Enlargement of NATO

She should have.

We have been on a slide to war ever since 2008 when the U.S. pushed for this NATO enlargement.

2014 started the war with the U.S. backed coup on February 22nd, 2014.

And we europeans have gone with gusto denying truth denying logic denying the off-ramps to peace and till today they are the warmongers right now they're championing the war they're talking about escalation they're talking about re-militarizing germany god forbid but this is the way things go the only glimmer The only glimmer of light at the UN General Assembly was that the German foreign minister at least sat down for 20 minutes with his Russian counterpart.

Jake Sullivan was the national security advisor under Biden, and Putin put a security agreement on the table to try to avert this escalation.

He did that in December 2021.

And it didn't have everything the U.S. would ever accept, but it had a lot of good stuff, including stop the NATO enlargement.

So I called Sullivan.

And what he said really, I mean, I've heard it a hundred times, many aspects of what he said.

But in terms of NATO expansion, you know, the normal things, Sergei Lavrov came during the conference earlier in the week and spoke about the whole process since 2014.

But what it's actually saying, I think, was about the multipolar order because bear in mind that his audience was really international.

I mean, there were some Brits, some Americans, but most of the foreign people were from the kind of developing world.

you know? Yeah, it would.

I mean, well, it's Russian territory.

And yeah, I mean, the whole point of preventing NATO expansion is to prevent NATO going up to Russia's border.

Well, NATO is at Russia's border in Kaliningrad, of course.

It's a difficult thing to solve.

But the issue of NATO membership, it's It becomes even more complicated because NATO often does this incrementalism or salami tactics, be it NATO expansion, the missile defense, the war against Russia would gradually move.

So it doesn't even become an issue of membership or non-membership.

because it gradually increases its presence in Ukraine.

So let's talk about security for everybody, not just NATO prerogatives or whims.

Yeah, well, on the Salami tactics, though, one of the reasons why countries use Salami tactics, these incremental changes, is because it removes resistance from our own public, but also from our adversaries.

So let's say in 1999, we would have said, OK, we're going to NATO expansion.

We're going to roll all the way into Ukraine.

That's the second anchor.

The third anchor, the historical arc from Soviet collapse through NATO expansion to Through the 2014 Crimea annexation and the 2022 full invasion of Ukraine.

Okay, four.

Putin's November 2024 revised nuclear doctrine.

100%.

Okay.

NATO expansion and the Russian view.

This is important.

But this is why it's problematic, this whole Hitler narrative that they're fighting World War II all over again, because what I argue and many others would be that this is not another Hitler, this is not an opportunistic war, war of expansion.

We learned over the past 30 years And this is confirmed by leadership across the West that Russia sees NATO expansion as a real threat.

So they see this as an existential threat.

And given that this is the problem, not the rise of a new Hitler, that means you have to do the exact opposite.

He's now 96 or 97.

And he was there.

He was in the Soviet Union, right? And he said in the 90s, together with George Kennan and others, you know, this NATO expansion will lead to war with Russia.

This is the most unwise thing we can do.

Although Paul Netzer, you may remember, he became a bit dovish during this period.

He was arguing against NATO expansion.

So he changed his mind.

Yeah.