Nato Enlargement

Gorbachev and Yeltsin agreed to collapsing the Soviet Union in exchange for a non-NATO expansion pledge. In 2021 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied such agreements ever existed or discussions even took place.^[1]

NATO expansion since the Clinton era represents a betrayal of the international agreements that ended the Cold War, caused the Fall of the Wall, and collapse of Soviet communism. Western oligarchs and neo-fascist global interests have profited immeasurably from ending the Cold War and betraying security agreements made with the Russian Federation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

To assent to the reunification of Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ultimately agreed to a proposal from then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (DOS) that a reunited Germany would be part of NATO but the military alliance would not move “one inch” to the east, that is, absorb any of the former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO.^[2][3]

On Feb. 9, 1990, Baker said: “We consider that the consultations and discussions in the framework of the 2+4 mechanism should give a guarantee that the reunification of Germany will not lead to the enlargement of NATO’s military organization to the East.” On the next day, then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said: “We consider that NATO should not enlarge its sphere of activity.”^[4] Gorbachev's mistake was not to get it in writing as a legally-binding agreement.^[5]

The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn, West Germany between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which Western officials made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO would not push into territory east of Germany. “We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document in British foreign ministry archives quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz. “NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added. A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is “unacceptable.”^[7]

In May 1995 President Bill Clinton was invited to Moscow for the 50th anniversary Victory Day celebrations of the defeat of Hitler. In Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin berated Clinton about NATO expansion, seeing “nothing but humiliation” for Russia: “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia – that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.”^[8]

After the Soviet Union collapsed depriving NATO of its original reason for existence, skeptics of the alliance included liberals as much as conservatives. In 1998, 10 Democratic Senators joined nine Republicans in opposing the first, fateful round of NATO enlargement with Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland added, extending the alliance to Russia's border. Among the dissenters was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. In between voting against the first Iraq war in 1991 and the second after Sept. 11, Sen. Wellstone warned that expanding NATO would jeopardize Europe's hard-won gains. “There is peace between states in Europe, between nations in Europe, for the first time in centuries,” he said. “We do not have a divided Europe, and I worry about a NATO expansion which could redivide Europe and again poison relations with Russia.”^[9]

Clinton era betrayal[edit]

As the New York Times wrote back in 1998, "Ben & Jerry's is against expanding NATO. So is Phyllis Schlafly, the arch-conservative activist. ... 'It would obligate us to go to war to defend the borders in Eastern Europe,' said Mrs. Schlafly, who founded the 80,000-member Eagle Forum. 'We don't think that's an American responsibility. We see this as one Bosnia after another.'^[10] NATO was never intended to be "the world's policeman," nor is it an enforcement arm or extension of the United Nations. President Donald Trump was highly critical of how the United States has been saddled with the bulk of the cost throughout its history while Europe has not paid its agreed upon mandated share of defense costs.

NATO carried out the bombing of civilians in Serbia during the Clinton Administration,^[11] fomented the Libyan war in which it aligned itself with al Qaeda elements during the Obama administration, and has been criticized for its provocative actions towards Russia in the Russia Ukraine conflict in 2022 under the Biden regime. The NATO organization has aligned itself with self-proclaimed Nazis in Ukraine war.^[12] NATO began arming, equipping, and training Nazi groups in Ukraine in 2015 for the specific aim to overthrow the legitimate government of Russia. NATO recruited neo-Nazi mercenaries from across the planet to train in Ukraine.

On March 19, 2021, NATO held its first conference promoting LGBTQ+ goals.^[13] See also "What does a Pride parade have to do with NATO? More than you might think."^[14]

NATO's official website states its political motive under Orwellian language: "NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict."^[15] Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has waged two wars of aggression, one against Serbia to carve out the state of Kosovo, which increased the crime rate in Kosovo as it was also turned into a hotbed of human and organ trafficking,^[16] and another in Libya which resulted in chaos and the return of the slave trade in Black Africans.

Russian reaction[edit]

Vladimir Putin assumed office as the president of Russia on the last day of 1999. In an interview with David Frost broadcast on the BBC on March 13, 2000, Putin expressed his desire to see Russia join NATO:^[17]

Within hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush and offer sympathy and support for what became the first invocation of NATO Article V, "an attack against one is an attack against all."^[18] Putin announced a five-point plan to support the war on terror, pledging that the Russian government would (1) share intelligence with their American counterparts, (2) open Russian airspace for flights providing humanitarian assistance (3) cooperate with Russia's Central Asian allies in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to provide similar kinds of airspace access to American flights, (4) participate in international search and rescue efforts, and (5) increase direct assistance -humanitarian as well as military assistance—to the Afghan Northern Alliance. The intelligence Putin shared, including data that helped American forces find their way around Kabul and logistical information about Afghanistan's topography and caves, contributed to the success of operation and rout of the Taliban. Two weeks after the attacks, Putin was invited to make a speech to a Special Session of the Bundestag, the first ever by a Russian head of state to the German parliament.^[19] Among the numerous subjects Putin addressed in fluent German was peace and stability in the common European home:

In 2004 the Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined NATO, setting up another common border between the Russian Federation and a NATO state. Three years later, at the Munich Security Conference, Putin declared, “We have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”^[20] In 2008 NATO said Ukraine and Georgia would become members. Four other Eastern European states joined NATO in 2009.

At the February 2007 Munich Security Conference President Putin said.

Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu said at the opening of the 10th Moscow International Security Conference in August 2022:

References[edit]