As a Swiss person I have to correct the statement about serving a minimum of 5 years: we only have mandatory basic training (18 weeks) + yearly repetition courses (3 weeks each) until you have served your mandatory 240 days
Maybe even more context: During recruitment there are even more pathways. People are assessed psychologically and physically and receive a certification of fitness for military service. Even if declared fit one can opt to serve a longer period in civil service, which can be several jobs, e.g. assisting in nursing homes, or even working in farms in the mountains. If declared unfit one has to serve in civil protection, which is called upon for disaster relief and many other tasks. Finally, if truly unfit or unwilling, one pays 3% of ones income until the age of 30 as a substitute for military service.
@@Blanksmithy123 You only get the "peace and love" part if you are willingly to turn yourself into a fortress and spending sizeable amount of your wealth on defence.. else get ready to be bullied, steam rolled or ignored til you eventually abandon neutrality or get your act together.
To be fair about Costa Rica’s lack of a military, America basically guarantees the protection of them, Panama, and other small islands since democratic backyard
Island nations with the ability to constrict the Panama Canal will always be guaranteed US support, or Gibraltar with the UK. After all, this is exactly what China hopes to recreate with its artificial islands nowadays.
@@arya6085 yeah, but Costa Rica is non-oficially administrated by the USA in practice, like Panama and other Central America states. What Russia does in Central Asia/Europe, USA does in Central/South America.
The country collapsed becaus the guy who replaced Tito tried to take away all autonomy that tito have to varies regions. and then said dude commiting genocide.
@@AL-lh2ht He did not replaced Tito. He tried it bit. Tito dismembered teritorially Serbia more than nazis did, while formally giving them main say in army or international politics. So majority of Serbs believed they have own country, while country was deeply ethnically divided. It did not took long before ambitious narcissist (Milosevic) to stir trouble in order to get more power. Yugoslavia was broken by West decisevely since the country during Cold War refused to join NATO. The topic is much more complicated than poor Kraut tries to explain usually in his trademark shallow and fact avoiding ways.
@@robrob9050 It sure as hell wasn't "decisively broken". When the wars started in 1991, most of NATO didn't really give a fuck about Yugoslavia and some would have even preferred to keep it whole. It was the then freshly reunited Germany and the Pope that swayed the West into supporting dissolution. Much of the actual military aid (to Croatia, at least) came from the former east block countries, not the least of which was Ukraine. There was a story in the news earlier this year where some of the artillery used in the defense of Zadar was returned to Ukraine to help them fend off their invaders.
@@2712animefreak You probably rebooted CNN firmware in your brain or what? Read timetable of the Badinter commission. It was very early in the crisis moves were made to broke the country by outside forces. Then read how long was membership in UN kept for Pol Pot Cambodia representatives? What is your conclusion?
Nations usually only get around to collapsing after the economy declines. If you’re in a country where you can get a decent job and live a pretty good life, you’re usually willing to put up with whatever strange ridiculousness the government is up to.
One thing's for certain after the invasion of Ukraine: *No nation with nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up.* Nuclear weaponry, whether or not it was a deterrent before, certainly appears like one now.
As a South Korean, I agree whole-heartedly. Our 'friends' in the North are going to increasingly lean on their nuclear weapons and ICBMs, which goes directly against our national interests. Despite efforts for a peaceful Korean peninsula, de-nuclearization seems to be off the table for a very long time. This has also lead to increasing (yet, mostly just pandering) political voices calling for the placement of nuclear weapons in South Korea as a failsafe. Which will lead to the Japanese calling for their own nukes and corresponding submarines, etc, etc. Russia has, without lifting a finger, made every nation in East Asia more dependent on the U.S., and much more wary of military posturing from China. No wonder Xi is loathing Putin's fun little adventure westwards.
Also, once a country with nuclear weapons use it in a aggression war, every nation will pursuit it. People forget that nuclear weapons technology are not that difficult to produce and domain. Its a ww2 tech after all... The reason there aren't even more countries with nuclear weapons is pure political. Fear of economic sanctions, threats, etc. All the rival nuclear powers would "coincidentally" turn into friends against anyone who tries to pursuit nuclear. But once a nuclear weapon falls, no matter from who, that's threats lost all meaning and we will see the number of countries with nukes tripled in less than a decade. Brazil, Japan, Germany, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, all The Gulf states, Turkey, many African nations, Mexico and many others will produce nukes very quickly, without difficulties. Maybe that's why Russia is afraid of using tactical nukes in Ukraine, to avoid a domino effect in this sense.
As Ukrainian i can say we literally got robbed. I won't speak here about use of those weapons, only want to mention that nuclear arsenal that Ukraine possessed was worth as much as Ukraine's GDP or even more. And it was given up almost for free. If our politicians really care about people, this could have been turned into great investment into Ukraine
"Czechoslovakia was allied to Britain" No it wasn't. Sorry Kraut, rookie error. Czechoslovakia was allied to *France* and *France* was allied to Britain. There was no direct Anglo-Czech agreement, which was the point of the Munich Agreement. Britain was terrified of getting dragged into a German-Czech war that it had nothing to do with by it's French ally, as getting pulled into a war by your allies had been a repeating feature of World War 1. The rest of your point is fine though.
As a french student I had heard about the hypocrisy of french government towards Czechoslovakia during the Munich agreements and after watching the video I only feel more sad and ashamed about it
@@marinebenoin659 it was also allied to Poland, and was supplying tanks to them. Well, it would have supplied tanks, had it not turned around the shipment at the outbreak of the war
@@marinebenoin659 i think there are many more current issues with French foreign policy that you can be upset by, e.g. its neo imperialist economic enslavement of Francophone African countries.
11:50 as a Casual EU4 player, I am guilty of enforcing nuetrality upon my victim states to make conquest easier. The fact a historical example exists is fascinating and horrifying.
When faced with a minor EU4 nation with strong allies, you try to 1) pull them into a war as a non-belligerent, 2) take all their money and break their alliances 3) wait until your truce is over 4) "look who is here on my border without an army or allies. It would be a shame, if someone declared war on you..." Now what were Putin's original war aims again?
As a swede and political scientist, I just want to say that Swedish neutrality is vastly overstated. During WW2 we sent most of our weapons to Finland, 10K volunteer soldiers and threatened the USSR with war after the peace treaty with Finland was too harsh. During the cold war we had escape plan for our leaders to flee to the UK and USA, we spied on the USSR for NATO and even built our airfields to fit NATO planes. We still made deals with the USA even as Palme was protesting the Vietnam War. And Russia knew all of this. And we still spoke our minds on the international stages, and pissing of western countries. And this did not stop after we joined the EU, and I don’t think it will after Sweden becomes an official part of NATO.
I never understood how people fall for that. We understand that you can't determine the intentions of people by looking at what they say, you have to look at what they do. Yet for countries we apply different standards?
@@freddyromariovasquezcairo2250 Oh, you must be very surprised to learn that US allies do what they want. It's almost as if the US is *not* some empire enforcing its will onto its allies and that it's in fact the allies that actively choose to be part of the western bloc and that they could leave and declare their neutrality anytime they want to. The only question remains, why on earth would any nation on earth not be a US ally? Oh, except for the morally corrupt regimes, those who are hiding nazi gold and those who are already US allies in all but name.
As a Vietnamese, it's very interesting to see how neutrality in Europe has progress to adapt with different historical events. Vietnam itself now is also trying to be neutral, being right under China while having the US as a strategic deterrence in the South China Sea. I hope you'll do an official video on us soon!
Good point. Do you think Vietnam is somewhat like Finland was: needing to remain neutral to appease it's scary neighbour? Is that the way citizens see it?
@@太陽神-u1l ehh, I think Vietnam of all countries definitely has the right to not want the U.S. to need to play a huge part in their defense. Just saying
@Shy Cracker Yeah, I found his channel early on as well, like a month after he started making his current style of content I think. I was immediately hooked lmao
“Why is Hungary a NATO member?” Good question, I mean even Poland has started since the war to fell out with Hungary and in Lithuania we refer to Obran literally as “Prostitute for gas”
What's wrong with that? EU was fucking Hungary over and extorting wealth at the same time. i.e. Hungary was PAYING to be screwed over by UK, US, France and Germany, so what's wrong with being paid gas to screw?
That’s a question I imagine a lot of the NATO leadership asks themselves every day since the war started, along with “why haven’t we kicked them out yet?”
@@connormclernon26 I am still questioning why is Orban getting away with not implementing sanctions against Russia? Do Hungarians have some special privileges or everyone is too lazy to act.
I love how Perun whent from small gaming channel to THE one channel that everyone point out if you want to start to undertand something as complex as defense economics
Ireland is a very active memeber in the UN and has been basically since the league of nations. Ireland and Canada I'd argue are similar as they represent the multilateralists, wanting to solve issues via multilateral bodies like the UN and ECHR. Ireland was also in the Congo along with the Lebanon, Liberia and dozens of other conflict zones. I dont think we'll adopt a domestic arms industry though. Thats a vast overestimation of what Ireland is willing to do. The current coalition barely increases defence and their opposition is led by Sinn Fein who think we're already not neutral enough and I don't see them ever increasing funding for the army. Ireland will have to rely on the UK and USA for security guarantees as we have in the past. Its a weird thing
@@tigerabraham5582 funny. But no, the IDF cannot effectively defend Ireland and we're not gonna be relying on a paramilitary who murdered Irish citizens during the troubles. Either way I do think Kraut overestimates how far Russia is willing to go with Ireland. Putin is a complete bloody idiot but if they attacked the internet cables coming into Ireland that would also cut off half of Europe from the US, it would unquestionably lead to an American response. Ireland has always been neutral in favour of democracies and the US and UK have not so subtly acknowledged that.
@@tigerabraham5582 The official army isn't called that it's just the Irish Army now, as part of the defence force of Ireland. And that couldn't hold of a Russian invasion despite utterly awful the Russian army is as the army has less then 10,000 people in it including reserves. And if you mean the Para-military groups then they're more likely to take Russian money to 'liberate' NI then they are to fight them, given that they basically devolved into an organised crime just with a good front and PR department.
I don’t honestly know what my fellow countrymen’s prevailing opinion on the concept is, but this Englishman would come steaming over to defend Ireland the moment we got an invite. They certainly wouldn’t have to ‘beg’ for help.
Greetings from Gothenburg. In Sweden we have a specific phrase for what you referred to as active neutrality “Humanitär Stormakt” translated as “humanitarian great power” A phrase often used by Social democratic politicians for what Sweden in their mind should be or should act. It also has a double meaning since the Swedish empire is referred to here as “Stormaktstiden” translated to as “great power era” which says a lot about how we Swedes viewed our active neutrality as you called it
@@PjRjHj Depends on where you are on the political spectrum. As I mentioned Social democrats often use the phrase, especially during the migrant crisis 2015-2016. During this time it sorta became a meme. Right wing politicians often scoff at the phrase and especially the right wing populist. The phrase for obvious reasons has been dropped by its proponents since of last year
Hate to say it but the term Humanitär stormakt is a fallacy, these last 7 years have been nothing short of disastrous for us. In my personal opinion we lose nothing of worth by finally dropping the pretense of neutrality.
@@fallout44454 I assume you are talking about the migration crisis being disastrous? Even if that's the case, we can still be a "humanitärian great power" on the global stage. What the phrase is talking about is Swedens ability to be the mediator in alot of conflicts. Sweden is in the forefront of humanitärian cases world wide. Kraut mentions a bunch of things at the end of the video that Sweden can take humanitärian pride in.
I am surprised Kraut, you didn’t highlight Turkey’s attempts to strong arm Finland and Sweden out of their sympathies to towards the Kurds by single handedly delaying their ascension to NATO. Turkey in this case extracted a price from both in their abandoning neutrality. Just thought I’d drop this here as an additional point, great video as always!
@@mori211 kurds want to be independent. the terratory of kurdish land in turkey is alike a fifth or fourth of turkey. Also they want a excuse to commit another genocide.
@@AL-lh2ht In a similar manner with idea of Catalan's independence, though maybe not an analogy that to really use but just reminds me of the scoff from nations that have proclamations of independence from their own areas or so. Though I guess there's some nuances. Israel's independence, as much as it's a mess right now, was part of already existing populations.
The shadow of the status of Northern Ireland looms over any meaningful discussion of changes to Irish neutrality. The attempts by the more extreme elements of the unionist community in Northern Ireland to either scrap or erode the Good Friday Agreement via Brexit have only complicated this issue further. This is an important factor to consider and one you don't seem to have mentioned.
I'm not so sure, Ireland having a "clean break" might help it adopt a more self sufficient form of neutrality than its current form of being effectively reliant on the British to defend them (not that we wouldn't if it came down to it, but the whole NATO issue complicates things). Ireland has had to maintain a precarious status quo with the GFA and now Brexit, an end either through a "hard" border with NI or reunification (not sure which is more likely, but given current trends I'd say the latter) might give Ireland the flexibility to change its current stance without fear of breaking a lot of other things.
On the flipside, the RAF is the one chasing Russian bombers away from Irish airspace, which doubtless helps dissuade the Irish state from wanting to spend the money to build a functional airforce.
We could take back the while island and unify, but that would mean sharing a country with a lot of half brits who hate us. Ireland doesn't really have anything, I can't see us building anything. Other countries had industries, we had centuries of occupation and looting followed by decades if brain drain and economic stagnation. We just can't do it.
The whole good friday agreement needs to be reworked to account for the changes in geopolitical dynamics in Europe and the renewed friendship our two countries have. The only people who are angry about the Norther Ireland Protocol and Brexit and the potential for it to undo the Good Friday Agreement are the people who are violent already and are trying to find excuses to justify their violence. The Conditions on Ireland joining NATO should be the ROI giving up all territorial claims on NI and removing the re-unification of Ireland from the Irish constitution. The premise that another country can have claims on it's neighbor due to "mistakes" and "ethnic" makeup is exactly what Russia used to claim Ukrainian land for itself. The people of Northern Ireland have the option of voting to rejoin Ireland and it should be down to the people of NI to decide that. Without interference from foreign governments, or threats of violence from extremist groups. The UK for it's part should uphold the will of the people should they choose to join Ireland, but should otherwise treat NI as any other part of our sovereign nation. Meaning no borders in the Irish sea under any circumstances. The border between the UK and EU is on the island of Ireland, and should be a border just like the one with France. Northern Ireland is part of the UK and how we administer the region is down to the UK. Not a bunch of terrorists and their american allies.
As a Swede, it is not about fighting alone it is about Russia no longer following sane logic of invading countries when it makes sense. So this means our deterrence does not work anymore, the only deterrence that works against Russia now is nukes. The Swedish deterrence has always been about making it so not worth invading that they never would.
What the heck are you talking about? Invading Sweden is much easier than invading Ukraine. And that's even after the recent year massive boost for the Swedish army. You are 10 million sitting on a vast valuable land with an incredibly rich industry. How is that "not worth it" with that very small army? If Germany wanted to few decades ago, it could steamroll that "Swedish deterrence." Take as an example for a country about the same size as Sweden with an actual deterrence - despite not being neutral, they still "stood alone" as the Finnish says. - Israel.
@@מ.מ-ה9ד Well our army today would probably not have a chance of stopping the russians but you have to understand that under the cold war Sweden was one of the most militarized countries in the world. With something around eight hundred thousand soldiers that could be called up during a mobilization and the rest of the population could be called up for total mobilization. Where essential industries (K-Företag) and workers would continue to produce goods in big mountain factories for the rest of the war. So yes it would have been extremely costly for the russians to invade us back then
Russian dissident here. If you think Russia ever was sane and acted in good faith, you were not paying attention. Assassinations, lies and creation of hostile criminal enclaves in other countries never stopped ever since Transnistria.
As a Swiss, I have to point out, that there is only 300 days of mandatory military service and not 5 years. After a base camp of 4 months, you have to serve the rest in small parts of 3 weeks every year, maybe that's where the confusion came from.
As a Luxembourg resident this country is classic case of neutrality not working. In the first half of the 20th century Luxembourg tried so hard to be neutral and twice it was invaded and annexed. That’s why after WW II this country became such a key part of NATO and the even more so the EU.
@@zombieoverlord5173 “getting stomped either way” was true for most countries in Europe that weren’t France, Germany or Russia. Belgium got stomped, as did the Netherlands, Denmark, Chech-Slovakia, Austria, etc. Only Italy, Spain and Poland were large & strong enough to fend of the big 3, and even then they could never military retake all their territory, so even if they did not get destroyed they’d still lose territory. Which makes the next war harder. That is basic history of Europe: The smaller neutral countries only exist because the big allow us so, or because we play the game using 1 great power against the other. Luxemburg played that game very well, and as a Dutchmen I’m proud to call them our equal partners within the Benelux!
It's worth considering the context behind Luxemburg's neutrality. In the 19th century, its strategic location almost led to armed conflict between France and Prussia, with only the guarantee of neutrality (and dismantling of its fortifications) allowing it to continue to exist and eventually become independant. Its neutrality was thus based on an external balance of power, which means it was vulnerable to shifts in this balance (see world war I and II). You could argue this external guarantee was the result of its small size relative to its neighbours, but you could also argue that its continued existence, compared to say, Neutral Moresnet, is actually a success of its neutrality.
Kraut joining even rounder table (possibly getting drunk in process)? That's sounds like secend best thing after PowerPoint man also joining. That podcast would be so legendary that It could rival Trash Taste.
As a Finn, I believe Finland's active role in mediating peace and cooperation within Europe came as a natural reaction to not feeling completely safe. Finland's inability to join the EU (until end of cold war) and NATO (until recently) due to pressure from Russia's forced-upon neutrality led to seeking alternate and sometimes creative sources of peace and stability to compensate. This in addition to a large defence force.
Here in Ireland we recently celebrated if that is the correct term the importance of the Good Friday agreement. However one thing that I noticed was that the mass media made little or no reference to the huge part that Finnish politicians played in helping to put together a forum for discussion . As an Irish citizen I want to pay tribute to Finland for their role in the peace process. Kittos Suomi.
Finland has not had neutrality pressured on it for ages. Joining EU didn't bring significant change to the security situation, but it changed political alignment. The Baltic countries were wiser in that they first secured their backs by joining NATO as pretty much the first thing they did, after which questions of political alignment are rendered inconsequential from a security point of wiev. NATO Finland could just as well even exit EU if it happens to want to since the security infrastucture is much more credible than that of the EU and comes with less would-be infringements on national sovereignty or other such political baggade that reduces or usurps agency of our political institutions. We are a western country but we don't worship the west as an abstraction, even if some politicians might give that kind of idea.
I mean, yes, but only if your country happens to be a tiny island in the middle of the ocean that sits astride an extremely strategic opening into the ocean that is very important to NATO
I cannot understate how many times I completely forget your nation even exists, and that's coming from someone who played as Iceland in CK3 less than a month ago
As a South African, I can't tell you how ashamed I am that our government continues to claim "neutrality", even as it came out today that they sold weapons to Russia. Even China has flipped against Russia in the UN, so it's unclear at this point what our excuse is. I really can't emphasize just how badly South Africa is doing right now - our economy is taking such a beating, electricity is off 8-10 hours a day, and on top of everything, the government chooses the losing side in the most unpopular war in decades. I'm afraid this is becoming a failed state. I'll have to leave soon.
I have a question, here in the States after the end of the Jim Crow era there were a lot of unforeseen consequences such as the forceful firing of black teachers into integrated schools and the death of many black owned businesses and consequently a large portion of the black middle class. Is this at all similar to post-apartheid South Africa
@@Megaawesomeguy It's hard to argue that the fall of apartheid had unforeseen negative consequences for black people in particular - but the ANC party has had disastrous consequences for the country overall. Corruption is unbelievably severe, it's absolutely crippling, and it infects so many different parts of our society in so many ways. The big ones at the moment are the complete neglect of infrastructure - our rail system basically doesn't exist anymore, electrical infrastructure is in extreme crisis, and many parts of the country are struggling with water infrastructure. South Africa is often compared to Zimbabwe. Although we haven't fallen as hard as they have, many feel we are doomed to make the same mistakes - we actually have growing political movements dedicated to making the same mistakes.
