Our #1 Priority is to Mend Russian Relations  Part 1 – Ukraine  

Has NATO over stepped its boundaries or is Vladimir Putin and Russia determined to dominate its neighbors and menace Europe. NATO and the United States claims that it is Russia that is attempting to expand its influence in Eastern Europe and beyond.

NATO has accused Russia of causing unrest in Ukraine and “land grabbing” of Crimea. Leaders in Moscow, however, tell a different story. For them, it is Russia that is attempting to protect ethnic Russians and is being pushed into a corner.

Russia has also claimed that the United States has failed to uphold a promise, made in the 1990’s, that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. If one examines the history and facts it appears Russia has a valid point.

Most people with an awareness of post WW2 history know that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. NATO countries were clearly defined as the other side in the “Cold War” against the Soviet Union. In recent years NATO has emphasized that its role includes “a broader effort to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration.”

This expanded purpose may be NATO’s only justification of existence. If NATO was formed in response to the threat of the Soviet Union, then when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 NATO should have also dissolved. In reality, since the 1990’s, NATO has expanded immensely.

The disbanding of the Soviet Union created a void in the old Warsaw Pact (Iron Curtain) countries. The void was ripe for NATO to expand its shield of influence. In the past 25 years NATO’s borders have expanded from the old West Germany border to the Ukraine and into the Balkins.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the question was whether the reunified Germany would be aligned with the United States and NATO or the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The George H.W. Bush administration advocated for the reconstituted German republic to be include in NATO.

On February 9^th 1990 U.S. leaders met in Moscow with the Soviets and a verbal agreement was struck. According to transcripts of the meetings then Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, the U.S. could make “iron-clad guarantees” that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Less than a week later the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin the reunification of Germany talks.

Although no formal deal was struck, the evidence indicates that a quid pro quo was initiated. Gorbachev would agreed to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion. In June of 1990 Bush was telling Soviet leaders that the United States sought “a new, inclusive Europe.”

In 1999 Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic joined NATO. In 2002 at the Prague Congress center Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were invited to join NATO. In 2004 at the Istanbul summit, Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia were welcomed in NATO as members. NATO leaders also made substantial progress towards receiving Ukraine into membership.  In 2011, NATO officially recognized four more members: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Russian leaders Yeltsin, Medvedev and Gorbachev have all protested that U.S. and NATO have violated the non-expansion arrangement of 1990’s. Putin has become the loudest Russian leader to protest against NATO’s advance into Eastern Europe. Putin’s rhetoric over NATO’s expansion has been termed by most politicians (including Clinton) and the compliant US press as “aggression and saber-rattling.”

NATO used a US backed regime change in Ukraine to cast an even darker shadow on Putin.  But the situation was distorted by the US, NATO and mainstream media. In February of 2014, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland “masterminded” the “regime change” in Ukraine, that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. The State Department convinced the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for “democracy.”

The U.S. organized a propaganda campaign to promote the coup-makers as heroes, not the brown shirts that they actually were. The New York Times and The Washington Post and most all of the West’s mainstream media twisted their reporting into all kinds of contortions to avoid telling their readers that the new regime in Kiev was permeated by and dependent on neo-Nazi fighters and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who wanted a pure-blood Ukraine, without ethnic Russians.

In Crimea, the ethnic Russians, who had been Yanukovych’s political base, resisted what they viewed as the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president. Crimea held a referenda seeking separation from Ukraine. On March 16, the referendum was organized by the elected legislative assembly of Crimea. Some 95.5% of voters in Crimea supported joining Russia. Vladimir Putin accepted the results of the Crimean people’s and Crimea joined Russia, after all Crimea has been under Russia on and off since 1783.

Meanwhile this past summer NATO conducted Anaconda-2016 a 10-day military exercise, involving 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries. It represented the biggest movement of foreign allied troops in Poland in peace time. The exercise, launched in Poland, was promoted as a test of cooperation between allied commands and troops in responding to military, chemical and cyber threats. The question should be asked “From where are these threats coming?”

The only non-NATO country in that part of the world that is capable of being a Military threat is Russia. The DNC and Hillary can tell us exactly who the leading suspect of Cyber terrorism is. Hillary in the presidential debates concluded “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election.” When in trouble blame the Russians.

George Washington advised against “permanent alliances,” and Jefferson, in his inaugural address on 4 March 1801, declared his devotion to “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” World War 1 was the enactment of  a series of those alliances that went into affect after the assasination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Leaving NATO may just be a preventative move to avoid WW3. Where have you gone Ron Paul?