"In February 1997, Mr. Kennan [father of the US post-war stragegy against the Soviet Union] wrote on The New York Times's Op-Ed page that the Clinton administration's decision to back an enlargement of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to bring it to the borders of Russia was a terrible mistake. He wrote that "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era."
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking," he wrote. His views, shared by a broad range of policy experts, did not prevail."
Quotd in NYT obituary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18kennan.html?pagewanted=2&sq=kennan%20february%201997&st=nyt&scp=1
We have been reaping the harvest sown by the Clintons and Madaline Albright since 1999, but only now are we beginning to realize it.
While I was not particularly enamored of Obama's statement on Georgia, at least his closing paragraph was a relative voice reason amidst the usual Cold War hysteria:
"Let me be clear: we seek a future of cooperative engagement with the Russian government, and friendship with the Russian people. We want Russia to play its rightful role as a great nation – but with that role comes the responsibility to act as a force for progress in this new century, not regression to the conflicts of the past. That is why the United States and the international community must speak out strongly against this aggression, and for peace and security."
Let us hope that the US and NATO can relax our hegemonistic impulses so that Russia will not feel obliged to pursue its security interests with violence.
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