What would the US have done if instead Mexico and Canada had joined the Warsaw Pact? The Cuban Missile Crisis can inform us on that. For me this is just so obviously yet another US foreign policy blunder, that civilians elsewhere pay the price for. I don’t have to list the many others for you, including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and lately they left Afghanistan in the lurch. Billons of dollars spent, millions of lives ruined. They support the foul Saudi regime and apartheid Israel. As a layman with no particular insight I don’t think post WWII US foreign policy has been very successful
I agree with all of that, in fact I was a lone voice in my own circle in criticising Kennedy over Cuba citing the existence of rockets aimed at Russia from Turkey, but, having broken away at last from Russian tyranny why on earth would the former Eastern Bloc not want to prevent it happening again? For all its faults, NATO was not an aggressive threat to Russia but a defensive one against its proven aggression over many years. We saw what happened with Sweden and Finland. They tried neutrality and saw that it didn’t work.
I agree David, that the countries that wanted to join NATO had every right to do so. What I lament is that while all this was happening nobody thought or cared that this trend might cause a spot of Russian paranoia. The Russians have been voicing security concerns for a long time, in fact since 1990. I would have hoped that smart Western politicians would have found a way of reassuring them that NATO expansion wasn’t a threat, if indeed it wasn’t. I guess the only stable situation is one in which no country, including Russia, feels threatened.
…and an economic boost to the defence (offence) industry in the US for every missile.
When the Gulf war was on, our internal rumour at HP was that inside every Patriot missile was an HP computer and apparently one of our salesmen in the US made so much commission, as basically every time a Patriot missile was fired he sold another computer, that the company simply refused to pay him the commission earned.
I’m a little younger than many of you here, but my ‘wake up’ to America was Ecuador - I’m under no illusions that the US is a defender of the rights of humanity, and the expression ‘Land of the free, home of the brave’ was always ironic. But this has to be about more than our antipathy to the US.
My comments about defeating Russia are because I don’t believe that as a nation they will ever allow their former satellite states to live without fear of invasion if Russia continues to believe they have the capability to attack them and be successful. Allowing Russia to retain any occupied land will simply reinforce the belief that this is a legitimate means of expansion, and peace will only be temporary. It will also continue to boost western arms manufacturing and development because there will continue to be a clear and present danger from Russia, as well as China, NK and Iran.
This does have the feel of escalation now, and that’s not good in any way.
Just remind me what was special about their meddling in Ecuador, I remember Chile, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan but my, obviously much older brain, does not register Ecuador. Nicaragua yes. Another one. Panama. The list is long.
Anyway, that aside, everything you say there is spot on, the Russians will not stop their expansionist mindset at Ukraine, Sweden and, especially, Finland have suddenly woken up to that and a good thing too.
Maybe I have just missed it, but unless one counts the disastrous adventure in Afghanistan and the Georgia affair I can’t think of any Russian moves that could ne considered expansionist. Only NATO has been expansionist, and how.
I’m no expert but given that (the actual war criminal) Bush had encouraged Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO, the invasion of Georgia should have been a waring as to what could happen in Ukraine. This comes from Wiki, I know many experts look down their noses at poor old Wiki and it is open to malicious editing but I find it a good and generally reliable source of information. I think the many. many editiors keeping an eye on the content is a good thing.
" Relations between Georgia and the West
One of President Saakashvili’s primary aims for Georgia was to become a member state of NATO,[85] which has been one of the major stumbling blocks in Georgia–Russia relations.[94]
Although Georgia has no notable gas or oil reserves, its territory hosts part of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline supplying oil to Turkey.[95] Russia, Iran and the Persian Gulf countries opposed the construction of the pipeline.[96] The pipeline circumvents both Russia and Iran. Because it has decreased Western dependence on Middle East’s oil, the pipeline has been a major factor in the United States’ backing for Georgia.[97]
During the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, American president George W. Bush campaigned for offering a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine. However, Germany and France said that offering a MAP to Ukraine and Georgia would be “an unnecessary offence” for Russia.[98] NATO stated that Ukraine and Georgia would be admitted in the alliance and pledged to review the requests for MAP in December 2008.[99] Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Bucharest during the summit. At the conclusion of the summit on 4 April, Putin said that NATO’s enlargement towards Russia “would be taken in Russia as a direct threat to the security of our country”.[100] Following the Bucharest summit, Russian hostility increased and Russia started to actively prepare for the invasion of Georgia.[101]Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed ForcesYuri Baluyevsky said on 11 April that Russia would carry out “steps of a different nature” in addition to military action to block NATO membership of former Soviet republics.[102] General Baluyevsky admitted in 2012 that after President Putin had decided to attack Georgia prior to the May 2008 inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev as president of Russia, a military action was planned and explicit orders were issued in advance before August 2008. Russia aimed to stop Georgia’s accession to NATO and also to bring about a “regime change”.[82]"
Note Germany and France’s comment about offence to Russia.
