How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ignored-warnings-how-nato-expansion-led-current-ukraine-tragedy#
Madeleine Albright, concedes that
“[Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.”
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott similarly described the Russian attitude.
“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.”
It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.
George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion.
”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated.
”I think 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.”
Events during the past few months constituted the last chance to avoid a hot war in Eastern Europe.
Putin demanded that NATO provide guarantees on several security issues.
Specifically, the Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce the scope of its growing military presence in Eastern Europe and would never offer membership to Ukraine.
He backed up those demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.
The
Biden administration’s response to Russia’s quest for meaningful Western concessions and security guarantees was tepid and evasive.
Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters.
Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a NATO political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) costed the Ukrainian people dearly.
History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions.
It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ignored-warnings-how-nato-expansion-led-current-ukraine-tragedy#