> We are talking about what causes us particular concern and anxiety, about those fundamental threats that year after year, step by step, are rudely and unceremoniously created by irresponsible politicians in the West in relation to our country. I mean the expansion of the Nato bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders.
It isn't obvious that China is dealing with the same sort of pressures in East Asia.
[0] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-putin-s-declar... - although technically I suspect he was declaring Special Military Operation.
If NATO anxiety was the primary factor for the war in Ukraine, Russia wouldn't be so blasé about draining troops and hardware from its borders with NATO countries to throw them into the meat-grinder.
They would still probably do it, mind you, but it would be a huge scandal and a subject of existential dread for Russian media and elites.
The fact that they've been stripping their NATO borders bare with barely anyone noticing or caring shows that nobody views the prospect of a NATO invasion as realistic. It was always a fig leaf.
(Although maybe there were scandals and I never heard of them. My exposure to Russian media is filtered through Western media. But I heard about other scandals and anxieties.)
Nobody has ever suggested that there was a prospect of a NATO invasion of Russia. That is crazy talk; it'd be the end of civilisation in the northern hemisphere. They aren't deploying troops to ward off a NATO invasion, that is what the ICBMs are for.
So what's really going on? Well, Putin said "rudely". Russia feels insulted because everybody wants to be in NATO, and nobody wants to be Russia's buddy... if you take Putin's words at face value.
If you don't, then I think Putin is terrified of Ukraine's revolution against a Russia-friendly leader. He doesn't want a western-friendly revolution in a culturally-Russian-adjacent country to succeed - there's too much chance that Russians might decide that they like the idea.
The way the Ukraine war has played out makes it pretty clear the Russians did have legitimate concerns. When the US invades Iraq with no moral justification, everyone moves on. When Russia invades Ukraine with no moral justification we see a similar response from most of the world ... except NATO that goes in and orchestrates what Wikipedia suggests are half a million casualties of the Russian armed forces [1].
Why might Russian military planners feel this is a threat? Because they can count corpses and they're not stupid. If you want to argue that they underestimated the threat NATO posed them in Ukraine and so Putin was lying that is one thing, but if so his propaganda happened to be truer to reality than he thought because he made a great point. NATO is out to get the Russians.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
Except there was no "full military integration" in the works, or even any "gear" deployed in Ukraine before Putin started throwing his massy hissy fit in 2014.
Because the major point of that infrastructure is to kill lots of Russians?
The point is to gently remind the current regime of the borders of NATO states, and of this thing known as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine-NATO_relations#Buchare...
Former NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer seems to disagree with that assessment, there were plans. That was around the time that Russia started activating their military as it became clear that NATO leadership could not be reasoned with. And that was even before the 2014 coup that coincidentally set up a pro-NATO government.
There were none, this "eventually" was an empty consolation without any timeframe, and was widely criticized as such at the time. No gear, no integration - and no desire to move in that direction.
> And that was even before the 2014 coup that coincidentally set up a pro-NATO government.
There was no coup in Ukraine. Ukraine became very interested in the military alliance after Russia invaded them.
> If NATO anxiety was the primary factor for the war in Ukraine, Russia wouldn't be so blasé about draining troops and hardware from its borders with NATO countries to throw them into the meat-grinder
Because the major point of that infrastructure is to kill lots of Russians if they invade.
> Why might Russian military planners feel this is a threat? Because they can count corpses and they're not stupid.
Because they can count corpses after they invaded.
The logical conclusion was "don't invade", not "hurry up and invade while you still can".
At this point Ukraine has lost something like 25% of their population, 20% of their land, 30% of their economy, 80% of their electricity grid and we've probably managed to weld China and Russia's political leadership together for a generation if the Chinese don't flub this in spectacular fashion. Not to mention given the other Asian powers every warning and incentive to form an economic bloc that is more impressive and dynamic than the USSR was. And obviously we keep rolling the dice for WWIII and nuclear exchanges, apparently word is out now [0] that we did have another nuclear near miss as might have been expected.
