still far from it, but this escalation indicates Ukraine is one a right path
Really man. You’re not supposed to believe in the propaganda. Only to pretend you believe.
They don't actually guarantee that, there is no formal bar to admitting a country with active disputes to NATO; and even if there were it would take agreement of exactly the same parties as are required to admit a new member to either eliminate or modify the formal requirement.
Also, the new regions aren't necessary for that if it was a bar because of the occupation of Crimea since 2014.
There's no formal bar, but it would be politically difficult. (Because now you either need to ignore your newest member's problems, or commit to a war that you didn't even want to fight.)
The former significantly undermines confidence in the organization, the latter... Ties it to actually fighting a war (with all the nasty ways in which it can escalate), as opposed to muttering about sanctions.
Out of the US, France, the UK, and Germany, which of those four countries do you think want to fight a shooting war with Russia?
At the moment, the answer is 'none of the above'. Implementing sanctions is comparatively easy, though.
I've actually been surprised how State Department propaganda ("anonymous sources within the State Department / Pentagon / White House") is transmitted unfiltered on the media, particularly after so many incidents of it being wrong (WMDs anyone?). It's also so sad to see how pro-Imperialist the suppposed Left is. Worse is how easily so many seem to accept this narrative.
The US promised NATO wouldn't expand east in 1990 and then immediately reneged on it and has done so repeatedly since to the point where NATO is knocking on Russia's door. Russia absolutely does not want Ukraine in NATO. I guess that's the line in the sand.
This draws predictable "It's Ukraine's choice" calls but when you provide an analogy like "How would the US feel about China or Russia building military and forward operating bases in Mexico or China along the US border?" it gets dismissed like "that would never happen", which of course doesn't answer the question.
Yep, Russian troops have entered Ukraine and that's bad. But it's not a war... yet. And Putin isn't a madman. This is a high-stakes move to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the West really needs to reconsider our position on this because it's not unreasonable. More to the point, is it worth igniting a war over Ukraine? Really?
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-e...
That may have worked for the germans to prevent paying reparations to greece, but the NATO trick lead to the problems we now have with russia.
Remember how the US reacted to some missiles in Cuba?
Putin is a result of what happened under Yeltsin, where some people got very rich and the rest had to suffer.
> But the recollections of those involved aren’t always consistent. Roland Dumas, who served as the French foreign minister in 1990, would later say that a pledge was made that NATO troops would not advance closer to the territory of the former Soviet Union. But the U.S. secretary of state at the time, James Baker, has denied that any such promise was ever made – a claim that some of his own diplomats, however, have contradicted. Jack Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time, has said that "categorical assurances" were given to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward.
Even if you deny that such a promise was made (and broken), you should be able to understand how having a hostile military alliance literally on your border is unacceptable and the US would never accept it were the tables turned. That's the point.
There are no good guys here. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There's a popular narrative of the US being provoked. But the truth is, the US instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by deploying strategic nuclear weapons to Turkey (interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact). Cuba was reciprocity. Those missiles in Turkey were quietly removed.
According the grand strategy of the cold war, those missiles were defensive. Their presence was requested by Turkey and when they were removed there was a diplomatic stink about it because the Turks argued that this was the US no honouring their agreement. There was nothing "quiet" about their removal.
This isn't comparable to Ukraine however. The US isn't trying to put nuclear missiles in Ukraine (and there aren't NATO nukes in any other former SSR either.) And it wouldn't matter if they were, because the range of ICBMs has increased since 1962. Russia isn't invading Ukraine to prevent nuclear weapons from being deployed on its doorstep; it's doing so to reestablish its control over its former empire.
And it is comparable. Ukraine is at Russia's doorstep and plays a major role for the access to the Black Sea. That's why Russia annexed Crimea in the first place.
It's a very well known non-agreement.
> James Baker agreeing to Gorbachev that NATO would expand "not another inch" eastward
That's...not how binding international agreements are formed.
Thank you, this is exactly the point I arrived at as well. It's an admission that the primary tool of the US State Department is to make friendly, reasonable verbal agreements in front of the press and public, then do the dirty move they really wanted to do when the news cycle has moved past. This maintains the appearance to the US public that their foreign policy is always just, and never cynical or deceitful.
EVERYONE: claps
RUSSIA: says one thing and do the other one
EVERYONE: gasps
Putin just said it's a consequence of Lenin creating the fake entity of Ukraine on territory that should be Russian exacerbated by Stalin transferring additional territory that should be Russian to the fake entity of Ukraine.
Sounds like Russia (or at least Putin, who definitely has a l’etat, c’est moi thing going on), thinks the fundamental problem is the fall of the Russian Empire, not NATO, which is just an impediment to restoring the Empire.
And the other president said:
> "Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."
