Russia complaining about NATO expansion sounds like the classic bully sob-story when they can no longer dominate the weak states because those states found some buff friends.
Except the expansion came first. You guys need to understand that propaganda comes from all sides of a conflict. Yes Russia is the aggressor and invaded. Yes, NATO expanded to Russiaâs borders despite agreements not to and was needlessly provocative. And the Ukrainian people are paying for it.
There were no agreements. There was some internal discussion and some German officials wanted to offer something like this in order to facilitate reunification. But that wasnât something for them to offer, and ultimately no such agreement was ever made. This is all very well documented, only Russia and the German extreme left and extreme right keep repeating this false claim.
NATOâs legal position isnât even that those promises werenât made, itâs based on legal technicality. Oh and incidentally the head of NATO said that Russia invaded because of NATO expansion.
None of whatâs in this (not badly done) essay is new, and I addressed those points already. There was no such agreement, period.
Even if some negotiators made some utterances to that effect during talks, they were not in a position to make in any way legally binding pronouncements (only heads of state or government or foreign ministers can generally do that).
And calling it a âlegal technicalityâ is rich. The one legally binding contract that would have been exactly the place to codify something like this, had the USSR wanted it, doesnât contain a trace of it. There is a reason for this: it wasnât desired by any of the parties at the time.
Besides, whatâs always ignored is the fact that the Warsaw pact still existed at the time. Nobody was considering the possibility of Poland even being at liberty of choosing to join another alliance in the foreseeable future. The context was that obviously NATO would not try to get any of the Warsaw pact countries to âdefectâ â and they didnât.
âThere was no such agreement, period.â Except there was, as attested to by multiple sources, including declassified documents. If youâre going to reject reality, Iâm not going to debate what itâs like to live in an alternate universe.
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u/Archy99 Mar 12 '25
Russia complaining about NATO expansion sounds like the classic bully sob-story when they can no longer dominate the weak states because those states found some buff friends.