The more I delve into this the more I become convinced that the blame for the whole disaster should be laid at the door of the US. This was all predictable and the US didn’t care, once again the war would be a long way from their homeland.
I think you have missed it John, the point that is. For a start one does count Afghanistan, the same as one does the American led adventure there, and the Georgia and Ukrainian invasions prove the point that Russia is of an expansionist mindset, in both they attempted to foil any moves towards NATO membership before it happened to avoid a direct confrontation. For this reason it is a nervous time for both Finland and Sweden and perhaps the only saving grace for them in the interim is that the idiot in Moscow has his hands full in Ukraine and, short of a nuclear strike, does not have the power to open a 2nd front.
But why this objection to NATO membership, for anyone? Simply because free nations need the security that lonely endeavour does not bring. If it were not so, and legitimate, why is anybody in NATO?
I agree David, as I mention above all the countries that joined NATO had every right to do so, as do Georgia and Ukraine. What I am pissed off about is that the (primaraly US) politicians that encouraged them to do so ignored the knock on effect on Russian paranoia. And here we are
Of course the best solution would have been for Russia to have joined NATO too, their help would have been useful when the real enemy China kicks off.
Not actually entering ADIZ but definitely flagging their intentions. China may be betting on keeping the west (US) tied up supplying and supporting Ukraine.
Ah, now you’re talking, and I mentioned way back in the '90s that that would be a good idea, then there would be no fear of others joining and no need of blocking invasions of those who wanted to.
Perhaps you did miss it, although I’m not sure how. This Wikipedia article mentions Russia making a treaty with Nazi Germany in order to occupy the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina which were then part of Romania, and Eastern Poland. with the Russians handing over the part they had captured to Germany. They later also occupied western Ukraine and parts of Belarus. At the end of the second world war Russia retained control of the countries it had taken from German control and added them to its empire with the exception of Yugoslavia and Albania. When Hungary tried to break free they sent in tanks. It was also hardly a benign occupation.
I have seen it written that Putin has pledged to restore the old USSR - ‘Make Russia Great Again’ if you will’ - but have not found a specific and detailed reference yet. I also see there have been denials that he wishes to do any such thing, but as various articles point out, there is normally a disconnect between what Putin says and what he does.
There is an interesting section here however: Russia under Vladimir Putin - Wikipedia
On 10 February 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a confrontational speech in Munich where, inter alia, he accused the West of breaking the promise not to expand NATO into new countries in Eastern Europe believing that is a threat to Russia’s national security. According to John Lough, associate fellow of the Chatham House, Putin’s statement was based on the myth that the West deceived Russia by reneging on its promises at the end of the Cold War not to enlarge NATO and chose to pass up the opportunity to integrate Russia into a new European security framework and instead encouraged Moscow back on to a path of confrontation with the USA and its allies. In fact, USSR neither asked for nor was given any formal guarantees that there would be no further expansion of NATO beyond the territory of a united Germany and, in addition, the USSR signed the Charter of Paris in November 1990 with the commitment to ‘fully recognize the freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements’.[183] In opinion of Andrey Kolesnikov, senior fellow of the Carnegie Moscow Center, this speech was the “foul of the last hope”: Russian president wanted to scare the West with his frankness believing that, perhaps, “western partners” would take into account his concerns and make several steps forward to meet him. It had a reverse effect but this scenario was also calculated: either you will or you won’t, Russia will be transforming from the fragment of the West into the super-sovereign island. Seeing as what happened thereafter, he decided for himself that he is free in his actions: because he had not succeed in becoming a world leader by western rules, he would become a world leader by his own rules.[184]
We also know that NATO is a defensive pact - not an organisation and treaty for invasion - with origins in the cold war threat from Russia and China. We can therefore be confident that Russia being surrounded by NATO countries does NOT threaten them as a nation-state, but rather places un-acceptable limits on their desires and ability to expand their territory through warfare.
So while I might agree that America has been behaving in a manner that is politically unwise, the responsibility for the invasion is wholly Russian, and there can be no lasting peace while a Russian boot remains on the soil of other nations. A lesson many other nations including America have had to learn too.
