And, Just Like That, China Is the World's Geopolitical Master

Hennessy's View ^ | 03/21/2023 | Bill Hennessy

[MalPearce]

I don’t know how it escaped your analysis, but the breakup of the USSR ended all commitments the US made to the USSR.

None of which ever said that INDEPENDENT states couldn’t join NATO. The draft pitch from James Baker related to countries inside the iron curtain. Once the USSR and its iron curtain ceased to exist, so did the limited scope of the now nonexistent obligation. QED.

Russia itself confirmed that state of affairs by signing the Belovezha Accords and recognising the Eastern Bloc independent nations as UN Charter members.

Both actions removed any obligations inside the Warsaw Pact, to give a damn what misty eyed USSR nostalgia freaks thought about NATO membership.

I’d read the charter and the accords if I were you. Both of them PERMITTED the freed countries to join NATO or CSTO - and DENIED Russia a veto in either direction.

“How would we feel” - what a stupid statement. How a minority fringe view in the USA applies, is irrelevant to how Eastern Europe feels. If you were Polish, or Latvian, or Finnish, you’d understand it differently.

As someone else said, the false analogy is bull. It’d be more accurate if the pitch was, choosing to invade Cuba to stop it hosting Russian training exercises while being intensely relaxed about Mexico having been a fully paid up member of the same alliance for fifteen years, doing the same training, and more... And ALSO without once pointing a medium or long range missile in the direction of the USA.

[Vaduz]

No surprise it’s what the democrat party has planed all along but they wanted to be the lead ruler.

Now they get to know how the work camps work too.

[silverleaf]

I don’t think Gorby was corrupt.
I think he was seduced into thinking Russia could be accepted as part of the “West” by being a reformist. After all, he presided over the breakup of the USSR which fit the Western goal to reverse the post-WW2 spread of communism into Eastern Europe, and which also diminished the influence and power projection of Russia.

But poor Gorby…Russia was never really going to be part of the West he admired so much, even if he did bring Pizza Hut into Russia.

NATO began to expand to fill the vaccum …against assurances by the West that NATO would not move east to the Russian border, and expanded into Eastern Europe in a confrontational threatening way, with intermediate range missiles within 10 minutes of striking Moscow with little warning.

Gorby got played into reducing Russia and its national security, That’s why Putin and the other nationalists never even went to his non-State funeral.

Not sure if Reagan was part of the DS Great Game redux, or got played like Gorby into “ detente”

[Hiddigeigei]

"The nightmare scenario has arrived."
And it looks like our government was instrumental in causing it. IMHO, at one time Russia would have much preferred to be an accepted part of European culture and as an European state.

[AndyJackson]

at one time Russia would have much preferred to be an accepted part of European culture

Let's see some of their cultural accomplishments measure up:
Ballet?
Music?
Literature?
Physics?
Mathematics?
Engineering?
Art?

Nope. Nothing. Just don't measure up. Failures. Complete and utter failures in every category I can imagine. Don't even know why we bother with this kind of discussion.

[wardaddy]

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

[blitz128]

I will check that, but will add no matter what Russia claimed Donbas was not theirs so not okay to roll into your occupied territory but okay for Russia to roll into all of ukrain
Also if true just roll into Donbas sand the war might have been over in 3 days.
Putin is all over the place on his reasons and it comes down to this he didn’t recognize Ukraine as a county people language or culture and he wanted it back
Next I will here it was about ridding “Ukraine” of bed bug infestation

[BobL]

“I think you meant to say Russia had the choice of being an independent but mostly irrelevant former power”

Doesn’t sound that way, with the West talking about ‘weakening’ and ‘de-colonializing’ Russia, and admitting to flat-out LYING to them once the Cold War ended.

Seems to me that Russia was going to be left alone about as much as a straight kid who attends church does these days in American public schools.

Problem for the West is that Russia isn’t interested in more LIES from them “oh, we were nevvverrr going to do anything to Russia”, as they have seen what the West has done in Serbia, Kosovo, North Africa, and the Middle East. They knew full-well that they were not about to be left alone.

[MalPearce]

Russia was never really going to be part of the West he admired so much, even if he did bring Pizza Hut into Russia.

Well, that's just a fringe opinion that American isolationists like to peddle (conveniently just as much as Russia peddles it). It's a myth..

