NATO expansion

Liberal triumphalism: accused of war crimes in the Kosovo war, Madeleine Albright (left) Bill Clinton (center) and Joe Biden (right).

As the New York Times wrote in 1998, "Ben & Jerry's is against expanding NATO. So is Phyllis Schlafly, the arch-conservative activist. ... 'It would obligate us to go to war to defend the borders in Eastern Europe,' said Mrs. Schlafly, who founded the 80,000-member Eagle Forum. 'We don't think that's an American responsibility. We see this as one Bosnia after another.' NATO was never intended to be "the world's policeman," nor is it an enforcement arm or extension of the United Nations. President Donald Trump was highly critical of how the United States has been saddled with the bulk of the cost throughout its history while Europe has not paid its agreed upon mandated share of defense costs.

NATO carried out the bombing of civilians in Serbia during the Clinton Administration, fomented the Libyan war in which it aligned itself with al Qaeda elements during the Obama administration, and has been criticized for its provocative actions towards Russia in the Russia Ukraine conflict in 2022 under the Biden regime. The NATO organization has aligned itself with self-proclaimed Nazis in Ukraine war. NATO began arming, equipping, and training Nazi groups in Ukraine in 2015 for the specific aim to overthrow the legitimate government of Russia. NATO recruited neo-Nazi mercenaries from across the planet to train in Ukraine.

On March 19, 2021, NATO held its first conference promoting LGBTQ+ goals. See also "What does a Pride parade have to do with NATO? More than you might think."

NATO General Secretary as of 2023 Jens Stoltenberg (center) at an LGBT rally.

Former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke described NATO's leftist rebranding after the collapse of the Soviet Union:

"The old NATO, which Leftists once had hated as a reactionary carbuncle, the Left had now come to see as having new evangelical meaning; no longer reactionary, but now revolutionary. Its new ‘revolutionary’ objective being to hasten the advent of a social revolution whose cultural sub-strata is the promulgation of the Woke tenets: Diversity, Pride, Trans rights, and the redress of historic discrimination and wrongs. The new NATO, inclusive and politically correct, is seen by European Leftists as the tool by which to sweep aside obstacles to the EU agenda, as well. These ‘switched shirts’ hold that the struggle for this ‘Cultural Order’ is incessant, totalising, and all-encompassing."

NATO's official website states its political motive under Orwellian language: "NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict." Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has waged two wars of aggression, one against Serbia to carve out the state of Kosovo, which increased the crime rate in Kosovo as it was also turned into a hotbed of human and organ trafficking, and another in Libya which resulted in chaos and the return of the slave trade in Black Africans.

Russia reaction

NATO expansion since the Clinton era represents a betrayal of the international agreements that ended the Cold War, caused the Fall of the Wall, and collapse of Soviet communism. Western oligarchs and neo-fascist global interests have profited immeasurably from ending the Cold War and betraying security agreements made with the Russian Federation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

To assent to the reunification of Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ultimately agreed to a proposal from then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (DOS) that a reunited Germany would be part of NATO but the military alliance would not move “one inch” to the east, that is, absorb any of the former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO.

On Feb. 9, 1990, Baker said: “We consider that the consultations and discussions in the framework of the 2+4 mechanism should give a guarantee that the reunification of Germany will not lead to the enlargement of NATO’s military organization to the East.” On the next day, then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said: “We consider that NATO should not enlarge its sphere of activity.” Gorbachev's mistake was not to get it in writing as a legally-binding agreement.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin agreed to collapsing the Soviet Union in exchange for a non-NATO expansion pledge. In 2021 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied such agreements ever existed or discussions even took place.

“U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous ‘not one inch eastward’ assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents … The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. … The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of ‘pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.’ … President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (‘I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests.’”

Opposition to gay marriage in Europe.

The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn, West Germany between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which Western officials made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO would not push into territory east of Germany. “We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document in British foreign ministry archives quotes US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz. “NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or unofficially,” Seitz added. A British representative also mentions the existence of a “general agreement” that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is “unacceptable.”

In May 1995 President Bill Clinton was invited to Moscow for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the victory over Hitler. In Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin berated Clinton about NATO expansion, seeing “nothing but humiliation” for Russia: “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia – that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.”

After the Soviet Union collapsed depriving NATO of its original reason for existence, skeptics of the alliance included liberals as much as conservatives. In 1998, 10 Democratic Senators joined nine Republicans in opposing the first, fateful round of NATO enlargement with Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland added, extending the alliance to Russia's border. Among the dissenters was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. In between voting against the first Iraq war in 1991 and the second after Sept. 11, Sen. Wellstone warned that expanding NATO would jeopardize Europe's hard-won gains. “There is peace between states in Europe, between nations in Europe, for the first time in centuries,” he said. “We do not have a divided Europe, and I worry about a NATO expansion which could redivide Europe and again poison relations with Russia.”

Vladimir Putin assumed office as the president of Russia on the last day of 1999. In an interview with David Frost broadcast on the BBC on March 13, 2000, Putin expressed his desire to see Russia join NATO:

Frost: Tell me about your views on NATO, if you would. Do you see NATO as a potential partner, or rival, or an enemy? Putin: Russia is a part of European culture. I simply cannot see my country isolated from Europe, from what we often describe as the civilized world. That is why it is hard for me to regard NATO as an enemy. I think that such a perception has nothing good in store for Russia and the rest of the world. ... We strive for equal cooperation, partnership, we believe that it is possible to speak even about higher levels of integration with NATO. But only, I repeat, if Russia is an equal partner. As you know, we constantly express our negative attitude to NATO's expansion to the East. ... Frost: Is it possible that Russia will ever join NATO? Putin: Why not? I do not rule out such a possibility. I repeat, on condition that Russia's interests are going to be taken into account, if Russia becomes a full-fledged partner. I want to specially emphasize this. ... When we say that we object to NATO's expansion to the East, we are not expressing any special ambitions of our own, ambitions in respect of some regions of the world. ... By the way, we have never declared any part of the world a zone of our national interests. Personally, I prefer to speak about strategic partnership. The zone of strategic interests of any particular region means first of all the interests of the people who live in that region. ...

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

In 2004 the Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined NATO, setting up another common border between the Russian Federation and a NATO state. Three years later, at the February 2007 Munich Security Conference President Putin said,

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? No one even remembers them."

In 2008 Croatia and Albania were invited to join the Alliance. The Republic of Georgia and Ukraine had hoped to join the NATO Membership Action Plan, but, while welcoming the two countries' aspirations for membership and agreeing that "these countries will become members of NATO", decisions were delayed pending further review.