@@Megaawesomeguy Post apartheid resulted in the new political force blaming every bad thing ever on the white population while at the same time it was just an excuse to enrich the new leaders. Literally the country is in shambles, every part of infrastructure is crumbling to pieces and still all they have to do is say "it's those evil whites causing all these problems" and they once again win the election and continue to milk a dying cow for personal gain.
I haven't seen the news about arms delivery to russia, but i ll believe you on this. But even without it, it was kind of obvious who SA leadership supported, as neutral in this case almost always means pro-russian. And in Ukraine many people just assume that Africa hate us for nothing, and start to hate Africans (not black, but generally people from sub-Saharan region) in return. It is sad to see this loop of hate in return when at the start we didn't have any grievances to each other
@@Megaawesomeguy Black South Africans as a whole are undoubtedly doing better then they were under Apartheid. The same thing is true for Jim Crow in the US it may seem as though things got worse after but that isn’t the case.
Side Note: I love how Kraut always shoutouts other channels in almost every single video, and redirects us to further-detailed information. That's the quality of a supportive community.
As a Swede, it’s sad to be giving up this position of neutrality, but it seems most people have agreed that there really isn’t any other way forward now. Great video
It would be interesting if instead of NATO we could do some sort of defence deals with neighbouring states individually or a common Nordic defence group of some sort, but I don't see that likely happening and without any real support for a poll on NATO membership from the parties, I guess our government is still gonna try joining NATO
I don't think you have given up neutrality, it's a bit of a false narrative. NATO doesn't change how you conduct your foreign policy. Sweden is in the EU, isn't picking a side and conduct economic warfare? Sweden is so close to NATO it's almost a formality. NATO is a defensive alliance, others see it as a threat or Side because it blocks their aggression or want an excuse to not negotiate. I think physical distance from everything and low historical baggage will still grant the role as a 'neutral' mediator 95% as before.
As a Finlander I am very pleased over the fact that Sweden cannot hide under some thin veil of neutrality the next time the horrors of the world come knocking around. Because there will be someone else carrying a far bigger stick than Sweden, reminding it of its obligations. At the moment when the first, not the last inch of Finnish has been violated. No more freeriding - slut på snålskjuts.
There's a good reason most Americans think that neutrality means a lack of an arms industry- Ireland is the only one of the countries you mentioned where English is the official language and we obviously have much deeper ties with them
As a Finn, I would like to share my perspective. I recognize our accomplishments as a neutral country, but those don't get much emphasis at all in our history books or in our political conversations. The only positives we usually think of when thinking of our neutrality is maintaining our independence and having good economic ties to Russia. These two are what our history books generally talk about. The latter has become far less significant, because Germany is now our biggest trade partner far outweighing Russia. And when considering the former, it is no coincidence, that we began openly talking about NATO membership after the Soviet collapse, because after the second world war our neutrality was forced on us because of Russian geopolitical interests and it was not of our own free will. Many European countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden adopted neutrality after disastrous wars, so that they could focus on internal development. This was our stance too after signing a treaty with Lenin's Russia after our independence, so that we could avoid a war with Russia. Something that is not often talked about, is that we trusted this treaty so much so, that we neglected our army so much so, that Mannerheim did not belie, that we could fight back the Russians and that we should capitulate to their demands in 1939. After the winter war we abandoned our neutrality to attack Russia, hoping that Hitler could defeat Stalin and remove the Russian irredentist threat to our independence. That didn't happen and we we're forced to accept neutrality on Russia's terms. This is made clear by the fact, that here and probably elsewhere the word Finlandization has a very negative tone. We have always viewed our neutrality in contrast to Russia, not as to what we can do for the benefit to international community, and while Kekkonen, Ahtisaari and others have acted as international mediators, that role in our country's history is not very pronounced and it has never been seen as our moral responsibility. Saying that Russia and Finland ever were friends is kind of weird, because we have completely different cultures and values, even our army has always been designed to specifically fight Russia. We have always seen Russia as a boogeyman, or a school bully, who has no future, but who you should get along with, and pretend to like, so you can avoid being bullied. Our neutrality by it's very nature has been self centered. We have always wanted to integrate closer to the west and after EU, NATO is the next logical step. In the past when we talked about NATO membership, most people would just dance around it, while talking about expenditures, the unrealistic prospect of involvement in foreign wars and such. I would like to point out, that the National Coalition party was the biggest supporter of membership, and it is now in power. The biggest reason why we didn't join, was because we saw what happened to Georgia and Ukraine and didn't want that here, because many of us believed, that we could not win a war against Russia and even if we could, war would still be devastating, win or lose. This latter one is important, because while the failures of the Russian military is laid bare for all to see, Ukraine is still devastated and we want to avoid that. So in my view we joined NATO to deter Russia from attacking us, unlikely as it may be and as a sort of payback and as a statement, that we are done pretending to be their friend. Anyway, that was long, but I am glad to say, rest in peace Finlandization 6.4.1948 - 15.5.2022
so instead of massively increasing military spending,encoraging ther rigth to bear arms for citizens and forming nordic alliances finland decides to join nato?Like have finnish people forgot about what they are capabel of ,using the winter war as an ex. As a swede i am dissapointed in sweden for the same reason.Especially when the Sweden prides itself of its morality abroad instead of i fixing the problems that are plaugeing swedish citizens and have an army that is not a joke compared to the rest of the world.
@@danieli9333 Even if we are well armed enough to beat Russia, neutrality simply makes you vulnerable these days and is not viable when being this close to a possible aggressor. I too would prefer closer co-operation between the Nordic countries in terms of defense and other things, but NATO is a more straightforward option for all of us.
@@Vellupellu Yeah this is an important thing to point out. It's unlikely Russia can ever conquer nations like Sweden or Finland; but the war has shown that as inept as Russia is, its complete lack of empathy for its own people means they can toss men into a meatgrinder and inflict horrific damage to another country anyway. The only way to deal with Russia is for a much stronger power to smash their capabilities outright rather than let them drag the war into a horrific siege; and nations like Finland prolly doesn't have that capability.
@@danieli9333 Could we fight off Russia? Maybe, but even in the most positive and outlandishly stupid predictions nobody would claim that it wouldn't come without *incredible* cost to Finland. To use an old joke, it seems like you are a Swede willing to fight to the last Finn.
@@danieli9333 Sweden's army is not a joke. It's decent for what it needs to do, and it is miles better than Germany's or Austria's. Joining NATO is more than just defense from a Russian invasion; it is a nuclear deterrent. Sweden probably won't be able to bear the cost of a nuclear weapons program and I don't think there is any political will for it. Becoming a contributing NATO member is a win/win for Sweden and NATO, and hopefully it will happen in the future.
@Kraut this is wrong 9:31 Belgium did not choose neutrality after the First World War it was in an active military alliance with France that relied on the French army pushing through Belgium into Germany in a hypothetical another war. The main reason Belgium was neutral during the start of ww2 was due to a diplomatic falling out in the 1930s that led to Belgium leaving the plan. This is also the reason why the Maginot line did not expand past German Border.
True, except that the Maginot Line was never meant to extend to Belgium. The defense strategy was to have the Maginot Line funnel the Germans to Belgium, where the Allied armies would set up defensive lines along the river dykes and canals and meet the invaders there. The Belgians pulling out of the defense pact in the 1930s meant no more forward-deployed Allied troops on the Belgian border, which considerably delayed the response. That and the risky Ardenne offensive pretty much ruined the Allied defense of France.
Started my college undergraduate career in international politics 4 years ago, largely because of the videos from this channel. I graduated today, came back home, and saw this new video up. Not sure what the message here Is supposed to be, but thanks for inspiring me through my academic career. ☺️
I got that degree and another liberal arts one, worked in politics for a bit and now do logistics I will not pay for my kids to get a degree in this , there’s enough info online
Congratulation for your graduation. I guess the message is if neutrality makes sence or not. The answers i think is it depends on the situation.. I also have seen better videos from kraut..
As an Irish person it was very interesting seeing an educated outsider’s perspective on my country. While I’m not certain what direction we will go in terms of military spending I do think a domestic arms industry is an overestimation due to our strict firearm control laws, the cost involved, and the risk of arming groups such as the UVF and IRA. While the Ukraine War has made people here more alert about defence it has also made us aware that our main security threat is quite inept. If we do increase the size of our military, I can imagine we’d practice active neutrality as you described, primarily because we already do. It’ll just be more noticeable with a bigger army. Our current defence from invaders is kind of weird. It’s like we’re a small poisonous animal. You could easily eat us but it’s probably a bad idea. For one our border situation somewhat unique. One lost bomber or inaccurate artillerist and you’ve attacked Northern Ireland and by extension NATO. We’re also surrounded by countries that have a vested interest in keeping us alive. While we were owned by the Brits they didn’t really do much with us, to the extent were we basically skipped the Industrial Revolution. However, Britain kept a firm grip on us because if they didn’t own us, France, Spain or someone else could use us as a staging ground to invade Britain. The same is true now, if a military power occupied us they’d be able to threaten Britain and Western Europe. The main reason we were occupied is now one of our best guarantees of safety. We’re also quite well liked internationally. We’re very active in the UN and EU and invest heavily in diplomacy. We have a massive diaspora, especially in the US and Britain. We’re also in a unique position of being both a western nation and a victim of colonial aggression by a western nation which opens a lot of doors. As a recent nation we also haven’t had many opportunities to make people hate us. As such any full-scale military invasion would not be popular globally and potentially at home depending on the invader. It also means our dimished but still extant paramilitary organisations will have plenty of potential sponsors. We also don’t have much to offer a would-be invader. We have fertile soil but not a lot. Our economy is strong but that’s dominated by multinational corporations that could jump ship as they’re doing with Russia now. Even the benefit of being a staging ground for further conquest is limited due to our lack of military infrastructure.
Okay, but I hope you understand that if the import of charming Irish panel-show comedians for the BBC ever dries up, we will be re-annexing you to secure the supply.
Plenty of countries with strict firearms controls have strong defense industries. The risk of arms being misappropriated is real, but they are probably cheaper to get from other sources. The cost? That's the cost of neutrality
Here in the United States there are heavy Irish roots. My hometown mascot is a Fighting Irish man since many people emigrated here after the Irish Potato famine of the 1840’s. Also, much of the hatred (justified and unjustified) towards the Catholic Church in America has been pushed towards the Vatican and some of their priests (we all know which ones I’m talking about) and not everyday citizens practicing Catholicism. I would agree that any attack on Ireland would bring hostility from all corners of the world to the aggressor.
Austria and Switzerland may not be NATO members, but being surrounded by NATO they're in fact free riders, since nobody can really attack them unless they go trough a NATO country, or it's a NATO country itself, which is quite improbable.
Austria is part of the EU and would therefore be required to defend other EU countries if attacked. Since most NATO countries in Europe are also EU member states Austria is defacto in NATO already. Swiss on the other hand has a brilliant military and is spending big money. Sooo just no to your statement.
@@hackbrettschorsch6855 that doesn't change the fact that they benefit from NATO protection which let's be real here, is protection delivered mainly by America while they contribute nothing to NATO defense spending. Sure, they may have good equipment but they haven't fought a war. They have no combat experience and they don't train with NATO which would cause even more issues if a war popped off in their region. The Swiss have historically profited from both sides of any conflict and yet still depend on NATO due to geography or otherwise. Doesn't sit well with many people. Same for the Swedes. I don't think we should be applauding a country for speaking up about social issues in other countries while contributing very little itself. Both kind of come off like self-righteous turds while contributing nothing to the world stage which results in their insulation from having to make difficult geopolitical decisions. Decisions that both countries will openly criticize other countries who are more active in geopolitics for making.
I'm from Croatia and a taxi driver told me he was in the yugoslav army when Tito died, he said they moved about 3000 tones(or more) of anti tank mines to the yugoslav-hungarian border because the expected an attack from the soviet union
really really great video Kraut!!! one of my aunts on my mom’s side of the family married a swiss man and moved to switzerland in the 80s. last summer, i finally met up with my swiss family after only seeing them once as a kid. it was fascinating talking to one of my swiss cousins about the ramifications of the ukrainian war. everybody i talked to felt the significance of switzerland condemning russia for the ukrainian invasion. everybody i talked to supported switzerland’s condemnation of the war but were still concerned about how the war and the end of swiss neutrality might influence the country in the long run. my mom and i were also staying at the house of my aunt’s friend and she just so happened to be hosting a ukrainian refugee woman. meeting her was very moving.
Mexican here. I just wanted to add regarding Mexican neutrality, that it was used as an excuse against accountability. On the foreign front, Mexico used the principle of non-intervention to keep foreign institutions from looking into state abuses and corruption. It also gave them some diplomatic clout since they were not seen as wanting to take advantage of other countries. Domestically, the regime touted its "defense" of weaker countries against imperialistic governments to garner support, especially among the country's intelligentsia, anti-American as they were (and many still are). In spite of this, there were some legitimate successes, like the Chapultepec Peace Agreement between the Salvadoran government and the guerrilla. I know this info was not relevant to your video's point, but that's what the comments are for! Awesome analysis, as usual.
So in other words, the social-political structures of colonial spain adapted for an independent Mexico yada yada then adapted to continue into the future.
Mexico is a de facto American protectorate. This is because Mexico is an extremely critical part of the US economy, and becoming more so as industry moves out of China. If you were to look at a map of economic flows, you would discover northern Mexico to be more economically integrated with the US than with central Mexico.
@@SU1C1D3xPR4D4 Exactly. Anything Mexico does must have approval from DC, even critiques against Washington. Politicians that claim to be "anti-yanqui" also acquiesce. Just look at AMLO. His rhetoric is anti-American (except, tellingly, regarding Trump), but he does Washington's bidding with regard to undesired migrants.
27:15 Kraut, I have to step in for Ireland here. You're referring to Sweden defending Congolese villagers from mercenaries. I'd advise you to look up the siege of Jadotville - it was Irish soldiers that put up a heroic defence, which was subsequently ignored at home for resulting in a defeat, despite it being against overwhelming odds.
@@Yha1000itz I thought the San Patricios were Irish Americans and other Catholic Americans that were tired of how mistreated they were by the Protestants. There were some escaped slaves and free Blacks too. I think it was a segregated unit in the US Army that wondered why they were fighting for a country that hated them against a Catholic country that already banned slavery.
Yeah but it wasn't just the irish, the siege of Jadotville took place during operation Rumpunch however both swedish and Indian UN troops partook aswell, heck you can even see the indian forces during the siege of the radio building in the movie. Furthermore it was the Swedish forces who protected the Balubas since neither the Indians or the Irish wish to take on the burden which led to the Swedes having to deal with the Baluba jeunes and the local population duking it out. Finally I'd like to point out that it was the Swedish forces that stormed Camp Massart which served as the HQ of the "Gendarmes".
@@fallout44454they didn't take place in the siege, the troops under siege were 155 Irish men, the Swedish, and indian troops were part of the 500 man counter attack that failed at a bridge, they were not part of the siege it's self and were repealed quickly
Heii Kraut im swiss. Its not 5 years, its a roughly 1.5 years of Basic Training (Rekrutenschule RS) followed by a total of 6 Repeat-trainings (Wiederholungskurs WK)with each being 3 weeks long. Love ur channel bye
If they actually consider you. When I was drafted I felt like 50% was UT and sorted out on the first day at the Rekrutierungszentrum. But then again, I feel this could change with the new situation
something I feel as a Englishman which also plays a part in irelands not spending money stance is that. if ireland was going to be under attack by anyone they would either have already gone through england or england would come to there aid because of the northern ireland and the hopes that it by helping ireland it would be seen more as mending of bridges
You can imagine how much peace our NATO membership really brings to my mind as a Finn, considering I'm a fit 23-year old whom has recently done military service lol
I'm sure you guys will be a valuable addition to the alliance but please don't just become another Iceland. There is always a danger the next US president might just lose interest.
@@andrex6288 You are also in a vital position to help the balkan states not to get forcefully russified if russia would ever try a "special military operation" there
When Switzerland condemned Russia many months ago I was genuinely surprised that more people weren’t focusing on how significant that was. It seemed like it was accepted as “ok cool… and moving on…” instead of talking about how breathtakingly awful you have to be to illicit such a response from the Swiss.
Condemning Russia and Putin is the bare minimum. What, we should applaud them for realizing that Russia is doing bad things? I think Western countries, and particularly "neutral" Western countries, are guilty of a fair bit of navel-gazing but applauding Switzerland, "do-nothing Switzerland", for realizing that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is unacceptable would just take the prize. How about they let NATO gift their Swizz produced weapons and munitions to Ukraine? Actions speak louder than words.
@@Boomerrage32 "Russia is doing bad things" Like, invading a country? Just like the US and NATO did alot more often them any other country like in Iraq, Vietnam, Yugoslavia etc.? So every country that isnt sanctioning the US/ UK/ NATO are just as guilty for every warcrime the west has done, in your logic.
@@Boomerrage32 "Condemning Russia and Putin is the bare minimum. What, we should applaud them for realizing that Russia is doing bad things?" Did they ever condemn Nazi Germany? Like, during the war? In any case, yes, we should applaud them. Political neutrality is supposed to be one of the modern Swiss guiding moral principles. If you disagree with that - fine, but, since your moral stance is divergent from that of the Swiss, your judgement has little value.
kraut is the type of youtuber to make a video about the how living rooms has changed over time and turn it into a discussion about the socio economic secution of the world
Well, there is a huge impact of society on how we build our habitats. Kraut has actually discussed a similar topic (how backyards are built in countries with high corruption) in his video on the Greek debt crisis.
@@hlibushok reminds me of that phrase, "sometimes, the curtains are blue because the author wrote that the curtains are blue." In real life, though, it's just as likely that the curtains are blue because somebody made a geopolitical cockup two steps short of WWIII and it meant that blue dye was cheap as chips, or something.
@@MarkusAldawn I prefer "Nothing happens without reason" Even the author who puts no meaning behind the blue curtains chose blue for a reason. They might imagine it would look nice based on aesthetic tastes inherited from their values and life experiences that are in turn derived from the places they've lived. At its the simplest, anyway.
Correction! The people of North Macedonia, never used any Yugoslav weapons (to achieve independence). By way of referendum it was decided to break away from the state of Yugoslavia and a deal was struck: no bloodshed. NMK disarmed, willingly surrendered any and all military equipment to the then JNA (which consisted of Serbs and Montenegrins by this point) and granted safe passage to the army to withdraw from NMK territory. The war / insurgency of 2001 is a whole other can of worms that we won’t get into. Just saying this because of the picture at 17:02.
Great video! One small correction though, Switzerland has actually fought in several wars since 500 years ago, notably the Napoleonic Wars. It was at the Congress of Vienna (1815) that Swiss Neutrality was ratified. Interestingly, the ratification was delayed by the coalitions when Napoleon left exile. The coalition countries finally granted Swiss neutrality after the end of the War of the 7th Coalition. So it has been closer to 200 years, not 500 years, that Swiss neutrality has been in place.
Well to be exact Switzerland has been neutral since 1515. But this was brought to an end when the french invaded in 1798, after that Switzerland fought alongside the french as a puppet state of France. And Switzerland also declared on France 1815 when it was forced to do so by the European powers so Switzerland did fought wars but is wasn't it's choice. That's why he talk about 500 years of neutrality.
The Swiss, not the Swiss Confederacy, fought in every European war up to well into the 19th century when mercenary service abroad was finally forbidden. The Swiss cantons in the meantime had some small civil war of their own...
ireland is extremely lucky in its location, historically less so but currently. A actual threat or invasion to ireland is a massive strategic weakness for the UK and to a degree france. Allowing a hostile force so close to ones borders and destablise the region would simply not be allowed. So while ireland is neutral, it has no nearby hostiles and those neighbours would prevent hostile actions so close to themselves
As a Finnish, I think people analyze too much why Finland joined NATO. A very simple reason for that is that a big majority of Finns in pollings were in favor of joining and it would have been politically damaging in elections to be opposed to that. This is not the only reason but I do think it made it impossible not to join. And I say this because even if the Ukraine war never happened and if polling for some other reason not related to Russia would have shown similar change we would have still joined NATO. Most Finn voters are not very knowledgeable about geopolitics and personal feelings drive people's opinions the most.
