“The ‘arrogant’ United States ‘built a new empire’ with NATO following the Cold War, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Friday after Russian president Vladimir Putin blasted the alliance in his end-of-year address yesterday.”
“In recent years President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly insistent that NATO is encroaching close to Russia’s borders, and Moscow last week demanded ‘legal guarantees’ that the US-led alliance will halt its eastward expansion.”
“Gorbachev said Washington grew ‘arrogant and self-confident’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the expansion of the NATO military alliance.”
“A former KGB agent and loyal servant of the Soviet Union, Putin was dismayed when the Soviet union fell apart, once calling the collapse ‘the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century’.”
“The Russian strongman blamed NATO’s militarisation of former Soviet states, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, since the end of the Cold War for the current crisis and threatened that Russia ‘can do anything at any cost’ to protect itself.”
“The growing tensions peaked this week when Putin vowed that Russia would take ‘appropriate retaliatory’ military steps in response to what he called the West’s ‘aggressive stance’.”
“Mr Putin likened the build-up of Nato forces in countries which once belonged to the Soviet Union to Russia establishing a military presence in Canada and Mexico.”
“Putin claims that at the end of the Cold War Nato assured Russia it would respect its territorial heritage and made promises not to expand the alliance into central and eastern Europe.”
“Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined Nato in 1999, followed in 2004 by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”
“In subsequent years, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia also joined, bringing Nato’s membership to 30 nations.”
“What did Vladimir Putin say […] on NATO expansion:”
“‘What is unclear here? Are we putting missiles next to the United States’ borders? No, it is the United States that has come to us with their missiles, they are already on our doorstep.'”
“‘The course of negotiations is not important to us, the result is important… ‘Not one inch to the East,’ they told us in the 90s. So what? They cheated, just brazenly tricked us! Five waves of NATO expansion and now already, please, the systems are appearing in Romania and Poland.'”
“The not unreasonable view of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and later former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was that with the Cold War over, the Soviet-sponsored Warsaw Pact dissolved, and with an economically prostrate Russia struggling to become a democracy, there was no justification for expanding a Western military alliance hundreds of miles closer to the Russian border.”
“Initially, Presidents Bush and Clinton seemed to agree. Then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO wouldn’t move “one inch eastward.” In October 1993, Clinton’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher assured Yeltsin that there would be no NATO expansion, but instead a new organization, “Partnership for Peace,” that would include all of the former satellite states and Russia as well. Yeltsin enthusiastically embraced this concept. However, his fury knew no bounds a year later when Clinton reversed course, expanded NATO to include the satellites and excluded Russia. Yeltsin insisted that what was agreed upon was “Partnership for all, not NATO for some” and he spoke of betrayal and the purposeful humiliation of a weakened Russia. From the sidelines, Gorbachev lamented the rejection of his concept of a “common European home.””
“This toxic issue has haunted relations between Russia and the West ever since, and became particularly dangerous when President George W. Bush said in April 2008 that he “strongly supported” NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and wouldn’t accept any Russian attempt to veto this. Bush’s proposal, however, was strongly rebuffed by six NATO members led by Germany’s Angela Merkel, who called such NATO expansion “needlessly provocative.” An outraged Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine was a direct threat to Russia’s national security and he viewed it as a “red line” that could not be crossed.”
“Putin further countered by becoming involved in the savage ethnic politics of Georgia by supporting dissident separatist groups in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and ultimately recognizing them as independent republics backed economically and militarily by Russia. In 2014, when Western-backed mass protests led to the overthrow of a pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Putin acted swiftly to intervene militarily in those areas of Eastern Ukraine whose inhabitants were largely Russian ethnically (Crimea 65 percent) or Russian-speaking (Donbas 70 percent).”
“It is ironic that, with all its internal problems, NATO should be pursuing high-risk policies on behalf of countries that are not NATO members; are not allies; and assuredly would bring far more burdens to the alliance than assets. As for the United States, which has seriously damaged itself through long wars in distant places, why would we be risking more of the same in places so little-connected to our true national interests?”
“Clearly it is time for NATO to re-examine the reasons for its existence so far beyond its prime.”
Read more: The ‘arrogant ‘ US ‘built a new empire’ with NATO after the Cold War, says Mikhail Gorbachev after Putin’s blast at alliance over Ukraine and NATO today: The sad decline of a grand alliance
Related: Did the West Break Its Promise to Moscow?
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