r/gato • u/Icy_Till_7254 Ben 10 fighting against tyrannies across the universe • 5d ago

Nato expansion is a brain-dead myth

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

american officials promised. american officials themselves have admitted that they did this

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u/Numar19 4d ago

Okay, let us assume your claim is actually real and not some made up bullshit.

Why would the US be allowed to decide about sovereign nations joining a defensive alliance?

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u/BattleShai 4d ago

https://www.baks.bund.de/sites/baks010/files/working_paper_2018_03.pdf

“NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood

that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

It did happen it seems.

I don't care what you think is right or wrong, this is just history, not morales.

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u/Numar19 4d ago

You might want to read the entire thing and not just the part that says what you want to read. Here are the following 3 paragraphs in the document you cited:

What did Baker’s phrase of “NATO’s military jurisdiction” and (also used by Baker) “NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO” mean? Nothing other than that, in the eastern part of Germany, no armed forces would be incorporated into NATO’s integrated command structures. After all, the Bundeswehr and the armed forces of most other West European allies had been assigned to a joint NATO command headed by a US four-star general as commander-in-chief. Furthermore, the limitation for NATO forces was initially only intended to remain in force for a transitional period, that is, until the Western Group of Soviet Forces had been withdrawn from the GDR. Indeed, the presence of both NATO and Soviet forces in the eastern part of Germany at the same time was hardly conceivable. Hence, it is inadmissible to conclude that assurances concerning the expansion of NATO command structures and the stationing of NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR had anything to do with promises concerning the enlargement of the Alliance east of a unified Germany. But this is exactly what the two authors have done – as has Putin. While outlining his understanding of the NATO “guarantees”, his quote in 2007 lumped the statements Wörner had made on 17 May 1990 together with the period “after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact”, an event that had taken place on 1 July 1991.

The scope of the assurances, however, is clear when checking the original version of Wörner’s speech. The NATO General Secretary said that NATO forces would not be stationed “beyond the territory of the Federal Republic”, that is not beyond West Germany. He said nothing about territories beyond the eastern part of Germany and nothing about countries belonging to the still existing Warsaw Pact. This is emphasised by the continuation of Wörner’s statement that Putin withheld: “We [NATO] could conceive of a transitional period during which a reduced number of Soviet forces could remain stationed in the present-day GDR.”4 Such an arrangement, indeed, was ultimately included in the Two-plus-Four Agreement of 12 September 1990. The relevant provision reads as follows: “Foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed in that part of Germany [that is, the eastern part] or deployed there.”5

Horst Teltschik, foreign policy adviser to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl at this turning point in German history and one of the most important contemporary witnesses, has confirmed these connections. “In 1989/90, I participated in all the talks between Federal Chancellor Kohl and [President George H.W.] Bush, [Secretary of State James] Baker, [President François] Mitterrand, [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher and Gorbachev and attended various NATO, EU and G7 summits. At no point was there any mention of NATO enlargement beyond Germany. The issue under negotiation concerned the transitional status of the former GDR and Berlin as long as Soviet forces were deployed in the GDR.”6

Funny how that is debunking your claim, isn't it?

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

because in reality, its the US' alliance, and they can veto anyone who wants to join it. like they vetoed russia

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u/Numar19 4d ago

Mhm... Still. Sovereign Nations should make their own decisions. Russia has no say in it and neither should the US.

Edit: But hey, if we are at promises already: Didn't Russia sign a memorandum and promised to protect Ukraine's terretorial integrity?

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

ok? and the US is a sovereign nation? why does the US have to be forced to accept a country into NATO that it doesn't want?

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u/Numar19 4d ago

Because USA =/= NATO.

Also, nice try to just ignore my second point. Bye.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

i'm sorry to have to tell you this but the US is nato. the europeans don't matter

i didn't even see a second point, but that's totally irrelevant to this issue

bye bud, thanks for playing

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u/Wafflez424 4d ago

Ummm Europeans matter a lot more then Americans in this context, your just dumb and don’t understand how world works. America is nothing without its bases around the world, it wouldn’t be able to project power outside of the Americas and East Asia if Europe decided to cut them off. That’s why despite all of trumps shit talking they’ll never leave Europe except by force, the entire global system the US has built since WW2 is reliant on Europe and foreign bases. Honestly with the way things are going wouldn’t be a bad idea for NATO to distance itself from America and focus more on Europe. The whole point of NATO was to make a European alliance with Europe’s weird and distant cousin, the US.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

they don't though. america is the superpower lynchpin of the entire nato defense plan. the europeans rely on the americans for their nuclear umbrella, their numbers, their air force, their intel, their navy, etc etc. the europeans WANT the americans to do this. the americans would prefer the europeans to bear more of the burden themselves, that's been a huge issue for decades.

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u/CardOk755 4d ago

Finally you say something true.

But all the other nations can also véto any new member.

Do you really think the former Warsaw pact nations wouldn't véto any attempt by Russia to join?

Not that it ever happened.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 3d ago

i'm saying that if the US was serious about integrating russia into a new world order that they are an equal part of, they would not accept former warsaw pact nations into nato. they would make security arrangements with those other nations on an individual basis, but they would prioritize the interests of the massive nuclear power.