@@arnarogbjorn Neutrality is also perspective, Finland has cooperated a lot with NATO, had military exercises with the USA, and our whole defense force is designed to defend against invasion from the east against an enemy who has exactly the same military capability as Russia. The only reason we plan to defend other directions is if we think the enemy will try flanking maneuvers. After the fall of the soviet union, the whole military has been built on the premise that we can as fast as possible join nato when the time comes as it did. Finland also joined sanctions against Russia after the Crimean invasion. Yes, I agree that neutrality is a national mindset but in this case, the biggest change will be the other nations mindset towards Finland's neutrality.
I mean, plenty of individual Finns are still neutral. Heck, I'd say almost every human on the planet is technically neutral when it comes to international politics, in the sense that the average human, no matter what nation they live in, is only going to be concerned with their immediate surroundings, or whatever large events will affect them most. That sounds pretty practical to me.
Have not watched the whole video yet, but Finland and Sweden were only neutral ever on paper, not on practice. I think that is an important point. We here in Finland have always been anti russian and pro western. Our whole millitary doctrine has been for 80 years now how to best fight against the russians. My Grand father fought against the russians in the continuation war and got a leg injury, bad enough that he had to use a walking stick for the rest of his life. And i remember this as a kid, our whole nation remembers this. People have their own grand fathers who never came back.
That is very true but many people don't understand that Finland had to remain apparently neutral to appease Russia despite Finland's full distrust of Russia. Hence all the underground bunkers in Finland in such numbers per capita not seen anywhere else in the world.
@@joythoughtTrue we did appease Russia during the cold war. So on paper we were friendly with them but on practice we prepeared for a possible new russian invasion, thats why millitary service is manditory. And why we have so many underground bunkers. We know the russians just love to bomb innocent children and civillians don’t we? We see that in Ukraine and they did bomb Helsinki in both winter and continuation war.
@@TheZeyon Sweden has officially been neutral since about 1834, but non-belligerent specifically in the Soviet war against Finland, so that Sweden could send gear to Finland. Then back to neutral(not counting conspiracy theories) until either now or when we joined the EU.
Every time you upload I’m so happy that I found your channel. As an American I’m basically totally blind to the geopolitics of Europe and your channel is bar none the most educational and non biased (as far as I can tell) source on the whole internet. Keep up the good word bud :)
As a swiss viewer I would like to correct that we do not need to serve for 5 years. The solders that do not proceed to an officer position serve a total amount of days a bit shorter than a year, usually distributed over multiple years. But it is true that our army is rather large and expensive for our size.
Switzerland spent 0.8% of GDP on the military in 2022, which is actually very little. Every NATO member spent more than that except for the very small countries of Luxembourg and Iceland and the overall NATO average is more than three times as high at 2.5%.
I belive he may have meant that we serve more or less over 5 years (but only 3 weeks). I agree it is confusing the way he said it. And for our size we pay very little ;) check out the budgets of our neighbors in comparison to their army size and gdp :D
The army budget by GDP is little, in absolute numbers it is with 6 billions per year still in the top 35 of the world according to the Stockholm Int. Peace Research Institute. Which isn't great but not terrible.
@@yes.7852 You have to keep in mind that a conscript is contributing almost nothing to the economy while larping war. people generally work between 40-50 years in their life, and all men in Swizerland lose one of those years. This leads to an over 1% loss in GDP for the country. However, Nato doesn't count loss of GDP as defense spending, because you are not directly paying for it, so the military spending seems small, even though in reality it is much larger.
It's incredibely nice to see Kraut giving a shout-out to Perun. I am very fond of the new generation of infotainment that doesn't just cover facts but also builds deeper understanding.
@@fuzzyhair321 as an Irish national, I can confirm that the Irish language is effectively out of our mainstream society. A lot of it is down to failing to teach Irish as a language in schools, with many people I know knowing more French, German or Spanish in the years after graduating secondary school than Irish. Its a shame too, its an amazing language
Summary 00:00:00 *This video is about Neutrality in Europe.* 00:11 Introduction -- Ground News Ad 01:38 Introduction 02:04 Introduction -- Ukraine - officially - was a neutral country. 00:04:00 *Reckoning by Scandinavia about what Ukraines' Neutrality did for them.* 04:05 Scandinavia -- Sweden 04:42 Scandinavia -- Finland 06:56 Scandinavia 00:07:22 *European Security, now and previously, feat. The Concert of Europe.* 08:21 Concert of Europe -- Belgium 09:31 Concert of Europe -- WWII 10:36 Concert of Europe -- Czechoslovakia 00:11:56 *Beyond Geopolitics, a look at how citizens benefit from neutrality.* 12:11 Citizen Benefits -- Switzerland 13:18 Citizen Benefits -- Singapore 13:26 Citizen Benefits -- Yugoslavia 13:48 Citizen Benefits -- Mexico 00:14:12 *But above all, neutrality comes at the cost of standing to fight alone.* 14:21 Costs -- Switzerland 14:51 Costs -- Yugoslavia 17:37 Costs -- Costa Rica 17:59 Costs -- Ireland 00:21:10 *Moral Matters explain what Kraut sees sadly being lost.* 21:14 Moral Matters -- Switzerland 24:10 Moral Matters -- Austria 25:14 Moral Matters -- ... and Serbia and Hungary 25:29 Moral Matters -- Passive and Active Neutrality 26:13 Moral Matters -- Finland 27:06 Moral Matters -- Sweden 00:28:41 *In conclusion, he therefore appeals to the Irish and the Swiss* ... to pick up the torches of Active Neutrality that the Swedes and Finns are now bound to drop.
Americans like me do sure love a good distraction from the high stakes shit show going on here 😅 I mean... Orban was the headliner for the RNC recently so...
@@monsieurdorgat6864 europeans are going to have a bad time when we are absent from the global world order. Many chaotic zones of conflict are being stopped by America, creating a safe environment and the implicit threat of military action. Imagine a refugee crisis that encompasses 10 to 20% of the population of Egypt. Because an Ethiopian Egyptian war broke out and now the Egyptian’s have water security issues. Or when China rearranges global trade requiring certain countries to implicitly, prefer BYD cars to gain better trade opportunities with the Chinese will intrinsically hurt European auto makers. Frankly, for international markets, I do not think European goods will have the Geo, political, backing or enough of a groundbreaking advantage to negate Chinese dominance, or hegemony.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Nothing in the US can be considered "high stakes", tbh. At least compared to the stuff that goes on in Europe where entire countries have to worry about getting "Russified".
A simmlar story played out on my high school graduation trip to Ireland back in 2022. Recently all the independently run model kit stores in Southeastern Virginia have closed up shop and been replaced by hobby towns ( a chain of corporate hobby stores ) .So one of the first things I did was to go to a small shop called Marks Models I chatted with the owner about this same topic along with the possibility of Irish Nato Membership for example what would happen if the US gave some F16s to Ireland or build them their own coastal patrol vessels. I came to a similar conclusion as Kraut did, about who will take up the mantle of that active neutrality role. Ireland is a good candidate and has done similar actions to that of Sweeden, especially in the Congo. A majority of their armed forces are structured as a mobile peacekeeping force, and could then take up something to that of Sweeden prior to 2022 (though they will probably swing a bit more to the Untied States) which a key flaw in it taking up the active neutrality mantle.
The mandatory bunkers in urbanism projects and defense against a possible Russian invasion in Finland shows that neutrality is not living in peace of mind of not being invaded by the neighbouring country wanting a chunk of you (if not all of you).
Old comment but in reality most Finns live totally peaceful and rarely think of Russia. Even when they move troops or stuff near our borders or violate our airspace it’s just another afternoon. We know Russia sucks and we know our military is strong. Realistically Russia couldn’t even invade a neutral Finland just due to the terrain and lack of infrastructure along the border on both sides
@@cassu6 you can do that because you are prepared, every bit defended, even more so now that you joined the military compass club. It's with those you can be at peace. Not sure if it was the case in, let's say, the 1920s. Love Finland!
Kraut, I wanna say thank you. You, along with Brain4Breakfast (god rest his soul) have changed the way I consume information. Your videos have taught me that understanding the history of an issue is the most important part of gaining a proper perspective. Im hungry for it, I love it, I love discovering historical context like it’s some ancient treasure that I found the key to, so much makes sense. I’m able to pull from across history and across fields of study in the strangest ways, I never would have thought that understanding the steps of genocide in foment Yugoslavia would translate to a school project on American immigration reform. My father is Estonian, your video about the history of vodka really touched me. It all clicked, everything, why men drink themselves to death, the tragedy of the Russian people, the cyclical nature of tyranny and oppression. Now as I enter university I feel like I have a leg up over my classmates, especially as an American it’s shocking how historically illiterate people are in general. I can almost assign a spiritual importance to it, there is nothing that gives me more purpose in anything than reading great historical epics and pouring over the intricate details of napoleons campaigns. Or reading Yukio Mishima and being consumed by the beauty of his literature. What a disgrace, colonial Americans were among the most educated in history and now we’re reduced to this. We’re all inheritors of the greatest story, the only story, there isn’t a higher purpose than telling it. Consider yourself among those great orators of history, you have touched millions of people who are better for it
as a swiss i think the reason why we see neutrality different is because its no longer as profitable as it used to be. back then much of our wealth came directly from things like banking, where neutrality is very helpfull. today banks are still important but not as much as our export industry. most of our export goes to our neighbour countries, that are also the most powerfull in the EU. We are dependent on free trade and labour from them. The EU does not want to give us all the benefits of a member without payment and thats why there is a big discussion on how much we have to pay. If we did not sanction russia these benefits whould be at risk, and that whould be a terrible for our country
not allowing swiss weapons beeing exportet to ukraine is sure not good for our arms industry and i think it should be allowed. but we dont need a big army anymore. as i said, we have good relations with all our neighbours and we dont need to spend so much on defence because of geograhpy
@@nickhtk6285 don't think much of the swiss or the government would have minded. but we basically gutted your weapons industry, with those strict regulations long ago. the reason it's so strict, is that it is a slippery slope to make exemptions. you quickly end up with the government giving in to business interests, undermining the will of the people.
Swiss neutrality is mainly due to our various language groups and therefore a concession we make towards our emidiate neighbours. Switzerland was not neutral towards south africa, and has no problems to compromise, when there are no internal interests to not compromise.
As a Mexican, I loved the node to the president daily morning "conference". In that matter, a video analyzing the current regime and the severe controversy it has caused among mexicans could be helpful. If you decide to embark on it, I can act as a "ground agent" here in Mexico City providing information or translations of certain things.
A minor correction about Finland... The Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance of 1948 didn't actually state that Finland would need to join the USSR in war. It stated that Finland would be required to defend itself should it be attacked or should its territory be used to attack the USSR - which is actually required if Finland was a neutral state in any case. And that if required Finland would be allowed to enter consultations to gain aid from the USSR but it wasn't something that would happen automatically. Nor would it trigger if the USSR, but not Finland, was attacked. It also required Finland to not ally itself with the West and acknowledged Finnish neutrality. And the military purchases were a Finnish solution to show neutrality. The goal was to spend roughly 1/3 on the western equipment, 1/3 on the eastern equipment, and 1/3 on either domestic or neutral. However as these were mostly done by value, and the Western stuff cost a lot more, it meant that Eastern stuff would be far more visible (but often retrofitted with Western equipment). But it also lead to interesting designs like the Finnish gunboats, which had Finnish-made hulls, West German engines, Western radar and electronic gear, a Swedish main gun, Soviet AA guns, and Soviet anti-submarine weaponry.
Another thing I find important to note is geographical location. Finland and Sweden share a border with Russia. It is easy for Switzerland and Austria to be neutral when they do not share a border with Russia. Of note should be also that Soviet and later Russian planes have constantly been crossing into Finnish airspace constantly as well despite the Finlandization.
Please read the surrender treaty by Finns after WWII - who invaded Soviet Union with the Germans in 1941-1944. Hello? Oh, from prosperous and peaceful boarder with Russia, who released Finns from WWII treaties, into being a lapdog of the Americans who will use Finns as bait [ see Ukraine]
or my country, Luxembourg. We arent neutral (actually one of nato founding members), but tbh who would attack us, sandwiched between france and germany? No one.
Austria did share a border with the Warsaw pact for 35 years, and it was occupied by the Soviets and the Allies after WW2 for nearly 10 years. One of the main pillars of it gaining back its independence was Austria becoming and remaining a neutral country.
Finnish guy here. I absolutely love how you always drew Finland with the expression of "ffs, guess they need us to be the soviet-whisperer again, this is pretty stressful and annoying as hell, but there's no one else so gotta step on the plate".
I'm from Bulgaria and right now there is a very strong nationalist party in Bulgaria that is advertising Bulgarian neutrality and leaving NATO. It is gaining more and more supporters every day. They are now the third biggest political party in Bulgaria. Because of this I find this video extremely interesting and coming at the perfect time.
Swiss Viewer here. This video was very insightful even for me, and I'll give some insight on how the younger urban Swiss think and act in this crisis if someone is interested. Our older generation (and especially the SVP party) holds the idea of perfect Swiss neutrality very dear to their hearts, but this idea is expressed to a much smaller extend in younger generations. At first, our parliament wanted to do the exact same thing as it did the last times war broke out in Europe, but the people protested and voted AGAINST neutrality. Us Swiss, especially younger generations, are western and European. Just because our constitution says we are neutral, doesn’t mean we are. We heavily condemn Russia’s invasion, and no one here goes: "let’s be neutral about this", if you ask someone on the streets of Zurich about Russia, he'll probably say something akin to: "F*ck Putin and Slava Ukraine". We introduced a special refugee status for Ukrainian refugees, so they don’t have to go through any processes and get taken on immediately. We Swiss as a people have to start realizing fact, that we are a part of this continent and not some mountain Island distant from everything. We are a part of Europa, even if we are not part of the European Union. We can't just Cherry pick things in our favor and act like the problems don't concern us, because they do, and it’s time we Swiss stared to burst out of our little wealth bubble and integrate into this European project we are all building THOGETHER. In the end I would like to give an example of how Switzerland has changed doe to the war: There is an important cultural hub in the center of Zurich by the lake called Bellevue Plaza. There are shopping malls, cinemas and restaurants scattered around, as well as a promenade by the lake, where all kinds of people meet in addition to the Zürich opera. There are large festivals that take place in the center of it, such as the Zurich film festival the street parade or the ending of the Swiss national holiday called "Sächsilüüte" (translating to "ringing the bells at six o'clock") where we parade around the city and burn a gigantic snowman to celebrate the ending of winter (yes, it’s very silly XD). I go by this plaza every day to get to college, so I've known that place for many years. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Swiss government decided in to raise ukrainian flags on flagpoles scattered around the plaza reserved for special occasions. So, you had this Swiss center of culture and wherever you looked, you saw the proud yellow-blue flag of Ukraine. We all thought this would all last a week or a month at most. Now 15 months have passed since the start of the invasion... and the Ukrainian flags are still flying high.
To be honest this is a view from a swiss of the urban zurich center. And it isn‘t even a svp vs everyone else view(green party is actually also against weapons reexport.) Go 10km outside of zurich and this comment is basicly worthless. So what I want to say this comment was written by a person that lives in the „zurich city“ bubble. Since I‘ve never seen a protest in my region. Nor do people neither old or young think that switzerland should get active on the matter. TLDR this comment was written by a zurich city person which usually don‘t represent the avarage opinion of swiss people. Usually it ends up with some comments about the SVP(which I also don‘t like) and how old people are bad.
@@Slithermotion Good point, I'll add that it's a Younger Urban perspective. The SVP vs the others wasn't meant for weapon export but more about the policies towards the European Union. It's safe to say that prgressive opinions will get dismissed in most rural areas, and in such areas one doesn't really protest about anything that isn't concerning the local community. And although I dislike the SVP, I do not think old people are bad. I would be interested which region you're from :)
I am from zurich and i am not from the old generation. Tim your just one of many naiv thinking lefties and therefor inaccurate. First and mainpoint there is no party with a clear standpoint to the situation even some svp politicians want to sent weapons to ukraine in order to not loose the reinmetall factory in zurich. The SP and Greens are also not united in supporting ukraine. This is not an old/young urban/rural thing!! Bro wenn du denksch in züri sind all linggs wie du irrsch dich! Die meiste usländer chönd mit eu nüt afange und wählet immer meh svp und fdp. Klar gits viel lüt wos wie du gsehnd aber au gnueg anderi wos genau anderscht ume gsehnd. P.S wieso henkemr ukraine flagge uf gebet dene geld und debii fahrets riese chärre. Isch imfall doberschicht wo zu eus chunnt und viel männer hendsich freykauft.
@@timstauffacher8663 From my interactions most Zurchers do agree, that it is a good thing that the Swiss are getting somewhat involved. Though I don't have a view on this.
To quote general Adolf Ehrnrooth, "Never again alone." Finland should always stand with the Baltic states, Poland and the rest of Europe against the common enemy.
I think your pitch to Switzerland and Ireland is very good. Absolutely those roles need to be filled. I think asking the Swiss to do that would require more of a transition than it would for Ireland. I think Ireland is very befitting of that role. I'm not sure they're ready to build a military to do as Sweden did in certain circumstances, but the voice? 100%.
100% agree though knowing the internal politics of Ireland, my view is that it's very questionable indeed that an internal defence capacity can be developed. Time will tell.
As an Irish person who's lived in Ireland their whole life, I'm of the opinion that the Irish government is a fundamentally lazy institution that will never fail to do the bare minimum. Maybe that will change if the current parties are voted out, but there just seems to be a maddening sense of contentness with the status quo among every older person I meet. I would like to see a French-style restructuring of the republic where the entire system is reformed. Perhaps if the north decide to rejoin with us, we could use it as an excuse to build something new and fresh for a whole island.
Hate to say it, but I see that kinda mindset everywhere I go. Like everyone snorted 5 kg of Francis Fukuyama's work and has been high on it for the last 20 years. Not Irish, but British. A fair amount of people just kinda ignore that the war is going and don't engage with it. They don't even engage with it in the retarded way that American conservatives do where they say "Weeell ah dont want mah cuntry sendin so much of Owah moneh over there, wee shuld be shpendin it ohn owah cuntreh and not on theyahs." they just completely ignore it, like it's not happening.
As a Brit with an Irish parent, I'm starting to think Irish unity can't come soon enough. I think it would be healthier for the world, despite what the Tories and the DUP might scream in protest.
Similarly, as Brit with Northern Irish family I think it would take a significant constitutional change like confederation to keep the peace in a United Ireland. Sadly I think that the symbolism of the Irish tricolour (Orange for Protestants, Green for Irish nationalism and white for peace between them) has been lost for alot of Unionists and this new state may even need a new flag
One of the roles of neutrality was to act as a buffer state, this was how neutrality worked after the Napoleonic wars. On 1789, Switzerland was invaded by the Grande Armee, and made into a French client state, despite Switzerland having one of the most efficient militaries, and geographical obstacles, it was still defeated by Napoleon, who used Switzerland as a springboard to wage war on Austria. This was the original purpose of Swiss neutrality, to work as a buffer state to protect Austria from France, this was also the reason for Dutch neutrality, it was a buffer state in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna to keep Britain, France, and German separate, when Belgium gained independence in 1830, the role of buffer state passed onto them. The world wars ended the Concert of Europe, yet some of the legacy of the Congress of Vienna still remains, particularly, the role of buffer states, it was believed in 1815 that these agreements would be honoured, but as nationalism and militarism grew to fever pitch in the twentieth century, the belief that the post-Napoleonic order would work as designed was shattered, as the sovereignty of buffer states would be violated by aggressors, this included the Warsaw Pact, which was a union of buffer states, meant to shield the USSR from NATO, however, the Soviet Union repeatedly violated the eastern bloc by invading and occupying, this is perhaps the biggest risk for neutrality, a buffer state has the biggest risk of being the next battlefield.