At least that one really believed himself.
If you believe in Putin's words directed to the most dumb (and thus extremely patriotic) citizens of his [own] country then I have no stakes here anymore.
Sovereign countries choose to join the club. Besides, why would it be amusing for Russia to punish Ukraine for (perceived) grievances against the US?
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Promise...
Yeltsin in this telex to Bill Clinton from 1993:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-ex...
Reported in the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/02/world/yeltsin-opposes-exp...
Then came a promise from Secretary of state Christopher on 10/22/93 that there would be no extension:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16380-document-08-secreta...
However Richard Holbrooke changed his discourse, and Yeltsin complained in 94:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16385-document-13-officia...
Then again:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NT-fron...
However, Yeltsine nearly died in 96, and his election relied entirely on manipulations at a large scale from the CIA. Therefore, Clinton thought he was free to proceed with NATO extension:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Perry-p...
But there was large disapproval from the Russian, like Gorbachev still in this Herald Tribune 1997 guest article:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-ex...
But in the US too, like George Kennan in the NYTimes, 1997:
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.h...
and many others, Michael Mandelbaum,Richard T. Davis, John Lewis Gaddis, even Thomas Friedman thought extending NATO was a serious mistake.
> Privately, though, a few more perceptive officials acknowledged that relations with Russia had not been handled well. In his memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, made some interesting admissions. “When I reported to the president my take on the Munich conference, I shared my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of the Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War…” Yet even that blunt assessment given to Bush did not fully capture Gates’ views on the issue. “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed 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.”
https://www.cato.org/commentary/did-putins-2007-munich-speec...
Also, there's the treachery of the 2011 Libya operation :
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/libye-0...
1. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine
2. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. The Russian Federation, the UK and the US reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
No, it didn't, at least in any way which anyone who is qualified for even an entry-level position in any diplomatic service on Earth would mistake for a binding commitment even on the then-current administration, much less indefinitely into the future. (The most commonly cited statement on this is actually a reference to deployment of troops within United Germany in the near term post-unification, and the second most commonly cited does refer to NATO expansion but is a communication of items that could be on the table for discussion if Russia was willing to come to the table on German unification, not a commitment; but there also some claims that some other private communication not reduced to a binding international agreement occurred.)
If it had made such a promise to the USSR in a binding way, we could discuss, based on the specific form of the agreement and the subsequent diplomatic action relevant to it after the fall of the USSR whether it was still binding between any parties and which nation or nations were the USSR’s successors in interest and what were the legal effects were of any potential disunity between those parties.
But since it didn't, the whole set of questions is moot.
> and then immediately reneged on it
NATO expansion to Eastern European nations beyond the former East Germany didn't occur until 1999, which is not “immediately” after an event alleged to have happened in 1990.
Oh yeah? From the former Ambassador to Soviet Union (1987-1991), Jeff Matlock [1]:
>One persistent U.S. demand is that Ukraine’s territorial integrity be restored. Indeed, the U.S. is party to the Budapest Memorandum in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for Ukraine’s transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia for destruction in accord with U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements. What the U.S. demand ignores is that, under traditional international law, agreements remain valid rebus sic stantibus (things remaining the same).
>When the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1994 there was no plan to expand NATO to the east and Gorbachev had been assured in 1990 that the alliance would not expand. When in fact it did expand right up to Russia’s borders, Russia was confronted with a radically different strategic situation than existed when the Budapest agreement was signed.
What annoys me about this discussion is that people continue to say none of this matters because there wasn't a treaty signed with Soviet Union - an entity that does not exist anymore - and this somehow means that anything said in the past also doesn't matter. It certainly matters in the minds of people escalating things in Eastern Ukraine right now. So it certainly isn't "moot". How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.
There's several other dimensions of this discussion that aren't happening at all - e.g. what NATO is even supposed to be doing in the 21st century 30 years after its raison d'être evaporated, what continued maintenance of American Empire in Europe means for both Europe and the United States and whether that's really in everyone's best interest, and how the alliance actually stacks up against a recalcitrant China in the Pacific Theater or if it is really even charted to do that - because we're so obsessed with Russia for reasons that are probably best left unstated for now. Inb4 I get accused of "apologizing" for Russia's actions here, I'm not. What they're doing is imo a long-term strategic blunder that will cost lives in the near-term. It's also wrong that the default position in the West right now is "Russia's concerns aren't legitimate QED".
[1] https://www.krasnoevents.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/116679777/krasn...
edit: grammar
NATO's raison d'être evaporated? Pretty sure Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (at a minimum) don't agree with that. It's the same it's always been - keep Russia from marching west across Europe. A bunch of countries in Europe still think that's important, and that it needs a credible military force to accomplish it. Russia's actions in Georgia and Ukraine do not give warm feelings of security to small countries on Russia's periphery.
