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What a shock - Biden's CIA director, in 2008 wrote a prophetic memo regarding Ukraine/NATO...

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
1674175560631.png

WikiLeaks on Twitter: "'Nyet Means Nyet: Russia' s #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - Cable from 2008 written by CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow https://t.co/rOoxmuf7CN https://t.co/CeP2DwBpVD" / Twitter

Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia's Bright Red Line | ZeroHedge

Unsurprising to me is how this mess, the result of the abrogation of Jim Baker's promise of "no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 'one inch to the east'" can be traced back to the hands down worst President ever...you know who:

By the time Putin became president the day before the new Millennium, “the initial hopes and plans of the early ‘90s [were] dead,” a leading liberal Russian politician declared. The first round of NATO enlargement had been followed by NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, done without UN security council authorization, triggering a Russian cut-off of contact with the alliance. By 2000, the revised Russian national security strategy warned that NATO using force beyond its borders “’is a threat of destabilization of the whole strategic situation,” while military officers and politicians started claiming “that if NATO expands further, it would ‘create a base to intervene in Russia itself,’” the Washington Post reported.

Ironically, there would be one exception to the next two decades’ worth of rising tensions over NATO’s eastward creep that followed: the early years of Putin’s presidency, when the new Russian president defied the Russian establishment to try and make outreach to the United States. Under Putin, Moscow re-established relations with NATO, finally ratified the START II arms control treaty, even publicly floated the idea of Russia eventually joining the alliance, inviting attacks from his political rivals for doing so. Even so, he continued to raise Moscow’s traditional concerns about the alliance’s expansion, telling NATO’s secretary-general it was “a threat to Russia.”

“If a country like Russia feels threatened, this would destabilize the situation in Europe and the entire world,” he’d said in a speech in Berlin in 2000.

Putin softened his opposition as he sought to make common cause with the George W. Bush administration. “If NATO takes on a different shape and is becoming a political organization, of course, we would reconsider our position with regard to such expansion, if we are to feel involved in the processes,” he said in October 2001, drawing attacks from political rivals and other Russian elites.

As NATO for the first time granted Russia a consultive role in its decision-making, Putin sought to assist its expansion. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi made a “personal request” to Bush, according to an April 2002 cable, to “understand Putin’s domestic requirements,” that he “needs to be seen as part of the NATO family,” and to give him “help in building Russian public opinion to support NATO enlargement.” In another cable a top-ranking state department official urges holding a NATO-Russia summit to “help President Putin neutralize opposition to enlargement,” after the Russian leader said allowing NATO expansion without an agreement on a new NATO-Russia partnership would be politically impossible for him.

This would be the last time any Russian openness toward NATO expansion is recorded in the diplomatic record held by WikiLeaks.


Allies Weigh In

By the middle of the 2000s, US-Russian relations had deteriorated, partly owing to Putin’s bristling at US criticism of his growing authoritarianism at home, and to US opposition to his meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian election. But as explained in a September 2007 cable by New Eurasia Foundation president Andrey Kortunov, now a Russian foreign policy advisor who has publicly criticized both Kremlin policy and the current war, US mistakes were also to blame, including Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a general sense that he’d given little in return for Putin’s concessions.

“Putin had clearly embarked on an ‘integrationist’ foreign policy at the beginning of his second presidential term, which was fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and good relations with key leaders like President Bush” and other leading NATO allies, Kortunov said according to the cable. “However,” he said, “a string of perceived anti-Russian initiatives,” which included Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and “further expansion of NATO,” ultimately “dashed Putin’s hopes.”

What followed was a steady drumbeat of warnings about NATO’s expansion, particularly regarding neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, much of it from Washington’s NATO allies.


Why is it that so many of the worst US foreign (and domestic - hello, ever heard of the "Patriot" act? Do you like the Covid response?) policy decisions trace back to that complete moron?
 

