Posted on 05/19/2022 4:33:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the Cold War wound down in the early 1990s and the threat from the Soviet Union receded, the reason why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created disappeared. But bureaucracies die hard, and bureaucratic and political inertia are often hard to overcome. An alliance established to contain the Soviet Union needed a new purpose, and like other going concerns and political organisms, NATO would either expand or die. So it expanded.
And it began to expand at the same time that the United States was urging Russia to join the West in a "partnership for peace," and to peacefully accept the unification of Germany despite Russians' memories of two savage world wars fought against the Germans. Secretary of state James Baker told Russia's leaders that NATO would not expand "one inch" closer to Russia. Yet, just a few years later, President Bill Clinton began the process of expanding NATO to the east, and in 1999, despite prescient warnings from Russia expert George Kennan, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became NATO members.
It didn't stop there. In 2004, NATO, like an insatiable organism, admitted Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Cold War was long over, and we were fighting a global war on terror with Russian support — so why was NATO expanding? Why was it in the vital national security interest of the United States to go to war to protect those new members?
It didn't stop there. In 2004, NATO, like an insatiable organism, admitted Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Cold War was long over, and we were fighting a global war on terror with Russian support — so why was NATO expanding?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yes, there is no need for NATO.
At some point, you need to wean the kids from the teat.
bump
WION, Gravitas Plus: Did NATO push Ukraine into war?
“Ukraine conflict has been ‘westsplained’ enough. On Gravitas Plus, Palki Sharma tells you how Western arrogance & NATO’s expansionism are also to blame, how their actions precipitated the crisis in Ukraine.”
Gorbachev himself was asked about this. He said no such guarantees had been even sought by Russia let alone agreed by America.
He also explained, the assurances were to not expand NATO to the border of the USSR through East Germany. And were based on the assumption that the USSR was here to stay.
Well, East Germany doesn’t exist as a Soviet territory, the Iron Curtain did fall, the Russian government agreed that former USSR states were now independent and had the right of self-determination, and by 2002 NATO was far more focused on North Korea and Islamism as the emergent threats to world peace, than Russia.
If NATO expansion had anything to do with Russophobia one does wonder... Where were all the oligarchs moving to? NATO countries. Where fid they send their kids to school? NATO countries. Where did they invest? NATO countries.
Putin was convinced that the dissolution of the USSR was the worst calamity in Russian history BECAUSE NATO and the EU weren’t so much presenting threats to Russia as, presenting such a massive opportunity that ongoing Russian partnership was starting to look less relevant.
It was the cultural invasion eroding his power that outraged him. Not a military threat. Hence why he thinks Europeanisation is synonymous with Nazism.
A damn fine question, though also a pertinent observation. It parallels the European dream of "unification" in which a leadership class arises to rule over, as they like to say, "member states." And then, the diktats begin to follow from on high. With all the marketing and posturing as so many historical lessons have already shown. Then, "it is futile to resist...."
Recently released audio tapes show that verbal assurances were given to Russia.
But even written agreements wouldn’t matter given the U.S. has broken written treaties before, and given that NATO is a rogue organization that is defensive but yet illegally went offensive against Libya when no NATO members were threatened and did this for Odumba who said the U.S. would “lead from behind.”
But Odumba supporters here at FR don’t care as NATO can do no wrong to them, they want more warmongering, more federal debt, care about Ukraine’s borders, are America Last, and know that the war in Ukraine is a shiny object for Biden to take attention off of his abysmal failures at home, but they support Biden too, obviously.
FR has been overrun by Biden/Obama/MIC/DeepState/NATO bots.
“As the Cold War wound down in the early 1990s and the threat from the Soviet Union receded, the reason why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created disappeared.”
No it didn’t. Nothing changed in RUSSIAN military doctrine toward western Europe or in its nuclear arms targeting. And then under Putin Russia began breaking nuclear accords it had with the U.S., updating and moderninizing its nuclear arsenal against the nuclear treaty provisions. This was repeatedly noted in the United States Senate from WJClinton’s time on.
The west thought the cold war ended. Putin did not.
It is a lie, and the error of the whole premise of the article, that Russian attitudes toward the west changed when the Soviet Union ended. They didn’t.
“But even written agreements wouldn’t matter given”
... Russia has very literally torn up every single verbal and written assurance it’s ever made in the context of recognizing, respecting and even protecting the sovereign rights of former Soviet states between 1991 and February 2022.
Including its undertakings at the UN, when signing the charter of founding principles.
