Cool a lot of people are wrong.
There's a reason Putin wanted NATO out of Eastern Europe but wasn't willing ti guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty
Because the only aspect in which specifically in Eastern Europe NATO has impact is that trying to annex one of the NATO nations there is an act of World War
There's a reason Finland is now more interested in NATO
Weird to just be dismissive of a discussion that has been going on for decades.
Especially given the subject at hand is...a state having legitimate security concerns? Come on. Russia has a pretty robust history of being invaded, it hasn't had the most warm relationship with a whole host of powerful Western countries, NATO is more or less an anti-Russian military alliance. Forget Putin, forget Ukraine, just take a glance at the broader sweep of history through Russia's eyes.
Check out this fascinating piece written in 1997:
NATO: Expansion Critics Write To Clinton
Two senators of Clinton's own Democratic party -- Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) -- sent a letter to Clinton this week, requesting "comprehensive responses" to more than two pages of questions they raise about the enlargement process.
Another letter was sent to the White House Thursday by more than 40 former senior officials, ambassadors and government experts, asking Clinton to halt the expansion effort.
They called it "a policy error of historic proportions" and urged Clinton to explore other options for European security through the European Union, arms control, and NATO's Partnership for Peace program.
. . .
Harkin and Wellstone said in their letter they are not sure that expanding the alliance to Central Europe is a wise or feasible policy and listed a host of concerns about costs, the impact on Russia, the scope of enlargement and the future mission of the new alliance, as well as America's obligations.
. . .
They too asked about the new NATO's mission and "how far into Central and Eastern Europe will the expanded NATO finally reach and how will this affect nations in the region which are not admitted into the alliance?"
Signers of the second letter predicted a dark and dire outcome to these and other aspects of NATO enlargement, saying it will draw "a new line of division in Europe between the ins and the outs of a new NATO, foster instability" and diminish the security of those left out.
. . .
Matlock said the biggest current threat is not a risk of Russian aggression but the risk posed by Russian nuclear weapons. He made the familiar argument that NATO expansion has hardened Russian resistance to disarmament and will delay negotiation and implementation of critical arms control agreements.
Let me emphasize a few of those lines: "the impact on Russia," "diminish the security of those left out," "hardened Russian resistance to disarmament."
Even if you disagree, you should be willing to at least
entertain the possibility that Russia views NATO expansion as a security issue. Seriously.
Nope. A book was released in 1997 foundation of geopolitics and written in the years prior before NATO expansion occurred. The author of this book leads a party in Russia that has Putin's ear. This author also lead the annexation of Crimea initiative and played a part in this war for the donbas. Oh, that book it mentioned annexation of ukraine and genocide against the ukrainians
No, it was never about security concerns. It's about Russia's place as a world power.
Interesting that someone wrote a book, but I'm not sure what this post is even arguing against. Russia was an imperialistic power before even Oprah's Book Club was a thing - that's not a revelation. It still has very real security concerns.
Ok, to be clear, I'm not the one bringing moral equivalence into this -- I'm criticizing that very notion -- it's the twitter thread that started this whole convo that is invoking that. It was Scahill's position that the west has no moral high ground re: Russia's invasion of Ukraine because of NATO bombings in Serbia. That, to me, is stupid! A military response to a then-ongoing genocide (which he, again, makes no mention of) is not comparable, morally or otherwise, to Russia's campaign in Ukraine imo. Even if he had picked a more damning example of western military intervention -- like, say, the war in Iraq! -- I would say that's a better piece of evidence, but would still disagree with the core argument. Wrongdoing in the past, even the very recent past, does not mean you are never in the right ever going forward. The idea that NATO cannot claim any moral high ground here is ridiculous to me.
Your whole framing here is...very, very specific. Conflating being right with having moral standing, approaching moral standing as something that changes from situation to situation as opposed to something that is earned over time, hyperfixating on this whole moral standing thing in the first place when that isn't required at all to understand Scahill's argument. For whatever reason refusing to see why it's directly relevant to bring up NATO's bombings in Serbia (note: not because it's the worst thing NATO/the West's ever done, obviously, come on), and in the meantime, also refusing to wrestle with the actual actions that are being put into the unlawful/straight up war crimes category.
Let me emphasize that point about hyperfixating on the moral standing issue: vis a vis Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the West is
right. The driving argument Scahill's making isn't that the West can't be right, nor even that it and Russia are in precisely morally equivalent positions, but that the sins which have robbed NATO of moral force have had consequences and are relevant to today.
en.m.wikipedia.org