PhilFish

Administrator
Staff member
View attachment 73702

WikiLeaks on Twitter: "'Nyet Means Nyet: Russia' s #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - Cable from 2008 written by CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow https://t.co/rOoxmuf7CN https://t.co/CeP2DwBpVD" / Twitter

Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia's Bright Red Line | ZeroHedge

Unsurprising to me is how this mess, the result of the abrogation of Jim Baker's promise of "no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 'one inch to the east'" can be traced back to the hands down worst President ever...you know who:

By the time Putin became president the day before the new Millennium, “the initial hopes and plans of the early ‘90s [were] dead,” a leading liberal Russian politician declared. The first round of NATO enlargement had been followed by NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, done without UN security council authorization, triggering a Russian cut-off of contact with the alliance. By 2000, the revised Russian national security strategy warned that NATO using force beyond its borders “’is a threat of destabilization of the whole strategic situation,” while military officers and politicians started claiming “that if NATO expands further, it would ‘create a base to intervene in Russia itself,’” the Washington Post reported.

Ironically, there would be one exception to the next two decades’ worth of rising tensions over NATO’s eastward creep that followed: the early years of Putin’s presidency, when the new Russian president defied the Russian establishment to try and make outreach to the United States. Under Putin, Moscow re-established relations with NATO, finally ratified the START II arms control treaty, even publicly floated the idea of Russia eventually joining the alliance, inviting attacks from his political rivals for doing so. Even so, he continued to raise Moscow’s traditional concerns about the alliance’s expansion, telling NATO’s secretary-general it was “a threat to Russia.”

“If a country like Russia feels threatened, this would destabilize the situation in Europe and the entire world,” he’d said in a speech in Berlin in 2000.

Putin softened his opposition as he sought to make common cause with the George W. Bush administration. “If NATO takes on a different shape and is becoming a political organization, of course, we would reconsider our position with regard to such expansion, if we are to feel involved in the processes,” he said in October 2001, drawing attacks from political rivals and other Russian elites.

As NATO for the first time granted Russia a consultive role in its decision-making, Putin sought to assist its expansion. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi made a “personal request” to Bush, according to an April 2002 cable, to “understand Putin’s domestic requirements,” that he “needs to be seen as part of the NATO family,” and to give him “help in building Russian public opinion to support NATO enlargement.” In another cable a top-ranking state department official urges holding a NATO-Russia summit to “help President Putin neutralize opposition to enlargement,” after the Russian leader said allowing NATO expansion without an agreement on a new NATO-Russia partnership would be politically impossible for him.

This would be the last time any Russian openness toward NATO expansion is recorded in the diplomatic record held by WikiLeaks.


Allies Weigh In

By the middle of the 2000s, US-Russian relations had deteriorated, partly owing to Putin’s bristling at US criticism of his growing authoritarianism at home, and to US opposition to his meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian election. But as explained in a September 2007 cable by New Eurasia Foundation president Andrey Kortunov, now a Russian foreign policy advisor who has publicly criticized both Kremlin policy and the current war, US mistakes were also to blame, including Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a general sense that he’d given little in return for Putin’s concessions.

“Putin had clearly embarked on an ‘integrationist’ foreign policy at the beginning of his second presidential term, which was fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and good relations with key leaders like President Bush” and other leading NATO allies, Kortunov said according to the cable. “However,” he said, “a string of perceived anti-Russian initiatives,” which included Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and “further expansion of NATO,” ultimately “dashed Putin’s hopes.”

What followed was a steady drumbeat of warnings about NATO’s expansion, particularly regarding neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, much of it from Washington’s NATO allies.


Why is it that so many of the worst US foreign (and domestic - hello, ever heard of the "Patriot" act? Do you like the Covid response?) policy decisions trace back to that complete moron?
It's really just a regurgitation of the same old same old, all the way back to post world war II and the tripartite agreements and so on. This is all old hat

[/URL]
 
View attachment 73702

WikiLeaks on Twitter: "'Nyet Means Nyet: Russia' s #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - Cable from 2008 written by CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow https://t.co/rOoxmuf7CN https://t.co/CeP2DwBpVD" / Twitter

Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia's Bright Red Line | ZeroHedge

Unsurprising to me is how this mess, the result of the abrogation of Jim Baker's promise of "no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 'one inch to the east'" can be traced back to the hands down worst President ever...you know who:

By the time Putin became president the day before the new Millennium, “the initial hopes and plans of the early ‘90s [were] dead,” a leading liberal Russian politician declared. The first round of NATO enlargement had been followed by NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, done without UN security council authorization, triggering a Russian cut-off of contact with the alliance. By 2000, the revised Russian national security strategy warned that NATO using force beyond its borders “’is a threat of destabilization of the whole strategic situation,” while military officers and politicians started claiming “that if NATO expands further, it would ‘create a base to intervene in Russia itself,’” the Washington Post reported.