And, the Budapest Memorandum.”
There, fixed it for you.
How about the firm assurances in January 2022 to the entire international community that Russia would not invade or make war on Ukraine? (Hence “this is not a war, it’s a Special Military Operation, lol”.)
NATO expansion only violates the letter of the Soviet era assurances if you believe that the promises remained relevant after the dismantling of the USSR and after Russia had already accepted UN recognition of multiple former SSRs as sovereign member states in the UN general assembly.
“We shouldn’t have done that” is Putin’s view. Our response to him should be, “Toughshitski, Comrade. Russia did, there’s no pretending otherwise, and that’s why you invited international condemnation with your unprovoked invasion, and that’s also why your protests against NATO expansion are bullshit. If you want to play that game, your seat at the UN Security Council actually belongs to Ukraine because both Russia and Ukraine had equal right to it - but they respect the un Charter and you do not.”
Had I been in the Duma, post 1990, I’m pretty sure my attitudes would have been influenced by the actions of the US in Iraq and many many other places around the world.
“Had I been in the Duma, post 1990, I’m pretty sure my attitudes would have been influenced by the actions of the US in Iraq”
You would only think that way, because of those things, if even without those things you thought as Russia as an adversary of the U.S. to begin with. That is a point of view that some Russians, like Gary Kasparov, did not and does not agree with.
It’s simple, really. Post WWII Japan accepted that its empire had come to an end, and moved on. Post Soviet Union some Russians, like Putin, could not and cannot accept the end of the Russian empire.
Agree.
Also, Gulf War 1 intervention was not only requested by the invaded country, it was entirely consistent with UN founding principles.
What muddied the water is America stopped at kicking Saddam’s forces back into Russia instead of going for regime change. Which again is consistent with international law and demonstrailted restraint.
Regimes that thought America was wrong to do Gulf War One can’t really be taking the UN founding principles very seriously. How else do they think the international community should stop a rogue dictator launching an aggressive military invasion against a state that’s not its enemy? Harsh language?
Sorry, i came over all Dubya there, confusing Saddam’s Iraq with Putin’s Russia.
To be fair, they do kinda act the same.
“What muddied the water is America stopped at kicking Saddam’s forces back into Russia instead of going for regime change.”
I get the “international law” point.
However, failure to go all the way to Baghdad in 1991 and not deposing Saddam’s government had many negative results.
Saddam’s forces were laregly Shia Muslims with mostly Sunni Muslim commanders. In Kuwait and the desert of Saudi Arabia they were surrendering in droves and in Iraq asking us to go take out Saddam.
Instead:
1. For the next ten years the stupid sanctions program leaked like a sieve and was used by Saddam to enrich his regime at the expense of his people with the international community getting the blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people.
2. The international WMD inspection regime could never get to definitive answers because (a) Saddam broke down all the WMD activity into divided segments spread out across every possible industrial and academic venue in the country and usually subsumed in possible “dual use” applications, and (b) his away anything that could be hid away and (c) stifled the inspectors work at every step in every way. His whole method was to keep the inpsection process from getting final definitive answers until after the sanctions could get lifted, afterwhich he was going to reconnnect and reeconstitute the WMD developments to fruition.
3. The Shia thought the Gulf War I was going to get rid of Saddam for them. They had been ready to join the Kurds against Saddam in 1991. Instead they became fodder for the agenda of the Mullahs of Tehran, and for ten years Iran became more and more embeded with the Shia and radicalizing them, and building them up, just waiting for whenever the occasion to depose Saddam would arrive. By 2003 they had become as great a military force we had to contend with in as Saddam’s formal military, and they sparked the Sunni-Shia civil war founght along side and among our attempts to quell all the militias after there was no more formal Saddan-Iraqi military. Failure to get rid of Saddam was a ten year gift to the Mullahs of Tehran to one day “rescue” the Shia of Iraq that the U.S. had turned its back on. THAT is why EVERYTHING in 2003 was ten times harder and longer than it would have been in 1991.
4. And Iraq is still hobbled internally because of all the inroads the Mullahs of Tehran built among them from 1991 to 2003. We, not Iran, had the advantage in 1991, because as much as the Mullahs of Tehran use the “religious” card with the Shia of Iraq, the Shia of Iraq are not Persian and they fought with Saddam against Iran for nearly eight years, from 1980 to 1988.
We should have removed Saddam in 1991 and saved the world and Iraq from ten more years of Saddam’s reign, Not doing so was worse for all concerned in the long run.
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