I don't see what the post-90s NATO expansion has gotten us here, but it doesn't seem to be very useful. It has spectacularly failed to preserve the peace and it'd be better if this whole situation had been treated as Iraq War 2.0. Whatever the Russians were demanding before the start of the war it was not going to be as bad as the deal the Ukrainians will eventually get and the West hasn't done ourselves any favours here strategically even if we do make the leap that Russia's borders are our business. It looks like the fine minds behind the US wars in the middle east have also been at play here.
[0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-scrambled-urge-putin-...
They already know it. The European part of Russia is practically undefended, everything has been committed to Ukraine. When Prigozhin marched on Moscow, there was nothing to oppose him other than a few bucket loaders to dig up roads.
Russians are huffing and puffing about NATO because it makes riskier and costlier for them to invade other countries and kill people there. That's the simple truth. Everything else is bullshit and the theories you are spinning do not hold up to any scrutiny.
Nothing of this is new. In the 1940s, Russians acted the same way. Demanded neutrality and "military cooperation" and all the other fine euphemism you present us, then invaded their neighbors, set up communist dictatorships and began sending by hundreds of thousands everyone from toddlers to bed-ridden elderly to labor camps in the Siberian wilderness or executed them on the spot, and opened floodgates to massive resettlement of ethnic Russians to wipe natives off the map. It's still in the living memory. Nobody wants to relive that again, which is why this time nobody intends to make themselves an easy target with neutrality again and countries have only increased military cooperation the more hostile Russia has become.
This whole paragraph isn't a serious argument. Putin was born in the 1950s and while it might be in living memory none of the leadership class involved in this were alive in the 1940s, the economic concerns of the pre-WWII world were different to the modern era, and Russia had a dramatic shift of government philosophy in the 90s.
You may as well make policy on the basis that the British have global imperial ambitions, that the Germans are genocidal, that the Japanese are threatening to invade the Philippines or that the US has a small government. You can't lumber people with the assumption that their government is going to behave the same as in the 1940s.
> Russians are huffing and puffing about NATO because it makes riskier and costlier for them to invade other countries and kill people there. That's the simple truth. Everything else is bullshit and the theories you are spinning do not hold up to any scrutiny.
Can you articulate my theories? Because you seem to be in furious agreement on this point, you just haven't managed to take the next logical step and append some serious reflection and a "Did the policies we adopted make the situation better or worse? And who for?" on the end. Because we seem to have adopted a position that has left almost literally everyone involved and most of the bystanders in a worse position than if NATO hadn't been posturing against the Russians for the last 30 years. Driven, I suspect, by the same inane tiger-with-unchanging-stripes logic that you are suggesting.
And even if that logic is right, looking to the 1940s should come with a "and policy today has to be completely different to avoid the large and catastrophic war that then followed". Not this gentle escalatory madness that is taking place and the breakdown of communication and empathy that many people seem to want. The big lesson of WWII is Europe can't afford to solve their problems with big military actions. The NATO strategy of avoiding diplomacy suggests we are going to relearn that lesson which is moderately terrifying.
You may as well make policy on the basis that the British have global imperial ambitions, that the Germans are genocidal, that the Japanese are threatening to invade the Philippines or that the US has a small government. You can't lumber people with the assumption that their government is going to behave the same as in the 1940s.
This is exactly the same blueprint as was used in 1940 to occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russians even tried the same with Finland and established Finnish Democratic Republic, which had to be scrapped after Finns put up a stiff resistance and Russians lost the Winter War. And they continued with this after the WWII to set up communist dictatorships all across Europe, same blueprint over and over again. Local population "invites" and Russians flood in with tanks and guns to "help".
If you know history, then this is like watching a re-run.
