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2022-02-02 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

NATO tricked Russia into promising not to move east, Putin says

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Posted by badanov 2022-02-02 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 Cry me a river.

Posted by European Conservative 2022-02-02 18:19|| 2022-02-02 18:19|| Front Page Top

#2 KGB wouldn't lie to you. Pravda.

Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No”
What the Germans, Americans, British and French did agree to in 1990 was that there would be no deployment of non-German NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR. I was a deputy director on the State Department’s Soviet desk at the time, and that was certainly the point of Secretary James Baker’s discussions with Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 1990, few gave the possibility of a broader NATO enlargement to the east any serious thought.

The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:

Until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.
There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.
Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 18:34|| 2022-02-02 18:34|| Front Page Top

#3 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s verbal assurance to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that if Germany were allowed to reunify within NATO then the alliance would not move “one inch eastward”—a pledge Gorbachev foolishly failed to codify in writing. (Baker and others dispute this characterization, and Baker has denied that he made any formal pledges.)

https://archive.ph/o/dlVO3/https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

Warsaw Pact disbanded and Russian troops withdrew. Why didn't we do the same?

Posted by Sheter the Lesser9291 2022-02-02 21:22|| 2022-02-02 21:22|| Front Page Top

#4 From Gorbachev himself from the link in #2:
Gorbachev continued that “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.” To be sure, the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 21:25|| 2022-02-02 21:25|| Front Page Top

#5 That NATO is stationing troops on the former Warsaw Pact nations is entirely to due Putin's stupid aggressiveness.
Several years after German reunification, in 1997, NATO said that in the “current and foreseeable security environment” there would be no permanent stationing of substantial combat forces on the territory of new NATO members. Up until the Russian military occupation of Crimea in March, there was virtually no stationing of any NATO combat forces on the territory of new members. Since March, NATO has increased the presence of its military forces in the Baltic region and Central Europe.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 21:29|| 2022-02-02 21:29|| Front Page Top

#6 Joshua Shifrinson has done by far the best analysis of what actually happened.

There was indeed a deal -- a verbal promise, which anyone who knows contract law is understood by civilized people as binding when the other party offers consideration. The Soviets offered consideration, and then some: they completely disbanded the Warsaw Pact. OF COURSE they were humiliated and have ever since been determined to avoid being fvcked again.

Re the promise: the entire premise of German reunification was that the Cold War formula would be nullified. IOW, a divided and militarized Germany would, post 1991, be replaced by a unified and demilitarized Germany. The Russians would NEVER have agreed to a reunified Germany had they known NATO would expand, not only "one inch eastward," but right up to Russia's borders.

That was the implicit deal. We knew that, they knew that, Kohl and Genscher knew that.

Here's Shifrinson:

Contrary to the claims of many policymakers and analysts, there is signiacant evidence that Russian assertions of a “broken promise” regarding NATO ex- pansion have merit.169 Applying insights from international relations theory to both new and preexisting evidence on the 1990 negotiations suggests that Russian leaders are essentially correct: NATO expansion violated the quid pro quo at the heart of the diplomacy that culminated in German reuniaca- tion within NATO. There was no written agreement precluding NATO expansion, but non-expansion guarantees were still advanced in 1990, only to be overturned.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:06|| 2022-02-02 23:06|| Front Page Top

#7 We not only lied to the Russians and humiliated them; we rubbed their faces in it. We crushed their brother-Slavs in Serbia, siding with a Muslim terrorist organization in the bargain, and lectured them about financial responsibility while we promoted and propped up a corrupt and mentally deficient figurehead while Russia turned into a shitty, lawless oligarchy that impoverished millions and caused longevity to decline...

Gee, THAT sounds familiar, doesn't it? Hits kinda close to home, друзя мои -- не правда ли?

Interesting that the same globalist shits who humiliated and cheated the Russians are the western elites who have helped China rise and stuffed their pockets over the last 30 years: the Bushes, Clintons, their Oligarch pals and the hundreds of little carpetbaggers taking in lobbying and consulting and investment banking fees from the global elites who have bequeathed is our current dystopian global nightmare.

