whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Really, how were they not neutral in 2014?

---

They were in a state of civil war in 2014. By 2022 they were a de facto US "ally" (although "pawn" might be a better description).

---

Probably a good idea to join forces with someone when your neighbor invades and kills your people.

---

Or so they thought. Now they're learning otherwise. They're one of many peoples who have bought into the "freedom vs. tyranny" narrative and suffered the consequences. Israel is another one.

Who invaded whom in 2014 depends on which point of view you take. I would argue it was Ukraine and not Russia that invaded the Donbas. The people of the Donbas would agree, for what little that's worth to Americans. But it doesn't really matter in terms of your larger question. Ukraine's status was uncertain at the time. Its neutrality or allegiance was one of the things that would be decided by the civil war.

The West knew better than to officially invite Ukraine into NATO and then start building up its army. We did things the other way around, hoping that by the time Russia reacted it would be too late. That was where things stood when Russia finally invaded in 2022.

---

Russia invaded, period. Russia was always going to invade. Russia was always going to try to take over Ukraine. Russia has never, in its heart of hearts, recognize Ukraine as a sovereign.

Ukraine and the West were naive to lose sight of that. Ukraine gave up its nukes. The West left Ukraine on its own, sending only token support until it was far too late.

It was all right there, in Putin's and his cronies' speeches and writings. It's still there today because they just can't hide it. I mean, of all things, idiot Putin led his Tucker interview with that silly history lesson. He actually thought he could convince the world Ukraine wasn't a real country or real people. Were it not so dire, that would have been one of more comedic moments in geopolitical history.

---

What changed? That's the question that needs to be asked.

Russia and the US were on the path to a long and peaceful coexistence after the Cold War. Yet the idea of NATO expansion reared its ugly head very early on:

Quote:

---

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a chorus of government officials, academics, commentators, and retired bureaucrats and diplomats has dismissed any link between the crisis and NATO's decades-long expansion. Moscow's aggression, we are told, is all about Vladimir Putin's imperial impulse--his desire to recreate the Russian empire. Yet three decades ago we had some warning of Russia's strategic sensibilities about NATO expansion. During the 1990s campaign to bring Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, many leading military and foreign-policy thinkers argued that the enlargement of NATO would lead to trouble with Russia. Expansion would create the very danger it was supposed to prevent: Russian aggression in reaction to what the Kremlin would deem a provocative and threatening Western policy.

The list of opponents of NATO enlargement from three decades ago reads like a who's who of that generation's wise men. It included the architects of the Cold War containment doctrine George Kennan and Paul Nitze; the former senior Reagan defense officials Fred Ikl and Admiral James Watkins; president Jimmy Carter's CIA director Stansfield Turner; the Nixon-era diplomats Robert Bowie and Robert Ellsworth; the Reagan-era ambassadors to Moscow Arthur Hartman and Jack Matlock; the intellectuals Ronald Steel, Edward Luttwak, and the Cato Institute's Ted Galen Carpenter; the magazine editors Owen Harries (the National Interest) and Charles Maynes (Foreign Policy); and, not least, the distinguished historians Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, John Lewis Gaddis, and Britain's foremost military historian, Sir Michael Howard.

Officials in the State and Defense departments also opposed NATO plans to expand eastward, including the Polish-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili and Defense Secretary Les Aspin, as well as his successor William Perry, who considered resignation in late 1994 when the policy proposal moved forward. Former defense secretaries Robert McNamara and James Schlesinger also aired their concerns that NATO enlargement would decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.

In the lead-up to the Senate's ratification of expansion in 1998, the New York Times editorial board said that it was "the most important foreign policy decision America has faced since the end of the Cold War" and could "prove to be a mistake of historic proportions. . . . It is delusional to believe that NATO expansion is not at its core an act that Russia will regard as hostile."

Although the Times opposed NATO enlargement, it was not the case, as Poland's president, Aleksander Kwaniewski, joked to the columnist William Safire in 1997, that "the only ones against us are the Russians and the New York Times."

In fact, the opponents represented an ideologically diverse group across America's political spectrum--from the unreconstructed accommodationists Noam Chomsky and the Nation on the left to the America First "isolationists" Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly on the right. In between, there was opposition from legislators on both sides of the political aisle: from the Republican senator John Warner and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to the Democrat senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the former senators Sam Nunn and Gary Hart.

Virtually all opponents were primarily concerned about upsetting Russia's strategic sensibilities in a "new world order"--or what the leading neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dubbed "the unipolar moment." For Washington, that meant not just the triumph of Western principles and influence, but a pax Americana. For Moscow, though, it no longer meant a security arrangement between equals.

Three critics of NATO expansion distinguished themselves during this period: Pat Buchanan, George Kennan, and Owen Harries. Although they expressed themselves in different ways, all highlighted not only the folly of rubbing Russia's nose in its Cold War defeat but also the ominous consequences of giving security guarantees to the former captive nations of Eastern and Central Europe.

