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2022-03-03 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
June 26, 1997: Dear Mr. President, We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions.
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Posted by Omomolet Phutch9064 2022-03-03 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ]  Top

#1 Yeah, sure they're all Putinbots (before anyone ever heard the name Putin). Meet the bots;

George Kennan, greatest diplomat and moscfanous abskysus if RU foreign policy, in 1998: NATO expansion "would set in motion ... the beginning of a new cold war... the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

Clinton's Russia expert Strobe Talbott opposed NATO expansion: "Many Russians see Nato as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.”

Ambassador Jack Matlock opposed BATO expansion.

Prof. Stephen F Cohen opposed it vigorously up to his death. Prof. Robert Legvold and Prof. Robert Jervis of Columbia opposed it. Sen. Bill Bradley traveled across Russia and came back opposed to NATO expansion.

Diplomat and then CIA Director Bill Burns reported in 2008 that "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)." In his 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bill Burns wrote, “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer has put out the best video - 13 million views and climbing daily - about why the Ukraine Crisis is The West's Fault

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Posted by Snuse Elmereger2090 2022-03-03 01:38||   2022-03-03 01:38|| Front Page Top

#2 A compilation of all the warnings by our best thinkers over the last few decades:
https://mobile.twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Posted by Whins Wittlesbach2816 2022-03-03 01:52||   2022-03-03 01:52|| Front Page Top

#3 For anyone keeping score - it's Mardi Gras +2, whoop!
Posted by Rex Mundi 2022-03-03 02:33||   2022-03-03 02:33|| Front Page Top

#4 Russia sure is pumping out the talking points.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2022-03-03 07:04||   2022-03-03 07:04|| Front Page Top

#5 and it's NOT WORKING
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 07:05||   2022-03-03 07:05|| Front Page Top

#6 ^ Lots of pent-up demand to feel "exceptional." Talk vs walk, boys...
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-03-03 07:06||   2022-03-03 07:06|| Front Page Top

#7 Saying IT'S TEH PUTINPROPAGANDAAAAA! isn't engaging with any ideas or refuting any points. This is what you say when you have no arguments, and the evidence presented is causing cognitive dissonance.
Posted by Omomolet Phutch9064 2022-03-03 07:17||   2022-03-03 07:17|| Front Page Top

#8 We're not trained seals having to push back on talking point lies every time you puke some up. I get it, this IS your job.
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 07:28||   2022-03-03 07:28|| Front Page Top

#9 We usually have the bug man come every year. Never see too many bugs. Bug threat is greatly diminished.

If we had the bug man come every month, we'd probably see about the same number of bugs....but the bug man and the chemical company would become rich and love us.

Posted by Besoeker 2022-03-03 07:45||   2022-03-03 07:45|| Front Page Top

#10 

R. McNamara in 1968, resigned as Secretary of Defense serving JFK & LBJ, to become President of the World Bank?? .
Posted by NN2N1 2022-03-03 07:55||   2022-03-03 07:55|| Front Page Top

#11 Ivan doesn't get it.
In the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, the oration by Edward Everett took two hours. Lincoln gave his 'Gettysburg Address' taking only a few minutes. I doubt anyone can remember the oration, but the address like its author is still part of Americana.

KISS - keep it simple, stupid.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-03-03 08:03||   2022-03-03 08:03|| Front Page Top

#12 "Ivan"?
You mean your entire security and intellectual establishment, including CIA Directors, US diplomats, US scholars from across the political spectrum -- literally everyone who ever analyzed this said that threatening Russia's existence by expanding NATO was the stupidest mistake the US and the West could possibly make.

And you clowns still pretend that these people - your best, most accomplished, most respected diplomats and scholars and spymasters - you pretend your own wise men are "trolls." Yep. Keep deluding yourselves.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Posted by Deadeye Jones7194 2022-03-03 08:34||   2022-03-03 08:34|| Front Page Top

#13 I'm not sure that NATO went out a a membership drive quite so much as ex-Soviet satellites started pounding on the door to be let in.
Posted by Mercutio 2022-03-03 09:10||   2022-03-03 09:10|| Front Page Top

#14 "talking point lies"

Which one was the lie? This was written by foreign policy elites 25 years ago and it predicted what just happened. They warned us, and what do you know they were right.

Please point out where the lie is. If you can. Which you can't, and that's why the insults are being used instead of arguments.

ex-Soviet satellites started pounding on the door to be let in.

