Posted on 06/12/2022 11:03:00 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Just so we can get this pinned down... This is Russia’s line of thinking.
1. The USA is morally obliged to remove NATO protection in all nations east of what used to be called East Germany... Because Baker once said something to a commie in the late 80s.
2. The USA has a unilateral ability to just throw countries out of NATO even though Russia knows NATO accession requires the unanimous consent from existing NATO members.
3. Because of (1) USA should do (2) even though (2) makes it impossible to ever guarantee that Ukraine could, let alone would, join NATO.
4. Russia is not bound by any internationally ratified, binding and eternal agreement. This includes the UN founding principles on respecting the borders of sovereign nations and not committing genocide.
5. Any deal that’s been more recently signed by Putin himself, or his own government, is valid only as long as Russia chooses to abide by it. (Like the one about not interfering with the free and fair trade of food supplies - by its own agreement Russia shouldn’t be blockading or stealing Ukraine’s grain).
5. Putin can revoke any agreement at any time for any reason and we mustn’t “poke the bear”. By contrast, POTUS and Zelenskyy cannot do this if it’d offend Russia.
Have I got it right? Only, that reads to me as, Ukraine and America must accept that they both need to be equally subservient to Putin.
Quick. More Ukraine flag on twitter.
“The Ukraine is weak, it’s feeble, I think it’s time to put the hurt on The Ukraine!”
James Baker - you know, the Secretary of State - was low ranking? At least you admit the assurances were given. As for your faux-legal casuistry that follows, why of course it was understood that the assurances were given with the understanding that they would only last as long as the USSR continued./sarc/ The point of the negotiations on the Warsaw Pact/Russian side was to determine the behavior of the West toward the new states that would come into being AFTER the imminent dissolution of the USSR. BTW, oral agreements are “formal” agreements and are enforced in the US and other countries. In international relations, probably most agreements are made as mutual oral assurances. In any event, the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet states relied on assurances that the West gave. Certainly, in international affairs countries can’t enforce agreements as citizens would in a domestic dispute, so countries forbear or resort to other means when agreements they have entered into have been breached. Our dishonoring our word is bad enough, but carrying out a coup against a democratically elected Ukrainian government to further the geopolitical fantasies of our Neocons was vicious. The Obama administration’s coup brought neonazis into significant participation in the Ukrainian government and caused an 8 year war by the coup government against civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk. There’s much more, but while indulging a troll is sometimes amusing, you don’t know enough to be entertaining. BTW, don’t forget to get your booster or to wear your mask at the keyboard and outside.
Good grief, if you read more, you’d know that it has been written about, even before all this happened. I haven’t heard a word from you about the coup, the neonazis, and the slaughter of innocents by the coup government in Donbass. So, should I surmise you are an Obama/Biden/Soros lover and warmonger? Troll.
“Apologist” doesn’t mean what you think it means, which is illustrative of the problem you and the small society of trolls present here. You know very little and don’t want to know much. Moreover, you claim to be conservative, but your posts read like the drivel produced by the Biden administration and the MSM. You were probably taken in by the Covid hoax. Be sure to keep your boosters up to date and double mask-up while you are at your keyboard.
“ Our money was supposed to be wasted on bullets…”
No, actually our money was supposed to be wasted by laundering it into American ruling class politician-family accounts.
What a clueless post.
Pathetic attempts at ad hominem.
When did NATO or the U.S. Break the “agreement” you tout?
“James Baker - you know, the Secretary of State - was low ranking?”
Ye gods, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? Did they not teach you basic civics at your school? YES. In the context of making verbal assurances that were later overriden by far more, far more SENIOR people, yes he was way down in the pecking order.
Under modern international AND American law, an agreement between the USA and another country is only legally binding if all these things apply:
1. its content explicitly makes it binding - e.g. by describing it in terms like pact, treaty, convention, accord, memorandum of understanding
2. it has an executive sign-off by POTUS, or a ratification with the “advice and consent” of the Senate.
3. it is formally entered into the public record as a referenceable treaty/accord/memorandum/convention, versioned and dated.
Did all those things happen with Baker’s assurance? No.
Did all those things haoppen with the Treaty on the Final Settlement? YES.
What does the Final Settlement include?
“The treaty allows Germany to make and belong to alliances, without any foreign influence in its politics.”
Did Russia, the USA, France and the UK sign it? YES.
Did both the BRD and DDR also sign it? YES.
Did Baker say it? Who bloody cares, six different countries’ leaders signed it.