Fvck them. Putin's a bandit but he's dead right on this one. We never ever should have expanded NATO eastward. We gained nothing and turned Russia into an enemy -- when we could have and should have played the Russia card against our REAL enemies, China and radical Islam.

Criminally foolish. History will not be kind to Bush, Baker, et al.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:19|| 2022-02-02 23:19|| Front Page Top

#8 Read Gorbachev's lips: he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.

While the west had no plans to expand east, it was the newly freed Warsaw Pact members who insisted on NATO membership. They were intimately familiar with Russian motivation and behavior and insisted on NATO membership before a situation rose like in Ukraine. What part of free association of free peoples don't you understand?

I believe one huge missed opportunity was not offering NATO membership to Russia and the rest of the FSU when the Eastern European members joined. It would have moderated Russian behavior and moved them to democratic government. If Russia declined to join, then they would have no excuse to bully the others from joining the democracy club. But the late 90's was a not a time strategic thinking but of selling out the USA to China and Oval Office bjs.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 23:34|| 2022-02-02 23:34|| Front Page Top

#9 "free association of free peoples" -- what bullshit.

The only thing that our elites understand -- and Russia's, and China's, and Germany's and France's and Japan's elites and every person on the planet who's ever held a responsible position understands -- is power.

We had an excess of power in 1991. Stupidly, though predictably, we reveled in that power and thought that a freak of history was the Mandate of Heaven / Manifest Destiny / The END OF HISTORY.

Foolish hubris. Catastrophic self-congratulatory blindness.

We fvcked up. We made Putin. We prepared the ground for his fetid bloom.

So fvcking stupid. Why are you justifying it now? What on earth is America's vital interest in Estonia? In Georgia? In Ukraine of all places?

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:45|| 2022-02-02 23:45|| Front Page Top

#10 Russian motivation -> Russian paranoia

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 23:46|| 2022-02-02 23:46|| Front Page Top

#11 Fascist much?

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 23:46|| 2022-02-02 23:46|| Front Page Top

#12 Gorbachev was a rube. A southern hick chosen by Politiburi hacks to preside over le deluge.

Putin for all his corruption is an intelligent decisive and strong leader. One eyed man maybe you get the drift. Gorbachev was blind.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:51|| 2022-02-02 23:51|| Front Page Top

#13 What on earth is America's vital interest in ~~Estonia? In Georgia? In Ukraine of all places?~~ Germany, Japan, Korea, Canada, Mexico, Chicago? Let's get our asses out of all of them. It's a straw man argument cause the line can be drawn anywhere or nowhere.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 23:51|| 2022-02-02 23:51|| Front Page Top

#14 Fascist much?

Try harder, Karen.

Don't be so fvcking Woke. It doesn't belong here.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:52|| 2022-02-02 23:52|| Front Page Top

#15 We have vital interests in the Persian Gulf. In the South China Sea. In the Caribbean / on our southern Border.

But not in Eastern Europe, let alone Georgia and Ukraine.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:53|| 2022-02-02 23:53|| Front Page Top

#16 It wasn't Gorbachev that broke up the Soviet Union, it was the old line Communists' failed anti-Gorbachev coup that allowed the republics to declare independence.

Posted by Ulelet Snusotch7182 2022-02-02 23:54|| 2022-02-02 23:54|| Front Page Top

#17 Those "republics" are anything but. Nearly all are third-world shitholes presided over by bandits.

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2022-02-02 23:56|| 2022-02-02 23:56|| Front Page Top

#18 Fascist much?

Nobody here is fascist. We leave that for the left, who invented it a century ago and never gave it up.

Posted by trailing wife 2022-02-02 23:58|| 2022-02-02 23:58|| Front Page Top

23:58 trailing wife
23:56 Merrick Ferret
23:54 Ulelet Snusotch7182
23:53 Merrick Ferret
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21:22 Sheter the Lesser9291
20:30 trailing wife
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