If this actually happened, we shouldn't have let them in. Admitting them was just going to lead to a war. Which it did. We have to think in terms of "what's good for America" not what's good for foreigners on the other side of the planet who despise us anyway.
Posted by Omomolet Phutch9064 2022-03-03 09:16||   2022-03-03 09:16|| Front Page Top

#15 Didn't get the message - the elites aren't
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-03-03 09:37||   2022-03-03 09:37|| Front Page Top

#16 Perhaps Russia should reflect on why former Soviet prisoners states want to get away from Russia's loving brotherly embrace?
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 09:51||   2022-03-03 09:51|| Front Page Top

#17 Keep digging.
Posted by Injun Munster2016 2022-03-03 09:53||   2022-03-03 09:53|| Front Page Top

#18 Even worse. Biden and his people actually encouraged Ukraine to hope for NATO membership. Deliberately creating false hope caused Zelensky to walk away from the Minsk II agreement he signed.

Now ironically the only alternative to having tens of thousands of his people killed is for Zelensky and the US to restore Minsk II. After having his ass kicked on the battlefield and thousands of innocents slain.

Had Biden - Mr. "Well, sonofabitch! He did what I told him to!" - had the US president forced Zelensky to actually live up to the Minsk II promises of autonomy for Donbas, and told the Russians that we would agree to forswear NATO membership for Ukraine, Biden could have prevented the crisis from ever happening.
Posted by Pharong Peacock3672 2022-03-03 10:42||   2022-03-03 10:42|| Front Page Top

#19 NATO, simply put if you dont have a shoreline on the north-atlantic ocean, you cant join. So, only the U.S., England, Norway, and Russia qualify.
Posted by irish rage boy  2022-03-03 11:04||   2022-03-03 11:04|| Front Page Top

#20 threatening Russia's existence by expanding NATO

Category error. Expanding NATO does not threaten Russia's existence.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2022-03-03 11:38||   2022-03-03 11:38|| Front Page Top

#21 had the US president forced Zelensky to actually live up to the Minsk II promises of autonomy for Donbas, and told the Russians that we would agree to forswear NATO membership for Ukraine

If only Putin got everything he wanted!

Note that those steps involve giving away territory and blocking them from joining a defensive alliance. Why would any nation be expected to go along with that?
Posted by Rob Crawford 2022-03-03 11:42||   2022-03-03 11:42|| Front Page Top

#22 They tried to add Georgia to NATO. That was before Georgia attacked Ossetia. They got their asses handed to them. Just imagine if they'd been a part of NATO, they'd have dragged us in with them.

If you forgot about this (or more likely never heard of it - typical) then here's an enthusiastic write-up of what happened by the War Nerd.
Posted by Omomolet Phutch9064 2022-03-03 12:43||   2022-03-03 12:43|| Front Page Top

#23 Can't all those Russian trolls stick to one name?
Posted by European Conservative 2022-03-03 12:57||   2022-03-03 12:57|| Front Page Top

#24 blocking them from joining a defensive alliance.

???

Since when is NATO a defensive alliance? Where'd you get this data from? Name the last time it united to defend the territory of its member states. It's never happened. Even Afghanistan was the invasion of another country (and they lost the war).

Why don't we ask NATO itself what it does? Good idea, eh?

"NATO is a crisis management organisation that has the capacity to undertake a wide range of military operations and missions."

Go ahead and look that page up and down and tell me where it says anything about being a defensive alliance. It's such an easy argument to destroy when you have facts on your side.
Posted by Omomolet Phutch9064 2022-03-03 12:58||   2022-03-03 12:58|| Front Page Top

#25 Afghanistan was in defense of the United States, asshat.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2022-03-03 16:18||   2022-03-03 16:18|| Front Page Top

#26 #23 For them, this is what passes as OPSEC
Posted by Rex Mundi 2022-03-03 16:37||   2022-03-03 16:37|| Front Page Top

#27 Russian-speaking top US diplomat and CIA Director Bill Burns to Condi Rice, after the foolish Bucharest summit promise in 2008:

"In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Go on, little sheep, deny it all you like. Ignore the fact that no American (aside from maybe Rep. Tlaib) would dream of allowing China to place its missiles and bombers in Mexico or Canada.