>When the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1994 there was no plan to expand NATO to the east and Gorbachev had been assured in 1990 that the alliance would not expand. When in fact it did expand right up to Russia’s borders, Russia was confronted with a radically different strategic situation than existed when the Budapest agreement was signed."
And this gives Russia permission to invade a sovereign nation? Ukraine's independence is not just a matter of the Budapest Memorandum, it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries, something many Russians don't want to acknowledge.
So far, NATO has not invaded Russia or violated its territorial sovereignty but Russia has violated the borders of multiple boarder states, so it's a bit rich for Putin to complain about NATO when he's clearly just trying to reincorporate border states that were conquered by the Tzars.
Nowhere did I suggest this, and Matlock does not even imply it in his essay. I was pretty clear that the problem I have with this discussion at this point. To put it bluntly: we will get nowhere with diplomacy if our line continues to be "your concerns are fake and made up, so do what we tell you". That's the attitude I see in here, in MSM, and from politicians (mostly in the US). Russia needs to be punished for what they're doing, but I want to see an end to these conflicts. The greatest geopolitical blunder since the end of WWII is the utter failure of the West to come to terms with and reintegrate Russia into a joint-security sphere after the fall of communism and Soviet Union. It's bigger than the Iraq War even, since Russia actually does have nukes.
>...it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries
Some of these people in Ukraine are hardcore neo-Nazis, and we are giving them weapons. Some a genuine I'm sure, and I haven't been to Ukraine, and only have a few friends from there. So it's hard for me to gauge exactly how genuine any of this is given how toxic coverage of anything even tangentially related to Russia is in the West.
Well I have been there and I can tell you that Ukrainian patriotism is much broader than just the far right. Some of the people in the US are hardcore neo-Nazis but nobody assumes that they drive American foreign policy.
>Some of the people in the US are hardcore neo-Nazis but nobody assumes that they drive American foreign policy.
Probably because they don't. The only reason I brought it up is that I take issue with the framing of Ukrainian militias in the western press, where the ... troubling nature (to put it lightly) of some of these organizations is ignored. This is largely irrelevant to the greater point about the history here though (sorry I brought it up), and I wish more in the West broadly but in the United States in particular would read history that goes back farther than 1938.
And still, there is Trump in the US who won the race and mass shooting from nazis. Why does the US get any weapons?
It's strange rhetoric because there are many nazis in the US with regular hate crimes in media, but it will be hard to find any hate crimes in Ukraine. Politically, nazi apologists in the US government got much more support than in Ukraine. From the last news after parliament election
>The main mouthpiece of the nationalists, Yarosh scored 0.7% of the vote in the presidential elections. In Russia, Sobchak (one of the opposition leaders) scored about the same. The number of seats in the parliament is 1 (one) for the nationalists from the "Samopomich" party, while the pro-Russian "OB" has 6. There is no right sector (nationalist supporters) at all in the new gathering.
Even with Putin's message that there are "no country like Ukraine, no Ukrainian language and culture, no Ukrainians as people at all," all that things that black people also can see in the US, there are LESS nationalist supporters than Russian supporters (a country, who started proxy war for 8 years already) in Ukraine.
Yeah, it seems like nazi to me.
How can you even say this with a straight face as Russia invades neighboring countries? You know why Russia doesn't attempt this land grab with NATO countries? NATO.
Russia has no interest in invading NATO countries. It wants to maintain national security.
NATO raison d’être was providing a shared framework for European security and preventing another general war in Europe, largely by tying West Germany into a durable common framework with other European powers.
It would be rendered redundant if replaced with a common EU security framework, but not by the collapse of Soviet bloc.
>It would be rendered redundant if replaced with a common EU security framework, but not by the collapse of Soviet bloc.
I've seen this repeated in a dozen different places, and I can't parse what it even means. Alliances come and go. That's just the normal course of history.
> How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.
This has nothing to do with Russia security, or would you think that the UN would attack Russia? Its a defense organization.
The mistake people make is thinking its a country like France or Germany, but just a bit different. You need to understand that Russia is ruled by a gang of oligarchs and has nothing that functionally resembles the institutions we take for granted. Putin gets what he wants from the parliament, even unanymously when he wants that. There are no laws for Putin and his crownies, the law applies only to his enemies. The Russia state is a strange amalgamation of intelligence (Puting rose to power from the KGB) and a small group of extremely powerful oligarchs. Then there are layers of smaller oligarchs below that one that run deeper layers of corrupt officials. Its bribery and theft all over the place, its a hugely dysfunctional state. Independent/foreign media outlets have been expelled or terminated, many Russians don´t consume the news anymore. Trust has been lost.
