DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Global Collapse
HTML https://globalcollapse.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: General Discussion
*****************************************************
#Post#: 3105--------------------------------------------------
Knarf's Knewz ( Who is the eviler empire? )
By: Blade of Grass Date: March 17, 2022, 8:22 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine
Tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the
decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy
blunder of epic proportions.
NATO Expansion — The Trigger for Russia’s Attack on Ukraine? –
Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of
aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between
NATO and Moscow even more dangerous. The West’s new cold war
with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary
responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant,
tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past
quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well.
Analysts committed to a U.S. foreign policy of realism and
restraint have warned for more than a
quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most
powerful military alliance in history toward another major power
would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive
confirmation that it did not.
Thinking Through the Ukraine Crisis — the Causes
“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand NATO eastward
without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even
the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders
of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions
would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian
Federation itself.” Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars
(p. 45). I wrote those words in 1994, at a time when expansion
proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign
policy seminars in New York City and Washington, D.C. I added
that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of
Russia.”
What was not publicly known at the time was that Bill Clinton’s
administration had already made the fateful decision the
previous year to push for including some former Warsaw Pact
countries in NATO. The administration would soon propose
inviting Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to become
members, and the U.S. Senate approved adding those countries to
the North Atlantic Treaty in 1998. It would be the first of
several waves of membership expansion.
Even that first stage provoked Russian opposition and anger. In
her memoir, Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright,
concedes that “[Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and his
countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a
strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s
dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.” Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott similarly described the
Russian attitude. “Many Russians see NATO as a vestige of the
cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point
out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military
alliance, and ask why the West should not do the same.” It was
an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration
nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.
George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment
policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998
New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of
NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion. ”I think it
is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the
Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect
their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no
reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody
else.”
He was right, but U.S. and NATO leaders proceeded with new
rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding
the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been
part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of
Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion
now had NATO perched on the border of the Russian Federation.
Moscow’s patience with NATO’s ever more intrusive behavior was
wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia
that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when
Putin addressed the annual Munich Security Conference. “NATO has
put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. NATO
expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the
level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against
whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the
assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of
the Warsaw Pact?”
In his memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of
defense in the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack
Obama, stated his belief that “the relationship with Russia had
been badly mismanaged after [George H.W.] Bush left office in
1993.”Among other missteps, “U.S. agreements with the Romanian
and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in
those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit
rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring
Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That
move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the
Russians considered their own vital national interests.”
The following year, the Kremlin demonstrated that its discontent
with NATO’s continuing incursions into Russia’s security zone
had moved beyond verbal objections. Moscow exploited a foolish
provocation by Georgia’s pro‐​Western government to
launch a military offensive that brought Russian troops to the
outskirts of the capital. Thereafter, Russia permanently
detached two secessionist‐​minded Georgian regions
and put them under effective Russian control.
Western (especially U.S.) leaders continued to blow through red
warning light after a red warning light, however. The Obama
administration’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s
internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help
demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected,
pro‐​Russia president was the single most brazen
provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediately
responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was
underway with a vengeance.
Could the Ukraine Crisis Have Been Avoided?
Events during the past few months constituted the last chance to
avoid a hot war in Eastern Europe. Putin demanded that NATO
provide guarantees on several security issues. Specifically, the
Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce
the scope of its growing military presence in Eastern Europe and
would never offer membership to Ukraine. He backed up those
demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.
The Biden administration’s response to Russia’s quest for
meaningful Western concessions and security guarantees was tepid
and evasive. Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters.
Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a NATO political and
military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in
the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.
The Ukraine Tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the
decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy
blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that
NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps
violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts
warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went
unheeded. We are now paying the price for the U.S. foreign
policy establishment’s myopia and arrogance.
HTML https://www.cato.org/commentary/ignored-warnings-how-nato-expansion-led-current-ukraine-tragedy#
#Post#: 3106--------------------------------------------------
Re: Knarf's Knewz ( Who is the eviler empire? )
By: RE Date: March 17, 2022, 11:53 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Blade of Grass link=topic=108.msg3105#msg3105
date=1647523350]
Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine
Tragedy
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the
decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy
blunder of epic proportions.
[/quote]
Thank Kissinger & Bryzynski for that.
RE
*****************************************************