Ignore Kissinger. Ignore Mearsheimer. Ignore Kennan. Ignore every single one of your ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, historians and scholars of international relations. Ignore them all, and pretend that Americans and westerners who call out your current regime's fools on their madness is somehow a "bot" or a "tool." You know nothing, have learned nothing, and you will inherit the wind.

Start learning Chinese, lemmings.
Posted by Ebbimp Pelosi8406 2022-03-03 17:52||   2022-03-03 17:52|| Front Page Top

#28 ...actually, a million Chinese study English about every night. It is still the common language of science, technology, medicine, aviation, etc to include you wonderful posters here. I'm sure it will go the way of Latin or Greek, but it will be a while.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-03-03 18:00||   2022-03-03 18:00|| Front Page Top

#29 I think it was pretty clever of us Americans to learn our planetary language before everyone else did.
Posted by SteveS 2022-03-03 19:29||   2022-03-03 19:29|| Front Page Top

#30 While you weren't looking... Biden's boy in Vienna is about to sign the JCPOA. It's hilarious: they're begging **Russia** to help **Iran** build up Iran's military as a way of inducing those Russkies you hate to sign on to their deal.

Israelis expect the deal to be signed any day. Behind your backs. And stabbing yet another ally in the back.

https://mobile.twitter.com/GLNoronha/status/1499018795926626305
Posted by Elmuger the Wicked3262 2022-03-03 19:36||   2022-03-03 19:36|| Front Page Top

#31 Now we know why your shit for brains president had "Iranians" (LOL) on his mind during that Monty Python-worthy SOTU speech.

Seriously, his team is focused entirely on their beloved IRAN DEAL now.

They've never given a fuck about Ukraine or Russia -- and their gross negligence and stupidity explain why we're in this mess.
Posted by Glumble Guelph5780 2022-03-03 19:39||   2022-03-03 19:39|| Front Page Top

#32 Hilarious ... here's former State Dept analyst Gabriel Noronha:

"1. NEW: My former career @StateDept, NSC, and EU colleagues are so concerned with the concessions being made by @RobMalley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation.
🤣

2. “What’s happening in Vienna is a total disaster” one warned. The entire negotiations have been filtered and “essentially run” by Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov.

The concessions and other misguided policies have led three members of the U.S. negotiating team to leave.

😂
Posted by Vernal Munster6770 2022-03-03 20:05||   2022-03-03 20:05|| Front Page Top

#33  Start learning Chinese

*shrug* I started studying Mandarin in 1997 against probable future need, after Mr. Wife came home with an urgent request from his management to take over the R&D group in Beijing the following Monday. Fortunately, it fell through — we’d been back in the U.S. for less than two months at that point, and that week had moved into the new house and the trailing daughters started their new school, so it was much too soon to move them to a third continent — children need more time. Both later studied Japanese, which gave them a foundation in Chinese kanji against future need. The languages thing has provided us quiet amusement when among foreigners who blithely assume Americans are monolingual. For perspective, the exurban public school district I live in reports forty different native languages among the students, with the top three being Spanish, Vietnamese, and Arabic. Both Russian and the Chinese dialects are in the top ten. But then, in the 2000 national census it was reported that 20% of Americans spoke a language other than English at home, so we’ve been that way for quite some time.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-03 20:10||   2022-03-03 20:10|| Front Page Top

#34 Hey Wife: Better start learning Russian and Farsi. And hop a flight to Wien.
Those three US cookie-pushers who just bugged out of Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov's JCPOA bazaar in Vienna need to hand off their Kick Me signs to someone. Viennese German not required. They speak 'merikin.
Posted by Fester Wholusing7353 2022-03-03 20:18||   2022-03-03 20:18|| Front Page Top

#35  While you weren't looking... Biden's boy in Vienna is about to sign the JCPOA.

Boychik, you need to research your targets better. Reports about the JCPOA travesty has consistently been on Rantburg’s Page 2: War on Terror Background/Politics since President Barack Hussein Obama first mused aloud about the possibility. ”Biden’s boy in Vienna” has been about to pointlessly sign the thing for weeks — Iran is the hold-up for obvious reasons, the American side of the table.

here's former State Dept analyst Gabriel Noronha

Saw that when it was first tweeted. Nice of them to be concerned, but it would have been nicer still if they’d reared up on their hind legs years ago. Or in early 2021, when President Biden’s people revived the thing. Now their concern accomplishes nothing.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-03 20:26||   2022-03-03 20:26|| Front Page Top

#36 No, dear heart, this is new. This isn't your keyboard generals linking to shit. This is a State Dep't insider spilling all the beans on the filth going down right now in Vienna in real time

A deal which the US diplomats describe as being LED BY THE RUSSIAN LEAD DIPLOMAT. With arms sales from Russia to Iran to close the deal.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

And your man just gave the biggest soeech of the year and mixed up Iranians and Ukrainians.
😂😂😂😂😂😂

Poor Slow Joe. Just gave away the wag the dog plan.

