Diogenes
Nemo me impune lacessit
The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War. It’s Not ‘Siding With Putin’ to Admit It
It has become especially fashionable in some circles to insist that NATO’s expansion to Russia’s border was in no way responsible for the current Ukraine crisis.
Many dismiss all arguments to the contrary as “echoing Putin’s talking points,” “siding with Putin,” or circulating Russian propaganda and “disinformation.” Leaving aside the ugly miasma of McCarthyism enveloping such allegations, the underlying argument is factually wrong.
Russian leaders and several Western policy experts were warning more than two decades ago that NATO expansion would turn out badly—ending in a new cold war with Russia at best, and a hot one at worst.
Obviously, they were not “echoing” Putin or anyone else.
George Kennan, the intellectual architect of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 failing New York Times interview what NATO’s move eastward would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” he stated. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”
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