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Old 07-18-2022, 01:40 PM   #16
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Originally Posted by lustylad View Post
This illustrates one reason it wasn't such a brilliant idea for NATO to expand without apparent limits (or IMO adequate forethought). When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, NATO had 16 members. Today there are 30. Any one of them effectively wields a veto power over new applications for membership.
Agree.

Although this should not remotely be considered an argument that in any manner seeks to justify Putin's brutal sacking of a sovereign nation, I do believe that NATO long ago pushed well beyond what might reasonably have been considered its legitimate writ.

For the historical record, here's the text of a well-known 1998 NYT interview with the late George Kennan:

By Thomas L. Friedman

His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate's ratification of NATO expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th century was ready with an answer.

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''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. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

One only wonders what future historians will say. If we are lucky they will say that NATO expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic simply didn't matter, because the vacuum it was supposed to fill had already been filled, only the Clinton team couldn't see it. They will say that the forces of globalization integrating Europe, coupled with the new arms control agreements, proved to be so powerful that Russia, despite NATO expansion, moved ahead with democratization and Westernization, and was gradually drawn into a loosely unified Europe. If we are unlucky they will say, as Mr. Kennan predicts, that NATO expansion set up a situation in which NATO now has to either expand all the way to Russia's border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe.

But there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990's. They will note that one of the seminal events of this century took place between 1989 and 1992 -- the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which had the capability, imperial intentions and ideology to truly threaten the entire free world. Thanks to Western resolve and the courage of Russian democrats, that Soviet Empire collapsed without a shot, spawning a democratic Russia, setting free the former Soviet republics and leading to unprecedented arms control agreements with the U.S.

And what was America's response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia's borders.

Yes, tell your children, and your children's children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse.

We are in the age of midgets. The only good news is that we got here in one piece because there was another age -- one of great statesmen who had both imagination and courage.

As he said goodbye to me on the phone, Mr. Kennan added just one more thing: ''This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.''
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Old 07-18-2022, 01:45 PM   #17
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Please cut these people some slack here, lustylad.

How can you consider it fair to require conspiracy bullshit websites and meme-purveyors to get little things like historical facts straight?
You're probably right.

Hmmm... I wonder if sapper has been binge-watching this interesting new series on Amazon Prime? Quite possibly he was involved in its production!

Not surprisingly, the woman who plays Ekaterina is quite a looker!


‘If Putin Was a Woman...’

To grasp the Russian president’s worldview, just binge-watch ‘Catherine the Great.’


By Walter Russell Mead
July 4, 2022 3:06 pm ET

We live in an age of bad gender punditry, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has contributed to the confusion. Speaking to German media between the Group of Seven and NATO summits late last month, he offered the following wisdom: “If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn’t, but if he were, I really don’t think he would have embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has. If you want a perfect example of toxic masculinity, it’s what he is doing in Ukraine.”

One hopes this was the reflexive and insincere pandering of a career politician, because if Mr. Johnson and his G-7 colleagues actually believe this nonsense, the West is in even greater trouble than it appears.

Vladimir Putin isn’t trying to be more like Rambo. Among other heroes of Russian history, he is trying to imitate Catherine the Great. The most successful of a line of 18th-century rulers, mostly female, who expanded the empire of Peter the Great and made Russia the greatest land power in Europe, Catherine conquered the Crimea and western Ukraine. She won naval battles in the Black Sea and ruthlessly suppressed rebellions at home. Having installed a former lover as king of Poland, she gleefully took the lion’s share of that unhappy country while partitioning it three times.

Americans hoping to get beyond stereotypes to grasp Mr. Putin’s worldview should spend some time on the couch binge-watching “Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great.” This lushly produced costume drama, made with funding from the Russian Ministry of Information and presented in Russian with English subtitles on Amazon Prime, lets viewers see Russia the way Mr. Putin wants Russians to see it. It provides more insight into Putinist thinking than all the bloviations of the G-7 leaders.

In the series, Catherine overthrows her feckless husband, Peter III, and secures power by ordering the murder of a young ex-emperor and sanctioning Peter’s murder at the hand of her lover. When Peter, a slavish admirer and imitator of Prussian King Frederick the Great, came to power, he recalled Russian troops then occupying Berlin and conceded huge territories to Frederick in hope of building an alliance of values with Russia’s former foe. Like the liberals of the Yeltsin era, he sought to provide Russia with a modern Western-style constitution and generally to make Russia a European country. The hero who helps Catherine seize the throne—an officer from the Russian occupation force in Germany disgusted with Peter’s abject weakness in the face of Western arrogance—could remind Russian viewers of ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin returning to the chaos of post-Soviet Russia from his German posting. In subsequent seasons, Catherine goes on to crush domestic opposition and defeat Russia’s eternal enemies to the west and south.

All the key beliefs of Putinism, represented as eternal truths about Russia and its place in the world, are on display in a series that is as entertaining as it is educational. All other countries hate and seek to ruin Russia. Talk of “values” in international relations is a cynical con by which the hostile West seeks to confuse and disarm Russia.

Russia is also threatened from within. Greedy officials, populist discontent and pretenders to power would pull Russia to bits if left to themselves. Foreign enemies are eager to join forces with domestic ones, constantly probing to weaken Russia. Corruption is chronic; no government can ever root it out. But some corrupt officials are loyal to Russia; others are paid agents of foreign powers.

Only a strong ruler, exempted from the restraints of conventional morality and armed with a powerful internal security apparatus that is free to use harsh measures can keep Russia safe. The burden of absolute power and the necessity of making hard and often soul-killingly ugly decisions isolate the ruler. But to bear this burden and make those ugly choices is the highest form of sacrificial idealism. The people give themselves to the ruler; the ruler gives up hope of private happiness for the people.

It doesn’t always work out well. Catherine’s armies faced many setbacks owing to endemic corruption, poor leadership and, often, the technological superiority of her enemies’ weapons. There was never enough money in the treasury. But successful rulers do not give up when the going gets tough. They, and the Russian people with them, dig in for a long, ugly war.

This is the picture Mr. Putin wants the Russian people to have of their current situation, and to a significant degree it is likely how he sees himself.

To your couches, Americans! Those who do not understand their enemies must brace for defeat. As long as G-7 leaders allow cheap gender stereotypes to fog their brains, Vladimir Putin can still hope to grind out a victory in Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-puti...ce-11656952454
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Old 07-18-2022, 02:19 PM   #18
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"But there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990's."
Ahhh yes... how painful it is to listen to George Kennan scolding us so presciently 24 years ago!

The "utter poverty of imagination" is exactly right! If deterring Soviet expansionism was the raison d'etre behind the formation of NATO back in 1949, the desire of overpaid bureaucrats in Brussels to keep and justify their jobs was a raison d'etre behind NATO's unrestrained post-1991 enlargement.

We've replaced foreign policy GIANTS like George Marshall, John Foster Dulles, and George Kennan with foreign policy PYGMIES like Tony Blinken, Susan Rice, and Victoria Nuland!

All in a single generation.


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As he said goodbye to me on the phone, Mr. Kennan added just one more thing: ''This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.''
Ouch!
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