Historical borders of Finland

You're missing the point. The figures only count "Official Development Assistance" (ODA) aid.

From the link I provided above:

In effect, much of the aid provided by the US would not be counted under this system. For example, NAFTA - the free trade agreement with Mexico. The US invested 327 billion dollars in 2009 (the last year I can find figures for) in Mexican industry. This is pure development aid, but is not counted under the ODA system.
That 327 billion dollars is TEN TIMES the amount counted by ODA, and is just an example of aid to one developing nation.

 

The fact that the US has on occasion when it suited its interest engaged in regime change does not imply that it has the obligation to do so especially when the need to do so is determined by rather ambigous criteria by individuals or powers not associated with the US.

??? The US didn't control any of them. They would occasionally fulfill US requests but often did things contrary to US interest and/or requests. So I'm still waiting for a single valid example of your "long list".

The "weapons of mass destruction" had previously existed in Sadam's stockpile (and indeed a few still did) what's more he still had a program for the construction of the same (although not as much of one as he apparently thought) furthermore he intentionally gave the world the impression he had them. Admitedly some of the analysis was rather one sided but that's a different issue. As for the "presence of al Qaeda" from what I recall if you looked at exactly what was stated it was accurate. Subject to misinterpretation but accurate. On the other hand these were for the most points talking points and not the real and legitimate reasons for the invasion of Iraq.

Then why did you bring it up in the first place? Seams like now that your diatribe has been proven without merit you are trying to sweep it under the rug to me.

Sure looks like it to me. I didn't bring it up either by the way.

The US military was present to defend them if the Soviets attacked. There may not have been troops in some of the countries (such as Sweden) but that doesn't mean the umbrella didn't exits. As for US military presence in Canada have you ever heard of "the DEW line"? Or "NORAD"?

Or maybe you just need reading glasses and possibly some additional lessons in reading comprehension.

 

I agree that you shouldn't consider direct investment in a Foreign industry, and reduction of trade tariffs, in a strict Foreign Aid consideration. Free Trade Agreements are not foreign aid.

"The US foreign direct investment (FDI) in NAFTA Countries (stock) was $327.5 billion in 2009 (latest data available), up 8.8% from 2008."

"Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a direct investment into production or business in a country by an individual or company of another country, either by buying a company in the target country or by expanding operations of an existing business in that country."

"Broadly, foreign direct investment includes 'mergers and acquisitions, building new facilities, reinvesting profits earned from overseas operations and intra company loans'. In a narrow sense, foreign direct investment refers just to building new facilities. The numerical FDI figures based on varied definitions are not easily comparable."

NAFTA is not just Mexico, but also includes Canada.

And the USA is the greatest receiver of FDI on the Planet, bar none.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_received_FDI

That is why FDI can hardly be used as a measure of Foreign Aid by governments.

That's not to say, that encouraging people to invest in Mexican industry is a bad thing. But it's not really government Aid.

But seeing as you wish to compare FDI:

USA's total FDI was $4,507 trillion USD
The Nordic Countries combined, was $1,194 trillion

 

Now, now. Nobody was realistically going to invade Sweden during the cold war, ever. Sweden had its own umbrella which was good enough. Although it obviously couldn't stand in an isolated conflict against either super power (surprise!), that is not a realistic scenario during the cold war. Swedish defence at the time was clearly focused on making the cost of any invasion in time and resources beyond what an invader would deem worthwhile in the context of a wider hot war. The only reason NATO would get involved, was because if Sweden collapsed, Nothing was going to defend the sliver of land called Norway, which was a NATO member. That said, there were secret agreements to allow the use of Swedish territory by NATO, in the event of a wider war, should Sweden be attacked. It was clear, however, Sweden could not count on American help, as it may be needed elsewhere, for countries that had signed the North Atlantic Treaty.

Western & Central Europe may have needed the US in the context of the cold war, but Sweden did not. It wasn't until the economic crisis of the early Ninties, that Sweden's military preparedness took a dive, from which it now staggers from worse to abysmal.

Furthermore, what is truly abysmal, is how the wider EU spends something akin to 60-80% of USA's military budget, but gets far less bang. But that is another rant.

 

Actually in a protracted NATO-Warsaw Pact war Norway would be a serious target for Soviet forces and it is likely Russia would have rolled through both Finland and Sweden to get there and to keep their forces supplied.

 

"Attempted to roll through."

Given Finnish and Swedish preparations, and the wider context (war in Central Europe), the Soviets wouldn't have had enough qualitative troops to achieve all that on their northern flank.

 

http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_sovthreat/Introduction.cfm?navinfo=46465

"The picture emerges that the pre-emptive offensive strategy also applied to the Northwestern TSMA and that the Soviet Union had, in this case, the objective of establishing what could be called a maritime defence zone west of the Nordic region, which would thereby be isolated in its entirety from the Anglo-Saxon world. Through the rapid occupation of Denmark and Northern Norway, they reckoned that Sweden would declare itself neutral and that Finland would adhere to what the Soviet Union interpreted as the spirit of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. The advantage in this for the Soviet Union was that there would be no need to detach forces to militarily defeat Finland and Sweden. In the case of Sweden, it could be perceived as particularly important at the beginning of a war not to be forced to neutralise the large air force and the Swedish Navy in connection with the break-out through the Baltic straits as this would require deploying forces that could be better used against NATO."

 

Back to the topic:

Just few miles from my home is Austrian border and you can see from family names that many inhabitants of that region could be my "compatriots", but they are Austrians and I don't care who their grandparents were.I really don't give a stuff. After the WW2 many Sudeten Germans were settled in this region. Now, should I go up there and ask them to leave "my" ethnic/historical territories? Of course not because I respect people regardless of their ethnicity/nationality. Besides, I'm convinced that I'm mentally sane person therefore I don't qualify for doing insane things.

Should we start ethnic cleansing in 21th century just because some foolish chauvinistic idealists want to have their "historic" territories? I don't think so. Other people live there, their children attend schools there, boys date girls in forests that once belonged to someone else. They live there and that land belongs to them, old ethnic maps belong to museums. Unfortunately, there are still some who would even today gather people of different ethnicity and load them into cattle wagons. Or somewhere else.

Karjala, please try to be cool and leave that people over your eastern border people alone. Otherwise, some of us might think that you're an ordinary chauvinistic troublemaker. But, I know you ain't.

Now, I'm leaving the "Stump".

 

NATO and the Norwegians certainly thought it was a possiblity. Even if they didn't initially if the Soviets took the rest of Europe why wouldn't they take over Finland, Sweden, and Norway afterwards?

 

This is all true. Some remarks though:

1. Of course there's no official dispute. Finland could achieve nothing with that. Unfortunately the old habbit of self-censorship among the Finnish politicians is hard to die. Everything regarding Russia is still often hush hush - rights of Finland included. Why would Russia give up anything if the official Finland does not say anything?

2. The polls in Finland are surprisingly favourable towards the return, keeping in mind that for decades anything negative regarding the USSR/Russia was considered extremely dangerous - returning of Karelia especially. Even hinting about the Finnish rights for (Finnish) Karelia was advertised as calling for a soviet attack. During president Kekkonen's reign (1956-1981) the best way for a politician to destroy his/her career was to mention Karelia.

Even today when the official Finnish (leftist) media handels the matter or makes polls the main focus is on the possible costs the return would cause - and keeping totally silent about the many benefits, for both Finland and Russia!

After the WW2 the Finnish-Soviet relationships were based on lies and denial of truth. Unfortunately this habbit seems to have deep roots even today,

3. As you wrote, the polls in Russia are meaningless, since the people don't often know what is being asked for. And anyway the opinions of the occupiers are irrelevant.

4. Naturally there are no rightful Finnish owners left in the ceded area, since they all escaped (bar 19 individuals). The few Finns living in that area now are Finns from Ingria - the area around St. Petersburg where they were deported from during the Stalin's time. It still does not mean, that the rightful owners - or their chidren - didn't still have their rights.

5. See my answer nr. 2.

 

1. True, but then you should not be offended when people want to womit when they hear the phrases like "protecting/bringing freedom/liberty/democracy"...

2. Franco, Marcos, Musharraf... But obviously anything I write will never change your beliefs. Of course they didn't ALWAYS follow the USA, but often enough anyway.

3. Yeah, right...

4. Because that's one very valid reason why the US military presence is often not automatically admired. I didn't/don't want to start discussing about the crimes of the US military, which you surely should be aware of.

5. Kodiak Beer did.

6. It's the choice of the USA to have (too) large military power and spend a lot. I'm not buying that story about Sweden, since they used to have very strong defence forces.

7. Don't think so.

 

That's what we wanted them to believe. In reality the Finnish army was only preparing against the soviet attack - as always.

 

1. I understand, that because your environment is totally different and your thinking obviously is leaning towards Stalinism, you cannot see the difference e.g. between Finland and Slovenia.

Of course when different nationalities mix it is often difficult/impossible to draw the borders. However that is totally different than accepting the soviet robbery of 100 % Finnish land. I'm not talking about some ancient "historical territories" or "old ethnic maps", but the actual homes and properties of living people. Would you accept the robbery of your home?!

2. Nobody is talking about the ethnic cleansing, except that the Finns were practicly ethnicly cleansed, since they had to escape. According to the UN inhabiting occupated land is not acceptable. The occupators of the homes of the Finns have no rights to them.

3. Since the collapse of the USSR millions of Russian have moved back to their home country from the countries they used to occupy. I doubt any of them used "cattle wagons", as you so "hilariously" suggested...

4. I'm cool and only wish, that the Russians would give the Finnish homes back. I doubt there's that many thinking so - except you of course, which doesn't matter.

