Ucovered Document Re:NATO Expansion Promise

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/02/21/uncovered-document-revea…
A document from the British National Archives that was resurfaced in a report by the German newspaper Der Spiegel* reveals that the Soviet Union was promised NATO wouldn’t expand eastward during negotiations at the end of the Cold War.

The document is the minutes of a meeting between foreign ministry officials from the US, France, Germany, and Britain in Bonn, Germany, on March 6th, 1991. Officials referenced the “two plus four” negotiations that were held with the Soviet Union in 1990 to reunify East and West Germany.

“We made it clear in the two plus four negotiations that we would not expand NATO beyond the Elbe. We can therefore not offer NATO membership to Poland and the others,” German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog said at the 1991 meeting.

French, US, and British officials also agreed on the issue of NATO expansion, including Raymond Seitz, who served as the US assistant secretary of state for Canada and Europe at the time.

“We have made it clear to the Soviet Union in two plus four talks and elsewhere that we will not take advantage of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” Seitz said, according to the document.

The promise was never part of an official treaty, which is why Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking written guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia won’t ever join the alliance.

Get it writing! Verbal promises mean nothing in a capitalist world.

The link below requires the ability to read German.
*https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article236986765/Nato-Os…

Get it writing! Verbal promises mean nothing in a capitalist world.

Promises, written or verbal, have no value with any sovereign nation. Remember:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/world/europe/ukraine-russ…

“When Russians say, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to invade Ukraine’ what they mean is, ‘Yes, yes, yes, we do want to invade Ukraine,’” said Oksana Syroid, a former deputy speaker of Parliament.

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Get it writing! Verbal promises mean nothing in a capitalist world.

Yup. Written promises don’t mean much either.

Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994 to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit…

Belarus and Kazakhstan have Putin-friendly governments. Ukraine has been invaded.

Steve

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Get it writing! Verbal promises mean nothing in a capitalist world.

And we HAVE IT in writing, in a separate agreement, that Russia will never attack Ukraine.

Written promises mean nothing in the world of global politics.

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Get it writing! Verbal promises mean nothing in a capitalist world.

There really was no need to smear Capitalism.

The Captain

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There were also other developments afterwards, for example, the Ukraine later on gave up its nuclear weapons in return for the expectation of western military protection. That certainly rendered any previous promises like this obsolete.

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Say NATO had been rebranded as the European and North America Security Pact (ENASP). Putin would still have invaded Ukraine. Putin wants his sphere of influence to be as large as the USSR’s was, but many in Europe (who remember the USSR) have said no. Ukraine joining EU, NATO, or ENASP would all have provoked Putin. At some point, Russia will accept the fact that the Cold War is over, and the USSR is not returning, but we’re not there yet. It might just take time for the old Soviet thinking to die off, and we need to limit the damage Putin can do in the meantime.

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