Does that final settlement agreement override the earlier Baker assurances? ABSOLUTELY.
If the collapse of the Soviet Union had worried Russia, the fix would’ve been simple; Yeltsin and Bush could’ve sat round the table and drafted a newer, updated treaty/memorandum etc. to take the new realities into account. They didn’t. So, by the time both Presidencies changed hands, Baker’s nonbinding agreement wasn’t just long dead, it was long buried.
Here’s some light reading to help you understand it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany - Yes.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
By the way - just to pick a few more holes in it:
“neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place”
Issue 1: Binding agreements tend to contain assurances or commitments related to DEFINED actions and DEFINED circumstances. There’s neither of those in here. Since you seem to be struggling with the basics - In plain English, Baker said “Us two guys don’t intend America to benefit any more than the Soviet Union will, from whatever unspecified stuff might happen”. That might be binding to someone like Jeb Clampett, but it’s not an enforceable contract on the international stage.
When an agent represents an institution, company or country, it is customary to use the third person, or the name of the organisation. Not the first person, which is predominately used to express opinions.
Issue 2: Because it’s so open-ended it’s got more loopholes than a chicken wire fence. The biggest one being, the minute the Soviet Union broke up there was no way for the Soviet Union to enforce any expectation on the USA because the Soviet Union no longer existed. Tell you what: how about you buy a chunk of a business that’s being broken up, change its name, change the people running it, and then tell me this: are ALL supplier’s contracts with OldCorp still just as enforceable as if it hadn’t been broken up? Yes or no?
Issue 3: If a diplomat wants their statements to be legally binding and enforceable even for a short term period, they can’t prevent it from being scrutinised by lawyers.
“So what we tried to do was to take account of your concerns expressed to me and others, and we did it in the following ways: by our joint declaration on non-aggression; in our invitation to you to come to NATO; in our agreement to open NATO to regular diplomatic contact with your government and those of the Eastern European countries; and our offer on assurances on the future size of the armed forces of a united Germany – an issue I know you discussed with Helmut Kohl. We also fundamentally changed our military approach on conventional and nuclear forces. We conveyed the idea of an expanded, stronger CSCE with new institutions in which the USSR can share and be part of the new Europe.”
Issue 4: All these things were delivered on. Future size of the NATO force IN A UNITED GERMANY remains limited even to this day - check. Non-aggression - America and NATO have not attacked Russia since the Berlin Wall fell. So, again, check. Greater role in Europe? Yes, they got on the Council of Europe, and into Eurovision, and into European tournaments. So, check.
No wonder even Gorbachev said, everything that was expected of America was delivered. There is nothing in the agreement following Baker’s conversations that wasn’t signed, sealed AND delivered.
“Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO. Instead, the dissolution of the USSR was brought about by Russians (Boris Yeltsin and his leading advisory Gennady Burbulis) in concert with the former party bosses of the Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, in December 1991. The Cold War was long over by then. The Americans had tried to keep the Soviet Union together (see the Bush “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1, 1991).”
Issue 5: It was the RUSSIANS, not the Americans or NATO, who broke the Soviet Union apart. Russia didn’t “lose” the Cold War. Ukraine, and the Warsaw Pact countries, were willingly freed from the Soviet Union by Russia, and alonside Russia they were recognised at the UN. Russia even signed off their recognition!
Putin’s invasions of Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine are all based on the fact that he thinks Russia has a divine right to their territories. But he is utterly, utterly wrong. Russia didn’t “lose” ALL past, present and future legal jurisdiction over their territories, IT GAVE THAT JURISDICTION AWAY.
And because it did that, the conditions you talk about, vis-a-vis Baker, are UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.
The Secretary of State is low ranking? You mean the guy who is 4th in line to succeed to the Presidency and the President’s chief foreign officer? Don’t be ridiculous. You obviously don’t understand that relatively little of what is agreed between countries involves treaties. Even if there is a treaty, what is this “legally binding” nonsense? Nothing internationally is legal binding in the same way that domestic contracts are because there is no way short of some form of nation state force to enforce international agreements. My point is that 1. the US government got the Constituent states of the Soviet Union to agree to dismantle the Soviet Union in a particular way because they relied on our promise, 2. breaking our promise was dishonorable, although the promise is no more “enforceable” than other international agreements, and 3. breaking the promise was very bad foreign policy from a realpolitik standpoint. Leaving aside things agreed in the 90s, the US/NATO/Soros 2014 coup was also both morally reprehensible and foolish from a realpolitik perspective. The Ukrainians have been used like pawns by the West, and the genius Biden administration inspired sanctions are bankrupting Europe, profoundly harming the global south, causing shortages of fertilizer and other commodities here, driving Russia closer to China, and driving the Ruble to new highs and enriching Russia. Our adventure in the Ukraine is also likely to end the status of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. See if you can figure out what that means.