A past and future Republican presidential candidate, Buchanan used his nationally syndicated column to rail against a new cold war with Russia. In 1994, he noted that if the Cold War presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson backed away from confrontation with the Soviet Union over Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, "why would we risk a clash with Moscow when the Cold War is over?" NATO expansion, Buchanan warned, "is a prescription for a NATO-Russia clash, as soon as the nationalists come to power." Three years later, in 1997, he lamented that "antagonizing Moscow" meant "driving her toward China and Iran."

George Kennan--the author of the containment doctrine of 1947, a former ambassador to the USSR, and one of America's wisest students of Russian affairs--spoke for the many dissenters in 1997 when he warned that NATO expansion "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era." It would weaken Russian reformers, embolden hard-liners, undermine strategic arms agreements, and escalate East--West tensions when Russia got back on its feet and began acting like a great power.

In the 1990s, Russia was no threat to the West and was incapable of serious military action. But "if humiliated further and made desperate," as Owen Harries warned in 1996, "it could be dangerous in a way that a wounded animal can be dangerous." Its potential to be a troublemaker was huge. A sick Russia with a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons would one day get well and declare its own Monroe Doctrine.

Harries--a Welsh-born conservative academic and cold warrior who became an Australian diplomat-policymaker and editor of the National Interest (from 19852001)--argued: "Expanding NATO violates the wise principle enunciated by Winston Churchill: 'In victory, magnanimity.' Churchill was no softy, but he recognized the stupidity of grinding the face of a defeated foe in the dirt."

As early as 1993, in a widely quoted essay in Foreign Affairs, Harries warned of the perils of any proposal to intrude U.S. military power into Russia's sphere of influence. It would greatly annoy the Russians, but it would have little credibility, create splits within the alliance, and require much in blood and treasure.

The forty-five-year interlude of the Soviet bloc was merely an episode in a much larger history, Harries said, and its demise did not necessarily mark the end of Moscow's involvement in the region. He cited "strategic interests, traditional motives of prestige, the 'historic mission' of freeing the Greek Orthodox population from infidel rule, and the pan-Slavism that had a very real impact on policy" as reasons to take into account Russian sensibilities and interests beyond its own borders.

"To ignore all this history and to incorporate Eastern Europe into NATO's sphere of influence, and at a time when Russia is in dangerous turmoil and when that nation's prestige and self-confidence are badly damaged, would surely be an act of outstanding folly." Harries warned that in such circumstances, NATO expansion could provide a "catalyst that would enable extreme chauvinistic elements in Russia to exploit frustrations, resentments and wounded national pride in ways that would have unpleasant consequences both internally and internationally."

Another central tenet of the HarriesKennanBuchanan critique was that NATO expansion could suffer a massive credibility problem. Ends and means, Walter Lippmann famously warned in 1943, ought to be brought into balance, and aspirations should match resources in foreign-policy deliberations. Yet here was the U.S. cashing in on the so-called peace dividend by cutting defense spending and army and naval troop levels even as it added security commitments in a part of the world where Cold War presidents felt America had no vital interest justifying a risk of war. Meanwhile, European allies were slashing their own defense budgets and downsizing their own militaries. The irresponsibility of such conduct raised the question of the seriousness of the new commitments being undertaken.

Harries, Kennan and Buchanan were also among the opponents of NATO expansion to draw attention to the assurances the U.S. and Germany gave to Moscow during the early 1990s: that if Russia withdrew from its Warsaw Pact client states and accepted German unification, NATO would not move "one inch eastwards." By expanding NATO to the frontiers of the former Soviet Union, they warned, Washington had repudiated an implicit agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev thanks to which the demise of the Soviet Union did not unleash the kind of chaos and brute force that had characterized the collapse of other empires. As the English foreign-policy realist Martin Wight once put it: "Great Power status is lost, as it is won, by violence. A Great Power does not die in its bed."

What happened in the case of the Soviet Union's collapse was the exception to the rule. From 1989 to 1991, the Kremlin turned loose all of its satellites, allowed the Berlin Wall to fall and Germany to be united, and dissolved the USSR into fifteen independent nations--all with virtually no bloodshed. This political miracle took place in no small part because the George H. W. Bush administration refused to exploit Russia's security vulnerabilities. There was, to be sure, no formal treaty to codify any casual agreement that Washington would not expand its security reach into what Moscow had long viewed as its near abroad. But America had given Russia its word, and then suddenly broken it. As Kennan lamented in 1998: "We did not, I am sure, intend to trick the Russians, but the actual determinants of our later behavior . . . would scarcely have been more creditable on our part than a real intention to deceive."

It was around this time when the eminent historian John Lewis Gaddis said he "had difficulty finding any colleagues who think NATO expansion is a good idea." Gaddis, who later wrote Kennan's biography, observed in the New York Times: "I can recall no other moment when there was less support in our profession for a government policy."