The EEC had no problem welcoming in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, AND DON'T FORGET TURKEY AND BELARUS!

In 2020, the EU was Russia's first trade partner, accounting for 37.3% of the country’s total trade in goods with the world. 36.5% of Russia’s imports came from the EU and 37.9% of its exports went to the EU.

Two-way trade in services between the EU and Russia in 2020 amounted to €29.4 billion, with EU imports of services from Russia representing €8.9 billion and exports of services to Russia accounting for €20.5 billion.

In 2019, the EU was the largest investor in Russia.

(Source: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/russia_en )

On top of that,

• Russia was welcomed into all aspects of London life - it's still the playground of the Russian elite even now.
• The USSR got guest status on the Council of Europe in 1989, despite being a million miles from ever meeting the criteria.
• The newly independent Russia first entered the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994. Americans don't really get why this is significant, so just to explain, it has two elements,
  • membership of the European Broadcasting Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Broadcasting_Union)
  • The Eurovision Song Contest was set up out of a desire to promote cooperation AND cultural exchange between European countries
  • In other words, Russia had to want to be in it, and being in it gave Russia an opportunity to do some positive cultural exporting.
• Russia was GIFTED a seat on the Council of Europe in 1996 - after two years of applying for it, and despite Russia still being a long way off satisfying the criteria. Europe WANTED Russia to meet the criteria, and WANTED Russia at the table, so despite a whole raft of entirely sensible misgivings, the Council gave Russia the benefit of the doubt. Russia's attempts to meet Council of Europe elegibility are well-summarized here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_Council_of_Europe.
• The EU Parliament has not been invited by Russia to observe any of its elections since 1999. This really should be problematic for relations between Europe and Russia, given it's embedded into the Council of Europe membership criteria.
• At the 2003 St Petersburg summit, despite Russia STILL not complying with any of the MUTUALLY AGREED technical requirements of its greater participation in Europe, the EU and Russia reinforced their cooperation by creating four ‘Common Spaces’: an economic space; a freedom, security and justice space; an external security space; and a research, education and culture space. (Source: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/177/russia) - if the pattern sounds familiar, look up the "final" Helsinki Agreement 1975 and its successor, the Belovezha Accords.
• Russia has been participating in European sports (and in particular soccer competitions) since the 60s - so consider, even at the height of the Cold War, Europe never turned Russia away. From day one of independence of the USSR, Russia's been actively invited to compete. But it finally did in 2022, with the backing of soccer's international governing bodies - in other words, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was considered in European sports circles to be the worst thing Russia's done on the continent in over fifty years.

So Europe has been bending over backwards since 1994 to give Russia mulligans on its utter inability to get with the program, to the extent of giving it a completely undeserved seat on the Council of Europe, reinforcing the Helsinki principles with Russia TWICE since the collapse of the Soviet Union, overlooking clear membership violations, and tolerating Russia's persistent bad attitude toward the EU’s Eastern Neighborhood.

Here's the results of a survey in October 2019, thirty years after the USSR started to collapse.

 

This tells you the real reason why Russia is the biggest pariah on the continent of Europe  - of all the countries that could've done something useful with itself after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russia was gifted opportunity after opportunity to become a HUGE influence in Europe... and Russia's paranoid isolationalism led it to either reject or waste every single one of its opportunities.

Russia is the most demonstrably malfeasant, ornery, always-whinging sad sack on the continent. If it didn't have nukes, even Belarus would be embarrassed to have Russia as a next door neighbor. Russia is so toxic, it had to invade the third most corrupt country in Europe (after Belarus) just to make its status as the runaway number one in the contest more secure.

Unlike pretty much every other ex-Soviet country in Europe, and despite Europe bending over backwards to make things easier for Russia, the Russian elites made no attempt whatsoever to adapt the country to the post-Soviet world. Those that could get rich robbing the country blind, did. Putin objected to that in public, but privately he was taking a bung from every one of those thieves.

And if we're willing to believe the polling, the majority of Russians (under Putin anyway) PREFER to be governed that way. Well, that's fine, if that's what they want, but don't expect Europe or the UK or the USA to think investing in Russia is worth the effort if that's how Russia does business.

When Freepers whinge about Uniparty, I look at that graph and think, 30 years after the fall of Communism, it's telling that Russia was the only country out of all the countries surveyed that NEVER wanted to adapt to the 21st Century. Russia never lost its hard-on for a return to a stronk Soviet style one party state.