 

Why they are perfectly accurate. The problem is of course there is a limited amount of funds available and their are other concerns as well. Failure to recognize that is unreasonable. Unfortunately that's not a rare phenomena.

Not often enough to make your claim of "control" legitimate. So no those don't count either. I agree you are unlikely to wrte anything to change my opinion much less my beliefs. Both of those requre a logical fact based argument, something you seem to have a hard time bringing to the board.

I'd like to think that meant your recognized the reality of things but somehow I don't thinks so.

So you present a baseless argument, then don't want to discuss it but still claim it's valid????

Indeed he brought it up but you were the one who posted a rather baseless denigration. Indeed one that was rather full of factual errors. If the US government had posted something like that you would likely be shouting that they lied at the top of your lungs.

Indeed it was the choice of the US to do so, that it was too large is highly debateable indeed from what I can see given the goals and the interest of the USA it is fallacious. However while it was a choice it was to a fair extent forced on the US and the US in any case extended its defencive umbrella over western Europe. Sweden did indeed have pretty decent defensive forces but they were almost insignificant compared to those of the Soviets or the US. The knowledge that the US and NATO wouldn't put up with a Soviet occupation of Sweden certainly didn't weaken the Swedish defences at all.

The temptation to reply to lines like this with things like:
"Obviously"
or:
"You could have improved the correctness and genrality by leaving off the last word"
is almost overwhelming.

 

Norway is part of NATO.

Read the whole article. It's not a estimate by NATO scaremongers, to rustle up more money, but an evaluation of various known Soviet war plans from the Cold War, and what they thought they themselves could achieve.

In other words, the evidence points to, that the Soviets themselves didn't feel comfortable in that they could achieve their needed rapid victory in the West, if Finland and Sweden were included. Defeating Sweden would entail such diversion of forces needed to defeat NATO, and doing so was felt to threaten the needed breakout of the Baltic fleet.

NATO's own estimates of Soviet capabilities doesn't enter into it.

 

"It proved to be the case that many had come to roughly the same conclusion long before, and one of those who described this was the Norwegian Rolf Tamnes, who has specialised in the study of developments on NATO’s Northern Flank during the Cold War. He quotes the Norwegian Ministry of Defence’s assessment in 1973 after a two-year in-depth strategic study of Russian intentions in the North:

The Ministry concluded that ‘the pattern of development appears to indicate that the Soviet defence zone is projected from the most northerly part of the Norwegian Sea to cover at the present time the whole Norwegian Sea in the waters of Britain, Ireland and Iceland’. The Parliament Defence Committee emphasised in February 1973 that the Soviet defence zone has now reached the GUIK line and ‘most of Norway is behind this line...

 

A different article:

"The book reveals that fear of an invasion from the former Soviet Union was rife among the Norwegian defense forces immediately after the end of World War II. Several imagined scenarios included ocean-based assaults, invasions launched from Finland or paratrooper drops at key locations in the north, although all strategies hinged on the belief that an invasion would not come through Sweden."

 

No Karjala, you raised the issue of US aid in post 84.

 

They most certainly do. One can only react to percieved/potential threat. By the time the Soviet papers were available that threat was gone. Note that politicians in general don't always react reasonably and dictators such as Stalin and Hitler have even fewer constraints on them in this regard than democratic leaders.

 

The question at hand was did Sweden require USA's umbrella? I think I've shown, that by Soviet planning, Sweden's defence was adequate, in the terms for which it existed: to defend Swedish territory in the event of a wider European conflict. Furthermore, I've shown that the same conclusion was drawn by the Norwegians, both immediately post WWII and on into the 1970's.

Such then was the situation. Therefore, if Soviet planning, and NATO members had reached this conclusion, if the Soviet leadership decided to attack Sweden in the aforementioned context, it would generally be seen as a strategic mistake, for whatever political reasons, and ensure the failure of the wider goal; defeating NATO prior to the arrival of American arms. It was of paramount importance to the Soviet planning, for the Baltic Fleet to break out, which would've been vastly more difficult with Sweden involved. The Soviets would've been very hard pressed to destroy Sweden's dispersed air force, which regularly trained from stretches of Motorway all over the country. And it is a large country, with significant stretches of motorway.

Furthermore, Sweden had no need of the Nuclear umbrella either, as it had produced all the necessary components of nuclear weapons by the 60's, although it decided not to actually assemble any weapon itself. The AJ37 Viggen would've been used to deliver the devices had the political decision been made.

Getting Roosevelt's secret assurance of military assistance in 1960 in the event of a soviet attack was nice, but that was of course based on the strength of the Swedish Air force, and its ability to defeat Soviet Anti-submarine activities in Kattegatt and the Baltic. American Polaris-armed submarines were to lurk in near-Swedish western costal waters.


The fact remains, the preferred Soviet plan, avoided attacking Sweden, not because of promised American aid, but because it would be too costly to the overall effort.

Lastly, Finland's observers in general, were not impressed by American forces performance in Winter exercises during the Cold War. But I sadly can't find the article.