As a strongly pro-nato Danish citizen, I still think the end of Swedish neutrality is a huge loss. Sweden officially supporting North Vietnam in the Vietnam War has mostly been treated as some weird meme. Still, it showed that belief in democratic values does not need to mean submission to the foreign policy of the largest democratic power. Edit: Ok my wording might not have been the best, "submission", sounds like the Nato countries are US vassals, they are not, but in some smaller Nato countries like Denmark, there is some incentive not to criticise "our most important ally" too much, time will tell if this applies to Sweden as well.
Say what you will about Turkey. But their membership has not inhibited them from diverging radically from other members when necessary: Cyprus, Syria; you get the picture. The only member I would say is entirely dependent on the Alliance is Iceland because they decided to leave our realm.
To many Americans, myself included, Sweden has always had... extremely questionable positions. The Vietcong were analogous in every way that matters to North Korea. Sweden literally allied with what was basically North Korea - an autocratic, communist regime bent on wiping out the democratic South Vietnamese government. It is not very different to allying with Russia in their invasion of Ukraine today. You may see it as a meme, but many Americans don't. Furthermore, the Swedes have long been openly critical of NATO, and have lambasted America's role as a security guarantor and hegemon - yet now they want to join? What about those decades of basically calling us evil? Frankly, I'm of the opinion we should hang them out to dry. Why should Americans be on the hook to defend a country full of people that openly think we're evil? I have no problem with Finland though. The Finns are awesome.
@@jeffmorris5802 The US at one point and time were terrorists to the UK, and enemies of many current NATO members. I think that stopping Russia's ability to expand is more important than being upset about their cold attitude.
As an Irishman. This gave me a lot to think about. Defence has traditionally been ignored by the political establishment as a non-priority. However, things are changing in Ireland. Sinn Fein talk a lot about unity, which would require an increase in our defence capabilities. I think we need to have a serious discussion about our values, and our place in the world.
@IVIRnathanreilly personally I'd prefer if Ireland took the Russian model (conquering land that was historically ours but is currently held by our neighbours) but Swiss is also an improvement over our current situation
Switzerland was never really neutral, there is a joke that encapsulates this perfectly: A Swiss banker does business with two countries that are at war with each other, a friend of his asks him why he does it, if whoever wins he will lose half of his business? to which the banker replies: "Doing business with both allows me to determine who wins the war, and that's my real business"
Until a bunch of Mossad-like agents arrives in the banker's house and the last thing he hears is "Доброго вечора ми з України!" We would donate to that org endlessly. Until ALL who worked with russians end up the same.
Please keep making content Kraut. You are the political commentator we do not deserve but absolutely need. Phenomenal content with intelligence and grace.
Fantastic video, thanks! Few comments though: 1. Moldova is also a neutral state on paper. They have ridiculously minimal defense spending and they can't join NATO due to own Constitution. 2. We can't seriously consider EU members neutral. There's mutual assistance article within EU that works similarly to NATO Article 5. There's also common foreign and defense policy. 3. With joining NATO, both Finland and Sweden can keep their foreign policy with no changes. So, it is very wrong to state that their "torch was dropped". They can still easily pursue sensitive foreign policy goals.
I agree mostly here, but on 3 I think you could say the issue is that yes they can continue to pursue sensitive foreign policy goals, but the issue is they might be perceived differently making those goals harder to pursue
@@devrimyilmaz9044 I don't think its black and white, it just muddies the water a bit. Turkey is a NATO member and not neutral, yet was trusted by Russia in recent pow exchanges. I think it certainly changes things to a degree, but not entirely, often things are judged on a case by case basis rather than being black and white
@@jascu4251 I'm not that sure about that. Most countries, say in Africa or Asia, may perceive all Western countries as more or less homogenous. Rich, white West. They are already in the EU. So, a check in the box. Who cares are they in NATO or not, OECD or not, OSCE or not or smth else. They never been neutral since they entered EU. Also, for people who truly know their stuff, they'd very well understand that both Sweden and Finland had secret cooperation with the US to ensure their security, while their armies long been put under NATO standards. So, what has change? Nothing, it's just a formality. Now they will be covered by Article 5, they'll pay a little to NATO HQ and their flag will wave in Brussels. Apart from that, it's the same Finland and Sweden as 5, 10 or 20 years ago.
@@aleksandrsmironovs3566 I think its somewhere in between, like I don't think its a huge factor, but it might be a factor. An example of this might be if a country plays something up for domestic political gain. A lot of these things are fluid, and not necessarily "real" And we've also seen that with dictatorships, leaders can be irrational. I think there's a tendency to think that leaders are immune from the kind of brainworms which affect many people, but they can be just as susceptible, more so in some cases if they are isolating themselves
Perun's videos are amazing! I've probably watched all of his powerpoint vids, and that's not an exaggeration.. Both Perun and Kraut's voices are pretty chill too, so sometimes I'll just listen to their videos while I'm falling asleep. Two of the best creators on this platform!!
In one of your previous videos you said neutrality means not just having no enemies but no friends, and means having to stand alone. You wouldn't expect neutral countries to be heavily militarised, with conscription and expensive militaries, but it's a necessity especially depending on your neighbours
Same! His vids made want to get a list of historical books, from Last Imperialist to the Turkish Century. Too bad I lost Enemy at the Gate because I was hooked with that one.
This channel is absolutely sensational, so strange how you can find such great content by accident, sometimes the algorithm really hits. If anyone knows of any other GeoP channels of this guy's caliber please recommend!
The Finns had to fight alone. When they had to fight again, they joined the flipping AXIS because at least they'd fight with them. That's how much fighting alone sucks.
They were an honorary axis member, the only reason they joined the axis was because Russia was an existential threat.
Год назад+14
Another long-awaited video from Kraut! You did quite well this time especially discussing the aspect of Neutrality over countries and what benefits it has really brought to the country maintaining its sovereignty.
Excellent video. I can say that taking an international politics course at university in the US really opened my eyes to the diplomatic complexities in Europe. Luckily, the Professor for the course spent a large amount of time on Finland and Sweden's contributions to long-lasting peace. Something I feel that many Americans take for granted or misunderstand.
As an American, I've never really thought about how many countries in Europe/Asia have traditionally been neutral, with the exceptions of Switzerland and Sweden. Thanks for making such a well produced, informative video!
well thats because as a american you really only have 4 countries with in 1000 miles of you that you need to give a shit about. russia, canada, mexico and cuba too a much lesser degree. Europe doesn't matter what happens there really too the average american. there are also just way fewer countries per mile in the america's then there are in europe and asia.
I don't think people fully understand just how large Yugoslav military spending was. * They had a rail gun project running in the 80's finishing the first variant in 1985 with an energy output of 8KJ, next variant hit 10MJ [some researchers boast it hit 20MJ but that value wasn't published]. * They had an indigenous mini-submarine programme. A few classes of small to medium subs. * They produced their own military grade munitions that was aimed to rival NATO accuracy standards. [it sounds silly till one opens books on the metallurgic insanity going into making NATO standard munitions] * They developed their own IFV the M-80 [which is not a BMP. Shares more parts with the AMX-10P than anything else] * They developed their own fighters and attack airplanes. * They were developing a 4rth generation multi-role fighter with Dassault based on the Rafale. A single seat single engine variant with reduced radar cross section and a fully digital cockpit. Yes they played with the concept of stealth. Which was probably part of the reason Serbia managed to shoot down that F-117 * They developed several tanks and life extinctions to current tanks. Even if in the end they decided to buy the licence for the T-72. And even then they did like SAAB cars did to GM. Just scrapped the lot and rebuilt every single component with their own tech and higher spec. Even up-armoured the export thing with Yugoslav developed composite armours. The M-84 and it's variants is superior in every single way to the Russian T-72 and it's variants. And made over 1000 of them for themselves and then started exporting them. * They developed their own SAMs. * They even financed nuclear weapons program program till it was abandoned due to costs and the general vibe of other nations towards such programs. Also developed chemical and biological warfare * Own shipbuilding production that made a navy of 90 ships. And that's just a few of the projects they had. The spending spree was insane. It was absolute luck that we caught Belgrade off guard. That and a few brave commanders that didn't subscribe to the bloodbaths so the wars for independence weren't even worse than they could have been.
Ukraine changed its constitution in 2019 and gave up its neutrality with the stated intention to join NATO, which was the reason why Russia insisted on security guarantees. As an Austrian, I can assure you that the overwhelming majority in Austria support our neutrality and oppose NATO membership some of the political parties push for. Austria is surrounded by NATO members, so our membership would be pointless.
Well you know, Austria is the land where Adolf Hitler was born, and most Austrians fought on the side of the Nazis during World War II, so much for Austrian Neutrality, and being neutral about the latest Fuhrer, Vladimir Putin, doesn't help! He's even got his own swastika, the letter "Z". So how many people are walking around with red armbands with a black 'Z' in a white circle. Do we call these the Z-Nazis? Vladimir Putin is a Z-Nazi and so are all the people who support him!
Thank you so much for this video. As an American so many of us are uneducated on how European politics work and I think it’s wonderful that you help us understand what is actually going on from across the pond. Much love ❤
@@justjoe4390 there’s only so much research you can do and Americans do not have the time to become experts on European politics when there are better ways to spend our time. Watching a video essay and reading a few “poorly written” articles will have to do.
European politics are no different than anywhere else. Protect your intrests as efficient as possible if necessary undermine intrests of others in order to secure yours. Make friends if it benefits you intrests or make enemies if it does. Or better said, states have neither friends nor foes only intrests and they care about it. Since the dawn of humanity.
As a dumb millennial American, I honestly don’t know why America isn’t more interested in Europe than it is. I think maybe it’s since the Cold War ended and we “won,” we’ve been getting fat and sassy and have relished having our weirdo half-cousins in Europe just staying over there next to yucky Russia and China. I think more everyday Americans are starting to face the dreaded fact that the world is more tightly knitted together than we wanted to think, and globalization doesn’t mean “everything shifts the American direction and conforms to the US dollar, which is of course the best” but means whatever bad happens to one section of the globe affects everyone else. GLOBALization. This is making us more nervous when Russia starts throwing its weight around-not because we can directly see what’s happening, but because it’s directly impacting us here. It’s shameful how stuck-up this is, but I think seeing our gas prices go up a couple bucks and not always having our beloved Poptarts in stock due to wheat shortages is forcing us common Americans to take global politics more seriously-especially those of us who didn’t see the Cold War. This isn’t just something we should tune out and leave to the politicians to deal with because we’re too busy grieving the American dream and hating most of the recent Marvel movies. We need to pay attention.
It's quite interesting that Turkey, despite being a member of the organization that Russia considers a threat to its existence, has managed to stay mostly neutral in the Ukraine war, enjoying good relations with both Ukraine and Russia and even becoming the main mediator in the whole conflict. Meanwhile Austria, despite claiming to be neutral has indirectly sent weapons to Ukraine through the EU and by being a member of the EU Common Defense Police, which though not being a proper military alliance like NATO, would mean that in the event of an attack to an EU member, they would be forced to take a side and formally assist said member. My point is that concepts such as "neutrality" or "ally" sometimes exist in name only and don't correspond to the realities in the field. And said realities can quickly change depending on whoever is in power in said country.
Did you forget about Bayraktar? Austrians never sent any weapons only financial and medical aid. As an austrian btw i think we should help more. It is increadibly cowardly to use nato neighbors as a shield against russia, austrians have lost any backbone, its really just sad.
@@captainalex157 No, I did not forget about the Bayraktar drones. Those drones were an acquisition by Ukraine from a private Turkish company, the Turkish government had nothing to do with that transaction. Besides, Turkey has been playing a pivotal role in helping Russia evade the sanctions and has provided Russian oligarchs with a place to hide their money and yachts. Erdogan is playing both sides, and quite successfully if I may add. If you re-read my comment you will see that I never said that Austria directly sent weapons to Ukraine. But the EU has sent weapons to Ukraine using the common budget which all member states, including Austria, contribute to. So in a sense, Austria is indirectly paying for Ukrainian weapons through the EU.
@@markdowding5737 thanks for correcting me on the bayraktars. i understood your comment, but i still think there is a big difference between sending weapons directly or indirectly. anyway id like austria to send over a bunch load of AUGs and more, but we like always rely on our neighbors to keep us safe, its just pathetic imo.
@@captainalex157 I believe all EU countries should have a common military and defense policy, especially. against foreign threats like Russia. The problem with Austria is that they have a "Declaration of Neutrality" inscribed in their constitution, so it is not fully possible to fully join a side of conflict while claiming to be neutral (though it might be more a matter of preserving appearances than the reality of the situation). I think for Austria to adopt a more direct posture in the war they would have to remove the neutrality part of their constitution, but from what I could gather (Professor and RUclipsr James Ker-Lindsay made a very good video on the matter) Austrians don't seem to want the change on the neutral status of their country.
@@markdowding5737 Yes most austrians are content with being safe in a nato bubble, which is just cowardly behaviour, there is no real threat to austria, so most austrians dont care. But to be fair i think most people in the world think like that.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
As a Swiss person I have to correct the statement about serving a minimum of 5 years: we only have mandatory basic training (18 weeks) + yearly repetition courses (3 weeks each) until you have served your mandatory 240 days
Maybe even more context: During recruitment there are even more pathways. People are assessed psychologically and physically and receive a certification of fitness for military service. Even if declared fit one can opt to serve a longer period in civil service, which can be several jobs, e.g. assisting in nursing homes, or even working in farms in the mountains. If declared unfit one has to serve in civil protection, which is called upon for disaster relief and many other tasks. Finally, if truly unfit or unwilling, one pays 3% of ones income until the age of 30 as a substitute for military service.
That sounds great
Thats what i Wanted to say.(245 days)
@@khronos7020 If truly unfit, doesn't that mean they're disabled, can't get a job, and don't have an income??
@@SuperRavensfan101 Not exactly. But Khronos allteady explained it in his response.
Neutral expectations: peace and love
Neutral in reality: make the country a fort or be steam roll
Those are not mutually exclusive
,,If you want peace, be ready for war"
@@Blanksmithy123 You only get the "peace and love" part if you are willingly to turn yourself into a fortress and spending sizeable amount of your wealth on defence.. else get ready to be bullied, steam rolled or ignored til you eventually abandon neutrality or get your act together.
Having no enemies also mean having no friends
An armed society is a polite society (ANd Swiss people are armed to the teeth)
To be fair about Costa Rica’s lack of a military, America basically guarantees the protection of them, Panama, and other small islands since democratic backyard
Also for a lot of nations with no military, they have no hinterland. Once an enemy invaded the defenders are screwed
realistically, what can the marshall islands or other micro states do if they get invaded, its not even worth it for them to have a military
Island nations with the ability to constrict the Panama Canal will always be guaranteed US support, or Gibraltar with the UK. After all, this is exactly what China hopes to recreate with its artificial islands nowadays.
@@toastytoast9800 marshall islands is officially aligned with the US. Costa Rica is not, that is what makes it unique
@@arya6085 yeah, but Costa Rica is non-oficially administrated by the USA in practice, like Panama and other Central America states. What Russia does in Central Asia/Europe, USA does in Central/South America.
That tangent about Yugoslavia was magic. I had always assumed the country collapsed because Tito died. I learned something new today.
The country collapsed becaus the guy who replaced Tito tried to take away all autonomy that tito have to varies regions. and then said dude commiting genocide.
@@AL-lh2ht He did not replaced Tito. He tried it bit. Tito dismembered teritorially Serbia more than nazis did, while formally giving them main say in army or international politics. So majority of Serbs believed they have own country, while country was deeply ethnically divided. It did not took long before ambitious narcissist (Milosevic) to stir trouble in order to get more power. Yugoslavia was broken by West decisevely since the country during Cold War refused to join NATO. The topic is much more complicated than poor Kraut tries to explain usually in his trademark shallow and fact avoiding ways.
@@robrob9050 It sure as hell wasn't "decisively broken". When the wars started in 1991, most of NATO didn't really give a fuck about Yugoslavia and some would have even preferred to keep it whole. It was the then freshly reunited Germany and the Pope that swayed the West into supporting dissolution. Much of the actual military aid (to Croatia, at least) came from the former east block countries, not the least of which was Ukraine. There was a story in the news earlier this year where some of the artillery used in the defense of Zadar was returned to Ukraine to help them fend off their invaders.
@@2712animefreak You probably rebooted CNN firmware in your brain or what? Read timetable of the Badinter commission. It was very early in the crisis moves were made to broke the country by outside forces. Then read how long was membership in UN kept for Pol Pot Cambodia representatives? What is your conclusion?
Nations usually only get around to collapsing after the economy declines. If you’re in a country where you can get a decent job and live a pretty good life, you’re usually willing to put up with whatever strange ridiculousness the government is up to.
One thing's for certain after the invasion of Ukraine:
*No nation with nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up.*
Nuclear weaponry, whether or not it was a deterrent before, certainly appears like one now.
Unfortunately that is one key takeaway. Nukes = sovereignty.
As a South Korean, I agree whole-heartedly. Our 'friends' in the North are going to increasingly lean on their nuclear weapons and ICBMs, which goes directly against our national interests. Despite efforts for a peaceful Korean peninsula, de-nuclearization seems to be off the table for a very long time.
This has also lead to increasing (yet, mostly just pandering) political voices calling for the placement of nuclear weapons in South Korea as a failsafe. Which will lead to the Japanese calling for their own nukes and corresponding submarines, etc, etc. Russia has, without lifting a finger, made every nation in East Asia more dependent on the U.S., and much more wary of military posturing from China. No wonder Xi is loathing Putin's fun little adventure westwards.
Nuclear weapons give leverage and are needed for peace negotiations.
No nuclear weapons means free real estate for the imperialist powers.
Also, once a country with nuclear weapons use it in a aggression war, every nation will pursuit it. People forget that nuclear weapons technology are not that difficult to produce and domain. Its a ww2 tech after all... The reason there aren't even more countries with nuclear weapons is pure political. Fear of economic sanctions, threats, etc. All the rival nuclear powers would "coincidentally" turn into friends against anyone who tries to pursuit nuclear. But once a nuclear weapon falls, no matter from who, that's threats lost all meaning and we will see the number of countries with nukes tripled in less than a decade. Brazil, Japan, Germany, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, all The Gulf states, Turkey, many African nations, Mexico and many others will produce nukes very quickly, without difficulties. Maybe that's why Russia is afraid of using tactical nukes in Ukraine, to avoid a domino effect in this sense.
As Ukrainian i can say we literally got robbed. I won't speak here about use of those weapons, only want to mention that nuclear arsenal that Ukraine possessed was worth as much as Ukraine's GDP or even more. And it was given up almost for free. If our politicians really care about people, this could have been turned into great investment into Ukraine
"Czechoslovakia was allied to Britain"
No it wasn't. Sorry Kraut, rookie error. Czechoslovakia was allied to *France* and *France* was allied to Britain. There was no direct Anglo-Czech agreement, which was the point of the Munich Agreement. Britain was terrified of getting dragged into a German-Czech war that it had nothing to do with by it's French ally, as getting pulled into a war by your allies had been a repeating feature of World War 1.
The rest of your point is fine though.
As a french student I had heard about the hypocrisy of french government towards Czechoslovakia during the Munich agreements and after watching the video I only feel more sad and ashamed about it
Quick point: you mean "its" (possessive of "it"), not "it's" (contraction of "it is").
@@marinebenoin659 it was also allied to Poland, and was supplying tanks to them. Well, it would have supplied tanks, had it not turned around the shipment at the outbreak of the war
This is the most passive aggressive "Well ackchyualy" I have ever seen haha
@@marinebenoin659 i think there are many more current issues with French foreign policy that you can be upset by, e.g. its neo imperialist economic enslavement of Francophone African countries.
