Originally Posted by
dsc810
Given that US secretary of State James Baker promised that Nato would not expand one inch Eastward - and the promptly did I'd say Putin has good reason to be aggrieved.
Perhaps in return he might be considering expanding Westwards....
For selected definitions of the term "promptly" perhaps. James Baker stopped being a cabinet officer in 1992/1993 when the administration changed. Now let's seen who was the first nation to be added to the 16 nations, and when did that happen? At the
1999 Washington summit, where Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic officially joined.
When did the opening moves get taken to explore new relationships with previous "Warsaw Pact" Nations? 1991ish.
These three nations had non-trivial negative experiences at the hands of the Russians/Soviets for about 50 years. Of course they wanted a change! They wanted to be part of the prosperous West. It wasn't just a matter of getting into NATO. It was a turning westward in general, to the EU, which they were free to do.
I was involved in a bunch of Partnership for Peace initiatives in the 90's that were well intentioned, and included the Russians. NATO "expansion" in 1996-1998 had to do with Spain joining the integrated command structure, but the 1997 Madrid Summit did see invitations to selected other nations to join if they liked.
None of the nations who wanted to join NATO were forced to.
More recently, the damned fool idea to get Georgia to join NATO was finally put to bed and axed. In each case the whole of the alliance had opportunity to accept or object. Depending upon whom was up, various NATO nations raised objections, and issues did or didn't get resolved.
All of the above said, it is my opinion that the 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia did serious damage to the US/NATO/Russian relationship that had been slowly improving during the 90's. Whatever good will was being built (the Russian brigade worked with the US 1AD in the northern sector in Bosnia doing peace keeping/peace enforcement) was undone.
Western rhetoric against the Russian response to the strife in Chechnya puzzled me then, and in retrospect was myopic in the extreme. It's more or less the same problem that rose up among Islamists elsewhere, and still poses a serious security problem for a variety of nations.
A concise illustration of the dysfunctional relationship between Russia and the US, and some NATO allies, is in Syria. A chance to work together is being taken in some cases (Kerry/Lavrov and chemical weapons) and squandered elsewhere.