Who'd have thunk egging on Russia to attack was all about helping ... Iran?

How much money is being kicked back to Hunter und Vater?
Posted by Whese Claque3204 2022-03-03 20:46||   2022-03-03 20:46|| Front Page Top

#37 You stupid fucks. Y'all been played.

You'll wake up today or Saturday and see headlines about Biden's 'triumph' in Vienna.

With a brief mention below the fold in paragraph 27 that the deal was sealed by allowing the Iranians to buy Russian arms.
Posted by Omonter Spique2593 2022-03-03 21:03||   2022-03-03 21:03|| Front Page Top

#38 That’s Mrs. Wife, actually. I followed Mr. Wife halfway round the world and back again in the course of his career, acquiring several souvenir daughters along the way.

I’ve been to Vienna. Pretty city, great food, the feel everywhere of having once been the center of an empire and happy to no longer have the responsibility. My German was fine for Germany and Switzerland, and combined with English led easily to Flemish and Dutch, but Austrian German is unintelligible to the uninitiate. Possibly that’s why President Obama thought it was a separate language, poor man.

Russian would be fun — I wanted to take some classes at university when I was younger, assuming that those dreadful Russian novels had to be better in the original language, but there weren’t enough of us. And later Mr. Wife managed his Russian responsibilities out of his company’s offices in Frankfurt and Brussels, so there was no need. But a number of other Rantburgers can converse with you in your native tongue, if that would be easier for you. ;-)

As for Farsi, with their birthrate and their apparent eagerness to challenge Allah’s love by triggering a Samson event from Israel, it seems a waste of effort. If I really need to understand something, I have Iranian friends who can translate.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-03 21:06||   2022-03-03 21:06|| Front Page Top

#39 Troll Pro-Tip: Don't take your payment in Rubles
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 21:07||   2022-03-03 21:07|| Front Page Top

#40 I mean, Jesus, when Reagan and pastryman Bob MacFarland did their Iran-Contra deal at least the arms were flowing to fight the communists.

Now your idiot leaders are pretending to fight Russia -- and letting the RUSSIANS SELL ARMS TO IRAN so they can fight your supposed ally.
This is beyond parody.
Laugh? Cry?
Why not both?
😄😰😂😢😁😭😄😰😂😢😁😭😄😰😂😢😁😭
Posted by Sheba Angavigum1728 2022-03-03 21:10||   2022-03-03 21:10|| Front Page Top

#41 "Your" - nice slip, Ivan
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 21:11||   2022-03-03 21:11|| Front Page Top

#42 tw:tl;dr
Posted by Clyde Thud3479 2022-03-03 21:15||   2022-03-03 21:15|| Front Page Top

#43 Frankie, you should compliment your Sec'y of State's slip: lavender with pink piping, and of the finest silk
Posted by Whasing Oppressor of the French4257 2022-03-03 21:17||   2022-03-03 21:17|| Front Page Top

#44 heh. Nice catch, Ivan
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-03 21:22||   2022-03-03 21:22|| Front Page Top

#45  tw:tl;dr

That’s okay — not everything I say fascinates everyone. ;-)

Cute, gentlemen. Although if I could recommend lavender silk with cream piping instead — the pink in combination is a bit jeune fille for a gentleman supposed to be one of the most powerful in the world.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-03 21:43||   2022-03-03 21:43|| Front Page Top

#46 Ladies and Gentlemen! There's no nicely-nicely here! This is the War Room!!
Posted by Jeremiah Ulererong5502 2022-03-03 21:48||   2022-03-03 21:48|| Front Page Top

#47 Is it Hunter und Vater or Jager und Vater?
Posted by Chesney Shating6485 2022-03-03 21:54||   2022-03-03 21:54|| Front Page Top

#48 ^ It is 10% each, either way.
Posted by SteveS 2022-03-03 22:52||   2022-03-03 22:52|| Front Page Top

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