So why do some Freepers love Putin's Russia so much? It's UNIPARTY! It's heading towards North Korea levels of totalitarianism! It represents the complete antithesis of limited government and individual freedom! There is no "American Dream" equivalent in Russia; you're either in the corrupt elite or you're cannon fodder!

The only thing it's got going for it is, it celebrates Neo Nazis, serial killers and pedophiles serving in its military while at the same time putting on a floor show about how it offsets that moral depravity by, er, having the bare-chested belly kissing Putin guy ordering a clamp down on LGBTQIA++. To put that in context, it's like saying DADT didn't go anywhere near far enough so let's kick all the queers out of the military and replace them with folks like Tim McVeigh and the Trenchcoat Mafia... And then having this policy announced by Wes Goodman.

Ukraine was adapting slowly to the opportunities presented by Europeanisation - and turning its back on oligarchs, one-party authoritarianism, rampant financial corruption... And poor old butt-hurt Putin wasn't having that.

[MalPearce]

Yes, it helps to read that article, and pay attention to the sentences and words. It really doesn't say anything to validate Putin's false narrative

"The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991"

"President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests"

Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’

The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors... about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures.

After this meeting, Kohl could hardly contain his excitement at Gorbachev’s agreement in principle for German unification and, as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO.

‘I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union.

Note the bold, underlined words. USSR. Soviet. Not "Russia".”

There are some things the pro-Russian posters on here keep reminding us, correctly I might add, so just for posterity here they are in big letters, purple Comic Sans.

Russia, post-1992, is an independent country,
no more or less independent than any other
country formed at/after the end of the Cold
War and the collapse of the USSR.

"The Russian Federation" is NOT a synonym
for "the USSR" or "the Soviet Union".

"Russia" has no claim over the Warsaw Pact
countries, OR over the independent republics.
Not legally, not morally, not in reality.

Whatever James Baker or GHWB pledged to Scheverdnaze / Gorbachev was only as binding as long as the Soviet Union existed, and had "interests" in the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact officially disbanded in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

So why do some people here keep laboring the Putinist bullshit that we're all bound to a bunch of promises made to the last leader of the Soviet Union, in respect of the Soviet Union, more than 30 years after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact both ceased to exist?

ALL legal, moral, political or militaristic claims Moscow held over the Warsaw Pact countries (or any of the newly independent country) were torn up in 1991, and Russia was one of the countries that tore those claims up. (If you don't believe me, read the Belovezha Accords.).

I really can't help people who can't see the bleeding obvious, but Putin claiming that Ukraine or anywhere else is (or ought to be) part of Russia isn't just wrong, it's HILARIOUSLY wrong. Heck, if you put the case in front of a pre-teen kid, they'd get it.

Imagine Russia and Ukraine were once a married couple who got divorced (amicably!) in 1991. One of 'em (Russia) got to keep the lion's share of the assets, the other (Ukraine) didn't get as much but wasn't bitter about it... Imagine then that Russia spent several years trying to sabotage every new relationship Ukraine tried to set up, kept insisting they should get back together, and got jealous seeing Ukraine about to get engaged to someone else in 2013 so decided to smash the front door in... Finally, imagine that Russia, from 2013 to 2022, had built up so much bitterness and so incapable of moving on that it attempted a shotgun remarriage even if it meant burning down .

Wouldn't you have an intervention and tell Russia to get the F over itself, stop being such a whiny sad sack, get over the fact that the divorce was totally legit, and let Ukraine do its own thing?

It's not Ukraine's fault that Russia is bitter, paranoid and alone. Russia did that to itself.

[Hiddigeigei]

"Let's see some of their cultural accomplishments measure up: Ballet? Music? Literature? Physics? Mathematics? Engineering? Art?"
Nope! Note! Just a bunch of RuZZian Mongol invaders. Scratch a Russian and you find an attacking Europe Tater mongol like this singing a Neapolitan folk song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAHSkRIJoy4), or this Ruzzian invader singing in "My Lips Kill So Hot" from a German Operetta (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZlPG91IRps) whose contract with the Metropolitan in NY was cancelled because she wouldn't criticize Putin. .

[Hiddigeigei]

"Meine lippen sie küssen so heiß"
My lips kiss so hot.

[wardaddy]

Lol
U made me laugh

U need your own show