Can you articulate my theories? Because you seem to be in furious agreement on this point, you just haven't managed to take the next logical step and append some serious reflection and a "Did the policies we adopted make the situation better or worse? And who for?" on the end. Because we seem to have adopted a position that has left almost literally everyone involved and most of the bystanders in a worse position than if NATO hadn't been posturing against the Russians for the last 30 years. Driven, I suspect, by the same inane tiger-with-unchanging-stripes logic that you are suggesting.
MILITARY SPENDING of Europe had continued to steadily decrease since the end of the Cold War. In 2006, the total spending was 190 billion. By 2014, it was down to 162 billion. As a percentage of GDP, Cold War era spending was 3-5%, now it's 1-2%.
EUROPEAN MILITARY CAPABILITIES have been in steep decline too. In 1990, German Army had 308 000 personnel, 5045 tanks, 2136 IFVs. To cut costs, Germany disbanded most of its army and sold off its equipment all over the world, as far as Chile. By 2015, only 61 312 personnel, 225 tanks and 406 remained. The same trends were mirrored in other countries.
AMERICAN MILITARY PRESENCE in Europe was also in decline. In 1987, the US had 80 military bases in Europe. 30 years later, less than half remained. Furthermore, these bases are a shadow of their former self: the number of US military personnel deployed to Europe is at the lowest since the WWII, down from 320 000 during the 1980s to around 60 000 nowadays, mostly manning facilities like the massive military hospital at Ramstein airbase. In 1989, US Army had 5000 tanks in Germany alone. In 2013, the last twenty American tanks departed Europe.
NEW DEPLOYMENTS TO EUROPE were ridiculously small, mainly light infantry for host nation training purposes: as of 2017, a single non-permanent battalion with 800 personnel and 4 jets in Estonia, a 1200-strong battalion in Latvia and another in Lithuania with 4 jets, and 4000-strong armored battalion in Poland. Plus 4 jets in Romania for three months in the summer. Is this the infamous "encirclement"?
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS is an adequate comparison only insofar as it applies to Russian behavior. Russia and NATO agreed in the founding act of 1997 that NATO would not station any missiles in Eastern Europe. NATO has upheld that commitment for a quarter of a century. NATO nuclear missiles remain where they were 50 years ago, whereas Russia has recently moved theirs westward into Belarus, an unstable dictatorship held up only by Russian secret services.
If you insist on making comparisons with Cuba, then the closest thing Europe offers is Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in the middle of Europe, with short-range Russian nuclear missiles pointed at Europe: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2016/1...
PRIOR TO THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE, Europe was unilaterally disarming itself to the extent that Germany didn't even have enough equipment for joint exercises with other countries. Germans were mocked for using painted broomsticks for cannons on their vehicles, and French president talked that NATO was obsolete and "braindead". Central and Eastern Europe had been accepted into NATO, but their fears were not taken seriously and often even ridiculed, and nothing was done to bolster their security like had been done in West Germany during the Cold War.
Russia has gone as far as flying drones in NATO airspace, including over cities, armed with warheads. In a recent incident, Romanian F-16s tracked such drone for half an hour without shooting it down because obsolete rules of engagement disallow that. NATO has been unable to reach a consensus whether armed drones from a openly hostile country should be shot down in NATO airspace before they hit any city and kill people there.
Where is this posturing that you talk about? It is easy to throw such phrases around, but I fail to see any substance behind them.
They did stop. There was that long period from 1990 to 2014 where they were withdrawing their military influence. The area controlled by Moscow's is going to have shrunk over my lifetime even at current rates of conquest. We could have kept that 25-year period going if the treatment of the Russian state had been a bit more welcoming instead of rapping them over the knuckles for being naive.
> [various caps-locked sections]
There are a lot of reasons why a war might not have happened, but given that a war has actually happened it only makes sense to look why it did. The NATO budget was allowed to shrink because the USSR budget imploded - NATO was still outspending Russia by more than 10:1. Frankly it has been pretty stunning how well the Russians have held up over the last 2 years to the point where I suspect the Chinese are more actively involved than it looks.
