Gorbachev Blasts NATO Eastward Expansion

[Purveyor]

OSCOW, April 2 (RIA Novosti) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has criticized NATO's eastward expansion and the failure by Western powers to keep their promise not to deploy military bases near Russia's borders.

Gorbachev said in an interview with Germany's Bild newspaper published on Thursday that Western Germany, the United States and other powers had pledged after Germany's reunification in 1990 that "NATO would not move a centimeter to the east."

Gorbachev said the Americans had failed to fulfill the promise and the Germans had also turned a blind eye.

"They probably rubbed their hands rejoicing at having played a trick on the Russians," the former Soviet leader told the paper, adding that this had led to Russia's disillusionment with post-Cold War relations with the West.

NATO has enlarged since 1999, admitting three ex-Soviet Baltic republics and four Communist-bloc states in Eastern Europe. The membership was more recently increased on Wednesday, when Albania and Croatia formally joined the alliance.

The expansion has strained relations between the West and Russia, which is concerned by the new military bases emerging along its borders.

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RIA NOVOSTI: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090402/120879153.html

[Democracyinkind]

1. And right he is! NATO's eastward expansion

... was the one kick in the gut that Russia needed to become a semi-fascistic state.
While I am totally open to put some blame on Jelzin (started the whole buying elections thing in the new russia and started the whole shut up or I'll kill you in in the new russia) but we should never underestimate what we did to Russia by cheating Gorbatchev and betting on Jelzin.

Noam Chomsky has made this quite clear very recently, I think it was on Democracynow! last week or so.
I strongly believe that our neglecting our promise - incorporating East Germany into NATO and accepting that as NATO's easternmost border - has contributed heavily to the deterioration of Russia.
I don't believe strongmen like Putin would have succeeded Jelzin if it weren't for our breaking that promise and if Brzezinski and his boys wouldn't have tried to kill the Russian economy.

anyway. my two bits. Great find, this post! (Rec)

[Igel]

4. The kick it needed was early and was repeated often.

NATO's expansion is a symptom of one problem, and the promise to Gorbachev and his invocation of it Gorbachev's are also symptoms of a similar problem.

That problem is the population of the countries recently admitted to NATO.

Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a certain segment of Russians were outraged. The Baltics wanted "freedom", but, the reply was, they could have simply voted at any time after 1946 to be independent--why make a big deal of it? Same for the other countries in the Warsaw Pact/Comecon--if Poland or Czechoslovakia or Hungary wanted out, they could simply say so. (1956, 1968, and the early 1980s were conveniently forgotten, as was the pre-WWII occupation of the Baltics.)

The populations were ungrateful and hateful. The Russians, as a result, were bitter over having their generosity ignored, their liberal and caring caresses rebuffed. It was fascinating to read about it (not, of course, in the more liberal periodicals and literature, but in the crappy literature that sold far more copies). It was even more fascinating to do shots of vodka with a Russian in Brno on the same Czech study program and hear her say exactly the same thing--she was there to maintain her Czech, the language of an ungrateful population. Nationalism grew with the corruption and economic problems under El'tsyn, of course, esp. with the post-hoc conclusion that Putin was responsible for Russia's economic improvement. But enough of problem 1. On to problem #2.

It's a common failing in the US, among left and right to assert that Poles and Balts and Kazakhs are properly in the Russian sphere of influence--that Russia has a right to maintain a neutral or favorable near abroad. We heard precisely that kind of drivel during the recent Georgia/Russia conflict. Those on the left would be aghast at the idea applied to the US--it would mean supporting, in Realpolitik terms, embargoing Cuba, deposing Chavez, interfering in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Things that most on the left of US politics utterly despise would suddenly become good and proper.

The promise to Gorbachev basically said, "Look, we won't expand NATO, whatever the new countries want, so it doesn't matter." The people in those countries feared Russia and how Russia had treated them and was treating them, and wanted protection, and NATO later changed its mind. Russia did not: It's not a decision for the "lesser Slavs" and the Balts (etc.) to make. Poles took seriously when Putin celebrated the German resistance in WWII and ignored the contributions of the Polish resistance, for example, coming, as it did, on the heels of a threat to place far larger conventional troops on the Russian-Polish border. Just as many on the left in the US consider Latin American suspicion of US motives and actions in Central America to be warranted, so Central and E. European suspicion of Russia's motives and actions in their part of the world are justified.

[Vidar]

2. Gorbachev was honorable in his international dealings, not so the US & NATO.

[Hawkowl]

3. Albania and Croatia?!

Really what is the purpose of NATO anymore? Are we going to absorb every European country except Russia?