The distinguished Oxford historian Michael Howard illustrated Gaddis's point. "If NATO were to be extended eastward, we would see the beginning of a familiar pattern of aggression," he wrote in the Times of London in 1996. "Russia, seeing herself threatened by her traditional enemies, would once again set about establishing her dominance over Ukraine, Belarus and probably the Baltic states."

"NATO would have to respond by improving its military ties with the Visegrad states and perhaps offering guarantees in the Baltics, which the Russians could only see as further threats to their own security." Sir Michael concluded: "Within a few years, we would be back to a military confrontation in which the security of the Visegrad states would really be threatened, and the whole merry-go-round would begin again."

https://modernagejournal.com/natos-prophetic-critics/240359/

---

Notice one argument that was glaringly absent from the debate at the time. That is the argument you're making now, that the dirty Russkies were always going to invade Ukraine or Eastern Europe no matter what.

No doubt there were some troglodytes embedded in the military and intelligence who thought so, but they weren't taken seriously. If anything, the expansionists' argument was exactly the opposite--we could push Russia as far as we wanted with no fear of resistance. On the very eve of the war in 2022, Jake Sullivan was promising that Russia would never invade Ukraine.

So I'll ask you...who's being naive, Kay? The ones who saw all of this coming, or the ones who denied it and are now frantically re-writing history to pretend we had no part in it?

As for Putin's interview, it was misrepresented in the West as usual. He was essentially saying the same thing Owen Harries said in the 1990s, as mentioned in the article above. Russia has legitimate interests beyond its own borders, including a long history with Ukraine. That doesn't mean they can't recognize Ukraine's independence. They recognized it in 1991, on a basis of Ukrainian neutrality, and Putin reaffirms that in the 2024 interview.

The problem is that the West in recent years has taken a completely different view. Now Ukraine must be "aligned" with the West and only the West. Russia can have no say in trade negotiations, despite its deep interconnection with the Ukrainian economy. It can have no say in NATO expansion, despite the long recognized principle of indivisible security.

That is what changed. All based on a rewriting of history, wherein the Russians fought tooth and nail to hold on to their empire and have stubbornly refused cooperation ever since.

A long list of luminaries who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War--and it was negotiated--will tell you that's just not true. The troglodytes tell you otherwise, and they are increasingly loud as the whole unipolar project falls apart. That's the real revisionism. Don't fall for it. It's part of the same hubristic agenda that has failed in the Middle East and will continue to fail wherever it's tried.

---

nothing is more amusingly ironic than to see someone quoting foreign policy realists to make an argument for a foreign policy idealism which asserts that the current Russian autocrat whose armies are on campaign in Ukraine has rejected the aggressive foreign policy agenda of prior Russian autocrats.

Stop gaslighting yourself. Russia had no grounds for war with Ukraine. Ukraine had not taken any hostile action toward Russia. Ukraine was in the exact same status on D-Day as Finland and Sweden (UN member/Nato partner). Ukraine had not even requested Nato membership. Ukraine was/is not eligible for Nato membership due to it's many border disputes with Russia.

Failure to promise NOT to do something is not grounds for war.

---

I'm quoting foreign policy realists to argue exactly what they were arguing. What's ironic is that you call yourself a realist while promoting what Mearsheimer would call racist pseudo-history in order to justify a neoliberal crusade.
No, you are making an "end of history" argument that Russia isn't Russia anymore, that they are a trustworthy partner in peace who has no territorial ambitions and only invaded Ukraine out of necessity to stop (contrived) great provocations (as opposed to what it patently was - romantic irredentism). Never mind the fact that Ukraine had the EXACT same relationship with Nato and EU as Sweden and Finland did at the exact same time.

NATO has bent the rules for membership before and can do it again. If anything, your argument is a reason for Russia to keep pressing the dispute.
Can you cite an instance where Nato admitted a state with a hot, ongoing border conflict with a nuclear powered rival?

---

You are really not very good at this.

---

RUBLE IMPLODING

🔥🔥🔥 The Ruble has lost 6% of its value in the past 5 business days
& 20% of its value this year.

Inflation is devouring Russia’s economy.

👉 But wait: There’s more!

Oil prices, if they drop to $50 per barrel would force Ruble devaluation to $1 = ₽135-155. pic.twitter.com/jMDmCdR905

— Jason Jay Smart (@officejjsmart) November 26, 2024

Opposing proliferation of landmines, emphasizing their long-term danger to civilian populations, and organizing efforts to clear them used to be a standard NGO pursuit of the 1990s and 2000s. Princess Diana even made it one of her signature issues. Poof -- down the memory hole pic.twitter.com/gTY5smI5vo

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2024

Redbrickbear said:

---

How liberals learned to love the landmine

Opposing proliferation of landmines, emphasizing their long-term danger to civilian populations, and organizing efforts to clear them used to be a standard NGO pursuit of the 1990s and 2000s. Princess Diana even made it one of her signature issues. Poof -- down the memory hole pic.twitter.com/gTY5smI5vo

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2024

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

sombear said:

---

Really, how were they not neutral in 2014?