11:50 as a Casual EU4 player, I am guilty of enforcing nuetrality upon my victim states to make conquest easier. The fact a historical example exists is fascinating and horrifying.
I have also released vassal states only to annex them later. Something Russia has done/is trying to do in Ukraine.
i literally blushed i just did this yesterday in eu4, lmao makes you feel so shameful
It’s annoying because they just make friends with new allies
@@pandaotu just keep them garunteed until the truce is over then break it and invade, they won't ally anyone usually
When faced with a minor EU4 nation with strong allies, you try to
1) pull them into a war as a non-belligerent,
2) take all their money and break their alliances
3) wait until your truce is over
4) "look who is here on my border without an army or allies. It would be a shame, if someone declared war on you..."
Now what were Putin's original war aims again?
As a swede and political scientist, I just want to say that Swedish neutrality is vastly overstated. During WW2 we sent most of our weapons to Finland, 10K volunteer soldiers and threatened the USSR with war after the peace treaty with Finland was too harsh. During the cold war we had escape plan for our leaders to flee to the UK and USA, we spied on the USSR for NATO and even built our airfields to fit NATO planes. We still made deals with the USA even as Palme was protesting the Vietnam War. And Russia knew all of this. And we still spoke our minds on the international stages, and pissing of western countries. And this did not stop after we joined the EU, and I don’t think it will after Sweden becomes an official part of NATO.
I never understood how people fall for that. We understand that you can't determine the intentions of people by looking at what they say, you have to look at what they do. Yet for countries we apply different standards?
Well, you're officialy now a pet of the US, so I don't think so.
@@freddyromariovasquezcairo2250 Oh, you must be very surprised to learn that US allies do what they want. It's almost as if the US is *not* some empire enforcing its will onto its allies and that it's in fact the allies that actively choose to be part of the western bloc and that they could leave and declare their neutrality anytime they want to. The only question remains, why on earth would any nation on earth not be a US ally? Oh, except for the morally corrupt regimes, those who are hiding nazi gold and those who are already US allies in all but name.
@@freddyromariovasquezcairo2250 Nope, we just prevented being a pet to russia.
That's what I love about Sweden.
As a Vietnamese, it's very interesting to see how neutrality in Europe has progress to adapt with different historical events. Vietnam itself now is also trying to be neutral, being right under China while having the US as a strategic deterrence in the South China Sea. I hope you'll do an official video on us soon!
Don't ever make the capital mistake of inviting back Uncle Sam to keep China at bay.
It won't leave this time.
Good point. Do you think Vietnam is somewhat like Finland was: needing to remain neutral to appease it's scary neighbour? Is that the way citizens see it?
@@stefanodadamo6809 chingkong bot
@@太陽神-u1l ehh, I think Vietnam of all countries definitely has the right to not want the U.S. to need to play a huge part in their defense. Just saying
I think China will leave you one for some time after the 1970's events 😂
Yes, we know.
Love how Perun just burst onto the scene after the Ukraine war and is now like one of the most respected military analysts on YT now.
I wanted to like this, but 69...
@@Ag3nt0fCha0s Well you can like it anyways now.
Maybe THE* defense economics analyst
@@Hjernespreng why yall gotta do this man jus keep it how it is now U fucked the whole shit up
@Shy Cracker Yeah, I found his channel early on as well, like a month after he started making his current style of content I think. I was immediately hooked lmao
“Why is Hungary a NATO member?”
Good question, I mean even Poland has started since the war to fell out with Hungary and in Lithuania we refer to Obran literally as “Prostitute for gas”
What's wrong with that? EU was fucking Hungary over and extorting wealth at the same time. i.e. Hungary was PAYING to be screwed over by UK, US, France and Germany, so what's wrong with being paid gas to screw?
That’s a question I imagine a lot of the NATO leadership asks themselves every day since the war started, along with “why haven’t we kicked them out yet?”
Simple, it's the Russian troyan horse in the EU and NATO. Hungary is blocking every instance for theirs own interests.
@@connormclernon26 I am still questioning why is Orban getting away with not implementing sanctions against Russia? Do Hungarians have some special privileges or everyone is too lazy to act.
@@connormclernon26 Because you can't kick nations out of NATO.
“What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with heart full of neutrality?” -Zapp Brannigan
I love how Perun whent from small gaming channel to THE one channel that everyone point out if you want to start to undertand something as complex as defense economics
Same, good for him though
In my heart he is still the youtuber I discovered thanks to Terra Invicta !
It is pretty cool yeah. People were thirsty for Ukraine content, and he wasn't just turning out hot takes. Truly a legend
please daddy perun, give me that powerpoint presentation, talk dirty to me about defense economics and the international arms market!
I love the fact he amassed messive success by creating hour long powerpoint presentations on budgets and accounting in military procurement.
Ireland is a very active memeber in the UN and has been basically since the league of nations. Ireland and Canada I'd argue are similar as they represent the multilateralists, wanting to solve issues via multilateral bodies like the UN and ECHR. Ireland was also in the Congo along with the Lebanon, Liberia and dozens of other conflict zones. I dont think we'll adopt a domestic arms industry though. Thats a vast overestimation of what Ireland is willing to do. The current coalition barely increases defence and their opposition is led by Sinn Fein who think we're already not neutral enough and I don't see them ever increasing funding for the army. Ireland will have to rely on the UK and USA for security guarantees as we have in the past. Its a weird thing
The have the IRA to defend them though
@@tigerabraham5582 funny. But no, the IDF cannot effectively defend Ireland and we're not gonna be relying on a paramilitary who murdered Irish citizens during the troubles.
Either way I do think Kraut overestimates how far Russia is willing to go with Ireland. Putin is a complete bloody idiot but if they attacked the internet cables coming into Ireland that would also cut off half of Europe from the US, it would unquestionably lead to an American response. Ireland has always been neutral in favour of democracies and the US and UK have not so subtly acknowledged that.
Definitely in the Congo. Siege of Jadotville, which the film is surprisingly accurate
@@tigerabraham5582 The official army isn't called that it's just the Irish Army now, as part of the defence force of Ireland. And that couldn't hold of a Russian invasion despite utterly awful the Russian army is as the army has less then 10,000 people in it including reserves.
And if you mean the Para-military groups then they're more likely to take Russian money to 'liberate' NI then they are to fight them, given that they basically devolved into an organised crime just with a good front and PR department.
I don’t honestly know what my fellow countrymen’s prevailing opinion on the concept is, but this Englishman would come steaming over to defend Ireland the moment we got an invite. They certainly wouldn’t have to ‘beg’ for help.
Greetings from Gothenburg. In Sweden we have a specific phrase for what you referred to as active neutrality “Humanitär Stormakt” translated as “humanitarian great power” A phrase often used by Social democratic politicians for what Sweden in their mind should be or should act. It also has a double meaning since the Swedish empire is referred to here as “Stormaktstiden” translated to as “great power era” which says a lot about how we Swedes viewed our active neutrality as you called it
Do Swede's like the phrase, or do they find it conceited?
@@PjRjHj Depends on where you are on the political spectrum. As I mentioned Social democrats often use the phrase, especially during the migrant crisis 2015-2016. During this time it sorta became a meme. Right wing politicians often scoff at the phrase and especially the right wing populist. The phrase for obvious reasons has been dropped by its proponents since of last year
Hate to say it but the term Humanitär stormakt is a fallacy, these last 7 years have been nothing short of disastrous for us.
In my personal opinion we lose nothing of worth by finally dropping the pretense of neutrality.
@@fallout44454 I assume you are talking about the migration crisis being disastrous? Even if that's the case, we can still be a "humanitärian great power" on the global stage. What the phrase is talking about is Swedens ability to be the mediator in alot of conflicts. Sweden is in the forefront of humanitärian cases world wide. Kraut mentions a bunch of things at the end of the video that Sweden can take humanitärian pride in.
@@KevinUchihaOG Kraut likes to pretend Sweden is just going to stop acting sweden.
I am surprised Kraut, you didn’t highlight Turkey’s attempts to strong arm Finland and Sweden out of their sympathies to towards the Kurds by single handedly delaying their ascension to NATO. Turkey in this case extracted a price from both in their abandoning neutrality. Just thought I’d drop this here as an additional point, great video as always!
I wouldn't be surprised if NATO will try to drop Turkey and Hungary after next week's elections.
I am like.. I do not really understand why Türkiye is so pressed about Kurdistan and Sweden.. we are supposed to be in the same geopolitical block
@@mori211 kurds want to be independent. the terratory of kurdish land in turkey is alike a fifth or fourth of turkey.
Also they want a excuse to commit another genocide.
@@AL-lh2ht In a similar manner with idea of Catalan's independence, though maybe not an analogy that to really use but just reminds me of the scoff from nations that have proclamations of independence from their own areas or so.
Though I guess there's some nuances. Israel's independence, as much as it's a mess right now, was part of already existing populations.
What price? Finland had nothing to do with any such matters in the first place and Sweden is not in NATO yet.
This whole thing was theater.
Always love to hear your takes, Kraut. I may not agree all the time, but they certainly make me think!
Tf are you doing here?
Hehe I see where you get your inspiration for the server. Good to see you about!
I only listen to videos that I already agree with because thinking is for dweebs
I srsly didn't expect to see a comment from you here.
Hey aren’t you that world building guy?
The shadow of the status of Northern Ireland looms over any meaningful discussion of changes to Irish neutrality. The attempts by the more extreme elements of the unionist community in Northern Ireland to either scrap or erode the Good Friday Agreement via Brexit have only complicated this issue further. This is an important factor to consider and one you don't seem to have mentioned.
I'm not so sure, Ireland having a "clean break" might help it adopt a more self sufficient form of neutrality than its current form of being effectively reliant on the British to defend them (not that we wouldn't if it came down to it, but the whole NATO issue complicates things). Ireland has had to maintain a precarious status quo with the GFA and now Brexit, an end either through a "hard" border with NI or reunification (not sure which is more likely, but given current trends I'd say the latter) might give Ireland the flexibility to change its current stance without fear of breaking a lot of other things.
On the flipside, the RAF is the one chasing Russian bombers away from Irish airspace, which doubtless helps dissuade the Irish state from wanting to spend the money to build a functional airforce.
We could take back the while island and unify, but that would mean sharing a country with a lot of half brits who hate us. Ireland doesn't really have anything, I can't see us building anything. Other countries had industries, we had centuries of occupation and looting followed by decades if brain drain and economic stagnation. We just can't do it.
The whole good friday agreement needs to be reworked to account for the changes in geopolitical dynamics in Europe and the renewed friendship our two countries have. The only people who are angry about the Norther Ireland Protocol and Brexit and the potential for it to undo the Good Friday Agreement are the people who are violent already and are trying to find excuses to justify their violence.
The Conditions on Ireland joining NATO should be the ROI giving up all territorial claims on NI and removing the re-unification of Ireland from the Irish constitution. The premise that another country can have claims on it's neighbor due to "mistakes" and "ethnic" makeup is exactly what Russia used to claim Ukrainian land for itself. The people of Northern Ireland have the option of voting to rejoin Ireland and it should be down to the people of NI to decide that. Without interference from foreign governments, or threats of violence from extremist groups.
The UK for it's part should uphold the will of the people should they choose to join Ireland, but should otherwise treat NI as any other part of our sovereign nation. Meaning no borders in the Irish sea under any circumstances. The border between the UK and EU is on the island of Ireland, and should be a border just like the one with France. Northern Ireland is part of the UK and how we administer the region is down to the UK. Not a bunch of terrorists and their american allies.
@@bengoacher4455 saying Ireland has to give up claims on all of Ireland is like telling Ukraine they have to give up their claim to crimea
As a Swede, it is not about fighting alone it is about Russia no longer following sane logic of invading countries when it makes sense. So this means our deterrence does not work anymore, the only deterrence that works against Russia now is nukes. The Swedish deterrence has always been about making it so not worth invading that they never would.
What the heck are you talking about? Invading Sweden is much easier than invading Ukraine.
And that's even after the recent year massive boost for the Swedish army. You are 10 million sitting on a vast valuable land with an incredibly rich industry. How is that "not worth it" with that very small army?
If Germany wanted to few decades ago, it could steamroll that "Swedish deterrence."
Take as an example for a country about the same size as Sweden with an actual deterrence - despite not being neutral, they still "stood alone" as the Finnish says. - Israel.
@@מ.מ-ה9ד Well our army today would probably not have a chance of stopping the russians but you have to understand that under the cold war Sweden was one of the most militarized countries in the world.
With something around eight hundred thousand soldiers that could be called up during a mobilization and the rest of the population could be called up for total mobilization. Where essential industries (K-Företag) and workers would continue to produce goods in big mountain factories for the rest of the war.
So yes it would have been extremely costly for the russians to invade us back then
Russian dissident here. If you think Russia ever was sane and acted in good faith, you were not paying attention. Assassinations, lies and creation of hostile criminal enclaves in other countries never stopped ever since Transnistria.
@@מ.מ-ה9ד lol Israel alone. Forgetting that we the US’s taxpayers bankroll your entire existence
Which is why we should just get Nukes, its not like it would be difficult for us.
As a Swiss, I have to point out, that there is only 300 days of mandatory military service and not 5 years. After a base camp of 4 months, you have to serve the rest in small parts of 3 weeks every year, maybe that's where the confusion came from.
245 days
As a Luxembourg resident this country is classic case of neutrality not working. In the first half of the 20th century Luxembourg tried so hard to be neutral and twice it was invaded and annexed. That’s why after WW II this country became such a key part of NATO and the even more so the EU.
I mean, coming from an ignorant American, it's not like Luxembourg is a full on country. It's more of a big city. They would get stomped either way.
@@zombieoverlord5173 “getting stomped either way” was true for most countries in Europe that weren’t France, Germany or Russia.
Belgium got stomped, as did the Netherlands, Denmark, Chech-Slovakia, Austria, etc. Only Italy, Spain and Poland were large & strong enough to fend of the big 3, and even then they could never military retake all their territory, so even if they did not get destroyed they’d still lose territory. Which makes the next war harder.
That is basic history of Europe:
The smaller neutral countries only exist because the big allow us so, or because we play the game using 1 great power against the other.
Luxemburg played that game very well, and as a Dutchmen I’m proud to call them our equal partners within the Benelux!
As a Dutchmen I'd like to say you guys gave up neutrality when you stole our flag
It's worth considering the context behind Luxemburg's neutrality. In the 19th century, its strategic location almost led to armed conflict between France and Prussia, with only the guarantee of neutrality (and dismantling of its fortifications) allowing it to continue to exist and eventually become independant. Its neutrality was thus based on an external balance of power, which means it was vulnerable to shifts in this balance (see world war I and II). You could argue this external guarantee was the result of its small size relative to its neighbours, but you could also argue that its continued existence, compared to say, Neutral Moresnet, is actually a success of its neutrality.
@@Pasteurpipette same as Swiss
I still believe Kraut should be a Guest to NAFO's even rounder table
It seems everyone is joining the Cult of NonCredibleDefense😂
24:00 Sounds like he might be interested
@@thingsthatinterestedme7962 He definitely should have used Lazerpigs picture there
Kraut joining even rounder table (possibly getting drunk in process)? That's sounds like secend best thing after PowerPoint man also joining.
That podcast would be so legendary that It could rival Trash Taste.
After the (albeit short) Destiny x Lazerpig and Dylan Burns mentioning the Pig, nothing seems to be off the table.
As a Finn, I believe Finland's active role in mediating peace and cooperation within Europe came as a natural reaction to not feeling completely safe. Finland's inability to join the EU (until end of cold war) and NATO (until recently) due to pressure from Russia's forced-upon neutrality led to seeking alternate and sometimes creative sources of peace and stability to compensate. This in addition to a large defence force.
Here in Ireland we recently celebrated if that is the correct term the importance of the Good Friday agreement. However one thing that I noticed was that the mass media made little or no reference to the huge part that Finnish politicians played in helping to put together a forum for discussion . As an Irish citizen I want to pay tribute to Finland for their role in the peace process. Kittos Suomi.
“Peace” requires active maintenance as relative chaos and primal Survival of the Strongest rules apply without…
WW1 winners = USA
Ww2 winners = USA
Ww3 winners = USA
#1 Super power USA forever (the new Roman republic)
@@Tethloach1 yea but the Romans in the West were cocky and got done in by the Goths…
Finland has not had neutrality pressured on it for ages. Joining EU didn't bring significant change to the security situation, but it changed political alignment. The Baltic countries were wiser in that they first secured their backs by joining NATO as pretty much the first thing they did, after which questions of political alignment are rendered inconsequential from a security point of wiev.
NATO Finland could just as well even exit EU if it happens to want to since the security infrastucture is much more credible than that of the EU and comes with less would-be infringements on national sovereignty or other such political baggade that reduces or usurps agency of our political institutions.
We are a western country but we don't worship the west as an abstraction, even if some politicians might give that kind of idea.
Remember, you CAN be neutral, uninvolved, part of an alliance, a giant mooch without your own army, AND important in diplomacy!
Regards from Iceland!😆
I mean, yes, but only if your country happens to be a tiny island in the middle of the ocean that sits astride an extremely strategic opening into the ocean that is very important to NATO
@@michaelimbesi2314 Hey, it could be tiny islandS, plural! (thinking of Marshall Islands, Solomons, Philippines, etc, etc)
brb learning icelandic
@@Doc_Fun hard
I cannot understate how many times I completely forget your nation even exists, and that's coming from someone who played as Iceland in CK3 less than a month ago
As a South African, I can't tell you how ashamed I am that our government continues to claim "neutrality", even as it came out today that they sold weapons to Russia. Even China has flipped against Russia in the UN, so it's unclear at this point what our excuse is. I really can't emphasize just how badly South Africa is doing right now - our economy is taking such a beating, electricity is off 8-10 hours a day, and on top of everything, the government chooses the losing side in the most unpopular war in decades. I'm afraid this is becoming a failed state. I'll have to leave soon.
I have a question, here in the States after the end of the Jim Crow era there were a lot of unforeseen consequences such as the forceful firing of black teachers into integrated schools and the death of many black owned businesses and consequently a large portion of the black middle class. Is this at all similar to post-apartheid South Africa
@@Megaawesomeguy It's hard to argue that the fall of apartheid had unforeseen negative consequences for black people in particular - but the ANC party has had disastrous consequences for the country overall. Corruption is unbelievably severe, it's absolutely crippling, and it infects so many different parts of our society in so many ways. The big ones at the moment are the complete neglect of infrastructure - our rail system basically doesn't exist anymore, electrical infrastructure is in extreme crisis, and many parts of the country are struggling with water infrastructure.
South Africa is often compared to Zimbabwe. Although we haven't fallen as hard as they have, many feel we are doomed to make the same mistakes - we actually have growing political movements dedicated to making the same mistakes.
@@Megaawesomeguy Post apartheid resulted in the new political force blaming every bad thing ever on the white population while at the same time it was just an excuse to enrich the new leaders. Literally the country is in shambles, every part of infrastructure is crumbling to pieces and still all they have to do is say "it's those evil whites causing all these problems" and they once again win the election and continue to milk a dying cow for personal gain.
I haven't seen the news about arms delivery to russia, but i ll believe you on this. But even without it, it was kind of obvious who SA leadership supported, as neutral in this case almost always means pro-russian. And in Ukraine many people just assume that Africa hate us for nothing, and start to hate Africans (not black, but generally people from sub-Saharan region) in return. It is sad to see this loop of hate in return when at the start we didn't have any grievances to each other
@@Megaawesomeguy Black South Africans as a whole are undoubtedly doing better then they were under Apartheid. The same thing is true for Jim Crow in the US it may seem as though things got worse after but that isn’t the case.
Side Note: I love how Kraut always shoutouts other channels in almost every single video, and redirects us to further-detailed information. That's the quality of a supportive community.
Even a nod to Lazerpig.
