@tjscott0 I won’t flag this post but you are posting a lot of copyrighted material. TMF watchers may delete your post for copyright infringement. They’ve done it to me. That’s why I’m careful to copy only 3 paragraphs or so (with careful attribution and a link to the original) and then describe the rest in my own words. It takes more time but can protect a post.
Wendy
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Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine , by Scott Horton. The Libertarian Institute. 690 pp.
Horon’s theme is Washington’s insistence of NATO expansion into former Soviet empire. Despite warnings from Russian diplomats, European leaders, and US foreign policy experts.
The NATO expansion begins with James Baker’s promise that NATO would expand “not one inch” to the East if the Soviets withdrew from East Germany.
The critical decisions about whether NATO should expand eastward were made during Clinton’ administration. Horton has heavy documentation that a preponderance of foreign policy people thought the risks outweighed the benefits.
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The 1995 Budapest agreement almost did not occur.
The Yeltsin eruption on December 5, 1994, made the top of the front page of the New York Times the next day, with the Russian president’s accusation (in front of Clinton and other heads of state gathered for a summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, CSCE) that the “domineering” U.S. was “trying to split [the] continent again” through NATO expansion. The angry tone of Yeltsin’s speech echoed years later in his successor Vladimir Putin’s famous 2007 speech at the Munich security conference, though by then the list of Russian grievances went well beyond NATO expansion to such unilateral U.S. actions as withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the invasion of Iraq.
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Yeltsin was ignored.
US expansion opponents included 2 sec of defense-Les Aspin & William Perry, Ambassadors to Soviet Union Jack Matlock & Thomas Pickering, NSA Brent Snowcroft,CIa director William Burns, legendary postwar containment formulator George Kennan, and former CIA directors Stansfield Turner & Robert Gates to name a few.
The main government players pushing for nato expansion were Richard Holbrooke and Anthony Lake; they were aided mightily by Bruce Jackson, the Lockheed vice president and DC lobbyist, who formed the Committee to Expand Nato in 1996. (Jackson surely merits his own biographer; he later founded the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq” and is plainly a man who can get things done in Washington.) The defense industry, as political scientists have long noted, has constituents scattered nationwide who appreciate its manufacturing jobs. NATO expansion promised to be good for business. Electoral factors counted. Clinton had lost the 1994 congressional elections, and Polish Americans wanted Poland to be part of NATO; Polish suffering and resistance under Soviet occupation gave Poland’s wishes considerable moral weight in the West.
NATO expansion was popular politically; Republicans regularly chided Clinton for being “weak” by delaying it
*Holbooke and Lake were skilled bureaucratic infighters, figures like Secretary of Defense William Perry were not. *
William Perry wrote in his memoir that a true partnership with Russia would have been possible without NATO expansion. Perry was met with an attitude of “Who cares what they think?”
Perry considered resigning but didn’t.
Russia, unwilling to start a war complained but could due nothing but acquiesce to former Warsaw Pact countries absorption into NATO.
Ukraine was a different matter. Even Henry Kissenger & Zbigniew Brezinski highlighted Ukraine as an especially neuralgic point for Moscow.
Kissenger warned about helping western Ukraine dominate largely ethnic Russian provinces in the east.
Zelensky & Putin attempted to negotiate their differences.
Putin dropped his demand for the “disarmament of Ukraine”; Zelensky agreed to drop plans to join NATO. Substantive talks between diplomats from the two countries continued in late March in Belarus and Istanbul: Russia would withdraw from eastern Ukraine; Ukraine would recognize Russia’s possession of Crimea; Ukraine would drop its NATO aspiration and seek security guarantees from individual Western countries.
Zelensky advisor said they were prepared to seal the deal.
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, trusted by both sides, served as Putin and Zelensky’s go-between and developed the outline of a ceasefire.
But Washington would have none of it. Bennet later explained, “The Americans decided to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.” Shortly thereafter Boris Johnson showed up in Kiev with promises of more weapons and a message from Biden. Horton cites a Ukrainian paper, Ukrainska Pravda : “Putin should be pressured, not negotiated with…. The collective West now felt…that Putin was not really as powerful as previously imagined, and there was a chance to ‘press’ him.”
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“Who cares what they think?”
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These warmongering politicians deserve to rot in hell.
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I don’t understand the mindset that unless the United States of America is at fault unless it grovels and prostrates itself in front of Putin. Our president of course is completely subservient to Putin, but that doesn’t mean we as citizens need to be.
I’m of the opinion that Putin is responsible for Putin’s actions. I had no idea there was such a ground swell that America must follow Putin’s desires or suffer the consequences.
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Its good that Trump does not listen to these dumb jingoistic advisers who are driving towards nuclear war.
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And Washington ain’t responsible for their actions and resulting reactions?
The US didn’t invade another sovereign country.
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Iraq & Afghanistan & US interventions in Syria & Libya & Yemen using surrogates in the last two.
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That’s why Russia invaded Ukraine? I’m confused, this just became much more complicated.
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Russia is playing the same game the US has in the past. Why? Because they can. Just nukes and significant number of troops, equipment and munitions are needed.
In the first week of the newly elected regime in the USA in 2001 the president decided to invade Iraq; with or without UN approval according to Secretary of Paul O’Neill who was at the meeting. It just took a few years to gin up a reason and manipulate US populace support.
After Iraq & Afghanistan, the US populace was tire of war but Libya civil war presented an opportunity for intervention but it was unlikely the US government could close the sale to the US public. So we enlisted our vassals in NATO to intervene. They couldn’t quite cut the mustard so the US had to help with intelligence and munitions so Qaddaffi could be removed. And without ground troops intervene Libya turned into a breeding ground for terrorists & terrorism.
And on and on it goes.