Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

(Mar 6, 2022 07:47 AM)Kornee Wrote: [ -> ]Nice to have a solid source backing that widely believed 'verbal memorandum of understanding'. Seems the original Bush senior admin's assurances were actually given in good faith and not a cunning ploy. Or at least a certain faction were sincere.
And that subsequently,  new gen Hawks (aka Neocons) outplayed Doves and the result is before us. While US unilateral withdrawal from 1972 ABM treaty has shown even solemnly co-signed treaties are in the long run 'not worth the paper they're written on', at least the other party have that piece of paper to wave around.
Whereas solemn verbal assurances are all too easy to outright deny, or conveniently reinterpret to suit the current circumstances. 'Flexibility'.

I think that understanding the roots of Russia’s sense of insecurity is important. It's not a blame game. They’re our representatives.

Nevertheless, everyone is undercutting that statement to Gorbachev, and rightly so, because the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. What’s pertinent, however, is what Yeltsin was led to believe. In 1994, instead of pushing for NATO’s expansion, the U.S. promoted a Partnership for Peace to include all members of the former Warsaw Pact.

It was noted that this would mark the end of the Soviet era and the incorporation of a true democratic future for Russia. "Christopher said that President Clinton particularly wanted him to talk with him on President Yeltsin’s recent letter to NATO. With a great deal of care and study, President Clinton decide on what recommendation to make at the summit in January. "In this respect, your letter came at exactly the right time and it played a decisive role in President Clinton’s consideration." There could be no recommendation to ignore or exclude Russia from full participation in the future security of Europe. As a result of our study, a "Partnership for Peace" would be recommended to the NATO summit, which would be opened to all members of the NACC, including all European and NIS states. There would be no effort to exclude anyone and there would be no step taken at this time to push anyone ahead of others. President Yeltsin jumped in at this point and asked if he understood correctly that all countries in CEE and the NIS would, therefore, be on an equal footing and there would be a partnership and not a membership. Secretary Christopher replied, "Yes, that is the case. There would not even be an associate in this case." Yeltsin replied, "This is a brilliant idea.""

It goes on expressing Yeltsin’s excitement about the deal but you can clearly see it in face.

Secretary Christopher's meeting with President Yeltsin, 10/22/93, Moscow

background or "follow a trail to the actual motivations of proponents"

'Who Cares?': Trump Allies Question U.S. Support For Ukraine
https://news.yahoo.com/cares-trump-allie...40653.html

EXCERPT: ...prominent Donald Trump supporters are questioning America’s interests in the region, echoing Kremlin talking points about Ukraine, and heaping praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the most influential voice on the network, suggested Tuesday that maybe Putin isn’t actually as bad a guy as the West makes him out to be. Carlson claimed President Joe Biden is actually the aggressor, and that he’s secretly setting up a conflict with Russia to “make a play against fossil fuels.”

Right-wing author and commentator Candace Owens, another Trump acolyte, agreed, tweeting: “WE are at fault.” She urged her followers to read Putin’s remarks from earlier this week, in which he painted a distorted picture of Western aggression. Some observers saw the speech as an effort to sell a further invasion of Ukraine to the Russian public.
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On the Putin bandwagon long before Ukraine developments.
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Candace Owens praises Putiin after capitol riot arrests
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/us-news/15...t-arrests/

CANDACE Owens has praised Vladimir Putin for "calling out the evils" of the Democrat Party after the Russian leader accused the White House of jailing Capitol rioters for their "political opinions."
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https://www.rt.com/russia/518602-biden-p...ace-owens/

Owens is not the only US celebrity who recently made a Twitter bid to secure a one-on-one with Putin. Last month, billionaire Elon Musk asked the Russian president to join him at the audio chat app Clubhouse for a conversation. The Kremlin did not take Musk up on the offer, however.
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Candace Owens - fact checking claims that NATO/US broke agreements again
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/20...ent-again/

SUMMARY: No legal agreement prohibits NATO from expanding eastward. Russians have argued that comments made by U.S. and other Western leaders during the negotiations over the reunification of Germany constituted a promise that NATO would not extend beyond then-East Germany. Those allegations have sparked decades of debate amongst those involved in the events, and scholars studying them. Even scholars who say they believe western powers did offer the Soviet Union assurances about NATO expansion say Owens’ claim is misleading.


EXCERPTS: [...] Two days before Russia invaded Ukraine with an assault that intelligence officials had warned was coming, conservative commentator Candace Owens insisted that the U.S. was "at fault."

"NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward," Owens said in the Feb. 22 tweet, which directed her more than 3 million followers to remarks from Russian President Vladimir Putin that she said showed "what’s actually going on."

Owens’ comment echoed a grievance claimed by Putin and other Russian leaders regarding the West’s negotiations with the Soviet Union after the Cold War.

[...] When Russian President Boris Yeltsin protested NATO’s expansion, President Bill Clinton’s administration asked the German foreign ministry to look into the matter. The ministry reported that Yeltsin’s complaint was formally wrong, but it said it could understand "why Yeltsin thought that NATO had committed itself not to extend beyond its 1990 limits," according to the Guardian.

[...] "Candace Owens’ statement is more fiction than not," Shifrinson told PolitiFact. "No. 1, NATO as an organization did not make this commitment. No. 2, it wasn’t an agreement."

"There is a legitimate point to say that the U.S. offered assurances to the Soviets that NATO would do something, but that is not the same thing as saying NATO offered an agreement," Shifrinson continued. "NATO is not violating, and it never offered an agreement."

None of that justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he added.

Marc Trachtenberg, a professor emeritus from the University of California, Los Angeles, has summarized the research on the NATO-enlargement-promise debate. His writing also argued that U.S. officials made assurances to the Soviets that they ultimately reneged on.

But in an email to PolitiFact, he also took issue with Owens’ use of the word "agreement."

"What we had here were purely unilateral statements made by high U.S. and German officials," Trachtenberg said. "Strictly speaking, this does not show there was an ‘agreement’ … I think the term ‘tacit understanding’ is a better way to put it."

OUR RULING: Owens said, "NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward."

There is an ongoing historical debate over comments that Western leaders, including Baker, made during post-Cold War negotiations, and whether what they said amounted to assurances that NATO would refrain from welcoming in countries closer to modern-day Russia.

But NATO as an organization made no such pledge, and the formal agreement signed at the end of those negotiations said nothing about the alliance not expanding eastward.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

(Mar 6, 2022 07:39 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]But NATO as an organization made no such pledge, and the formal agreement signed at the end of those negotiations said nothing about the alliance not expanding eastward.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Is that your definition of sleuthing? 

Maybe so, but we were clearly aware of the danger.

Quote:    My estimate here rests on the fact that including the
Madrid 3, there are now 12 candidates for NATO membership. This
total of 12 candidates can easily increase to 15 if Austria,
Sweden, and Finland decide to apply. In fact, I see a 16th
country, Ukraine, on the horizon.
    Continuous enlargement of this scope and possibly doubling
NATO's current membership insistently recalls the scenes in
Disney's ``Fantasia'' about the Sorcerer's Apprentice who cast
a spell to create a spring of water but ended with a flood
because he did not know how to say ``stop.''
    NATO has already decided at its Madrid summit to entertain
the candidacies of five more countries--Romania, Slovenia, and
the three Baltic States. We very much hope that better wisdom
will prevail, but if in fact the first group of three is
admitted as NATO members, then there should be no
doubt anywhere that negotiations on Baltic State membership
will be seriously pursued.
    If nothing else, partisan political competition in the
United States will push these negotiations fatefully forward.
No one will wish to be accused of faint-heartedness in the face
of certain Russian opposition.

Quote:    First we could expand NATO membership to the Baltics,
meaning that we would bring the Western military alliance to
Russia's border. At the very least, I believe we would have to
expect a sharp diminution in cooperation with Russia and the
remilitarization of the line between Europe, between NATO and
Russia.
    Second, we could try to bring in the Baltic States but fail
because our Western European allies vetoed this. This, I
believe, they would do. I believe that Baltic membership is
unacceptable to the Western Europeans, which means that we
would have a huge Transatlantic quarrel with our Western
European allies over this issue.
    Or, the third alternative where the Balts and Ukrainians
are concerned is that we would fail to expand and thereby do
precisely what the administration claims NATO expansion is
designed to avoid. We would renege on a promise. We would give
Russia a veto over NATO's affairs. We would draw a new line of
division in Europe and we would strand new democracies on the
wrong side of it.
    Now some argue privately that we can avoid this issue, that
we can just expand to these three countries and let it go at
that. I do not believe that this is feasible, even if it were
proper, which I don't believe it is.
    First, we are on record as promising the Balts membership.
Second, they will press us on this issue, and rightly so.
    Third, no American president will ever unequivocally rule
out Baltic or Ukrainian membership, which means that the
Russians will always have to assume that we may expand to
Russia's border, which means at the very least that this issue
will become a central one in relations between us and the
Russians as far as the eye can see with no benefit to us.