---

They were in a state of civil war in 2014. By 2022 they were a de facto US "ally" (although "pawn" might be a better description).

---

Probably a good idea to join forces with someone when your neighbor invades and kills your people.

---

Or so they thought. Now they're learning otherwise. They're one of many peoples who have bought into the "freedom vs. tyranny" narrative and suffered the consequences. Israel is another one.

Who invaded whom in 2014 depends on which point of view you take. I would argue it was Ukraine and not Russia that invaded the Donbas. The people of the Donbas would agree, for what little that's worth to Americans. But it doesn't really matter in terms of your larger question. Ukraine's status was uncertain at the time. Its neutrality or allegiance was one of the things that would be decided by the civil war.

The West knew better than to officially invite Ukraine into NATO and then start building up its army. We did things the other way around, hoping that by the time Russia reacted it would be too late. That was where things stood when Russia finally invaded in 2022.

---

Russia invaded, period. Russia was always going to invade. Russia was always going to try to take over Ukraine. Russia has never, in its heart of hearts, recognize Ukraine as a sovereign.

Ukraine and the West were naive to lose sight of that. Ukraine gave up its nukes. The West left Ukraine on its own, sending only token support until it was far too late.

It was all right there, in Putin's and his cronies' speeches and writings. It's still there today because they just can't hide it. I mean, of all things, idiot Putin led his Tucker interview with that silly history lesson. He actually thought he could convince the world Ukraine wasn't a real country or real people. Were it not so dire, that would have been one of more comedic moments in geopolitical history.

---

What changed? That's the question that needs to be asked.

Russia and the US were on the path to a long and peaceful coexistence after the Cold War. Yet the idea of NATO expansion reared its ugly head very early on:

Quote:

---

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a chorus of government officials, academics, commentators, and retired bureaucrats and diplomats has dismissed any link between the crisis and NATO's decades-long expansion. Moscow's aggression, we are told, is all about Vladimir Putin's imperial impulse--his desire to recreate the Russian empire. Yet three decades ago we had some warning of Russia's strategic sensibilities about NATO expansion. During the 1990s campaign to bring Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, many leading military and foreign-policy thinkers argued that the enlargement of NATO would lead to trouble with Russia. Expansion would create the very danger it was supposed to prevent: Russian aggression in reaction to what the Kremlin would deem a provocative and threatening Western policy.

The list of opponents of NATO enlargement from three decades ago reads like a who's who of that generation's wise men. It included the architects of the Cold War containment doctrine George Kennan and Paul Nitze; the former senior Reagan defense officials Fred Ikl and Admiral James Watkins; president Jimmy Carter's CIA director Stansfield Turner; the Nixon-era diplomats Robert Bowie and Robert Ellsworth; the Reagan-era ambassadors to Moscow Arthur Hartman and Jack Matlock; the intellectuals Ronald Steel, Edward Luttwak, and the Cato Institute's Ted Galen Carpenter; the magazine editors Owen Harries (the National Interest) and Charles Maynes (Foreign Policy); and, not least, the distinguished historians Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, John Lewis Gaddis, and Britain's foremost military historian, Sir Michael Howard.

Officials in the State and Defense departments also opposed NATO plans to expand eastward, including the Polish-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili and Defense Secretary Les Aspin, as well as his successor William Perry, who considered resignation in late 1994 when the policy proposal moved forward. Former defense secretaries Robert McNamara and James Schlesinger also aired their concerns that NATO enlargement would decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.

In the lead-up to the Senate's ratification of expansion in 1998, the New York Times editorial board said that it was "the most important foreign policy decision America has faced since the end of the Cold War" and could "prove to be a mistake of historic proportions. . . . It is delusional to believe that NATO expansion is not at its core an act that Russia will regard as hostile."

Although the Times opposed NATO enlargement, it was not the case, as Poland's president, Aleksander Kwaniewski, joked to the columnist William Safire in 1997, that "the only ones against us are the Russians and the New York Times."

In fact, the opponents represented an ideologically diverse group across America's political spectrum--from the unreconstructed accommodationists Noam Chomsky and the Nation on the left to the America First "isolationists" Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly on the right. In between, there was opposition from legislators on both sides of the political aisle: from the Republican senator John Warner and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to the Democrat senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the former senators Sam Nunn and Gary Hart.

Virtually all opponents were primarily concerned about upsetting Russia's strategic sensibilities in a "new world order"--or what the leading neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dubbed "the unipolar moment." For Washington, that meant not just the triumph of Western principles and influence, but a pax Americana. For Moscow, though, it no longer meant a security arrangement between equals.