@@Miata822 ALL HAIL THE PIG!!! OINK OINK!
As a Swede, it’s sad to be giving up this position of neutrality, but it seems most people have agreed that there really isn’t any other way forward now. Great video
It's true - neutrality is something you need the opportunity to do. It's not something all countries can do, in practice.
Rip
It would be interesting if instead of NATO we could do some sort of defence deals with neighbouring states individually or a common Nordic defence group of some sort, but I don't see that likely happening and without any real support for a poll on NATO membership from the parties, I guess our government is still gonna try joining NATO
I don't think you have given up neutrality, it's a bit of a false narrative. NATO doesn't change how you conduct your foreign policy. Sweden is in the EU, isn't picking a side and conduct economic warfare? Sweden is so close to NATO it's almost a formality. NATO is a defensive alliance, others see it as a threat or Side because it blocks their aggression or want an excuse to not negotiate. I think physical distance from everything and low historical baggage will still grant the role as a 'neutral' mediator 95% as before.
As a Finlander I am very pleased over the fact that Sweden cannot hide under some thin veil of neutrality the next time the horrors of the world come knocking around. Because there will be someone else carrying a far bigger stick than Sweden, reminding it of its obligations. At the moment when the first, not the last inch of Finnish has been violated. No more freeriding - slut på snålskjuts.
There's a good reason most Americans think that neutrality means a lack of an arms industry- Ireland is the only one of the countries you mentioned where English is the official language and we obviously have much deeper ties with them
As a Finn, I would like to share my perspective. I recognize our accomplishments as a neutral country, but those don't get much emphasis at all in our history books or in our political conversations. The only positives we usually think of when thinking of our neutrality is maintaining our independence and having good economic ties to Russia. These two are what our history books generally talk about. The latter has become far less significant, because Germany is now our biggest trade partner far outweighing Russia. And when considering the former, it is no coincidence, that we began openly talking about NATO membership after the Soviet collapse, because after the second world war our neutrality was forced on us because of Russian geopolitical interests and it was not of our own free will.
Many European countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden adopted neutrality after disastrous wars, so that they could focus on internal development. This was our stance too after signing a treaty with Lenin's Russia after our independence, so that we could avoid a war with Russia. Something that is not often talked about, is that we trusted this treaty so much so, that we neglected our army so much so, that Mannerheim did not belie, that we could fight back the Russians and that we should capitulate to their demands in 1939. After the winter war we abandoned our neutrality to attack Russia, hoping that Hitler could defeat Stalin and remove the Russian irredentist threat to our independence. That didn't happen and we we're forced to accept neutrality on Russia's terms. This is made clear by the fact, that here and probably elsewhere the word Finlandization has a very negative tone.
We have always viewed our neutrality in contrast to Russia, not as to what we can do for the benefit to international community, and while Kekkonen, Ahtisaari and others have acted as international mediators, that role in our country's history is not very pronounced and it has never been seen as our moral responsibility. Saying that Russia and Finland ever were friends is kind of weird, because we have completely different cultures and values, even our army has always been designed to specifically fight Russia. We have always seen Russia as a boogeyman, or a school bully, who has no future, but who you should get along with, and pretend to like, so you can avoid being bullied. Our neutrality by it's very nature has been self centered.
We have always wanted to integrate closer to the west and after EU, NATO is the next logical step. In the past when we talked about NATO membership, most people would just dance around it, while talking about expenditures, the unrealistic prospect of involvement in foreign wars and such. I would like to point out, that the National Coalition party was the biggest supporter of membership, and it is now in power. The biggest reason why we didn't join, was because we saw what happened to Georgia and Ukraine and didn't want that here, because many of us believed, that we could not win a war against Russia and even if we could, war would still be devastating, win or lose. This latter one is important, because while the failures of the Russian military is laid bare for all to see, Ukraine is still devastated and we want to avoid that. So in my view we joined NATO to deter Russia from attacking us, unlikely as it may be and as a sort of payback and as a statement, that we are done pretending to be their friend.
Anyway, that was long, but I am glad to say, rest in peace Finlandization 6.4.1948 - 15.5.2022
so instead of massively increasing military spending,encoraging ther rigth to bear arms for citizens and forming nordic alliances finland decides to join nato?Like have finnish people forgot about what they are capabel of ,using the winter war as an ex.
As a swede i am dissapointed in sweden for the same reason.Especially when the Sweden prides itself of its morality abroad instead of i fixing the problems that are plaugeing swedish citizens and have an army that is not a joke compared to the rest of the world.
@@danieli9333 Even if we are well armed enough to beat Russia, neutrality simply makes you vulnerable these days and is not viable when being this close to a possible aggressor.
I too would prefer closer co-operation between the Nordic countries in terms of defense and other things, but NATO is a more straightforward option for all of us.
@@Vellupellu Yeah this is an important thing to point out. It's unlikely Russia can ever conquer nations like Sweden or Finland; but the war has shown that as inept as Russia is, its complete lack of empathy for its own people means they can toss men into a meatgrinder and inflict horrific damage to another country anyway.
The only way to deal with Russia is for a much stronger power to smash their capabilities outright rather than let them drag the war into a horrific siege; and nations like Finland prolly doesn't have that capability.
@@danieli9333 Could we fight off Russia? Maybe, but even in the most positive and outlandishly stupid predictions nobody would claim that it wouldn't come without *incredible* cost to Finland.
To use an old joke, it seems like you are a Swede willing to fight to the last Finn.
@@danieli9333 Sweden's army is not a joke. It's decent for what it needs to do, and it is miles better than Germany's or Austria's. Joining NATO is more than just defense from a Russian invasion; it is a nuclear deterrent. Sweden probably won't be able to bear the cost of a nuclear weapons program and I don't think there is any political will for it. Becoming a contributing NATO member is a win/win for Sweden and NATO, and hopefully it will happen in the future.
@Kraut this is wrong 9:31 Belgium did not choose neutrality after the First World War it was in an active military alliance with France that relied on the French army pushing through Belgium into Germany in a hypothetical another war. The main reason Belgium was neutral during the start of ww2 was due to a diplomatic falling out in the 1930s that led to Belgium leaving the plan. This is also the reason why the Maginot line did not expand past German Border.
True, except that the Maginot Line was never meant to extend to Belgium. The defense strategy was to have the Maginot Line funnel the Germans to Belgium, where the Allied armies would set up defensive lines along the river dykes and canals and meet the invaders there. The Belgians pulling out of the defense pact in the 1930s meant no more forward-deployed Allied troops on the Belgian border, which considerably delayed the response. That and the risky Ardenne offensive pretty much ruined the Allied defense of France.
Started my college undergraduate career in international politics 4 years ago, largely because of the videos from this channel. I graduated today, came back home, and saw this new video up.
Not sure what the message here
Is supposed to be, but thanks for inspiring me through my academic career. ☺️
I Hope Kraut sees this msg
What’s the plan now you’ve graduated
I got that degree and another liberal arts one, worked in politics for a bit and now do logistics
I will not pay for my kids to get a degree in this , there’s enough info online
Congratulation for your graduation.
I guess the message is if neutrality makes sence or not.
The answers i think is it depends on the situation..
I also have seen better videos from kraut..
Outstanding commentary and summary of current events unfolding in Europe, please continue making such well thought out and capitvating content.
As an Irish person it was very interesting seeing an educated outsider’s perspective on my country. While I’m not certain what direction we will go in terms of military spending I do think a domestic arms industry is an overestimation due to our strict firearm control laws, the cost involved, and the risk of arming groups such as the UVF and IRA. While the Ukraine War has made people here more alert about defence it has also made us aware that our main security threat is quite inept. If we do increase the size of our military, I can imagine we’d practice active neutrality as you described, primarily because we already do. It’ll just be more noticeable with a bigger army.
Our current defence from invaders is kind of weird. It’s like we’re a small poisonous animal. You could easily eat us but it’s probably a bad idea.
For one our border situation somewhat unique. One lost bomber or inaccurate artillerist and you’ve attacked Northern Ireland and by extension NATO. We’re also surrounded by countries that have a vested interest in keeping us alive. While we were owned by the Brits they didn’t really do much with us, to the extent were we basically skipped the Industrial Revolution. However, Britain kept a firm grip on us because if they didn’t own us, France, Spain or someone else could use us as a staging ground to invade Britain. The same is true now, if a military power occupied us they’d be able to threaten Britain and Western Europe. The main reason we were occupied is now one of our best guarantees of safety.
We’re also quite well liked internationally. We’re very active in the UN and EU and invest heavily in diplomacy. We have a massive diaspora, especially in the US and Britain. We’re also in a unique position of being both a western nation and a victim of colonial aggression by a western nation which opens a lot of doors. As a recent nation we also haven’t had many opportunities to make people hate us. As such any full-scale military invasion would not be popular globally and potentially at home depending on the invader. It also means our dimished but still extant paramilitary organisations will have plenty of potential sponsors.
We also don’t have much to offer a would-be invader. We have fertile soil but not a lot. Our economy is strong but that’s dominated by multinational corporations that could jump ship as they’re doing with Russia now. Even the benefit of being a staging ground for further conquest is limited due to our lack of military infrastructure.
Okay, but I hope you understand that if the import of charming Irish panel-show comedians for the BBC ever dries up, we will be re-annexing you to secure the supply.
@@BalsiefenOkay, but on your end you have to get the BBC to stop calling our actors British.
Not happening pal
Plenty of countries with strict firearms controls have strong defense industries. The risk of arms being misappropriated is real, but they are probably cheaper to get from other sources. The cost? That's the cost of neutrality
Here in the United States there are heavy Irish roots. My hometown mascot is a Fighting Irish man since many people emigrated here after the Irish Potato famine of the 1840’s. Also, much of the hatred (justified and unjustified) towards the Catholic Church in America has been pushed towards the Vatican and some of their priests (we all know which ones I’m talking about) and not everyday citizens practicing Catholicism. I would agree that any attack on Ireland would bring hostility from all corners of the world to the aggressor.
Austria and Switzerland may not be NATO members, but being surrounded by NATO they're in fact free riders, since nobody can really attack them unless they go trough a NATO country, or it's a NATO country itself, which is quite improbable.
Austria is part of the EU and would therefore be required to defend other EU countries if attacked. Since most NATO countries in Europe are also EU member states Austria is defacto in NATO already.
Swiss on the other hand has a brilliant military and is spending big money.
Sooo just no to your statement.
@@hackbrettschorsch6855Austria should leave the EU therefore!
Better a free rider than an USA vassal state !
@@hackbrettschorsch6855 that doesn't change the fact that they benefit from NATO protection which let's be real here, is protection delivered mainly by America while they contribute nothing to NATO defense spending. Sure, they may have good equipment but they haven't fought a war. They have no combat experience and they don't train with NATO which would cause even more issues if a war popped off in their region. The Swiss have historically profited from both sides of any conflict and yet still depend on NATO due to geography or otherwise. Doesn't sit well with many people. Same for the Swedes. I don't think we should be applauding a country for speaking up about social issues in other countries while contributing very little itself. Both kind of come off like self-righteous turds while contributing nothing to the world stage which results in their insulation from having to make difficult geopolitical decisions. Decisions that both countries will openly criticize other countries who are more active in geopolitics for making.
That’s the main argument i have heard austrians use aswell which is a pretty frustrating. They want protection without helping out.
I'm from Croatia and a taxi driver told me he was in the yugoslav army when Tito died, he said they moved about 3000 tones(or more) of anti tank mines to the yugoslav-hungarian border because the expected an attack from the soviet union
really really great video Kraut!!! one of my aunts on my mom’s side of the family married a swiss man and moved to switzerland in the 80s. last summer, i finally met up with my swiss family after only seeing them once as a kid. it was fascinating talking to one of my swiss cousins about the ramifications of the ukrainian war. everybody i talked to felt the significance of switzerland condemning russia for the ukrainian invasion. everybody i talked to supported switzerland’s condemnation of the war but were still concerned about how the war and the end of swiss neutrality might influence the country in the long run. my mom and i were also staying at the house of my aunt’s friend and she just so happened to be hosting a ukrainian refugee woman. meeting her was very moving.
Mexican here. I just wanted to add regarding Mexican neutrality, that it was used as an excuse against accountability. On the foreign front, Mexico used the principle of non-intervention to keep foreign institutions from looking into state abuses and corruption. It also gave them some diplomatic clout since they were not seen as wanting to take advantage of other countries. Domestically, the regime touted its "defense" of weaker countries against imperialistic governments to garner support, especially among the country's intelligentsia, anti-American as they were (and many still are). In spite of this, there were some legitimate successes, like the Chapultepec Peace Agreement between the Salvadoran government and the guerrilla. I know this info was not relevant to your video's point, but that's what the comments are for! Awesome analysis, as usual.
So in other words, the social-political structures of colonial spain adapted for an independent Mexico yada yada then adapted to continue into the future.
Mexico is neutral because 1. It poses 0 threat to any real nation of power 2. Mexico would have to be aggressive with the blessing of DC.
Mexico is a de facto American protectorate. This is because Mexico is an extremely critical part of the US economy, and becoming more so as industry moves out of China. If you were to look at a map of economic flows, you would discover northern Mexico to be more economically integrated with the US than with central Mexico.
@@gavros9636 Unfortunately, that is the truth. Colonialism is alive and well in Mexico. It has just evolved into paternalism and caudillismo.
@@SU1C1D3xPR4D4 Exactly. Anything Mexico does must have approval from DC, even critiques against Washington. Politicians that claim to be "anti-yanqui" also acquiesce. Just look at AMLO. His rhetoric is anti-American (except, tellingly, regarding Trump), but he does Washington's bidding with regard to undesired migrants.
27:15 Kraut, I have to step in for Ireland here. You're referring to Sweden defending Congolese villagers from mercenaries. I'd advise you to look up the siege of Jadotville - it was Irish soldiers that put up a heroic defence, which was subsequently ignored at home for resulting in a defeat, despite it being against overwhelming odds.
I think I watched a movie about that. It was very good
You guys have a very long history of being against injustice.
In Mexico we still remember the San Patrick's Battalion.
@@Yha1000itz I thought the San Patricios were Irish Americans and other Catholic Americans that were tired of how mistreated they were by the Protestants. There were some escaped slaves and free Blacks too. I think it was a segregated unit in the US Army that wondered why they were fighting for a country that hated them against a Catholic country that already banned slavery.
Yeah but it wasn't just the irish, the siege of Jadotville took place during operation Rumpunch however both swedish and Indian UN troops partook aswell, heck you can even see the indian forces during the siege of the radio building in the movie.
Furthermore it was the Swedish forces who protected the Balubas since neither the Indians or the Irish wish to take on the burden which led to the Swedes having to deal with the Baluba jeunes and the local population duking it out.
Finally I'd like to point out that it was the Swedish forces that stormed Camp Massart which served as the HQ of the "Gendarmes".
@@fallout44454they didn't take place in the siege, the troops under siege were 155 Irish men, the Swedish, and indian troops were part of the 500 man counter attack that failed at a bridge, they were not part of the siege it's self and were repealed quickly
Heii Kraut im swiss.
Its not 5 years, its a roughly 1.5 years of Basic Training (Rekrutenschule RS) followed by a total of 6 Repeat-trainings (Wiederholungskurs WK)with each being 3 weeks long.
Love ur channel bye
Beat me to it. The basic is something like 1.5-2 in total, but more for higher ranks.
Hi Swiss, I’m dad
Huh? It s more around 1 year total. Around 300 days for me.
You're right. I forgot I "did further" xD
If they actually consider you. When I was drafted I felt like 50% was UT and sorted out on the first day at the Rekrutierungszentrum. But then again, I feel this could change with the new situation
Long-time Irish viewer, and I was so pleased to see us so heavily involved in one of your commentaries. Fantastic content as always, Kraut.
something I feel as a Englishman which also plays a part in irelands not spending money stance is that. if ireland was going to be under attack by anyone they would either have already gone through england or england would come to there aid because of the northern ireland and the hopes that it by helping ireland it would be seen more as mending of bridges
I was looking for this comment just so I could like it
you wanna mend bridges maybe get out of ireland first? @@si2foo
You can imagine how much peace our NATO membership really brings to my mind as a Finn, considering I'm a fit 23-year old whom has recently done military service lol
It's cozy here under the nuclear umbrella
I'm sure you guys will be a valuable addition to the alliance but please don't just become another Iceland. There is always a danger the next US president might just lose interest.
@@joeyjojojrshabadoo7462 Oh we certainly cannot afford to become another Iceland with a hostile dictatorship lashing out amid its demographic decline
@@andrex6288 You are also in a vital position to help the balkan states not to get forcefully russified if russia would ever try a "special military operation" there
@@MetalKingII You probably mean Baltic states, but yes absolutely
When Switzerland condemned Russia many months ago I was genuinely surprised that more people weren’t focusing on how significant that was. It seemed like it was accepted as “ok cool… and moving on…” instead of talking about how breathtakingly awful you have to be to illicit such a response from the Swiss.
Agreed
Condemning Russia and Putin is the bare minimum. What, we should applaud them for realizing that Russia is doing bad things? I think Western countries, and particularly "neutral" Western countries, are guilty of a fair bit of navel-gazing but applauding Switzerland, "do-nothing Switzerland", for realizing that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is unacceptable would just take the prize. How about they let NATO gift their Swizz produced weapons and munitions to Ukraine? Actions speak louder than words.
@@Boomerrage32 "Russia is doing bad things" Like, invading a country? Just like the US and NATO did alot more often them any other country like in Iraq, Vietnam, Yugoslavia etc.? So every country that isnt sanctioning the US/ UK/ NATO are just as guilty for every warcrime the west has done, in your logic.
@@Boomerrage32 Switzerland has been neutral since the 16th century. 500 years. They ignored everyone. EVERYONE. Even the Nazis.
@@Boomerrage32 "Condemning Russia and Putin is the bare minimum. What, we should applaud them for realizing that Russia is doing bad things?"
Did they ever condemn Nazi Germany? Like, during the war?
In any case, yes, we should applaud them. Political neutrality is supposed to be one of the modern Swiss guiding moral principles. If you disagree with that - fine, but, since your moral stance is divergent from that of the Swiss, your judgement has little value.
kraut is the type of youtuber to make a video about the how living rooms has changed over time and turn it into a discussion about the socio economic secution of the world
Well, there is a huge impact of society on how we build our habitats. Kraut has actually discussed a similar topic (how backyards are built in countries with high corruption) in his video on the Greek debt crisis.
@@hlibushok reminds me of that phrase, "sometimes, the curtains are blue because the author wrote that the curtains are blue."
In real life, though, it's just as likely that the curtains are blue because somebody made a geopolitical cockup two steps short of WWIII and it meant that blue dye was cheap as chips, or something.
@@MarkusAldawn I prefer "Nothing happens without reason"
Even the author who puts no meaning behind the blue curtains chose blue for a reason. They might imagine it would look nice based on aesthetic tastes inherited from their values and life experiences that are in turn derived from the places they've lived.
At its the simplest, anyway.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 very true, very true.
Correction! The people of North Macedonia, never used any Yugoslav weapons (to achieve independence). By way of referendum it was decided to break away from the state of Yugoslavia and a deal was struck: no bloodshed. NMK disarmed, willingly surrendered any and all military equipment to the then JNA (which consisted of Serbs and Montenegrins by this point) and granted safe passage to the army to withdraw from NMK territory.
The war / insurgency of 2001 is a whole other can of worms that we won’t get into.
Just saying this because of the picture at 17:02.
Great video! One small correction though, Switzerland has actually fought in several wars since 500 years ago, notably the Napoleonic Wars. It was at the Congress of Vienna (1815) that Swiss Neutrality was ratified. Interestingly, the ratification was delayed by the coalitions when Napoleon left exile. The coalition countries finally granted Swiss neutrality after the end of the War of the 7th Coalition. So it has been closer to 200 years, not 500 years, that Swiss neutrality has been in place.
