More proof that Russia isn't the enemy and is acting to secure itself from an overly AGGRESSIVE NATO!

Thanks to Bob for the link!

via National Interest.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was given a host of assurances that the NATO alliance would not expand past what was then the East German border in 1990 according to new declassified documents.


Russian leaders often complain that the NATO extended an invitation to Hungary, Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia to joint the alliance in 1997 at the Madrid Summit in contravention of assurances offered to the Soviet Union before its 1991 collapse. The alliance has dismissed the notion that such assurances were offered, however, scholars have continued to debate the issue for years. Now, however, newly declassified documents show that Gorbachev did in fact receive assurances that NATO would not expand past East Germany.


“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,” George Washington University National Security Archives researchers Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton wrote. “That discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.”

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Indeed, Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin have complained bitterly about the expansion of NATO towards their borders despite what they had believed were assurances to the contrary. “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?” Putin said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007.“No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”


As the newly declassified documents show, the Russians might have had a point. 

Story here. 

I love my country.

I love my countrymen.

I love it so much that when I see it going wrong...making mistakes...being led astray that I will shout instead of simply groveling to the masses that say I'm wrong.

What is that old Captain America comic?

You need to move.

I don't fully understand the reasons behind the framing of Russia as an enemy. I suspect that it had a bit to do with the unexpected election of Trump. Additionally I unfortunately believe it has to do with a need to push the defense budget (corporate welfare on a grand scale...too many flaky programs for another other conclusion).

Did they meddle in our elections?  Yeah.  Was it to such an extreme as to tilt the election?  Doubtful.  Do we meddle in other people's elections (to include allies)?  You bet your ass!

We ran a huge exercise on the Russian border.  They did the same and it was headlines.  They fly a couple of bombers to Venezuela.  We do the same right up to their coast...even regularly sail ships there.

You punch a man in the face you should expect to be punched back.  Expecting any less is a sign of either arrogance or immaturity or both.

Smedley was right.  Wish he was around to lecture on this topic. The quote from his book if you forgot...

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

For some reason the powers that be have decided that Russia is the racket...Can we ever be friends?  Maybe not.  Some would say probably not. That's fine.  But we don't have to cross swords and we can cooperate when possible.

Our current stance simply makes no sense.