Ironically, there would be one exception to the next two decades’ worth of rising tensions over NATO’s eastward creep that followed: the early years of Putin’s presidency, when the new Russian president defied the Russian establishment to try and make outreach to the United States. Under Putin, Moscow re-established relations with NATO, finally ratified the START II arms control treaty, even publicly floated the idea of Russia eventually joining the alliance, inviting attacks from his political rivals for doing so. Even so, he continued to raise Moscow’s traditional concerns about the alliance’s expansion, telling NATO’s secretary-general it was “a threat to Russia.”

“If a country like Russia feels threatened, this would destabilize the situation in Europe and the entire world,” he’d said in a speech in Berlin in 2000.

Putin softened his opposition as he sought to make common cause with the George W. Bush administration. “If NATO takes on a different shape and is becoming a political organization, of course, we would reconsider our position with regard to such expansion, if we are to feel involved in the processes,” he said in October 2001, drawing attacks from political rivals and other Russian elites.

As NATO for the first time granted Russia a consultive role in its decision-making, Putin sought to assist its expansion. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi made a “personal request” to Bush, according to an April 2002 cable, to “understand Putin’s domestic requirements,” that he “needs to be seen as part of the NATO family,” and to give him “help in building Russian public opinion to support NATO enlargement.” In another cable a top-ranking state department official urges holding a NATO-Russia summit to “help President Putin neutralize opposition to enlargement,” after the Russian leader said allowing NATO expansion without an agreement on a new NATO-Russia partnership would be politically impossible for him.

This would be the last time any Russian openness toward NATO expansion is recorded in the diplomatic record held by WikiLeaks.


Allies Weigh In

By the middle of the 2000s, US-Russian relations had deteriorated, partly owing to Putin’s bristling at US criticism of his growing authoritarianism at home, and to US opposition to his meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian election. But as explained in a September 2007 cable by New Eurasia Foundation president Andrey Kortunov, now a Russian foreign policy advisor who has publicly criticized both Kremlin policy and the current war, US mistakes were also to blame, including Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a general sense that he’d given little in return for Putin’s concessions.

“Putin had clearly embarked on an ‘integrationist’ foreign policy at the beginning of his second presidential term, which was fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and good relations with key leaders like President Bush” and other leading NATO allies, Kortunov said according to the cable. “However,” he said, “a string of perceived anti-Russian initiatives,” which included Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and “further expansion of NATO,” ultimately “dashed Putin’s hopes.”

What followed was a steady drumbeat of warnings about NATO’s expansion, particularly regarding neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, much of it from Washington’s NATO allies.


Why is it that so many of the worst US foreign (and domestic - hello, ever heard of the "Patriot" act? Do you like the Covid response?) policy decisions trace back to that complete moron?
George Keenan also had problems understanding those who wanted NATO expansion after the demise of the USSR:

https://comw.org/pda/george-kennan-on-nato-expansion/

"'Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?'"

luntly stated…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 "
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
George Keenan also had problems understanding those who wanted NATO expansion after the demise of the USSR:

https://comw.org/pda/george-kennan-on-nato-expansion/

"'Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?'"

luntly stated…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 "
The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, the result is that Ukraine going to get wrecked - YouTube

2015 - just after the US "meddled" in the Ukraine election to install an anti-Putin regime in Kiev. It seems a lot of people could see what Bush and the neocons had put into motion, and the end game is coming into view...nuclear war:

Putin ally warns NATO of nuclear war if Russia is defeated in Ukraine (msn.com)

Is that really what they wanted all along? It certainly appears to be following some sort of plan.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
You are basically sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "nah nah nah na na na...I can't hear you." These are historical facts. People predicted precisely what has transpired. Putin has told us that NATO in Ukraine was a "red line," Now you want to gaslight us into believing none of that happened and it is simply Putin suddenly attempting to "rebuild the Russian empire." Nobody with a brain and an ounce of integrity is going to fall for it.
 
