4 ms·
Not really. However the position of Russians has been absolutely constant. See these excerpts from talks between Gorbachev and James Baker, Baker and Chevarnadz
by wazoox 5y ago
Not really. However the position of Russians has been absolutely constant. See these excerpts from talks between Gorbachev and James Baker, Baker and Chevarnadze, with the famous "verbal assurances":
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Promises-no-expansion-NATO-eastward-USSR-1990-Gorbatchev-v1-en-2048x1595.jpg https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Promise...
Yeltsin in this telex to Bill Clinton from 1993:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-expansion-65.jpg https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-ex...
Reported in the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/02/world/yeltsin-opposes-expansion-of-nato-in-eastern-europe.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/02/world/yeltsin-opposes-exp...
Then came a promise from Secretary of state Christopher on 10/22/93 that there would be no extension:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16380-document-08-secretary-christopher-s-meeting https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16380-document-08-secreta...
However Richard Holbrooke changed his discourse, and Yeltsin complained in 94:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16385-document-13-official-informal-no-248-boris-bill https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16385-document-13-officia...
Then again:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NT-front-page.jpg https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/NT-fron...
However, Yeltsine nearly died in 96, and his election relied entirely on manipulations at a large scale from the CIA. Therefore, Clinton thought he was free to proceed with NATO extension:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Perry-page1.png https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Perry-p...
But there was large disapproval from the Russian, like Gorbachev still in this Herald Tribune 1997 guest article:
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-expansion-61-2048x1905.jpg https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/otan-ex...
But in the US too, like George Kennan in the NYTimes, 1997:
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.h...
and many others, Michael Mandelbaum,Richard T. Davis, John Lewis Gaddis, even Thomas Friedman thought extending NATO was a serious mistake.
> Privately, though, a few more perceptive officials acknowledged that relations with Russia had not been handled well. In his memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, made some interesting admissions. “When I reported to the president my take on the Munich conference, I shared my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of the Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War…” Yet even that blunt assessment given to Bush did not fully capture Gates’ views on the issue. “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George H.W.] Bush left office in 1993.” Among other missteps, “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”
https://www.cato.org/commentary/did-putins-2007-munich-speech-predict-ukraine-crisis# https://www.cato.org/commentary/did-putins-2007-munich-speec...
Also, there's the treachery of the 2011 Libya operation :
https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/libye-01.jpg https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/libye-0...