Russia isn't complaining about what is happening in Germany, France and the UK. They're complaining about what is happening in the likes of Ukraine and Georgia. And I doubt they are as much worried by US troop deployments as they are by exactly the situation that has played out in Ukraine. Slav troops, NATO weapons and EU logistical support.
> a single non-permanent battalion with 800 personnel and 4 jets in Estonia, a 1200-strong battalion in Latvia and another in Lithuania with 4 jets, and 4000-strong armored battalion in Poland. Plus 4 jets in Romania for three months in the summer. Is this the infamous "encirclement"?
Yes. If not for encircling Russia, what use is Estonia to the US? Why else put military resources there? It is part of a broad-based strategy of lots of Russians dying if the situation gets hot. I don't think anyone would really disagree with that assessment, but the Russians are quite vocal that they'd rather it wasn't so.
> NATO nuclear missiles remain where they were 50 years ago
The specific deployment of those missiles isn't really the point; the point is that the US would never tolerate a whisper of something like NATO but directed against the US on the American continent. Russia not tolerating NATO on their borders is a pretty reasonable attitude compared to what the mirror-image US response would be.
But, that said, NATO leadership are liars. They said they weren't going to expand NATO, then they did. If they say they aren't going to station missiles in their new military allies you'd be a bit gullible to believe that. It is believable if they say missiles won't be stationed until they are sure Russia can't do anything about it.
> Where is this posturing that you talk about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO - or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:History_of_NATO_enlargeme... if you like visuals.
They did stop. There was that long period from 1990 to 2014 where they were withdrawing their military influence.
But even those difficulties did not prevent Russia from using the same old blueprint of coming to the "rescue" of "oppressed minority" time and time again, as much as their means allowed. From Crimea and Donbas in 2014, to Georgia in 2008, to Abkhazia and Transnistria and others in the 1990s, to Afghanistan in the 1980s, to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, and countless other "missions in support of brotherly nations", the chain of intrusions into other countries remains unbroken.
There are a lot of reasons why a war might not have happened, but given that a war has actually happened it only makes sense to look why it did. The NATO budget was allowed to shrink because the USSR budget imploded - NATO was still outspending Russia by more than 10:1.
Yes. If not for encircling Russia, what use is Estonia to the US? Why else put military resources there?
The specific deployment of those missiles isn't really the point; the point is that the US would never tolerate a whisper of something like NATO but directed against the US on the American continent.
But, that said, NATO leadership are liars. They said they weren't going to expand NATO, then they did. If they say they aren't going to station missiles in their new military allies you'd be a bit gullible to believe that. It is believable if they say missiles won't be stationed until they are sure Russia can't do anything about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO - or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:History_of_NATO_enlargeme... if you like visuals.
* * *
All in all, your position appears to stand on known falsehoods:
1. That someone had promised to Russians that Central and Eastern European countries would be left isolated and not accepted into any international organizations. Not true.
2. That the acceptance of Central and Eastern Europe into international organizations was some kind of Western scheme and not their own passionate initiative against lukewarm reactions from existing members. Again, not true.
3. That the Americans were placing military resources in Europe. Not true. Leaders of those countries really wanted American and other western military presence to bolster their security against such wars like Russia launched against Ukraine, but never got anywhere with it, because even a possibility of such scenario was not taken seriously.
4. That Russians have been mistreated, humiliated, ignored and so forth. Again, not true, refuted by people who were in the center of the events, like Russian foreign minister Kozyrev.
Drop these falsehoods, and your argument crumbles under its own weight.
And you can see the Russian's have learned from that with things like the '08 invasion of Georgia. They only occupied portions of the country instead of the whole thing and it sounds like they're maintaining the legal fiction that they are independent.
> There were no permanent American "military resources" in Estonia, or anywhere else in Eastern Europe, before Russia invaded Ukraine.