Last edited:

Bugsy McGurk

President
View attachment 73702

WikiLeaks on Twitter: "'Nyet Means Nyet: Russia' s #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - Cable from 2008 written by CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow https://t.co/rOoxmuf7CN https://t.co/CeP2DwBpVD" / Twitter

Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia's Bright Red Line | ZeroHedge

Unsurprising to me is how this mess, the result of the abrogation of Jim Baker's promise of "no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 'one inch to the east'" can be traced back to the hands down worst President ever...you know who:

By the time Putin became president the day before the new Millennium, “the initial hopes and plans of the early ‘90s [were] dead,” a leading liberal Russian politician declared. The first round of NATO enlargement had been followed by NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, done without UN security council authorization, triggering a Russian cut-off of contact with the alliance. By 2000, the revised Russian national security strategy warned that NATO using force beyond its borders “’is a threat of destabilization of the whole strategic situation,” while military officers and politicians started claiming “that if NATO expands further, it would ‘create a base to intervene in Russia itself,’” the Washington Post reported.

Ironically, there would be one exception to the next two decades’ worth of rising tensions over NATO’s eastward creep that followed: the early years of Putin’s presidency, when the new Russian president defied the Russian establishment to try and make outreach to the United States. Under Putin, Moscow re-established relations with NATO, finally ratified the START II arms control treaty, even publicly floated the idea of Russia eventually joining the alliance, inviting attacks from his political rivals for doing so. Even so, he continued to raise Moscow’s traditional concerns about the alliance’s expansion, telling NATO’s secretary-general it was “a threat to Russia.”

“If a country like Russia feels threatened, this would destabilize the situation in Europe and the entire world,” he’d said in a speech in Berlin in 2000.

Putin softened his opposition as he sought to make common cause with the George W. Bush administration. “If NATO takes on a different shape and is becoming a political organization, of course, we would reconsider our position with regard to such expansion, if we are to feel involved in the processes,” he said in October 2001, drawing attacks from political rivals and other Russian elites.

As NATO for the first time granted Russia a consultive role in its decision-making, Putin sought to assist its expansion. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi made a “personal request” to Bush, according to an April 2002 cable, to “understand Putin’s domestic requirements,” that he “needs to be seen as part of the NATO family,” and to give him “help in building Russian public opinion to support NATO enlargement.” In another cable a top-ranking state department official urges holding a NATO-Russia summit to “help President Putin neutralize opposition to enlargement,” after the Russian leader said allowing NATO expansion without an agreement on a new NATO-Russia partnership would be politically impossible for him.

This would be the last time any Russian openness toward NATO expansion is recorded in the diplomatic record held by WikiLeaks.


Allies Weigh In

By the middle of the 2000s, US-Russian relations had deteriorated, partly owing to Putin’s bristling at US criticism of his growing authoritarianism at home, and to US opposition to his meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian election. But as explained in a September 2007 cable by New Eurasia Foundation president Andrey Kortunov, now a Russian foreign policy advisor who has publicly criticized both Kremlin policy and the current war, US mistakes were also to blame, including Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a general sense that he’d given little in return for Putin’s concessions.

“Putin had clearly embarked on an ‘integrationist’ foreign policy at the beginning of his second presidential term, which was fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and good relations with key leaders like President Bush” and other leading NATO allies, Kortunov said according to the cable. “However,” he said, “a string of perceived anti-Russian initiatives,” which included Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and “further expansion of NATO,” ultimately “dashed Putin’s hopes.”

What followed was a steady drumbeat of warnings about NATO’s expansion, particularly regarding neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, much of it from Washington’s NATO allies.


Why is it that so many of the worst US foreign (and domestic - hello, ever heard of the "Patriot" act? Do you like the Covid response?) policy decisions trace back to that complete moron?
Gotta be pretty nutty to think Ukraine was a threat to Russia.
 

PhilFish

Administrator
Staff member
You are basically sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "nah nah nah na na na...I can't hear you." These are historical facts. People predicted precisely what has transpired. Putin has told us that NATO in Ukraine was a "red line," Now you want to gaslight us into believing none of that happened and it is simply Putin suddenly attempting to "rebuild the Russian empire." Nobody with a brain and an ounce of integrity is going to fall for it.
All I did was add the rest of the story. It's decades and decades old.. I didn't say none of that happened....I provided historical context and fact indicating just how long this has been going on

Read.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
All I did was add the rest of the story. It's decades and decades old.. I didn't say none of that happened....I provided historical context and fact indicating just how long this has been going on

Read.
Yes but you are glossing over the part of the history where early on Putin was not anti-NATO and even considered the possibility of applying for membership. Until GWB and the neocons f*cked all that up and set this:

ukraine destruction - Bing images

Into motion.
 

