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Comment by AlisoPaletto | Hacker News Reader

Well, in reality nobody can trust any security guarantee from any one else. Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated.

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As far as I know, that “promise” was a preliminary conversation, not a legal matter.[1][2] Gorbachev did feel like the expansion was “a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances,” though.[1]

[1] Gorbachev: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all” https://web.archive.org/web/20150331084405/http://rbth.com/i...

[2] “The U.S.S.R. was never offered a formal guarantee on the limits of NATO expansion post-1990” https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/312636...

It's ironic that some feel Russia is justified in thwarting the expansion of NATO for its national security, completely overlooking the fact that the regions other countries want to join NATO is for their national security.

I've yet to hear why Russia has a better complain to its national security, than say, Ukraine.

This sounds reasonable at a very superficial level, but feels more like misdirection in terms of what NATO represents in the context of the cold war and the balance between two nuclear superpowers.

After all the same argument could be made backwards for the US. Why shouldn't, e.g., Cuba not be free to host Russian missiles? They're a free country. Surely if the US tried anything to prevent that, their security concerns don't trump those of Cuba.

Combine this with NATO ties to the Russian coup in 2014 conducted by some US funded neo nazi orgs in Ukraine (some of which are part of ukraines national guard today):

What would we do if Russia had setup that coup in Canada? We’d have boots on the ground in weeks.

Euromaidan was not a coup set up by the West. From right there it's obvious you've drunk the propaganda quite easily. Putin overplayed his hand pressuring Ukraine to reject EU despite popular will and his stooge was driven out by mobs. If anything it was an attempt by Moscow to directly control the government of Ukraine, Yanokovych who had also been interested in EU fell in line but the rest of the country didn't follow.

Russia doesn't have the right to veto what sovereign states do. Russia invaded a sovereign country here, that is not in any way comparable to sovereign states joining NATO.

> Russia doesn't have the right to veto what sovereign states do.

I'm curious what you mean by your use of the word "right" in the above context.

Whose job is it to enforce that right? Is that right enforced for all countries? Or only if mightier countries take an interest?

It seems that more powerful countries are constantly interfering with the internal politics of smaller countries by doing things like supporting dictators, interfering in elections, etc.

"Might Makes Right", as they say. Sovereignty, when you boil it down, just means who is strong enough to back up words with action.

Russia promised to play nice and not seek for expansion again. They were lying all the time from the beginning and countries close to Russian border knew this and looked to protection.

Russia has no right whatsoever over sovereign nations. If you think otherwise, you can depart to the place the Russian warship was sent.

> Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated.

Russia didn't even participate in international diplomacy then.

If you mean the USSR, show me the signed, ratified treaty.

If you mean the then-current Soviet leadership was given private assurances by the then-current US Administration, well, why would you expect that to bind anyone beyond the terms of those leaders and one of the involved states?

Russia promised to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and actually did so on paper in that case.

> Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated

This never happened, if it did please provide a link to the treaty text which proves it did.

> Russia was promised no NATO expansion when the Warsaw Pact was terminated.

That is factually incorrect. There is no treaty, no memorandum, no statement about that, except for some hearsay from a meeting between Baker and Gorbachev. This is the treaty about east Germany https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm and NATO, which the west has respected. Stop spreading misinformation.

What is correct is that Russia promised guarantees of Ukraine's borders in the Budapest memorandum.

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