Three critics of NATO expansion distinguished themselves during this period: Pat Buchanan, George Kennan, and Owen Harries. Although they expressed themselves in different ways, all highlighted not only the folly of rubbing Russia's nose in its Cold War defeat but also the ominous consequences of giving security guarantees to the former captive nations of Eastern and Central Europe.

A past and future Republican presidential candidate, Buchanan used his nationally syndicated column to rail against a new cold war with Russia. In 1994, he noted that if the Cold War presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson backed away from confrontation with the Soviet Union over Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, "why would we risk a clash with Moscow when the Cold War is over?" NATO expansion, Buchanan warned, "is a prescription for a NATO-Russia clash, as soon as the nationalists come to power." Three years later, in 1997, he lamented that "antagonizing Moscow" meant "driving her toward China and Iran."

George Kennan--the author of the containment doctrine of 1947, a former ambassador to the USSR, and one of America's wisest students of Russian affairs--spoke for the many dissenters in 1997 when he warned that NATO expansion "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era." It would weaken Russian reformers, embolden hard-liners, undermine strategic arms agreements, and escalate East--West tensions when Russia got back on its feet and began acting like a great power.

In the 1990s, Russia was no threat to the West and was incapable of serious military action. But "if humiliated further and made desperate," as Owen Harries warned in 1996, "it could be dangerous in a way that a wounded animal can be dangerous." Its potential to be a troublemaker was huge. A sick Russia with a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons would one day get well and declare its own Monroe Doctrine.

Harries--a Welsh-born conservative academic and cold warrior who became an Australian diplomat-policymaker and editor of the National Interest (from 19852001)--argued: "Expanding NATO violates the wise principle enunciated by Winston Churchill: 'In victory, magnanimity.' Churchill was no softy, but he recognized the stupidity of grinding the face of a defeated foe in the dirt."

As early as 1993, in a widely quoted essay in Foreign Affairs, Harries warned of the perils of any proposal to intrude U.S. military power into Russia's sphere of influence. It would greatly annoy the Russians, but it would have little credibility, create splits within the alliance, and require much in blood and treasure.

The forty-five-year interlude of the Soviet bloc was merely an episode in a much larger history, Harries said, and its demise did not necessarily mark the end of Moscow's involvement in the region. He cited "strategic interests, traditional motives of prestige, the 'historic mission' of freeing the Greek Orthodox population from infidel rule, and the pan-Slavism that had a very real impact on policy" as reasons to take into account Russian sensibilities and interests beyond its own borders.

"To ignore all this history and to incorporate Eastern Europe into NATO's sphere of influence, and at a time when Russia is in dangerous turmoil and when that nation's prestige and self-confidence are badly damaged, would surely be an act of outstanding folly." Harries warned that in such circumstances, NATO expansion could provide a "catalyst that would enable extreme chauvinistic elements in Russia to exploit frustrations, resentments and wounded national pride in ways that would have unpleasant consequences both internally and internationally."

Another central tenet of the HarriesKennanBuchanan critique was that NATO expansion could suffer a massive credibility problem. Ends and means, Walter Lippmann famously warned in 1943, ought to be brought into balance, and aspirations should match resources in foreign-policy deliberations. Yet here was the U.S. cashing in on the so-called peace dividend by cutting defense spending and army and naval troop levels even as it added security commitments in a part of the world where Cold War presidents felt America had no vital interest justifying a risk of war. Meanwhile, European allies were slashing their own defense budgets and downsizing their own militaries. The irresponsibility of such conduct raised the question of the seriousness of the new commitments being undertaken.

Harries, Kennan and Buchanan were also among the opponents of NATO expansion to draw attention to the assurances the U.S. and Germany gave to Moscow during the early 1990s: that if Russia withdrew from its Warsaw Pact client states and accepted German unification, NATO would not move "one inch eastwards." By expanding NATO to the frontiers of the former Soviet Union, they warned, Washington had repudiated an implicit agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev thanks to which the demise of the Soviet Union did not unleash the kind of chaos and brute force that had characterized the collapse of other empires. As the English foreign-policy realist Martin Wight once put it: "Great Power status is lost, as it is won, by violence. A Great Power does not die in its bed."

What happened in the case of the Soviet Union's collapse was the exception to the rule. From 1989 to 1991, the Kremlin turned loose all of its satellites, allowed the Berlin Wall to fall and Germany to be united, and dissolved the USSR into fifteen independent nations--all with virtually no bloodshed. This political miracle took place in no small part because the George H. W. Bush administration refused to exploit Russia's security vulnerabilities. There was, to be sure, no formal treaty to codify any casual agreement that Washington would not expand its security reach into what Moscow had long viewed as its near abroad. But America had given Russia its word, and then suddenly broken it. As Kennan lamented in 1998: "We did not, I am sure, intend to trick the Russians, but the actual determinants of our later behavior . . . would scarcely have been more creditable on our part than a real intention to deceive."

