And he tore down the wall! Hello, anybody in there? You obviously missed a decade. When Reagan’s policies defeated the Soviets, the Warsaw Pact folded and we HAD peace! We had peace on the agreed terms between Gorbachev and Baker, “not one inch east of a reunited Germany”. NATO is now one inch from the Russian motherland, a days tank ride from Moscow. Don’t give me any crap about somebody said Baker didn’t agree to that either. You can read the NATO leadership’s own words below. Other than in yours and Hillary’s Russia, Russia, Russia fantasies when did Russia ever attack us or NATO? Where in the NATO Charter is any of this sanctioned? Read my tagline. With a lot of work that is an attainable goal for you.
Show us that treaty.
There was absolutely ZERO trust between the US and Russia back then, and the idea that the Soviet Union would accept some verbal statement as a defacto treaty is absolutely ridiculous, and a desperate grasp at imaginary straws. There were no such guarantees, and both the Soviet Foreign Minister and President Gorbachev confirm that fact.
When President George H.W. Bush sat down with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to negotiate the peaceful end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, former Under Secretary of State Robert Zoellick ’81 was in the room where it happened.During the 1990 summit, Zoellick says President Gorbachev accepted the idea of German unification within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, based on the principle that every country should freely choose its own alliances.
“I was in those meetings, and Gorbachev has [also] said there was no promise not to enlarge NATO,” Zoellick recalls. Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, later president of Georgia, concurred, he says. Nor does the treaty on Germany’s unification include a limit on NATO enlargement. Those facts have undermined one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine — that the United States had agreed that former Warsaw Pact nations would never become part of the North Atlantic security alliance.
‘There was no promise not to enlarge NATO’
“The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years." - Mikhail Gorbachev
So, it's not in the treaty, and both US and Russian negotiators say it wasn't negotiated. The US, Germany and Russia signed an agreement that allowed Germany to reunify as a member of NATO, but no NATO troops would be stationed in the territory of the former East Germany, period. The "not one inch east" applied to East Germany, and NATO has obeyed that treaty.
From our perspective in Central and Eastern Europe there isn’t much difference between Russian Communism and Russian Fascism (Putin’s regime). Russia still wants to enslave its neighbors. We want to belong to the West. We don’t want to belong to the so-called Russian world (which we in Central Europe have never belonged to except for about 40 years after WWII), full of poverty and despotism.
Why do Central- and Eastern European countries want to be or become NATO members? Because Russia threatens us. If Russia left us alone, it would be different. Russia pushed us into NATO, not the “evil” US.
The fall of Communism in Russia was only formal. There was no de-communization. The Russians still celebrate their Commie criminals: Lenin, Stalin and others. They still fly Commie Flags.