So? I doubt there was much if anything in the way of permanent military resources in Ukraine and we've seen around half a million Russian causalities so far. That sort of outcome is a much bigger problem for them than whether the resources in Estonia are permanent or temporary.
If you don't want to explore the question of why the US had/has troops in Estonia of all places then don't bring it up. But I suspect that is a question of great interest to the Russian generals because it is hard to come up with alternatives to it being an anti-Russia encirclement.
> China has military installations on Cuba
Not much of a comparison though. Cuba doesn't have land borders with the US so any aggression has to go through the US Navy first, and China isn't in a position to supply Cuba with more materiel because that would also have to go through the US Navy and Cuba is on the wrong side of the America for easy access. Plus the US military budget is still something like 2-3x China's.
It is hard to see how the Cubans, even with the military might of the Chinese behind them, can leverage that position into half a million dead US citizens. What is the battle plan supposed to be to achieve that?
> The entire Europe tolerates nuclear missiles aimed at them from Kaliningrad.
And there is a lesson there - once the missiles are emplaced there isn't much you can do about them. The important thing is to either negotiate them away or not let hostile powers establish themselves.
> Here's Gorbachev calling it directly a myth...
1) I've watched enough politics that I don't believe a 2-minute out-of-context translated clip to be evidence.
2) I doubt Russians have paper commitments for every possible way that the US can get missiles on their border either. You could just as easily be back in 2040 explaining that the nuclear battery in Estonia was never specifically banned by a treaty because [reasons]. If they'd realised they were signing up for 30 years of NATO expansion they would have asked for more guarantees in writing.
> I don't. Put it into words, if you can.
In the 1990s the Russians reached the point where they couldn't maintain their status as an international superpower. The US response has been to spend 30 years encircling them with a hostile military alliance with both the threat and now reality of killing 10s if not 100s of thousands of Russians.
This is what would be termed "aggressive posturing". As an alternative, defensive posturing involves not advancing and not orchestrating meat grinders.
> All in all, your position appears to stand on known falsehoods:
I still don't think you can articulate the argument here. I don't think 1 is true at all - the hope by everyone when the USSR fell was that those countries would be welcomed into international organisations.
2. To sign up with NATO the US has to agree that it is in their interests. But I also agree that the countries involved were signing up enthusiastically. No-one is claiming they were compelled.
3. This seems like an accurate characterisation on first read, but I'm also obviously correct in the argument here. he US has been pouring materiel into Ukraine. It is reasonable to say that the Ukraine war is being fought with NATO weapons.
4. That isn't an accurate characterisation of my position - every country gets humiliated, mistreated and ignored and that isn't a cause of war. The Chinese just came out of the so-called century of humiliation and so far they have been effectively pacifists given how large they are.
I'm going to restate what I'm saying here in short:
Unless the Russian planners are stupid they will have detected the approach of the large, hostile military alliance and are responding to that approach. The US shouldn't have allowed NATO to expand because we'd expect it to provoke something like the Ukraine war and there isn't any upside in exchange for the provocation. These deaths are mostly meaningless and strengthening bystanders like China at the expense of Europe and the US.
Furthermore, our diplomatic position on Ukraine should be "the precedent here is the US invasion of Iraq, we should treat this similarly and work to re-establish the peace. NATO's leadership took a bad situation, made it worse and they should be replaced".
And I can tell that you don't believe NATO is hostile although how you square that with the number of deaths they have caused in Ukraine I don't know. I suspect the Russians don't know how to square that either. NATO is aggressive, violent and hostile. They can't opportunistically organise half a million casualties the way that the US has and pretend to be neutral or friendly - again, we have precedent for how this is expected to play out from all the times the US has launched random invasions of small players over the last few decades.
1. Russians were kicked out of Europe because their entire economy collapsed and they became unable to field occupying armies anymore. This is not a proof of "change of government philosophy".
2. Withdrawal suits much better to describe American forces in Europe. They removed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, almost all heavy weaponry, and closed half of all military installations as a policy choice.