Other than these things, we are in total agreement. /sarc/
98-99 and 2004. Again attempted in 2008 with Georgia (thwarted by Russia, which militarily restored the status quo ante and then got out), and, of course, attempted again after the 2014 coup. Kennan talked about the consequences of the first tranche of NATO expansion in his interview with Thomas Friedman of the NYT (1998?), and Mearsheimer talks about all of it up to 2015 (the date of his talk). I sent you those links. But, as I’ve written elsewhere, all forms of international agreements - formal treaties, memoranda of agreement, oral agreements, etc. - are not enforceable like domestic contracts. The parties adhere to them as long as it suits their perceived interest, and there is no “enforcement” short of some type of nation state force. Still, reneging as we did was dishonorable, but the US/NATO/Soros 2014 coup against a democratically elected government was both dishonorable and lit the fuse that resulted in what we have today. From a realpolitik point of view, the Obama/Biden/NATO policy has wrecked Ukraine, is impoverishing Europe, threatens famine in the global south, is risking WW III, is causing shortages of commodities such as fertilizer here, is threatening the demise of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency (that is hugely important), and is driving the Russians into the arms of China.
1998 and 2004.
What year is it now?
“If the Russians win this thing they might compel the Ukes to expose a lot of the Biden corruption.
As long as the Ukes are still fighting the Biden corruption can remain under wraps.”
If I had to make book on this, that is exactly why Biden is so keen on helping Ukraine.
“If the Russians win this thing they might compel the Ukes to expose a lot of the Biden corruption.
As long as the Ukes are still fighting the Biden corruption can remain under wraps.”
If I had to make book on this, that is exactly why Biden is so keen on helping Ukraine.
“From a realpolitik point of view, the Obama/Biden/NATO policy has wrecked Ukraine, is impoverishing Europe, threatens famine in the global south, is risking WW III, is causing shortages of commodities such as fertilizer here, is threatening the demise of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency (that is hugely important), and is driving the Russians into the arms of China.”
That I can agree with, but that’s about where things go next from YOUR ridiculously short term perspective.
My perspective is longer term and it also needs to consider ALL OUR (Britain’s and Europe’s as well as America’s) security, not just keeping Russia sweet.
Good luck getting your fuel prices down and your broadband routers free of spyware in the firmware when China and Russia share complete control over the Eurasian fuel market, the Middle East partners more with Russia and less with America, and democracies in Asia have two superpowers controlling the rare earth metal supply and processing.
THAT is Russia’s endgame. Half of it’s to restore their empire and the other half is to put the West in the begging corner.
Fighting on in Ukraine, to prevent the Donbas corridor, prevents Russia from ever having as much leverage as China. Caving in and letting them have Ukraine gives them the leverage they need. Letting them hit even more countries simply guarantees a doubling of the threat level currently set by China.
You act as if the unsurmountable weight of televised interviews with Dugin/Zhirinovsky/Putin, editorials written by their own hands, and their military actions following plans discussed years if not decades ago doesn’t prove that Russia has any agency OR ambition or ideology behind what it’s doing.
It patently does have far bigger fish to fry than cleaning up azov nazis and a miniscule risk of Ukraine avoiding the preplanned annexation by being in NATO.
Both of which are massively important to egocentric Americans, but are mere propaganda instruments to Putin.
“If not countered, the results will be catastrophic for America.”
How? You never said how? You just made some dumb statements then concluded it would be bad for us. So far, we are out $40 billion and I am sure much more.
“I’m an American I guess you’re a Russian or a Communist Chinese.”
You seem to be supporting only the Ukraine.
“Russia has lined up a lot of long range artillery “
Anywhere near the US? No? Then why your fake concern for the US?
“Another Putin Puffer exposed.”
As opposed to you Zelenski puffers? You are supporting money laundering democrats and child molesters.
“So I’m identifying the support of Russia and its aggression for exactly what it is - the support of the murder of innocents, which is the work of Satan and all his forces of darkness.”
So, you would support giving Hawaii back since we took at the force of a gun.
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