Throughout all this, the Soviets were dealing with the US the same way they had during the Cold War. Your word is your bond. You keep your promises. Instead, the US was already working to minimize the impact of its promises in real world application.
" Even before meeting the West German leadership at Camp David in late February 1990, Baker was ebullient over the prospect of reunifying Germany within NATO, noting in the margins of a briefing paper that, relative to the concessions the United States and West Germany would have to offer, "you haven't seen a leveraged buyout until you've seen this one!"
The key to this end, as the paper elaborates was structuring the diplomatic process to create the appearance of U.S. attentiveness to Soviet interests, but actually avoiding a Soviet "veto" and giving Gorbachev "little real control" over the terms of German reunification."- Ibid. See also Rice, "Preparing for the German Peace Conference."
How is Russia threatening to the USA? When the Clinton presidency broke with post- Cold War policy it destroyed over 50 years of progress in the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union. When the Clintons started expanding NATO they made the German government, US State Dept. and US presidency liars. On an issue as large as NATO expansion, the US is now an untrustworthy diplomatic partner. On the world stage, Russia can call the US a liar. Russia has called the US a liar. That's the danger Russia poses to the USA today. - NATO's Eastward Expansion: Did the West Break Its Promise to Moscow? By Uwe Klußmann , Matthias Schepp and Klaus Wiegrefe
Why Russia is the Greatest Threat to the World
The rest of the world is well aware of these things and it has left the governments of Europe and the US in a bind. Russia has said- no more. Earlier in the article, Ukrainian nationalist academic Olexiy Haran stated that Russia had single-handedly carried out the revolution against the Soviet Union.
George Kennan, the father of US Cold War Policy echoed these thoughts- ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime...And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952.- Foreign Affairs Now a Word From X By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: May 2, 1998
If Russia was the bad guy of the Cold War, just who were they revolting against?
Olexiy Haran points out that "Sergo Mikoyan argues that under the Soviet rule Russians were exploited more than other nationalities and that a "Ukrainian mafia" controlled the Politburo, and overestimates the role of ultranationalist groups in Ukraine which are by now on the margins of Ukrainian politics. If the United States considers the Caribbean and Central America zones of vital interest, continues Mikoyan, why does America use a "double standard" and not recognize the "special rights" of Russia ."-Disintegration of the Soviet Union and the U.S. Position on the Independence of Ukraine. Discussion Paper 9509, Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Author: Olexiy Haran
Mikoyan is considered by the West to be the most knowledgeable academic on the Cuban Missile Crisis negotiations. While his father was negotiating the crisis from the Soviet side, Mikoyan served as his secretary and recorded the progress.
In 1991, if the Russians were rebelling against a "wild" Ukrainian faction in the Politburo, why was Ukraine rebelling against its own politicians? Why not just take over? This point shows the validity of the Ukrainian nationalist scholars work that is cited above and history has shown some of the limitations. It wasn't Ukraine that seceded, it was Ukrainian-American emigres that did it for them.
The western world gave Russian president Vladimir Putin the challenge of becoming a moral compass for the world. And he took it. The one thing every country that deals with Russia knows is where they stand with them. When Vladimir Putin gives his word he keeps it. In all their dealings the Russians are seeking peaceful resolutions.
It isn't peaceful or good times that define a leader. It is how they handle the bad ones. The western world brought the bad to Russia's doorstep and because of this, Putin may well go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of the last century.
For Americans brought up in the afterglow of JFK's "Camelot" it's no wonder there is a spark of jealousy because we remember that legacy when Idealism reigned instead of ideology. We remember when it wasn't Republican or Democrat, ultimately we were Americans. For that we should be jealous of the Russians. Vladimir Putin picked up that ball for Russia where we dropped it for America.
We need to rebuild our own political structures. We need to build our diplomatic corps from scratch, by that I mean actually use diplomats. We need to rebuild our reputation as a trustworthy partner. America needs to gut and rebuild its intelligence services. The model they switched to isn't working. Social media, seriously? Most of all America needs politicians worth supporting. When your only choice is between Hitler and Ghengis Khan, who's the winner? Until then we can b*tch that Russia is a threat to the world because they stole our mojo.
" Yes, tell your children, and your children's children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse.
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