PhilFish

Administrator
Staff member
Yes but you are glossing over the part of the history where early on Putin was not anti-NATO and even considered the possibility of applying for membership. Until GWB and the neocons f*cked all that up and set this:

ukraine destruction - Bing images

Into motion.
I don't mention some random segment of history that you're attached to doesn't mean that I'm glossing over it. The fact of the matter is that Putin was never pro nato. Russia, putin, or whomever have always always been anti-nato since its creation. Furthermore Russia considers Ukraine it's property so on that basis whatever point you're trying to make is rendered moot
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
I don't mention some random segment of history that you're attached to doesn't mean that I'm glossing over it. The fact of the matter is that Putin was never pro nato. Russia, putin, or whomever have always always been anti-nato since its creation. Furthermore Russia considers Ukraine it's property so on that basis whatever point you're trying to make is rendered moot
That is your opinion - the public record says something completely different.
 

Bugsy McGurk

President
Nobody thought that, especially Putin. NATO was (and is) the threat to Russia. Read. The. Cables.
First, of course, Ukraine was not a member of NATO.

As important, NATO members pose no threat to Russia. No NATO member invaded Russia, and none will. Putin knows that. You are gullible enough to believe Putin and his cronies when they say they had to invade Ukraine for defensive reasons. Or, even more laughable, to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. You are what is known as a useful idiot.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
First, of course, Ukraine was not a member of NATO.

As important, NATO members pose no threat to Russia. No NATO member invaded Russia, and none will. Putin knows that. You are gullible enough to believe Putin and his cronies when they say they had to invade Ukraine for defensive reasons. Or, even more laughable, to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. You are what is known as a useful idiot.
Funny thing is, we have an international cadre of diplomatic and intelligence officials on the record with comments that demonstrate that YOU are the useful idiot...of the MIC:

We've not so much as reached one full month into 2023, and the United States' top ranking general is already predicting the war in Ukraine will surely not end this year.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley issued a broad view assessment on the state of the battlefield while attending a US-hosted meeting in Germany at Ramstein airbase among allied defense ministers, which had as its focus sending more arms to Ukraine. Gen. Milley said: "From a military standpoint I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all, every inch of... Russian-occupied Ukraine."

Despite officials at the meeting pledging more weapons to Ukraine, no significant decisions were made on the controversial question of sending Western-made heavy tanks.

Instead, the Biden administration says it's sticking by the decision to not send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukrainian forces. At the same time this may translate into Ukrainian forces holding back on any major attempt to push Russian forces back from current frontlines, particularly the now raging Bakhmut fighting.

"Senior US officials are urging Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive
against Russian forces until the latest supply of weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a top Biden administration official says," according to one international report.



It seems the USA isn't interested in a "quick" victory for the Ukrainians. I wonder why?
 

Bugsy McGurk

President
Funny thing is, we have an international cadre of diplomatic and intelligence officials on the record with comments that demonstrate that YOU are the useful idiot...of the MIC:

We've not so much as reached one full month into 2023, and the United States' top ranking general is already predicting the war in Ukraine will surely not end this year.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley issued a broad view assessment on the state of the battlefield while attending a US-hosted meeting in Germany at Ramstein airbase among allied defense ministers, which had as its focus sending more arms to Ukraine. Gen. Milley said: "From a military standpoint I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all, every inch of... Russian-occupied Ukraine."

Despite officials at the meeting pledging more weapons to Ukraine, no significant decisions were made on the controversial question of sending Western-made heavy tanks.

Instead, the Biden administration says it's sticking by the decision to not send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukrainian forces. At the same time this may translate into Ukrainian forces holding back on any major attempt to push Russian forces back from current frontlines, particularly the now raging Bakhmut fighting.

"Senior US officials are urging Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive
against Russian forces until the latest supply of weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a top Biden administration official says," according to one international report.



It seems the USA isn't interested in a "quick" victory for the Ukrainians. I wonder why?
Your rant has nothing to do with what I said.

I graciously accept your concession.
 
Top