Posted on 02/10/2024 4:09:02 PM PST by hardspunned
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nsarchive.gwu.edu ...
So being a dishonest person is ok in your book?
“...we shouldn’t be surprised that the Russians finally said no”
The Neocons, I guess, need to learn the HARD WAY that NO means NO with Russia. But heck, if their ‘Russia project’ finally results in them being expelled from power, then, perhaps, the war was worth it.
Bravo!
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche -
I don’t know what you’re trying to say. We lied to a bunch of bloodthirsty, lying totalitarians to get them to disappear. Fantastic! They’re pi$$ed about being had. That’s all I’m saying.
You might want to educate yourself about the Soviets and the situation we found ourselves in vis a vis the Warsaw Pact in 1990. You wouldn’t have told a fib to Hitler either I assume. Get real.
Who is right now spending who’s grandchildren’s borrowed money to arm that border and fight the generational, multi trillion dollar Cold War II arms race your globohomo/neocon DC heroes have blundered us into?
Gorbachev denied there was any such promise.
Once the Warsaw Pact had collapsed, continuing to lie and deceive them is a hostile act.
By the logic you just stated, the NeoCons hate Putin so attempting to deceive him on NATO intentions in Ukraine is OK ?
I want Canada out of NATO right now. And anyone with any sense should want the same for their countries.
If it is only the Baltics + Poland USA and UK doing this stupidity, they are going to be a lot more circumspect if they don’t have 25 other countries to drag into it.
There is a whole other side of this - post Gorbachev... which was, functionally every day since then: PUTIN.
As states broke away from the former Soviet Union/Russian Federation... Putin got nervous and decided military takeover was the answer - Georgia, Belarus, Chechnya (this latter one really puzzles me how they could so align with Putin now, after Putin destroyed them).
Oh - and even Ukraine - Putin continued to meddle and shuffle the deck - with puppet politicians bolstered by him (mostly clandestine... a lot like the CIA) - and even totally corrupting multiple elections in Ukraine trying to get them to “fall in line”. The CIA stepped in and created in Ukraine a tug-of-war. Remember how Putin/Russia promised to preserve and protect Ukraine’s borders if Ukraine gave up all those nukes? Yeah -
We didn’t lie. Gorbachev himself there was never any such promise.
It’s equivalent to having Russian missiles in Mexico and Canada.
Attacking Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine are also hostile acts. There's a big reason why so many Eastern European countries want to join NATO...the Muscovites are aggressive and can't be trusted.
“Putin’s strategic genius is simply amazing!”
The cool thing about the Neocons handing Donbass, Crimea, and likely much more, to Russia is that Russia also gets all of the GOODIES that, I guess, the Neocons don’t want...like cheap energy, excellent crop yields, etc., along with 10 million or so new Russians.
Thus, the Neocon’s strategic genius is simply amazing!
Let the neighbours of Georgia, Chechnya intervene if they think it is so important.
No-one in Brazil or Argentina thinks they have to defend the borders of Donbass.
Why does North America ?
Yet it was Russians from the Wagner Group and not NATO that marched their tanks on Moscow last year due to Putin’s colonialist war of choice. Putting your thinking cap on and riddle that one out.
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