That something horrible would rise from the ashes of Stalins dystopia is not entirely unexpected, but still there are aspects that are really unnerving, like the fact that organised crime runs through all the state affairs, and some oligarchs run even private armies (read up on Wagner for instance). The state kills, tortures and poisons anyone that stands in its way.
Putin needs to feed this whole gang, and the oligarchs take the majority of the economic output for themselves. The economy is segregated. Russians are poor. Russia (like any autocratic state) is severely lacking development, it main income is the export of raw materials like gas and oil. Its BNP is the same as that of the Benelux countries. Mind boggling poverty. The trouble with this system is the same, it eats everything at home and it needs to find food outside of its door. Thats why you see Russia taking control of neighboring countries, appointing pro-russia puppets to scavenge them. You see the same with Belarus, its president lost control as the people revolted, ran to Putin to keep him in power and thus handing Putin the keys. It is a total surrender. Now that Russia has an even firmer grip, this country will soon be sliced up among the oligarchs.
The people of Ukrain voted to join the EU, it has been doing the needed reforms for a functional democratic country with rule of law. It has been weighting down on Ukrain oligarchs. The economic ties with the Kremlin were weakening and trade started to shift to the EU. Ukrain was making real progress, and the people turned out to be not wanting in the Russian influence.
That is the moment Putin annexed Crimea and started a war that is taking 8 years already. And is not enough. And if you listened closely yesterday, it will never be enough.
The majority of the proxy states around Russia would rather join the West. Putin cant handle a democratic success scenario in one of the former Soviet occupied territories, it has already to handle enough civil unrest in its proxy states.
The whole NATO argument is bullshit, the buffer idea doesn't even make sense in modern militarily reality. Its PR from the Kremlin and its highly effective. Unfortunately.
This system needs to grab economic output from other nations, and will keep doing so. There is only hope for Russian people if the Kremlin is going down, its getting worse there as it always does for autocracy in the end. This never ends well.
Russia said they wouldn't invade Ukraine because:
-Russia is holding military exercises, you're being paranoid
-Nobody invades a european country on a wednesday (ok, that's true. They did it on a tuesday)
-Russia is pulling back troops.
-Russia will pull back troops as soon as the military exercises are done. So (previous) sunday. (or not!)
-Russia isn't invading Ukraine, we're just sending peacekeeping forces into the region that we declared independent of Ukraine.
etc... These aren't negotiation tactics to resolve future NATO membership concerns. These are stall tactics to position their military.
What Russia did strengthens the resolve of Ukraine to seek an alliance with NATO although they wouldn't qualify for membership. The more likely reason is that Russia hopes to undermine NATO. By taking Ukraine and putting themselves at the border of NATO countries, they can test if there's going to be a 2 tiered NATO. Countries for which the alliance is willing to invoke art. 5, and countries they are willing to abandon to avoid a world war.
I can't see how any of this could have worked out well, starting from the moment that Ukraine membership in NATO became a serious political subject.
Technically, Ukraine’s entire population being whisked into another dimension and its borders being impassable walls of force would also put Russia at the border of NATO countries (as would, for that matter, NATO not expanding after 1949), because Norway (1949), Lithuania (2004), Latvia (2004), Estonia (2004), and Poland (1999) all exist (and Lithuania and Poland surround a non-contiguous piece of Russia, even.)
And that's just counting land borders, otherwise you have to also consider the USA (1949), Turkey (1952), and Bulgaria and Romania (2004).
That's a very good question for Putin, try asking it and enjoy gulag or sudden inexplicable death/disappearance.
What the fuck gives one state (Russia) right to dictate what sovereign countries do and don't do? I get this cold war mentality, it was the heyday of Russia, moving pawns, fighting wars, being global badass with some serious respect unlike now, doing whatever they wanted. That's over for 30 years, and the only one to blame is Russians themselves, and their fucked up mentality. But Putin would like some 21st century version of the same.
In same way I hated US for the invasion of Iraq based on pure lies, which were clearly lies to everybody I knew even when Bush jr was presenting them in UN (remember the US senators' cries about changing 'french fries' to 'freedom fries' when France and Germany refused to support this bullshit? Look where it led Iraq and surrounding countries. Not even going into topic of Afghanistan).
I come from eastern Europe. We were invaded overnight by russian (and V4, but mostly russian) troops in 1968 for the great sin of wanting to live in freedom from communist terror of previous decades. Just like Hungarians a decade before. This ain't something to forget. Even if I wasn't alive back then, my parents were and its very good to listen to elders in such cases, they have good stories to tell, lessons to learn. Hard earned lessons of oppressed lives which could never reach their potentials.
And make no mistake, the West is quite fine with sacrificing us (everything east of Germany) all rather than doing anything effective.