Well to be exact Switzerland has been neutral since 1515. But this was brought to an end when the french invaded in 1798, after that Switzerland fought alongside the french as a puppet state of France. And Switzerland also declared on France 1815 when it was forced to do so by the European powers so Switzerland did fought wars but is wasn't it's choice. That's why he talk about 500 years of neutrality.
The Swiss, not the Swiss Confederacy, fought in every European war up to well into the 19th century when mercenary service abroad was finally forbidden.
The Swiss cantons in the meantime had some small civil war of their own...
The Swiss missile knows where it is because it knows where it isn't
Always love your conversations Kraut!! Thanks for helping your US audience understand the complexities in Europe.
Retweet^
@@tylernaturalist6437 this isn't twitter
@@regarded9702 r/Whooosh
@@regarded9702 why not
Here, here 🍻
ireland is extremely lucky in its location, historically less so but currently. A actual threat or invasion to ireland is a massive strategic weakness for the UK and to a degree france. Allowing a hostile force so close to ones borders and destablise the region would simply not be allowed. So while ireland is neutral, it has no nearby hostiles and those neighbours would prevent hostile actions so close to themselves
As a Finnish, I think people analyze too much why Finland joined NATO. A very simple reason for that is that a big majority of Finns in pollings were in favor of joining and it would have been politically damaging in elections to be opposed to that. This is not the only reason but I do think it made it impossible not to join. And I say this because even if the Ukraine war never happened and if polling for some other reason not related to Russia would have shown similar change we would have still joined NATO. Most Finn voters are not very knowledgeable about geopolitics and personal feelings drive people's opinions the most.
Neutrality is a national mindset and it seems Finns just aren't very neutral anymore, for a good reason.
@@arnarogbjorn Neutrality is also perspective, Finland has cooperated a lot with NATO, had military exercises with the USA, and our whole defense force is designed to defend against invasion from the east against an enemy who has exactly the same military capability as Russia. The only reason we plan to defend other directions is if we think the enemy will try flanking maneuvers. After the fall of the soviet union, the whole military has been built on the premise that we can as fast as possible join nato when the time comes as it did. Finland also joined sanctions against Russia after the Crimean invasion.
Yes, I agree that neutrality is a national mindset but in this case, the biggest change will be the other nations mindset towards Finland's neutrality.
I mean, plenty of individual Finns are still neutral. Heck, I'd say almost every human on the planet is technically neutral when it comes to international politics, in the sense that the average human, no matter what nation they live in, is only going to be concerned with their immediate surroundings, or whatever large events will affect them most. That sounds pretty practical to me.
True! For the average person, feelings are much more important than facts and logic. And I mean this as a neutral statement, not as a negative thing.
No wonder Finland is so left wing.
Feelings cause irrationality most times.
Have not watched the whole video yet, but Finland and Sweden were only neutral ever on paper, not on practice. I think that is an important point. We here in Finland have always been anti russian and pro western.
Our whole millitary doctrine has been for 80 years now how to best fight against the russians.
My Grand father fought against the russians in the continuation war and got a leg injury, bad enough that he had to use a walking stick for the rest of his life. And i remember this as a kid, our whole nation remembers this. People have their own grand fathers who never came back.
That is very true but many people don't understand that Finland had to remain apparently neutral to appease Russia despite Finland's full distrust of Russia. Hence all the underground bunkers in Finland in such numbers per capita not seen anywhere else in the world.
Correct me if Im wrong but I belive Sweden has never claimed officially to be netural instead the term non-belligerent was used.
@@joythoughtTrue we did appease Russia during the cold war. So on paper we were friendly with them but on practice we prepeared for a possible new russian invasion, thats why millitary service is manditory. And why we have so many underground bunkers.
We know the russians just love to bomb innocent children and civillians don’t we? We see that in Ukraine and they did bomb Helsinki in both winter and continuation war.
@@TheZeyon Sweden has officially been neutral since about 1834, but non-belligerent specifically in the Soviet war against Finland, so that Sweden could send gear to Finland. Then back to neutral(not counting conspiracy theories) until either now or when we joined the EU.
make no mistake though, if Russia had invaded Finland instead of Ukraine, you would not be receiving any more help than Ukraine is receiving now.
Kraut mentioning both Perun and Lazerpig?
Man Kraut is really getting into nonCredibleDefense
NCD is leaking again
@@niklasw.1297 NCD Intelligence Service. Nothing is beyond our reach.
@@sugandesenuds6663 War Thunder Players.
Challenge accepted.
Now let me go and leak the Intel for the B-21 Raider
@@marseldagistani1989 if you want, i have the patent of the SU57 on my harddrive.
@@sugandesenuds6663
Eh...
Why do I need the schematics on that flying city block?
Every time you upload I’m so happy that I found your channel. As an American I’m basically totally blind to the geopolitics of Europe and your channel is bar none the most educational and non biased (as far as I can tell) source on the whole internet. Keep up the good word bud :)
Even as a European I learn a lot from this channel and its comments 👍
As a swiss viewer I would like to correct that we do not need to serve for 5 years. The solders that do not proceed to an officer position serve a total amount of days a bit shorter than a year, usually distributed over multiple years. But it is true that our army is rather large and expensive for our size.
Switzerland spent 0.8% of GDP on the military in 2022, which is actually very little. Every NATO member spent more than that except for the very small countries of Luxembourg and Iceland and the overall NATO average is more than three times as high at 2.5%.
Switzerland piggybacking off of NATO and EU and giving virtually nothing in return. Not our finest hour.
I belive he may have meant that we serve more or less over 5 years (but only 3 weeks). I agree it is confusing the way he said it. And for our size we pay very little ;) check out the budgets of our neighbors in comparison to their army size and gdp :D
The army budget by GDP is little, in absolute numbers it is with 6 billions per year still in the top 35 of the world according to the Stockholm Int. Peace Research Institute. Which isn't great but not terrible.
@@yes.7852 You have to keep in mind that a conscript is contributing almost nothing to the economy while larping war. people generally work between 40-50 years in their life, and all men in Swizerland lose one of those years. This leads to an over 1% loss in GDP for the country. However, Nato doesn't count loss of GDP as defense spending, because you are not directly paying for it, so the military spending seems small, even though in reality it is much larger.
It's incredibely nice to see Kraut giving a shout-out to Perun. I am very fond of the new generation of infotainment that doesn't just cover facts but also builds deeper understanding.
The fact that the Irish rely on the British, of all people, for their defense is incredibly funny to me.
It is, on the contrary, incredibly sad. A country that doesn't even speak its mother language anymore.
@@stefanodadamo6809 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
@@stefanodadamo6809 um no? I live with a Irish national, this isn't true at all
@@fuzzyhair321 as an Irish national, I can confirm that the Irish language is effectively out of our mainstream society. A lot of it is down to failing to teach Irish as a language in schools, with many people I know knowing more French, German or Spanish in the years after graduating secondary school than Irish. Its a shame too, its an amazing language
@@ramblingrenegade6346 yeah my roommate is from the north west Donegal and he can speak it. It was fun listening to it
Summary
00:00:00 *This video is about Neutrality in Europe.*
00:11 Introduction -- Ground News Ad
01:38 Introduction
02:04 Introduction -- Ukraine - officially - was a neutral country.
00:04:00 *Reckoning by Scandinavia about what Ukraines' Neutrality did for them.*
04:05 Scandinavia -- Sweden
04:42 Scandinavia -- Finland
06:56 Scandinavia
00:07:22 *European Security, now and previously, feat. The Concert of Europe.*
08:21 Concert of Europe -- Belgium
09:31 Concert of Europe -- WWII
10:36 Concert of Europe -- Czechoslovakia
00:11:56 *Beyond Geopolitics, a look at how citizens benefit from neutrality.*
12:11 Citizen Benefits -- Switzerland
13:18 Citizen Benefits -- Singapore
13:26 Citizen Benefits -- Yugoslavia
13:48 Citizen Benefits -- Mexico
00:14:12 *But above all, neutrality comes at the cost of standing to fight alone.*
14:21 Costs -- Switzerland
14:51 Costs -- Yugoslavia
17:37 Costs -- Costa Rica
17:59 Costs -- Ireland
00:21:10 *Moral Matters explain what Kraut sees sadly being lost.*
21:14 Moral Matters -- Switzerland
24:10 Moral Matters -- Austria
25:14 Moral Matters -- ... and Serbia and Hungary
25:29 Moral Matters -- Passive and Active Neutrality
26:13 Moral Matters -- Finland
27:06 Moral Matters -- Sweden
00:28:41 *In conclusion, he therefore appeals to the Irish and the Swiss*
... to pick up the torches of Active Neutrality that the Swedes and Finns are now bound to drop.
Finland isn’t Scandinavia but I get why for simplicity reasons it’s stated as Scandinavia in this video
I'm an American, and nothing I love more than seeing European diplomatic history going into affect. Fantastic video, Kraut based as always
Americans like me do sure love a good distraction from the high stakes shit show going on here 😅
I mean... Orban was the headliner for the RNC recently so...
How about this, I'm also American, but living in Switzerland (no joke). So definitely getting some appropriate perspectives here 😂
@@monsieurdorgat6864 europeans are going to have a bad time when we are absent from the global world order. Many chaotic zones of conflict are being stopped by America, creating a safe environment and the implicit threat of military action. Imagine a refugee crisis that encompasses 10 to 20% of the population of Egypt. Because an Ethiopian Egyptian war broke out and now the Egyptian’s have water security issues. Or when China rearranges global trade requiring certain countries to implicitly, prefer BYD cars to gain better trade opportunities with the Chinese will intrinsically hurt European auto makers. Frankly, for international markets, I do not think European goods will have the Geo, political, backing or enough of a groundbreaking advantage to negate Chinese dominance, or hegemony.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 wait really Viktor Orban was doing talks for the Republicans… that’s really not good.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Nothing in the US can be considered "high stakes", tbh. At least compared to the stuff that goes on in Europe where entire countries have to worry about getting "Russified".
A simmlar story played out on my high school graduation trip to Ireland back in 2022. Recently all the independently run model kit stores in Southeastern Virginia have closed up shop and been replaced by hobby towns ( a chain of corporate hobby stores ) .So one of the first things I did was to go to a small shop called Marks Models I chatted with the owner about this same topic along with the possibility of Irish Nato Membership for example what would happen if the US gave some F16s to Ireland or build them their own coastal patrol vessels. I came to a similar conclusion as Kraut did, about who will take up the mantle of that active neutrality role. Ireland is a good candidate and has done similar actions to that of Sweeden, especially in the Congo. A majority of their armed forces are structured as a mobile peacekeeping force, and could then take up something to that of Sweeden prior to 2022 (though they will probably swing a bit more to the Untied States) which a key flaw in it taking up the active neutrality mantle.
The mandatory bunkers in urbanism projects and defense against a possible Russian invasion in Finland shows that neutrality is not living in peace of mind of not being invaded by the neighbouring country wanting a chunk of you (if not all of you).
Old comment but in reality most Finns live totally peaceful and rarely think of Russia. Even when they move troops or stuff near our borders or violate our airspace it’s just another afternoon.
We know Russia sucks and we know our military is strong. Realistically Russia couldn’t even invade a neutral Finland just due to the terrain and lack of infrastructure along the border on both sides
@@cassu6 you can do that because you are prepared, every bit defended, even more so now that you joined the military compass club. It's with those you can be at peace. Not sure if it was the case in, let's say, the 1920s. Love Finland!
Kraut, I wanna say thank you. You, along with Brain4Breakfast (god rest his soul) have changed the way I consume information. Your videos have taught me that understanding the history of an issue is the most important part of gaining a proper perspective. Im hungry for it, I love it, I love discovering historical context like it’s some ancient treasure that I found the key to, so much makes sense. I’m able to pull from across history and across fields of study in the strangest ways, I never would have thought that understanding the steps of genocide in foment Yugoslavia would translate to a school project on American immigration reform. My father is Estonian, your video about the history of vodka really touched me. It all clicked, everything, why men drink themselves to death, the tragedy of the Russian people, the cyclical nature of tyranny and oppression.
Now as I enter university I feel like I have a leg up over my classmates, especially as an American it’s shocking how historically illiterate people are in general. I can almost assign a spiritual importance to it, there is nothing that gives me more purpose in anything than reading great historical epics and pouring over the intricate details of napoleons campaigns. Or reading Yukio Mishima and being consumed by the beauty of his literature. What a disgrace, colonial Americans were among the most educated in history and now we’re reduced to this. We’re all inheritors of the greatest story, the only story, there isn’t a higher purpose than telling it. Consider yourself among those great orators of history, you have touched millions of people who are better for it
Not readin all that.
as a swiss i think the reason why we see neutrality different is because its no longer as profitable as it used to be. back then much of our wealth came directly from things like banking, where neutrality is very helpfull. today banks are still important but not as much as our export industry. most of our export goes to our neighbour countries, that are also the most powerfull in the EU. We are dependent on free trade and labour from them.
The EU does not want to give us all the benefits of a member without payment and thats why there is a big discussion on how much we have to pay.
If we did not sanction russia these benefits whould be at risk, and that whould be a terrible for our country
How do you see the decisions made by the Swiss government as it relates to arms and their arms industry?
not allowing swiss weapons beeing exportet to ukraine is sure not good for our arms industry and i think it should be allowed. but we dont need a big army anymore. as i said, we have good relations with all our neighbours and we dont need to spend so much on defence because of geograhpy
@@nickhtk6285 don't think much of the swiss or the government would have minded.
but we basically gutted your weapons industry, with those strict regulations long ago. the reason it's so strict, is that it is a slippery slope to make exemptions. you quickly end up with the government giving in to business interests, undermining the will of the people.
Swiss neutrality is mainly due to our various language groups and therefore a concession we make towards our emidiate neighbours.
Switzerland was not neutral towards south africa, and has no problems to compromise, when there are no internal interests to not compromise.
Full stop on that EU point: You lot REJECTED EU membership in a referendum in 2002. For the same reasons the UK left the EU.
Switzerland joined the UN only in 2002 for the exact same reasons. Just to demonstrate how slow that process is.
As a Mexican, I loved the node to the president daily morning "conference".
In that matter, a video analyzing the current regime and the severe controversy it has caused among mexicans could be helpful. If you decide to embark on it, I can act as a "ground agent" here in Mexico City providing information or translations of certain things.
A minor correction about Finland... The Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance of 1948 didn't actually state that Finland would need to join the USSR in war. It stated that Finland would be required to defend itself should it be attacked or should its territory be used to attack the USSR - which is actually required if Finland was a neutral state in any case. And that if required Finland would be allowed to enter consultations to gain aid from the USSR but it wasn't something that would happen automatically. Nor would it trigger if the USSR, but not Finland, was attacked. It also required Finland to not ally itself with the West and acknowledged Finnish neutrality.
And the military purchases were a Finnish solution to show neutrality. The goal was to spend roughly 1/3 on the western equipment, 1/3 on the eastern equipment, and 1/3 on either domestic or neutral. However as these were mostly done by value, and the Western stuff cost a lot more, it meant that Eastern stuff would be far more visible (but often retrofitted with Western equipment). But it also lead to interesting designs like the Finnish gunboats, which had Finnish-made hulls, West German engines, Western radar and electronic gear, a Swedish main gun, Soviet AA guns, and Soviet anti-submarine weaponry.
Little correction: in Budapest memorandum beyond US and Russia, UK and France also participated
Another thing I find important to note is geographical location. Finland and Sweden share a border with Russia. It is easy for Switzerland and Austria to be neutral when they do not share a border with Russia. Of note should be also that Soviet and later Russian planes have constantly been crossing into Finnish airspace constantly as well despite the Finlandization.
Sweden has a border with Russia?
Please read the surrender treaty by Finns after WWII - who invaded Soviet Union with the Germans in 1941-1944. Hello? Oh, from prosperous and peaceful boarder with Russia, who released Finns from WWII treaties, into being a lapdog of the Americans who will use Finns as bait [ see Ukraine]
@@AgnieszkaNishka Finland invaded to take back the territory the Soviets stole in the previous war
or my country, Luxembourg. We arent neutral (actually one of nato founding members), but tbh who would attack us, sandwiched between france and germany? No one.
Austria did share a border with the Warsaw pact for 35 years, and it was occupied by the Soviets and the Allies after WW2 for nearly 10 years. One of the main pillars of it gaining back its independence was Austria becoming and remaining a neutral country.
Finnish guy here. I absolutely love how you always drew Finland with the expression of "ffs, guess they need us to be the soviet-whisperer again, this is pretty stressful and annoying as hell, but there's no one else so gotta step on the plate".
I'm from Bulgaria and right now there is a very strong nationalist party in Bulgaria that is advertising Bulgarian neutrality and leaving NATO. It is gaining more and more supporters every day. They are now the third biggest political party in Bulgaria.
Because of this I find this video extremely interesting and coming at the perfect time.
Are they the ones who claim greater bulgaria borders?
@@فهميكتاني no, I don't think that any party represented in the parliament claims greater bulgaria borders.
So great to see Perun getting the shout he deserves on a major channel
Swiss Viewer here. This video was very insightful even for me, and I'll give some insight on how the younger urban Swiss think and act in this crisis if someone is interested. Our older generation (and especially the SVP party) holds the idea of perfect Swiss neutrality very dear to their hearts, but this idea is expressed to a much smaller extend in younger generations. At first, our parliament wanted to do the exact same thing as it did the last times war broke out in Europe, but the people protested and voted AGAINST neutrality. Us Swiss, especially younger generations, are western and European. Just because our constitution says we are neutral, doesn’t mean we are. We heavily condemn Russia’s invasion, and no one here goes: "let’s be neutral about this", if you ask someone on the streets of Zurich about Russia, he'll probably say something akin to: "F*ck Putin and Slava Ukraine". We introduced a special refugee status for Ukrainian refugees, so they don’t have to go through any processes and get taken on immediately. We Swiss as a people have to start realizing fact, that we are a part of this continent and not some mountain Island distant from everything. We are a part of Europa, even if we are not part of the European Union. We can't just Cherry pick things in our favor and act like the problems don't concern us, because they do, and it’s time we Swiss stared to burst out of our little wealth bubble and integrate into this European project we are all building THOGETHER.
In the end I would like to give an example of how Switzerland has changed doe to the war:
There is an important cultural hub in the center of Zurich by the lake called Bellevue Plaza. There are shopping malls, cinemas and restaurants scattered around, as well as a promenade by the lake, where all kinds of people meet in addition to the Zürich opera. There are large festivals that take place in the center of it, such as the Zurich film festival the street parade or the ending of the Swiss national holiday called "Sächsilüüte" (translating to "ringing the bells at six o'clock") where we parade around the city and burn a gigantic snowman to celebrate the ending of winter (yes, it’s very silly XD). I go by this plaza every day to get to college, so I've known that place for many years. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Swiss government decided in to raise ukrainian flags on flagpoles scattered around the plaza reserved for special occasions. So, you had this Swiss center of culture and wherever you looked, you saw the proud yellow-blue flag of Ukraine. We all thought this would all last a week or a month at most. Now 15 months have passed since the start of the invasion... and the Ukrainian flags are still flying high.
You elaborated beautifully
To be honest this is a view from a swiss of the urban zurich center.
And it isn‘t even a svp vs everyone else view(green party is actually also against weapons reexport.)
Go 10km outside of zurich and this comment is basicly worthless.
So what I want to say this comment was written by a person that lives in the „zurich city“ bubble.
Since I‘ve never seen a protest in my region. Nor do people neither old or young think that switzerland should get active on the matter.
TLDR this comment was written by a zurich city person which usually don‘t represent the avarage opinion of swiss people.
Usually it ends up with some comments about the SVP(which I also don‘t like) and how old people are bad.
@@Slithermotion Good point, I'll add that it's a Younger Urban perspective.
The SVP vs the others wasn't meant for weapon export but more about the policies towards the European Union.
It's safe to say that prgressive opinions will get dismissed in most rural areas, and in such areas one doesn't really protest about anything that isn't concerning the local community.
And although I dislike the SVP, I do not think old people are bad.
