Relevant quote:

> But the recollections of those involved aren’t always consistent. Roland Dumas, who served as the French foreign minister in 1990, would later say that a pledge was made that NATO troops would not advance closer to the territory of the former Soviet Union. But the U.S. secretary of state at the time, James Baker, has denied that any such promise was ever made – a claim that some of his own diplomats, however, have contradicted. Jack Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time, has said that "categorical assurances" were given to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward.

Even if you deny that such a promise was made (and broken), you should be able to understand how having a hostile military alliance literally on your border is unacceptable and the US would never accept it were the tables turned. That's the point.

There are no good guys here. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There's a popular narrative of the US being provoked. But the truth is, the US instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by deploying strategic nuclear weapons to Turkey (interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact). Cuba was reciprocity. Those missiles in Turkey were quietly removed.

"(interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact)"

According the grand strategy of the cold war, those missiles were defensive. Their presence was requested by Turkey and when they were removed there was a diplomatic stink about it because the Turks argued that this was the US no honouring their agreement. There was nothing "quiet" about their removal.

This isn't comparable to Ukraine however. The US isn't trying to put nuclear missiles in Ukraine (and there aren't NATO nukes in any other former SSR either.) And it wouldn't matter if they were, because the range of ICBMs has increased since 1962. Russia isn't invading Ukraine to prevent nuclear weapons from being deployed on its doorstep; it's doing so to reestablish its control over its former empire.

It's not about the range of weapons but about the reaction time of counter measures.

And it is comparable. Ukraine is at Russia's doorstep and plays a major role for the access to the Black Sea. That's why Russia annexed Crimea in the first place.

in other words - no

In others words they avoided it being written down like the germans avoided calling the Two plus Four agreement a peace treaty. Political trickery.

That may have worked for the germans to prevent paying reparations to greece, but the NATO trick lead to the problems we now have with russia.

Remember how the US reacted to some missiles in Cuba?

problem with russia is not nato but putin's head. if you had listen to his speech yesterday, nato is just a pretext because people need enemy to unite against. in reality he wants ussr back (he was complaining yesterday that republics were allowed to leave ussr to easily and ukraine is not a real country but something made up by lenin and stalin). he wants back the glory of soviet empire.

Things don't happen in a vacuum.

Putin is a result of what happened under Yeltsin, where some people got very rich and the rest had to suffer.