It was around this time when the eminent historian John Lewis Gaddis said he "had difficulty finding any colleagues who think NATO expansion is a good idea." Gaddis, who later wrote Kennan's biography, observed in the New York Times: "I can recall no other moment when there was less support in our profession for a government policy."

The distinguished Oxford historian Michael Howard illustrated Gaddis's point. "If NATO were to be extended eastward, we would see the beginning of a familiar pattern of aggression," he wrote in the Times of London in 1996. "Russia, seeing herself threatened by her traditional enemies, would once again set about establishing her dominance over Ukraine, Belarus and probably the Baltic states."

"NATO would have to respond by improving its military ties with the Visegrad states and perhaps offering guarantees in the Baltics, which the Russians could only see as further threats to their own security." Sir Michael concluded: "Within a few years, we would be back to a military confrontation in which the security of the Visegrad states would really be threatened, and the whole merry-go-round would begin again."

https://modernagejournal.com/natos-prophetic-critics/240359/

---

Notice one argument that was glaringly absent from the debate at the time. That is the argument you're making now, that the dirty Russkies were always going to invade Ukraine or Eastern Europe no matter what.

No doubt there were some troglodytes embedded in the military and intelligence who thought so, but they weren't taken seriously. If anything, the expansionists' argument was exactly the opposite--we could push Russia as far as we wanted with no fear of resistance. On the very eve of the war in 2022, Jake Sullivan was promising that Russia would never invade Ukraine.

So I'll ask you...who's being naive, Kay? The ones who saw all of this coming, or the ones who denied it and are now frantically re-writing history to pretend we had no part in it?

As for Putin's interview, it was misrepresented in the West as usual. He was essentially saying the same thing Owen Harries said in the 1990s, as mentioned in the article above. Russia has legitimate interests beyond its own borders, including a long history with Ukraine. That doesn't mean they can't recognize Ukraine's independence. They recognized it in 1991, on a basis of Ukrainian neutrality, and Putin reaffirms that in the 2024 interview.

The problem is that the West in recent years has taken a completely different view. Now Ukraine must be "aligned" with the West and only the West. Russia can have no say in trade negotiations, despite its deep interconnection with the Ukrainian economy. It can have no say in NATO expansion, despite the long recognized principle of indivisible security.

That is what changed. All based on a rewriting of history, wherein the Russians fought tooth and nail to hold on to their empire and have stubbornly refused cooperation ever since.

A long list of luminaries who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War--and it was negotiated--will tell you that's just not true. The troglodytes tell you otherwise, and they are increasingly loud as the whole unipolar project falls apart. That's the real revisionism. Don't fall for it. It's part of the same hubristic agenda that has failed in the Middle East and will continue to fail wherever it's tried.

---

nothing is more amusingly ironic than to see someone quoting foreign policy realists to make an argument for a foreign policy idealism which asserts that the current Russian autocrat whose armies are on campaign in Ukraine has rejected the aggressive foreign policy agenda of prior Russian autocrats.

Stop gaslighting yourself. Russia had no grounds for war with Ukraine. Ukraine had not taken any hostile action toward Russia. Ukraine was in the exact same status on D-Day as Finland and Sweden (UN member/Nato partner). Ukraine had not even requested Nato membership. Ukraine was/is not eligible for Nato membership due to it's many border disputes with Russia.

Failure to promise NOT to do something is not grounds for war.

---

I'm quoting foreign policy realists to argue exactly what they were arguing. What's ironic is that you call yourself a realist while promoting what Mearsheimer would call racist pseudo-history in order to justify a neoliberal crusade.
No, you are making an "end of history" argument that Russia isn't Russia anymore, that they are a trustworthy partner in peace who has no territorial ambitions and only invaded Ukraine out of necessity to stop (contrived) great provocations (as opposed to what it patently was - romantic irredentism). Never mind the fact that Ukraine had the EXACT same relationship with Nato and EU as Sweden and Finland did at the exact same time.

NATO has bent the rules for membership before and can do it again. If anything, your argument is a reason for Russia to keep pressing the dispute.
Can you cite an instance where Nato admitted a state with a hot, ongoing border conflict with a nuclear powered rival?

---

You are really not very good at this.

---

You are deeply confused. ***uyama's argument is opposite to mine in almost every way.

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Russian economy is tanking. Here is new evidence

1. Food inflation alone in Russia has surged 70% this year. Potato prices up 73% and butter 30%. True inflation since the invasion in 2022 is 71.4%, dwarfing the official number of 28% 1/ pic.twitter.com/fWcWIFUcJd

— Tymofiy Mylovanov (@Mylovanov) November 27, 2024

---

Realitybites said:

---

You probably believe that the inflation rate in the US is 3% too...

Are you aware that the gold reserves of the Russian central bank have risen 9900% in the past 17 years?

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Mothra said:

---

Meanwhile, the Russians are utilizing North Korean "special forces" in the fight against Ukraine.

