@zeh

So NATO membership of say, Estonia, does not reduce the risk of Estonian people being invaded?

The most likely country to attack Estonian people is Russia, and surely the risk of Russia attacking Estonian people is lower if they are members of NATO?

@zeh

We do not yet live in an ideal world where we can ignore the harsh realities of some countries being threatened by others.

For many of us in countries neighbouring Russia the best option to protect ourselves from aggression is membership in NATO.

Hopefully Russia will transform to something that no longer poses a threat to its neighbours, and then NATO can be dismantled. But before that happens, we cannot rely on Russia not attacking us if we are not protected by the NATO.

@zeh

It is not a framework but a reality. States exist and they go to war with each other. If a state is a member of NATO, other countries are less likely to go to war with it.

We can try to reduce nationalism, etc. (which is a goal I agree with), but we cannot just deny the reality that NATO provides protection for many countries from Russian aggression.

You might not care, but people living in those countries do.

Somehow many otherwise reasonable people have concluded that eastern european countries that joined NATO to protect themselves from Russian invasion are (at least to some extent) to blame for Russia invading an eastern european country that did not join NATO.

If anything, war in Ukraine proves the opposite - that had they not joined NATO, they would have risked being attacked by Russia.

Talked with a friend who had worked at OP consumer coop (largest bank in Finland).

He told me that they set up fund that allows members to invest in publicly listed Finnish companies with a small market cap.

The fund had to be closed because so many members were investing in it that they would have had to effectively buy all the shares of all small public companies.

So we had a situation where all small publicly listed corporations were almost "mutualised" under coop ownership.