Sweden and Finland set to join NATO in May

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

One thing that does confuse me about this last-minute Turkish objection is: Why did not the USA and other key NATO countries do private discussions with all NATO members to get their support ahead of time before giving Sweden and Finland the green light to start their application process domestically?

Now Sweden and Finland are committed domestically to NATO it is a lot easier for Turkey to get their pound of flesh than if there were private discussions ahead of time to get Turkey to back this.  This entire affair seems like a very bad diplomatic strategy on the part of the USA.

Except Turkey is in a worse position now, Finland and Sweden have gotten security guarantees from USA, UK and several other countries. It means that Finland and Sweden can just outwait Erdogan, and Erdogan will find that his negotiation position is worse right now.

jaichind, who uses "libertarian" as its own antonym, tends to assume that brutal strongmen are megabrained 69-degree-chess grandmasters and liberal-democratic leaders are feckless oafs until proven otherwise.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'll reiterate that Turkey should be kicked out of NATO. In the 21st century (and especially with Erdogan as leader), they serve no purpose being a NATO member.

Turkey was actually contributing pretty significantly to international support for Ukraine until quite recently, although much of that may just have been its traditional enmity with Russia.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Any guesses on who will vote against the accession treaty in the US? Paul and Lee feel like automatics given they voted against Montenegro. Does anyone join them?

The usual suspects: MTG, Gosar, Tlaib, Omar, among a few others. Just the worst members of congress from both parties.

House doesn't vote on treaties.

Is this being done with the formal constitutional treaty method? That is so rarely used.

I believe for NATO accession it has to be.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Let's be honest, Finland and Sweden was already all but NATO in name to begin with. This is just a formality. Marin is just as much a puppet for Brussels and Washington as her predecessors were.

That isn't an even remotely accurate understanding of the history of Finnish foreign policy but go off I guess.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I have to imagine this'll help Marin's coalition in the election tomorrow as well given how popular NATO currently is in Finland?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So what does Erdogan's re-election victory mean for Sweden's prospects of finally joining NATO?

Slight improvement since he doesn't have to throw out as much national-populist red meat for a while. We'll see how slight "slight" is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1750137900165926977

Demand nothing concrete, get nothing concrete. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Has Hungary done it yet, finally?

Scheduled it for Monday the 26th, supposedly.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Hopefully Moldova and Ukraine are next.

I doubt that Putin's pals (Erdogan and Orban) will ever allow that.

I think this is a fairer characterization of Orban than of Erdogan. The Turkish position is traditionally anti-Russian and Turkey's current interests generally benefit from Russia being frozen out of Europe. Erdogan is a bad-faith wrecker within NATO, but it's for other reasons.