Obviously, any country that is utilizing NK troops and Iranian weapons to attack another sovereign nation is clearly fighting a "Just War." Right Sam?

---

Man, that would be shocking if its true

The country is incredibly poor, 300k to 2 million people died in a famine in 1997, and it uses old soviet rusting out equipment.

Its major industries are all gov. owned and just supply junk to China that they don't want to make.

[China accounted for 98.3% of the DPRK's official trade with the outside world in 2023, up from 96.7% the year before.]

And they lease out some of their men as semi-slave labor to China or to Russia to cut lumber in Siberia and work on road construction projects

I can't imagine them actually sending troops into combat or those troops being in good.

They might struggle at simple guard duties inside of Russia.

[Hyunseung Lee spent 3 1/2 years with an artillery and reconnaissance battalion in the early 2000s. His time in the army included training for six months alongside the Storm Corps -- members of which are believed to have been deployed to Russia.

Amid reports that North Korean troops have already come under Ukrainian fire in Russia's southwestern Kursk region, the 39-year-old Lee warns that even Storm Corps troops are not prepared for such a battle.

"They're totally not ready," Lee told RFE/RL by telephone from the United States, where he has resided since defecting from North Korea a decade ago.

North Korean men are required to join the army at the age of 17, Lee said, and usually serve 10 years.

"They have never engaged in major conflict," Lee said of the troops sent to Russia. "They don't have real battle experience."]

---

The Russian Ruble enters full collapse mode. pic.twitter.com/60GzEm0FMn

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) November 26, 2024

Mainstream media doesn’t write much about it, but the Russian economy is in trouble.

After shifting to a wartime economy, it’s now overheating with severe labor shortages.

The interest rate is up to 22% & the ruble has fallen to its lowest level against the $ since the invasion pic.twitter.com/hWCnFxemuj

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 27, 2024

boognish_bear said:

---

Mainstream media doesn’t write much about it, but the Russian economy is in trouble.

After shifting to a wartime economy, it’s now overheating with severe labor shortages.

The interest rate is up to 22% & the ruble has fallen to its lowest level against the $ since the invasion pic.twitter.com/hWCnFxemuj

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 27, 2024

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Mainstream media doesn’t write much about it, but the Russian economy is in trouble.

After shifting to a wartime economy, it’s now overheating with severe labor shortages.

The interest rate is up to 22% & the ruble has fallen to its lowest level against the $ since the invasion pic.twitter.com/hWCnFxemuj

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 27, 2024

---

Trump just named Gen. Keith Kellogg as "Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia." Kellogg is a hardcore interventionist, Mike Pence aide, and Fox News contributor. He criticizes Biden for not arming Ukraine quickly enough, and says the plan for "peace" is to continue arming Ukraine https://t.co/v705v3PL8d

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2024

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨🚨🚨

Russia’s Central Bank Suspends Currency Purchases.

It’s happening. 👀 pic.twitter.com/scZWJnAO1M

— Bricktop_NAFO (@Bricktop_NAFO) November 27, 2024

trey3216 said:

---

The Russian Ruble enters full collapse mode. pic.twitter.com/60GzEm0FMn

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) November 26, 2024

---

trey3216 said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

The United States has sent $211 BILLION of your tax dollars to Ukraine,

4X as much as the rest of the world COMBINED.

— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) November 25, 2024

---

I've said it on here 1000 times, and now I'm going to give an analogy...

This simpleton level of statement by Tuberville is akin to this....


Your ex-wife getting mad at you because you decided to stop spending $100/month on a storage unit that contains $25000 worth of baby toys and clothes that you bought brand new years ago, and you gave the clothes and toys away to a family/families in need.

She's pissed because "you just gave that money away", and when you explain to her "I can take a full gift write-down for what it's worth currently, and not spend $1200/yr storing it" she continues to stomp her feet and say "well it was worth $25000".


Was, being the operative....


Just as your baby clothes were intended to cloth babies rather than sit in a storage unit, the stuff we sent Ukraine was built to destroy Russian military equipment....30 years ago....and we no longer have to spend big $$ on upkeep of it. No more storage unit... Full cost write down.




Yes, there's been actual monies sent for reconstruction, for utilities upkeep, and such, and for food/aide.

But the overwhelming level of that $$ you see in stupid, no context arguments like Tubs is making is 'military aide', which is nearly entirely in equipment we were mothballing and paying to keep in the storage unit. It's absolutely disingenuous.

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Trump just named Gen. Keith Kellogg as "Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia." Kellogg is a hardcore interventionist, Mike Pence aide, and Fox News contributor. He criticizes Biden for not arming Ukraine quickly enough, and says the plan for "peace" is to continue arming Ukraine https://t.co/v705v3PL8d

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2024

---

trey3216 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Mothra said:

---

Meanwhile, the Russians are utilizing North Korean "special forces" in the fight against Ukraine.