3. Russians were back to their old tricks by mid-1990s and that drove Eastern Europe to seek security from NATO.
4. The US has had infantry in Estonia for training purposes. Estonians are specialists in camouflage, small unit tactics and winter warfare, while the Americans have a lot to teach about combined arms warfare. Estonia has hosted many countries, Poland has had air defense systems set up and Swedish air force has flown simulated missions against them. That's what friendly nations do.
5. Foreign deployments have been intentionally limited to insignificant numbers so that Russia could not credibly claim to be threatened, but Russians are nevertheless annoyed. Not because they have a delusion that a few hundred infantrymen can "encircle" a country that spans 11 timezones, but because lauching missiles at Estonian barracks (like Ukraine saw on 24th February 2022) could potentially kill hundreds of Americans and drag the US into the war on day one.
6. If you want to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in Cuba, then an ill-prepared invasion along the lines of the Bay of Pigs would be great idea. When the invasion fails, keep sending hundreds of thousands of fresh troops into Cuba year after year. Don't forget to blame China if they help Cuba out with ammo.
7. Placement of NATO missiles in Europe was already negotiated in 1997 and NATO has sticked to their commitments. Only Russia has been inching closer to the other side.
8. If Gorbachev directly calling the "NATO promises" a myth is not good enough for you, then here's the foreign minister of the USSR giving a longer interview repeating the same things. According to him, nothing of this sort was discussed with Western diplomats, Warsaw Pact, or within communist party circles in Moscow. As a bonus, he says that he finds nothing wrong with the way Eastern Europe joined NATO: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...
9. That everyone "welcomed" Central and Eastern Europe into international organizations. Memoirs of diplomats, politicians and other representatives are littered with stories how no-one even took the countries they represented as actual countries, let alone viewed as even remote candidates to organizations. Early proponents of the EU and NATO membership were openly ridiculed even domestically. Go visit a library, read old newspapers, it's all there.
10. Integration of Central and Eastern Europe into the European Union and NATO has been a phenomenal success and has produced some of the most stable and prosperous countries on the planet. My first salary barely 30 years ago was 27 USD a month. Nowadays, it surpasses the average of several countries in Western Europe. Integration roadmaps helped CEE countries develop into modern states that have separation of powers, respect human rights, are run by law and offer ample opportunities. In alternative timeline, the 100 million people who gained freedom could've ended up in Russian-controlled totalitarian dictatorships like Belarus. That may not have a meaningful impact on your life, but it very much does have on mine.
11. Again, nobody was "pouring weapons into Ukraine" before Russia invaded. And nowadays, military aid to Ukraine - including heavy weaponry - is coming from all continents except Antarctica. If only penguins had a few artillery pieces to spare.
12. You keep repeating how the Americans keep "orchestrating meat grinders". Russians invaded a foreign country and are ready to die by hundreds of thousands instead of leaving Ukrainians alone and going home. It's their choice.
13. You keep blaming Russian deaths on the Americans. This is as stupid as blaming deaths of invaders on people whose home was invaded, and on their neighbors who lent knives and baseball bats to fight them off.
14. NATO is so incredibly hostile that still cannot decide whether it should shoot down armed Russian drones flying over their cities. Happened twice in Romania last week, people got air raid alerts with instructions to seek shelter.
15. Russia is provoked by weakness and attacks countries that lag behind in building relations with other countries and remain fairly isolated, because this lowers the risk for them. Ideally, they would have entire Europe neutral like in the 1940s, so that they could invade them one by one like they did back then. European countries have learned the lessons of the misguided 1930s neutrality and nowadays seek security in numbers and mutual cooperation.
16. Most of your lines of thinking lead back to the central theme that NATO is bad because it causes more Russians to die when they decide to invade Europe. Very revealing. You do not care about the freedom and wellbeing of millions of Europeans, only the lives of invading Russians seem to matter.