We’re told that the United Nations are calling on Russia to engage in diplomacy, but Russia must sit down with genuine diplomatic efforts, which is highly unlikely at this point. `

We’ve put Ukraine between a rock and hard spot. We’ll probably never agree to keep them out of NATO, but at the same time, we aren’t going to allow them to enter until this is over.

I doubt that a puppet put in by Putin would be likely to apply to join NATO. I don't think Putin will stop until he's either put in a puppet or destroyed the country entirely.

(Mar 6, 2022 11:56 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]I doubt that a puppet put in by Putin would be likely to apply to join NATO. I don't think Putin will stop until he's either put in a puppet or destroyed the country entirely.

And where else, in quite recent times, have we witnessed a blatant attempt at overthrowing a popular, democratically elected head of state, and installing a puppet? Not out of legitimate national security fears, but for a wider geopolitical hegemony aim? Ah that's right:
https://www.thecanary.co/feature/2019/01...venezuela/

It's the old truism 'when you point the finger, there are three pointing back' - writ large on the world stage again and again and....
But a slick and compliant MSM can be counted on to deflect from such at-home reminders.

Not a matter of two wrongs don't make a right. More that there is more urgency and legitimacy in one case vs the other. Torn between laughing and crying at the claims that the US & 'Western partners' are guilty only of being overly enthusiastic and 'clumsy' at going around the world 'installing democracies'. The 'fine details' suggest other reasons really apply.

Day 11 Summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...1-summary/

Still no dramatic changes on the map, but gradual changes that spell trouble for Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces continue to hold off the Russians to the west of Kyiv in sometimes intense fighting. It appears that the Antonov airport in Hostomel is again in Russian hands after changing hands repeatedly. The Russians take Kyiv suburbs then get pushed out again, over and over. The small provincial capital of Chernihiv continues to hold out against intense attack as it's done since day 1, blocking the main Russian advance to the East of Kyiv.. But while that happens, armored columns are approaching Kyiv from the Russian border further in the east, threatening to encircle the Ukrainian capital on three sides and threatening to cut off Chernihiv. So we are starting to see signs of coming collapse around Kyiv. That might explain the increasingly desperate tone of the Ukrainian government.

Regarding the Polish jets, it's really seeming that Poland won't give them up, even if the US promises them better jets. Apparently they are afraid Russia will go to war with them if they supply arms to Ukraine. Or something. Lots of very intense diplomacy is happening as we speak. Disappointing and probably nothing will be resolved until it's too late. There are lots of anti-tank rockets flowing into Ukraine but they also need more capable surface to air missiles too. (There are photos on the internet of Russian planes falling in fireballs, so the Ukrainians have some antiaircraft capabilities left.) They really need multirole jet fighters that can fight Russian planes in the air and attack Russian troop concentrations on the ground, like the '40 mile convoy' which has probably gotten where it's going by now, the Hostomel airport presumably. But all those amored columns rolling through the Ukrainian farmlands need to be hit from the air, that's perhaps the only thing that could really turn this thing around.

I hope that all of you understand that I’m not trying to sound condescending, but if you take the time to read all the discussions that took place regarding the expansion, you’ll see how chilling our atmosphere is today. I’m not delusional. I don’t think that any of us can solve world problems, but I do think that it helps to have a group of individuals to talk with that has the capacity to fully understand our current predicament.

(Mar 7, 2022 05:33 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]I hope that all of you understand that I’m not trying to sound condescending, but if you take the time to read all the discussions that took place regarding the expansion, you’ll see how chilling our atmosphere is today. I’m not delusional. I don’t think that any of us can solve world problems, but I do think that it helps to have a group of individuals to talk with that has the capacity to fully understand our current predicament.

One of me thinks it is good idea for at least some people to be able to see both sides of an argument. If someone like SS had gone to Zelensky and said "You're not going to like it but this is how it is.." we might not be seeing what we're seeing to today.

(Mar 8, 2022 12:23 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]One of me thinks it is good idea for at least some people to be able to see both sides of an argument. If someone like SS had gone to Zelensky and said "You're not going to like it but this is how it is.." we might not be seeing what we're seeing to today.

I wish it was that easy, C2, but these are war games between the world’s power players and there’s a lot at stake. To even begin to scratch the surface, we must look at all the pieces on board. We can start with Crimea and ask, why is it so important? 

First, look at it from a strategic military perspective and then look at its potential resources. This has nothing to do with Russia saving face. Like Putin said, people will talk. Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has already predicted that Russia’s capital outflow could reach US$160bn by the end of this year.

There’s even talk from western oil experts that estimate that there are areas that give Russia access to oil and gas reserves that could be worth trillions of dollars. Even if this isn’t inaccurate, the land grab will ensure Gazprom’s control of the area’s endeavors. Russia will have a monopoly on energy.

The potential for oil and gas reserves in The Black Sea are predicted to be massive.

Drilling for oil in the Black Sea

Germany has announced that energy supplies from Russia are exempt from the sanctions and will remain so.

"Supplying Europe with energy for heat generation, mobility, electricity supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way at the moment. It is, therefore, of essential importance for the provision of public services and the daily lives of our citizens."

(Mar 7, 2022 05:33 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]I hope that all of you understand that I’m not trying to sound condescending, but if you take the time to read all the discussions that took place regarding the expansion, you’ll see how chilling our atmosphere is today. I’m not delusional. I don’t think that any of us can solve world problems, but I do think that it helps to have a group of individuals to talk with that has the capacity to fully understand our current predicament.

Seconded.

---

(Mar 8, 2022 01:46 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]

(Mar 8, 2022 12:23 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]One of me thinks it is good idea for at least some people to be able to see both sides of an argument. If someone like SS had gone to Zelensky and said "You're not going to like it but this is how it is.." we might not be seeing what we're seeing to today.

I wish it was that easy, C2, but these are war games between the world’s power players and there’s a lot at stake. To even begin to scratch the surface, we must look at all the pieces on board. We can start with Crimea and ask, why is it so important? 

First, look at it from a strategic military perspective and then look at its potential resources. This has nothing to do with Russia saving face. Like Putin said, people will talk. Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has already predicted that Russia’s capital outflow could reach US$160bn by the end of this year.

There’s even talk from western oil experts that estimate that there are areas that give Russia access to oil and gas reserves that could be worth trillions of dollars. Even if this isn’t inaccurate, the land grab will ensure Gazprom’s control of the area’s endeavors. Russia will have a monopoly on energy.

The potential for oil and gas reserves in The Black Sea are predicted to be massive.

Drilling for oil in the Black Sea

The sea is surrounded by Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia; all of which have started explorations in different regions. Turkey and Russia have previously supplied other surrounding countries with reasonably priced oil and gas, but technological advances mean that more countries have the opportunity to search for their own resources.

Total, OMV, Repsol, Turkish Petroleum Company (TPAO), Shell and ExxonMobil are all interested in what lies under the Black Sea. TPAO estimates there are up to ten billion barrels of oil in the region, and the various companies are working on several projects in different sections which are divided into ‘blocks’.

Exploration in the sea had been limited and sporadic until 2012 when the huge Romanian well Domino-1 provided the largest discovery in the Black Sea to date; 84 billion cubic meters of gas, in the country’s block called Neptun.

Spurred on by this discovery, ExxonMobil teamed up with Austria’s OMV to join the exploration of Neptun. Together the companies built the Ocean Endeavour rig, which is drilling a well called Pelican South-1 wildcat in the hope of finding further hydrocarbon reserves. ExxonMobil is also planning to explore the smaller Teres block in the Bulgarian part of the sea, which so far hasn’t received much attention from companies.

Germany has announced that energy supplies from Russia are exempt from the sanctions and will remain so.

"Supplying Europe with energy for heat generation, mobility, electricity supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way at the moment. It is, therefore, of essential importance for the provision of public services and the daily lives of our citizens."

Truth is, by and large the joint position of NATO really means what US policy makers want. They have the big guns, and as Teddy Roosevelt famously quipped 'Speak softly - and carry a big stick'. Big sticks are always where it's really at.
Germany has been screwed as a pawn ever since WWII, and undoubtedly would adopt a much more conciliatory position in dealing with Russia - if allowed to. Many don't realize there is afaik still no signed peace treaty between Germany and the US. The practical import is that Germany is still technically occupied territory. Making compulsory permanent stationing of US nukes military (not sure if nukes are still there) on its soil 'perfectly legal'.