease" ( who needs to appease tiny states?) with "protect" then we are getting closer to reality.

The US and its puppet nato is still far the biggest military force, the US spends 8 times more on its military budget than russia which has the 2nd largest military. But due to internal problems within nato and over-stretched forces it is struggling to assert itself in the former ussr. However it is a fact that nato has taken over many former soviet republics and has been encircling russia since 98 and is still trying to stake its claim in the region.

Lord, you're sounding like a Putin propaganda mouthpiece now - I hope this is not anything like representative of the Corbyn line. Nato has "taken over" former soviet republics?
These are democracies who have chosen to join Nato

wtf is this guy talking about lol

I'm not sure foreign policy details are relevant in elections. The issues are too complex to even have a ball park understanding of what is going on without serious study.

I think foreign policy opinions are mostly previous partisan tribalism. The absolutely vain effort of Hillary Clinton to hit Trump on the Russia connections during the campaign showed that. You would think the USA #1 types would care about being owned by Russia but they clearly didn't.

Of course USA is a more partisan society than UK so it could have some relevance in the latter.

this is the standard hard left approach to foreign affairs

america = most aggressive imperialistic state around and everything which happens is viewed through that lens

putin invades ukraine? its a response to american imperialism!

Just a generalisation, you understand my point. However, certainly in the case of Ukraine, the CIA, EU and NATO were heavily involved in 2004.

I think the anti NATO argument is that NATO broke the deal they made with Russia during the USSR resolution.
The deal supposedly was that NATO was not going to expand to Poland which they broke thereby creating a political scenario in which guys like Putin can thrive.
Chomsky argues something along those lines.

I don't know, you would have to be pretty well versed in Eastern Europe politics to have a strong opinion on that imo. If you don't you are basically picking a side and cheering for them like you cheer for a football team.

Geo-politics is a hugely complicated affair, one which I don't claim to be an expert on. However there is no contradiction in what I said, rather the contradictions are inherent within global institutions, states, relationships between states and so on. The general point I am making is that NATO has been on the offensive in eastern Europe post 1990. There is ample evidence for this in the expansion into the former eastern bloc, the nato bombing of Yugoslavia, interference in the Ukranian revolution and more recently the deployment of troops into the Baltic states. These states are weary of potential Russian aggression, and it has been shown that the troop numbers are way too small to cope with a Russian offensive. Which is likely due to stretched resources in Afghanistan and an unwillingness of Germany and France to commit, preferring to strike a deal with Russia. The argument may be that further support would be offered in the event of a Russian attack.

by nato bombing of yugoslavia i believe he is referring to the time nato forced milosevic's army out of kosovo via a bombing campaign, where they were forcibly deporting almost a million kosovar albanians and killing those that resisted. i assume this is another example of a humanitarian pretext for territorial conquest

this is why corbyn squirms in his seat whenever anyone asks him a foreign affairs question, its hard to engineer a way to make this stuff not stink

Good point, and none of us are well versed. However, it is possible to generalise that there used to be 2 superpowers, now there is 1 (in b4 China, resurgent Russia etc) and this superpower has taken up much of the former territory of the other one.

The original reason why this is being discussed was something Corbyn said 4 years ago about Nato being a threat to world peace. At that time Nato was still officially at war with Afghanistan, using white phosphorus I might add, with war in Yugoslavia still fresh in the mind. Also bear in mind that Nato is funded mostly by the US making it essentially a puppet wheeled out when they need legitimacy for a particular offensive. And if they can't get it, what the heck just go to war anyway.

The reason I'm banging on about it is because there is a view of Nato as some benevolent peacekeeping force, a purely defensive alliance.

The problem with this approach is that you end up scratching your chin when they consistently ignore human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, for example. And it is also baffling as to how further death and destruction helps the cause:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/340966.stm

Do undecided voters in the close constituencies care about Yugoslavia in the late 90s ?

But even if the line about breaking an agreement was true ( I'm not an expert either but I think it's far from certain) The idea that the enlargement of NATO is an aggressive move against Russia is just so far from credibility as to be laughable. European countries who make up the great majority of NATO members have been cutting defence budgets to the bone. They just want to coexist with Russia. American motives are more complex but they certainly don't want to pick a fight with Russia. I don't think you have to be well versed in anything except common sense to see this.

Perhaps but the western military complex lost its credibility after the Iraq war in many circles.
That is what muddies the water and allows Corbyn to make it alive out of the foreign policy debate imo.

Even though the Iraq war was not a NATO invasion people evaluate NATO as it was the same thing as the US military complex.

because death and destruction can prevent greater death and greater destruction

--

on saudi, i've no quarrel with defining and understanding american foreign policy as being based on self interest. naive not to. but to dismiss all interventions as wars of aggression and to discount humanitarian considerations as if they aren't involved in the calculus is a bit much

not specifically yugoslavia, but i do think the root positions - anti usa, anti nato, anti the western world - gets up people's noses quite a bit. gets up my nose anyway

If you just imagine tom as a Viz style caricature of someone from the far left it all makes sense.

I suggest you spend some time in the KGB museum in Vilnius or the Museum of the Occupation in Riga. You might then understand why these countries want to minimise the risk of Russian invasion.

In any case with Merkel's speech today, Nato is effectively on its last legs and a European Army on its way. The Russians spent decades trying to split the US and Europe and Trump has done it in a matter of months.

Theresa May has also been singled out by Merkel, presumably she kept silent about the Paris agreement and Trump's rantings because she is desperate for some table crumbs in the form of US/UK trade. A colossal gamble on her part - Trump might not be president when we leave the EU.

After Iraq and Libya I find it very difficult to believe the Americans give a **** about anything except their own economic interest. Whatever was wrong with Saddam, Gaddhafi or the Taleban what transpired subsequently was worse for the people there, and put the West in greater danger.

You really have to go back to the last millenium to find a US intervention that could be described as humanitarian.

He means the US has been making alliances with the countries around Russia making the Russians paranoid and aggressive.

It is fairly mainstream geopolitical analysis shared by military experts and independent non-partisan thinktanks.

Yes , that seems like a structural weakness of his campaign. The problem Corbyn has is the disparity between his base and the undecided voter in the close constituencies.
Corbyn should have moved to the right in those issues in exchange for more support from the mainstream of his party in his economic program imo. That way he would have looked more responsible but he had to make that move right away , like in October 2015, at this point he is better off doing what he is doing and hoping for the best( at least in my non British thereby less valid opinion).

Sorry? Anti-US? George Bush-crazy evangelical oil baron that launched an unsuccessful war that created a breeding ground for ISIS? Donald F***ing Trump? Obama and his beloved drone strike campaign?

What about the "relationship" with the US is worth sacrificing British lives for and enduring the continued humiliation of being its poodle?