Speaking at the end of the meeting, Macron warned: “There is a change in Russia’s stance. It is striving to take on further territory and it has its eyes not just on Ukraine but on many other countries as well, so Russia is presenting a greater danger.”
Among those present at the meeting were the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the UK foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
Sadly it looks more and more like a full on traditional war is coming back to Europe. We should have invested more in destabilizing Russian government when we had the chance.
How messed up is it that the conservatives who warned against Russia in the early 2000s turned out to be right?
How messed up is it that many of those same conservatives that warned against Russia 25 years ago are firmly under their thumb now?
In retrospective everything is more clear. I would argue that it was fair bet to try to establish a deep economical connection with Russia as means to try to integrate it more into Europe. And we don’t know what would have happened if the west pushed for harder balkanization of Russia after Sowjets broke apart.
Of course! Mutual interest and strong economic ties have a long and well-proven history of building peace.
We’re learning that certain regimes are too fundamentally poisonous. They will undermine their own peace and prosperity just to dominate their rivals. See also North Korea and Iran
I think the mistake was not to support democratic/liberal powers in Russia enough. Im my opinion the 1990th were a turning point in Russian history where it could have gone either ways. But also it would be really interesting to know how Putins strategy and vision for Russia developed over time, hope future historians can find it out.
I think we should not forget that the West, especially the USA, definitely played a role in the 1990s in keeping Boris Yeltsin (and with him many of today’s oligarchs) in power and thus helped establishing the autocratic system that Russia has today.
Not sure what you mean by helping Yeltsin stay in power? I can’t really remember Yeltsin power being in danger to beginn with. As far as I know, one of the bigger problems was the very president focus constitution, which made it really easy for Putin to consolidate Power and Oligarchs making a really bad judgement that they can control Putin.
In the 1996 election, the USA under Bill Clinton actively supported Boris Yeltsin. Unfortunately, I can’t find any in-depth sources in English at the moment, but this article gives a general overview.
Edit: Some more background info on the topic here.
Fair point, but his opponent was Gennady Zyuganov, so we were all incredible lucky - this is not the worst possible timeline we live in.
https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/TimeYanks.jpg
“the 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back”
Yes, Democrats continued to be wrong about Russia into the 2010s
The photo was just an illustration that this really did happen, and at the time was considered a total “zinger.” At the time I really considered Romney a complete tool but here we are a dozen years later and I’m the one with egg on my face.
I think it was about 2 years later that Putin started attacking and annexing parts of Ukraine.
Same boat here, if Romney wasn’t a corporate stooge he wouldn’t be so bad. I mean before Obamacare there was romneycare.
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How is it messed up? I mean, how likely is it that the opposing party is wrong about literally everything?
Yeah we should have, after promising Russia not to expand Nato “one inch to the east”, almost IMMEDIATELY expanded Nato to the east. And then within 14 years be at their border. That would have destabilized the situation much more. If we only had done that! My point is that whatever we did to get to this point, we just should have done more of it.
Luckily we now get the war that was promised! And luckily we also get to do the exact same thing again with China and Taiwan! How great is that?
Come on, don’t be so willingly daft. Or maybe you’re just here to stir shit. NATO expansion is in response to russian aggression, both historic and renewed. Does NATO expansion have a fucking thing to do with Russia’s clandestine or overt wars in Belarus? Georgia? Ukraine? Moldova? With renewed saber-rattling in Central Asia? Can you really not see what’s happening? Fucking read up on Russia’s actions and intent over the last 20 years. Putin wants to reconstitute “Ruskiiy Mir”, blyat. And you’re blaming fucking NATO? Fuck off.
And Russia was a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum. What’s your point?
Sorry… which countries exactly do you think are in NATO?
This needs more nato, you can barely see it
Since Finland will most likely be part of NATO soon and wouldn’t have been if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine, I think that is going to happen.
Finland is sure to join NATO, it is already signed and ratified, going into effect in April. Sweden is close behind now that Hungary pulled its head out of its ass.
Thanks, I didn’t realize Finland had already gotten that far.
Lets do Taiwan and Georgia next!
The Russians had absolutely no reason to be so terrified about the NATO membership of two teeny tiny Baltic Nations. Those were and still are the only two NATO nations on Russia’s border.
Of course with Putin’s massive cock-up in Ukraine he’s now going to have NATO Finland on his border and that will create NATO Lake. Soo if expansionist NATO was the problem then Russia just made it a hell of a lot worse for themselves.
It was not to extend NATO bases into East Germany, which they haven’t
And moreover it was about not deploying nuclear weapons there, which they haven’t. The commenter above has it wrong. The soviet diplomats were no idiots at all. They knew exactly what they negotiated and agreed to and it’s precisely what happened.
What? I have difficulties understanding your point - maybe you can rephrase it.
They’re running with the Russian “NATO made me do it” talking point. You know, that same argument that abusive husbands use rather than own up to their own actions.
Are they? Seems like it, but the way they used to expressed they thoughts is rather confusing to me.
Yeah I took it as a poor attempt at sarcasm on their part
Oh we taking promises? What about RUSSIA promising UKRAINE in exchange for nuclear capability to not invade and then they did anyway? And all the genocide, is that totally cool because nato expanded more than an inch (which is a misrepresentation of the truth, I might add)
Pathetic little bad faith Russian propaganda troll
US should’ve probably just listened to Patton and nipped Russian expansionism in the bud before they had nuclear capabilities, but hindsight is 20/20.