Sunday, December 26, 2021

NATO Is So Last-Century

When George Kennan throws shade on NATO expansion.......

”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.”  --quoted at Vox

Those remarks were made after the Clinton NATO expansion of 1998, which admitted Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary.  Now a NATO expansion to include Ukraine is on the table--a far more foolish and provocative move than that of '98.

The pretext to this new and highly questionable foreign entanglement is that Ukraine gave up its nukes in return for a NATO (actually, USA) 'promise' to defend Ukraine against Russia.  Except said 'promise' cannot be found in writing anyplace.   Whoops!  The codicil is linked in the combox.  So Kennan's complaint that the Senate should not have agreed....eh, what does HE know?  

Who's kidding whom here?

Ukraine is very, very, good at spreading money around the Ruling Class' campaign accounts (and into their children's pockets, Bai-Den*).  So here's a proposition:  have the Ruling Class decamp for the Ukrainian border with their wives, children, and grandchildren.  If Ukraine needs defense, who better to do it??

Let's take Ukraine NATO membership off the table for Putin.  See if that produces a change in heart.

1 comment:

Grim said...

“Except said 'promise' cannot be found in writing anyplace.”

I’m not sure what you mean. It’s contained in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Here’s a copy.

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf