a reply to:
PatriotGames4u
Russia doesn’t make promises. It makes deals. If you do this then when won’t do that. If you don’t do that then we will do this. When one side
breaks their part of the deal then the other does the same.
The United States has repeatedly declared the Western Hemisphere to be off-limits to other great powers and has threatened or used force on numerous
occasions to make that declaration stick. During the Cold War, for example, the Reagan administration was so alarmed by the revolution in Nicaragua (a
country whose population was smaller than New York City’s) that it organized a rebel army to overthrow the ruling socialist Sandinistas. If
Americans could worry that much about a tiny country like Nicaragua, why was it so hard to understand why Russia might have some serious misgivings
about the steady movement of the world’s mightiest alliance toward its borders?
Russia’s doubts increased when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003—a decision that showed a certain willful disregard for international
law—and even more after the Obama administration exceeded the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and helped oust Libyan
leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Russia had abstained on the resolution—which authorized protecting civilians but not regime change—and former
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates later commented that “the Russians felt they had been played for suckers.” These and other incidents help
explain why Moscow is now insisting on written guarantees.
Opponents of NATO enlargement were quick to warn that Russia would inevitably regard enlargement as a threat and going ahead with it would poison
relations with Moscow. That is why several prominent U.S. experts—including diplomat George Kennan, author Michael Mandelbaum, and former defense
secretary William Perry—opposed enlargement from the start.Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
were initially opposed for the same reasons, though both later shifted their positions and joined the pro-enlargement bandwagon.
Moreover, they insisted that NATO’s benign intentions were self-evident and it would be easy to persuade Moscow not to worry as NATO crept closer to
the Russian border. This view was naive in the extreme, for the key issue was not what NATO’s intentions may have been in reality. What really
mattered, of course, was what Russia’s leaders thought they were or might be in the future. Even if Russian leaders could have been convinced that
NATO had no malign intentions, they could never be sure this would always be the case.
The next misstep was the Bush administration’s decision to nominate Georgia and Ukraine for NATO membership at the 2008 Bucharest Summit. Former
U.S. National Security Council official Fiona Hill recently revealed that the U.S. intelligence community opposed this step but then-U.S. President
George W. Bush ignored its objections for reasons that have never been fully explained. The timing of the move was especially odd because neither
Ukraine nor Georgia was close to meeting the criteria for membership in 2008 and other NATO members opposed including them. As political scientist
Samuel Charap stated: “[T]his declaration was the worst of all worlds. It provided no increased security to Ukraine and Georgia, but reinforced
Moscow’s view that NATO was set on incorporating them.” No wonder former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder described the 2008 decision as
NATO’s “cardinal sin.”
The next round came in 2013 and 2014. With Ukraine’s economy staggering, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych encouraged a bidding war between
the European Union and Russia for economic help. His subsequent decision to reject an accession agreement negotiated with the EU and accept a more
lucrative offer from Russia triggered the Euromaidan protests that ultimately led to his ousting. U.S. officials tilted visibly in favor of the
protesters and participated actively in the effort to pick Yanukovych’s successor, thereby lending credence to Russian fears that this was a
Western-sponsored color revolution. Remarkably, officials in Europe and the United States never seemed to have asked themselves whether Russia might
object to this outcome or what it might do to derail it. As a result, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the seizure of Crimea and backed
Russian-speaking separatist movements in Ukraine’s eastern provinces, plunging the country into a frozen conflict that persists to this day.
Putin is not solely responsible for the ongoing crisis over Ukraine, and moral outrage over his actions or character is not a strategy. Nor are more
and tougher sanctions going to cause him to surrender to Western demands. Unpleasant as it may be, the United States and its allies need to recognize
that Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment is a vital interest for Russia—one it is willing to use force to defend—and this is not because Putin
happens to be a ruthless autocrat with a nostalgic fondness for the old Soviet past. Great powers are never indifferent to the geostrategic forces
arrayed on their borders, and Russia would care deeply about Ukraine’s political alignment even if someone else were in charge. U.S. and European
unwillingness to accept this basic reality is a major reason the world is in this mess today.
edit on 01-12-2022 by mcsnacks77 because: (no reason given)