Obviously, any country that is utilizing NK troops and Iranian weapons to attack another sovereign nation is clearly fighting a "Just War." Right Sam?

---

Man, that would be shocking if its true

The country is incredibly poor, 300k to 2 million people died in a famine in 1997, and it uses old soviet rusting out equipment.

Its major industries are all gov. owned and just supply junk to China that they don't want to make.

[China accounted for 98.3% of the DPRK's official trade with the outside world in 2023, up from 96.7% the year before.]

And they lease out some of their men as semi-slave labor to China or to Russia to cut lumber in Siberia and work on road construction projects

I can't imagine them actually sending troops into combat or those troops being in good.

They might struggle at simple guard duties inside of Russia.

[Hyunseung Lee spent 3 1/2 years with an artillery and reconnaissance battalion in the early 2000s. His time in the army included training for six months alongside the Storm Corps -- members of which are believed to have been deployed to Russia.

Amid reports that North Korean troops have already come under Ukrainian fire in Russia's southwestern Kursk region, the 39-year-old Lee warns that even Storm Corps troops are not prepared for such a battle.

"They're totally not ready," Lee told RFE/RL by telephone from the United States, where he has resided since defecting from North Korea a decade ago.

North Korean men are required to join the army at the age of 17, Lee said, and usually serve 10 years.

"They have never engaged in major conflict," Lee said of the troops sent to Russia. "They don't have real battle experience."]

---

They can send those troops into combat to the meat wave lines that way they'll never have to feed them again. That's probably the purpose.

---

JUST IN: 🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russian President Putin slams US President Biden for trying to escalate the war before Donald Trump is inaugurated to prevent a peace deal.

"If president Biden thinks that by escalating the confrontation, he does anything to prevent the future administration from… pic.twitter.com/dXGoN1yLhW

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) November 28, 2024

whiterock said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

trey3216 said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

The United States has sent $211 BILLION of your tax dollars to Ukraine,

4X as much as the rest of the world COMBINED.

— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) November 25, 2024

---

I've said it on here 1000 times, and now I'm going to give an analogy...

This simpleton level of statement by Tuberville is akin to this....


Your ex-wife getting mad at you because you decided to stop spending $100/month on a storage unit that contains $25000 worth of baby toys and clothes that you bought brand new years ago, and you gave the clothes and toys away to a family/families in need.

She's pissed because "you just gave that money away", and when you explain to her "I can take a full gift write-down for what it's worth currently, and not spend $1200/yr storing it" she continues to stomp her feet and say "well it was worth $25000".


Was, being the operative....


Just as your baby clothes were intended to cloth babies rather than sit in a storage unit, the stuff we sent Ukraine was built to destroy Russian military equipment....30 years ago....and we no longer have to spend big $$ on upkeep of it. No more storage unit... Full cost write down.




Yes, there's been actual monies sent for reconstruction, for utilities upkeep, and such, and for food/aide.

But the overwhelming level of that $$ you see in stupid, no context arguments like Tubs is making is 'military aide', which is nearly entirely in equipment we were mothballing and paying to keep in the storage unit. It's absolutely disingenuous.

---

So you admit Ukraine is the largest money laundering scheme in human history?

Bcs in no sane reality does transferring old army surplus cost $300 billion.

---

it doesn't "cost" you anything to donate that TV you bought 20 years ago for $500. It costs you nothing unless you decide to replace it. if you had already planned to replace it, of course, you didn't really spend any extra money. You just got rid of the cost & hassle of keeping it. You actually come out ahead, as you can write it off your taxes, and you lower costs of maintenance & storage, etc....

Every Bradley we own, for example, is on the DOD balance sheet. We have thousands of them in long-term storage - direct annual maintenance costs and known future demil costs. It it is donated to Ukraine, it has to be written off the balance sheet as an expense. But the expense is non-cash - it's just a deduction in assets. You didn't actually spend any extra money. The make-ready and freight to get it there is offset by the loss of annual maintenance costs. And, of course, the far more substantial demil expenses are avoided entirely. The only true out-of-pocket expense is the purchase of replacement equipment. And that was already planned & budgeted for.

We are saving cash outflows when we give Bradleys away. So the true "out of pocket" portion of that $300m is a small percentage of the total. And as Trey has explained, most of the actual cash expense is spent with American defense manufacturers on replacements.

DOD has been working for over a decade to replace the Bradley with the XM30, and has narrowed the competition down to two finalists. As we start bringing the new XM30 on-line, we can proceed at a faster pace to get rid of the 2800 we still have in storage before we proceed to replace the 4500 in active duty, most of which do not have enough powerplant to retrofit the Israeli "Iron Fist" active protection system. (This is, a by the way, a good example of the benefits of US aid to Israel, which in this instance results in the benefit of a battle tested active defense system better than anything we have developed.....to protect our own boys & girls in battle).

---