I would be interested which region you're from :)
I am from zurich and i am not from the old generation.
Tim your just one of many naiv thinking lefties and therefor inaccurate.
First and mainpoint there is no party with a clear standpoint to the situation even some svp politicians want to sent weapons to ukraine in order to not loose the reinmetall factory in zurich.
The SP and Greens are also not united in supporting ukraine.
This is not an old/young urban/rural thing!!
Bro wenn du denksch in züri sind all linggs wie du irrsch dich! Die meiste usländer chönd mit eu nüt afange und wählet immer meh svp und fdp.
Klar gits viel lüt wos wie du gsehnd aber au gnueg anderi wos genau anderscht ume gsehnd.
P.S wieso henkemr ukraine flagge uf gebet dene geld und debii fahrets riese chärre.
Isch imfall doberschicht wo zu eus chunnt und viel männer hendsich freykauft.
@@timstauffacher8663 From my interactions most Zurchers do agree, that it is a good thing that the Swiss are getting somewhat involved. Though I don't have a view on this.
Looking forward to this, always a good discussion to be had even if i disagree with some things
Austria, Hungary and Serbia, what an iconic trio.
It's always a good day when kraut uploads, keep going strong
To quote general Adolf Ehrnrooth, "Never again alone." Finland should always stand with the Baltic states, Poland and the rest of Europe against the common enemy.
Having lived in Vienna for 4 years, I think the Austrian approach can be summed up in one phrase; “Schau ma mal dann seh ma schon”.
Translation ?
Google say “Take a look and then see”
@@zurielsss "We're gonna take a look and then see what we'll do"
@@zurielsss better translation: Fuck around and find out
Very nice, but if you/they really want to be more Swiss, the phrase would be "Zerscht luege mer mol denn gseh mer scho!"
@@zurielsss "let's see what happens and then we know what's going on"
I think your pitch to Switzerland and Ireland is very good. Absolutely those roles need to be filled. I think asking the Swiss to do that would require more of a transition than it would for Ireland. I think Ireland is very befitting of that role. I'm not sure they're ready to build a military to do as Sweden did in certain circumstances, but the voice? 100%.
100% agree though knowing the internal politics of Ireland, my view is that it's very questionable indeed that an internal defence capacity can be developed. Time will tell.
As an Irish person who's lived in Ireland their whole life, I'm of the opinion that the Irish government is a fundamentally lazy institution that will never fail to do the bare minimum. Maybe that will change if the current parties are voted out, but there just seems to be a maddening sense of contentness with the status quo among every older person I meet. I would like to see a French-style restructuring of the republic where the entire system is reformed. Perhaps if the north decide to rejoin with us, we could use it as an excuse to build something new and fresh for a whole island.
Hate to say it, but I see that kinda mindset everywhere I go.
Like everyone snorted 5 kg of Francis Fukuyama's work and has been high on it for the last 20 years.
Not Irish, but British. A fair amount of people just kinda ignore that the war is going and don't engage with it.
They don't even engage with it in the retarded way that American conservatives do where they say "Weeell ah dont want mah cuntry sendin so much of Owah moneh over there, wee shuld be shpendin it ohn owah cuntreh and not on theyahs." they just completely ignore it, like it's not happening.
This is true. If we were to get the North back, we would probably need some kind of confederation.
Perhaps federalise the island by the provinces and have small councils in each deal with each province's issues
As a Brit with an Irish parent, I'm starting to think Irish unity can't come soon enough. I think it would be healthier for the world, despite what the Tories and the DUP might scream in protest.
Similarly, as Brit with Northern Irish family I think it would take a significant constitutional change like confederation to keep the peace in a United Ireland. Sadly I think that the symbolism of the Irish tricolour (Orange for Protestants, Green for Irish nationalism and white for peace between them) has been lost for alot of Unionists and this new state may even need a new flag
One of the roles of neutrality was to act as a buffer state, this was how neutrality worked after the Napoleonic wars. On 1789, Switzerland was invaded by the Grande Armee, and made into a French client state, despite Switzerland having one of the most efficient militaries, and geographical obstacles, it was still defeated by Napoleon, who used Switzerland as a springboard to wage war on Austria. This was the original purpose of Swiss neutrality, to work as a buffer state to protect Austria from France, this was also the reason for Dutch neutrality, it was a buffer state in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna to keep Britain, France, and German separate, when Belgium gained independence in 1830, the role of buffer state passed onto them. The world wars ended the Concert of Europe, yet some of the legacy of the Congress of Vienna still remains, particularly, the role of buffer states, it was believed in 1815 that these agreements would be honoured, but as nationalism and militarism grew to fever pitch in the twentieth century, the belief that the post-Napoleonic order would work as designed was shattered, as the sovereignty of buffer states would be violated by aggressors, this included the Warsaw Pact, which was a union of buffer states, meant to shield the USSR from NATO, however, the Soviet Union repeatedly violated the eastern bloc by invading and occupying, this is perhaps the biggest risk for neutrality, a buffer state has the biggest risk of being the next battlefield.
As a strongly pro-nato Danish citizen, I still think the end of Swedish neutrality is a huge loss.
Sweden officially supporting North Vietnam in the Vietnam War has mostly been treated as some weird meme. Still, it showed that belief in democratic values does not need to mean submission to the foreign policy of the largest democratic power.
Edit: Ok my wording might not have been the best, "submission", sounds like the Nato countries are US vassals, they are not, but in some smaller Nato countries like Denmark, there is some incentive not to criticise "our most important ally" too much, time will tell if this applies to Sweden as well.
Say what you will about Turkey. But their membership has not inhibited them from diverging radically from other members when necessary: Cyprus, Syria; you get the picture.
The only member I would say is entirely dependent on the Alliance is Iceland because they decided to leave our realm.
The French are also known to not give in to what the US wants.
To many Americans, myself included, Sweden has always had... extremely questionable positions. The Vietcong were analogous in every way that matters to North Korea. Sweden literally allied with what was basically North Korea - an autocratic, communist regime bent on wiping out the democratic South Vietnamese government. It is not very different to allying with Russia in their invasion of Ukraine today. You may see it as a meme, but many Americans don't.
Furthermore, the Swedes have long been openly critical of NATO, and have lambasted America's role as a security guarantor and hegemon - yet now they want to join? What about those decades of basically calling us evil? Frankly, I'm of the opinion we should hang them out to dry. Why should Americans be on the hook to defend a country full of people that openly think we're evil?
I have no problem with Finland though. The Finns are awesome.
@@jeffmorris5802 The US at one point and time were terrorists to the UK, and enemies of many current NATO members. I think that stopping Russia's ability to expand is more important than being upset about their cold attitude.
What good has this done for Sweden?
As an Irishman. This gave me a lot to think about. Defence has traditionally been ignored by the political establishment as a non-priority. However, things are changing in Ireland. Sinn Fein talk a lot about unity, which would require an increase in our defence capabilities. I think we need to have a serious discussion about our values, and our place in the world.
And, you're neighbors to the Eternal Anglo.
@chinchilla415 the anglosphere is a bigger threat to the Gael than any russian will ever be
The Swiss model would be much more preferable than joining NATO. The last thing we need is being further controlled by outside interests.
@IVIRnathanreilly personally I'd prefer if Ireland took the Russian model (conquering land that was historically ours but is currently held by our neighbours) but Swiss is also an improvement over our current situation
@@antadhgI think you mean liberation of occupied territories instead of conquest
Switzerland was never really neutral, there is a joke that encapsulates this perfectly: A Swiss banker does business with two countries that are at war with each other, a friend of his asks him why he does it, if whoever wins he will lose half of his business? to which the banker replies: "Doing business with both allows me to determine who wins the war, and that's my real business"
The Iron Bank of Bravos.
Until a bunch of Mossad-like agents arrives in the banker's house and the last thing he hears is "Доброго вечора ми з України!" We would donate to that org endlessly. Until ALL who worked with russians end up the same.
Please keep making content Kraut. You are the political commentator we do not deserve but absolutely need. Phenomenal content with intelligence and grace.
Fantastic video, thanks! Few comments though:
1. Moldova is also a neutral state on paper. They have ridiculously minimal defense spending and they can't join NATO due to own Constitution.
2. We can't seriously consider EU members neutral. There's mutual assistance article within EU that works similarly to NATO Article 5. There's also common foreign and defense policy.
3. With joining NATO, both Finland and Sweden can keep their foreign policy with no changes. So, it is very wrong to state that their "torch was dropped". They can still easily pursue sensitive foreign policy goals.
I agree mostly here, but on 3 I think you could say the issue is that yes they can continue to pursue sensitive foreign policy goals, but the issue is they might be perceived differently making those goals harder to pursue
@@jascu4251 Exactly. I mean would you listen to a neutral country or your enemy?
@@devrimyilmaz9044 I don't think its black and white, it just muddies the water a bit. Turkey is a NATO member and not neutral, yet was trusted by Russia in recent pow exchanges.
I think it certainly changes things to a degree, but not entirely, often things are judged on a case by case basis rather than being black and white
@@jascu4251 I'm not that sure about that. Most countries, say in Africa or Asia, may perceive all Western countries as more or less homogenous. Rich, white West. They are already in the EU. So, a check in the box. Who cares are they in NATO or not, OECD or not, OSCE or not or smth else. They never been neutral since they entered EU. Also, for people who truly know their stuff, they'd very well understand that both Sweden and Finland had secret cooperation with the US to ensure their security, while their armies long been put under NATO standards. So, what has change? Nothing, it's just a formality. Now they will be covered by Article 5, they'll pay a little to NATO HQ and their flag will wave in Brussels. Apart from that, it's the same Finland and Sweden as 5, 10 or 20 years ago.
@@aleksandrsmironovs3566 I think its somewhere in between, like I don't think its a huge factor, but it might be a factor. An example of this might be if a country plays something up for domestic political gain. A lot of these things are fluid, and not necessarily "real"
And we've also seen that with dictatorships, leaders can be irrational. I think there's a tendency to think that leaders are immune from the kind of brainworms which affect many people, but they can be just as susceptible, more so in some cases if they are isolating themselves
As an Austrian. Our people are pretty much the epitomy of "I just want to grill goddammit!" Which is frustrating.
Perun's videos are amazing! I've probably watched all of his powerpoint vids, and that's not an exaggeration..
Both Perun and Kraut's voices are pretty chill too, so sometimes I'll just listen to their videos while I'm falling asleep. Two of the best creators on this platform!!
In one of your previous videos you said neutrality means not just having no enemies but no friends, and means having to stand alone. You wouldn't expect neutral countries to be heavily militarised, with conscription and expensive militaries, but it's a necessity especially depending on your neighbours
Thank you for making me buy books about history of Turkey, I'm fascinated by the country just because of you. Hello from Russia!
Turkish buffets are the best restaurants you can get in Germany... is that why Kraut tends to be a bit stout? 😅
@@Ganglo-Saxon you know that not all Russians are pro-regime, right?
@@Ganglo-Saxon what do you mean by that?
Same! His vids made want to get a list of historical books, from Last Imperialist to the Turkish Century. Too bad I lost Enemy at the Gate because I was hooked with that one.
@@stolyartoad8640 stop, there's no point. Do you have any favorite historical books?
This channel is absolutely sensational, so strange how you can find such great content by accident, sometimes the algorithm really hits. If anyone knows of any other GeoP channels of this guy's caliber please recommend!
The Finns had to fight alone.
When they had to fight again, they joined the flipping AXIS because at least they'd fight with them.
That's how much fighting alone sucks.
That turned out to be very unfortunate for Finland.
More like Finland _joined with and supported the Nazis_
They never joined the axis. They only fought alongside then against a common enemy...
@@theemperor-wh40k18 "They were not allies. They just fought together as brothers in arms against a common enemy."
They were an honorary axis member, the only reason they joined the axis was because Russia was an existential threat.
Another long-awaited video from Kraut! You did quite well this time especially discussing the aspect of Neutrality over countries and what benefits it has really brought to the country maintaining its sovereignty.
Excellent video. I can say that taking an international politics course at university in the US really opened my eyes to the diplomatic complexities in Europe. Luckily, the Professor for the course spent a large amount of time on Finland and Sweden's contributions to long-lasting peace. Something I feel that many Americans take for granted or misunderstand.
As an American, I've never really thought about how many countries in Europe/Asia have traditionally been neutral, with the exceptions of Switzerland and Sweden. Thanks for making such a well produced, informative video!
well thats because as a american you really only have 4 countries with in 1000 miles of you that you need to give a shit about. russia, canada, mexico and cuba too a much lesser degree. Europe doesn't matter what happens there really too the average american. there are also just way fewer countries per mile in the america's then there are in europe and asia.
I don't think people fully understand just how large Yugoslav military spending was.
* They had a rail gun project running in the 80's finishing the first variant in 1985 with an energy output of 8KJ, next variant hit 10MJ [some researchers boast it hit 20MJ but that value wasn't published].
* They had an indigenous mini-submarine programme. A few classes of small to medium subs.
* They produced their own military grade munitions that was aimed to rival NATO accuracy standards. [it sounds silly till one opens books on the metallurgic insanity going into making NATO standard munitions]
* They developed their own IFV the M-80 [which is not a BMP. Shares more parts with the AMX-10P than anything else]
* They developed their own fighters and attack airplanes.
* They were developing a 4rth generation multi-role fighter with Dassault based on the Rafale. A single seat single engine variant with reduced radar cross section and a fully digital cockpit. Yes they played with the concept of stealth. Which was probably part of the reason Serbia managed to shoot down that F-117
* They developed several tanks and life extinctions to current tanks. Even if in the end they decided to buy the licence for the T-72. And even then they did like SAAB cars did to GM. Just scrapped the lot and rebuilt every single component with their own tech and higher spec. Even up-armoured the export thing with Yugoslav developed composite armours. The M-84 and it's variants is superior in every single way to the Russian T-72 and it's variants. And made over 1000 of them for themselves and then started exporting them.
* They developed their own SAMs.
* They even financed nuclear weapons program program till it was abandoned due to costs and the general vibe of other nations towards such programs. Also developed chemical and biological warfare
* Own shipbuilding production that made a navy of 90 ships.
And that's just a few of the projects they had.
The spending spree was insane. It was absolute luck that we caught Belgrade off guard. That and a few brave commanders that didn't subscribe to the bloodbaths so the wars for independence weren't even worse than they could have been.
The Netherlands video will be insane, for sure...
As a swede I was smiling through the whole video and was touched by your comment Kraut, thank you for your kind comments and understanding
Ukraine changed its constitution in 2019 and gave up its neutrality with the stated intention to join NATO, which was the reason why Russia insisted on security guarantees. As an Austrian, I can assure you that the overwhelming majority in Austria support our neutrality and oppose NATO membership some of the political parties push for. Austria is surrounded by NATO members, so our membership would be pointless.
Well you know, Austria is the land where Adolf Hitler was born, and most Austrians fought on the side of the Nazis during World War II, so much for Austrian Neutrality, and being neutral about the latest Fuhrer, Vladimir Putin, doesn't help! He's even got his own swastika, the letter "Z". So how many people are walking around with red armbands with a black 'Z' in a white circle. Do we call these the Z-Nazis? Vladimir Putin is a Z-Nazi and so are all the people who support him!
Which was done after the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2014.
@@philipmaltz4137 And why did Russia intervene in 2014 ?
@@Mastakilla91Why would Russia intervene on a sovereign country's popularly elected and mandated will on the first place?
@@Mastakilla91 Because they felt like it.
Thank you so much for this video. As an American so many of us are uneducated on how European politics work and I think it’s wonderful that you help us understand what is actually going on from across the pond. Much love ❤
I bet you won't do any further research beyond this video and a few poorly-written articles on the first page of Google.
@@justjoe4390 That's still better than 90% of Americans of both politcal leanings
@@justjoe4390 there’s only so much research you can do and Americans do not have the time to become experts on European politics when there are better ways to spend our time. Watching a video essay and reading a few “poorly written” articles will have to do.
European politics are no different than anywhere else.
Protect your intrests as efficient as possible if necessary undermine intrests of others in order to secure yours.
Make friends if it benefits you intrests or make enemies if it does.
Or better said, states have neither friends nor foes only intrests and they care about it.
Since the dawn of humanity.
As a dumb millennial American, I honestly don’t know why America isn’t more interested in Europe than it is. I think maybe it’s since the Cold War ended and we “won,” we’ve been getting fat and sassy and have relished having our weirdo half-cousins in Europe just staying over there next to yucky Russia and China. I think more everyday Americans are starting to face the dreaded fact that the world is more tightly knitted together than we wanted to think, and globalization doesn’t mean “everything shifts the American direction and conforms to the US dollar, which is of course the best” but means whatever bad happens to one section of the globe affects everyone else. GLOBALization. This is making us more nervous when Russia starts throwing its weight around-not because we can directly see what’s happening, but because it’s directly impacting us here.
It’s shameful how stuck-up this is, but I think seeing our gas prices go up a couple bucks and not always having our beloved Poptarts in stock due to wheat shortages is forcing us common Americans to take global politics more seriously-especially those of us who didn’t see the Cold War. This isn’t just something we should tune out and leave to the politicians to deal with because we’re too busy grieving the American dream and hating most of the recent Marvel movies. We need to pay attention.
It's quite interesting that Turkey, despite being a member of the organization that Russia considers a threat to its existence, has managed to stay mostly neutral in the Ukraine war, enjoying good relations with both Ukraine and Russia and even becoming the main mediator in the whole conflict. Meanwhile Austria, despite claiming to be neutral has indirectly sent weapons to Ukraine through the EU and by being a member of the EU Common Defense Police, which though not being a proper military alliance like NATO, would mean that in the event of an attack to an EU member, they would be forced to take a side and formally assist said member. My point is that concepts such as "neutrality" or "ally" sometimes exist in name only and don't correspond to the realities in the field. And said realities can quickly change depending on whoever is in power in said country.
Did you forget about Bayraktar? Austrians never sent any weapons only financial and medical aid. As an austrian btw i think we should help more. It is increadibly cowardly to use nato neighbors as a shield against russia, austrians have lost any backbone, its really just sad.
@@captainalex157 No, I did not forget about the Bayraktar drones. Those drones were an acquisition by Ukraine from a private Turkish company, the Turkish government had nothing to do with that transaction. Besides, Turkey has been playing a pivotal role in helping Russia evade the sanctions and has provided Russian oligarchs with a place to hide their money and yachts. Erdogan is playing both sides, and quite successfully if I may add.
If you re-read my comment you will see that I never said that Austria directly sent weapons to Ukraine. But the EU has sent weapons to Ukraine using the common budget which all member states, including Austria, contribute to. So in a sense, Austria is indirectly paying for Ukrainian weapons through the EU.
@@markdowding5737 thanks for correcting me on the bayraktars. i understood your comment, but i still think there is a big difference between sending weapons directly or indirectly. anyway id like austria to send over a bunch load of AUGs and more, but we like always rely on our neighbors to keep us safe, its just pathetic imo.
@@captainalex157 I believe all EU countries should have a common military and defense policy, especially. against foreign threats like Russia. The problem with Austria is that they have a "Declaration of Neutrality" inscribed in their constitution, so it is not fully possible to fully join a side of conflict while claiming to be neutral (though it might be more a matter of preserving appearances than the reality of the situation). I think for Austria to adopt a more direct posture in the war they would have to remove the neutrality part of their constitution, but from what I could gather (Professor and RUclipsr James Ker-Lindsay made a very good video on the matter) Austrians don't seem to want the change on the neutral status of their country.
@@markdowding5737 Yes most austrians are content with being safe in a nato bubble, which is just cowardly behaviour, there is no real threat to austria, so most austrians dont care. But to be fair i think most people in the world think like that.
Love Ukraine from Kazakhstan 🇰🇿
I image alot of Kazakhstans are cheering Ukrainians are facing Russia imperialism.
@@starmaker75 Russian state tv and pundits openly discuss invading Kazakhstan
props for using your platform to promote civil engagement!