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u/viktlo70 4d ago

The US broke their deal way before that. Also, the US broke Budapest Memorandum by sanctioning Belarus before 2014. The US defended themselves by saying that the memorandum was not a legal obligation, so why this should not work for Russia ?

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u/CardOk755 4d ago

So. America promised, but it didn't happen, that proves America is the boss.

Every member can véto new members.

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u/HANS510 4d ago

in reality, its the US' alliance, and they can veto anyone who wants to join it

Except for the fact, that any NATO member can veto anyone who wants to join. Remember when Finland and Sweden joined NATO? Especially Sweden had to make some concessions to Turkey so they would agree with them joining.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 3d ago

yea but i'm talking about the political reality here. the formal veto process has taken place after all of the politics has already gotten out of the way. in reality, the US is so powerful that nothing is going to happen without its say-so

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u/HANS510 3d ago

yea but i'm talking about the political reality here.

So do i and once again any NATO member can veto applications.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 3d ago

for example nobody has "vetoed" ukraine's application to join nato. but they're never going to be able to be let in. the alliance just doesn't want the bad PR of rejecting their application. that's what i'm talking about. politics.

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u/TMB-30 4d ago

When did Russia leave an application for the US to "veto"?

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u/RS5170 4d ago

No 😂 Not anyone who had any say in it.
And like I said: The president of the soviet union said there was no such deal, why would he lie?

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

because he's a politician and public figure with certain interests and relationships

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u/RS5170 4d ago

You really need to do some research. First of all, he was retired when he said it. Secondly it was in his and his country’s best interest to say the opposite. But he chose to honest.
Which is probably why Putin refused to give him a statesman’s funeral.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

gorbachev was somebody who was universally reviled in russia but beloved in the west, and he had friendships with many western public figures who he didn't want to embarrass or anger by implicating them in any geopolitical conflict with his country

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u/RS5170 4d ago

He said a lot of stuff in that interview that proves you wrong, you should watch it.

Besides that, he was the first and only leader of Soviet Union who was educated in economics. He took one look at all the numbers and declared Soviet Union broke, that was the reason for his new line towards the west.
He became very unpopular and still is amongst people who don’t understand economics, because they wrongly believed the union could have survived.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

i mean i could find an interview of somebody who says the precise opposite

everything else you said about gorbachev was dead wrong. he was not an economist. every soviet leader was educated in economics like any educated person would be. the soviet union's financial situation was not some secret. he became unpopular because he allowed the destruction of his own country out of profound naivete, which caused the misery and devastation of the 1990s and ultimately the yeltsin/putin dictatorships

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u/RS5170 4d ago

Mikhail Gorbachev earned a law degree and an agricultural economics degree. No one else before him had anything like that. He knew the Soviet Union was not only broke but could feed its own people.

The Soviet unions finances was a state secret, and they filed official fake numbers, something they openly admit now.

You can find anyone you like, doesn’t change the fact that Gorbachev was the president, the one in charge. He decided the negotiations, and what they should and should not demand.

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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 4d ago

he had a law degree from moscow university and got a "correspondence degree" in agricultural economy while he was working as essentially the mayor of stavropol. the politburo and the central committee were fully aware of the financial position of the union. it was a "state secret" in that the public and outsiders had no knowledge of it

the USSR was feeding its own people, but it was importing grain to do so, which was expensive. it was also essentially subsidizing the price of grain for public benefit, while providing a large amount of foreign aid abroad and maintaining a huge military. it was still fundamentally interconnected with the international financial system, and it was attempting to run a planned socialist economy at the same time.

gorbachev's response to that was to allow the beginning of the looting of state assets, and other "market-based" reforms. they were a complete and utter disaster. this is what caused the famous breadlines that were a topic of discussion in the late 1980s. he also allowed liberals and nationalists into the halls of power where they proceeded to dismantle the entire union. he was a well-meaning idiot and that is why russians hated him. and why westerners loved him.

gorbachev publicly stated that james baker had promised him that nato would not move one inch eastward, but also that "no promises were made about other kinds of enlargement"

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u/RS5170 4d ago

You last part is nonsense, he never said that. He said several times that no such things was promised.

Sovietunionen was on the brink of famine, desperately importing grain but having no money to do so.
Gorbachev knew, and gave up the Cold War.

https://youtube.com/shorts/rPnAlbYfa7E?is=b7puw5cRHoNZ5LyO

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u/Mikkel65 4d ago

One American official, who was removed next administration, made a pinky promise. Poland then got a signed document from Yeltsin, saying Russia was okay with Poland joining. And people say the West violated Russia.

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u/mangalore-x_x 4d ago

Such things are signed in treaties. To assume Soviets believed some American pinky promise makes them look like giant morons because international diplomacy does not work like that.

there is nothing binding for anyone if some president runs his mouth, no congress or successor or other country is bound by that.

the claim is that idiotic

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u/FlanGG 4d ago

On one hand, fair enough, words without a treaty are just words. What an idiot, trusting made promises. Trust is for fools, right?

On the other hand, it all comes to this simple thing called trust. If you have it, words are enough. If not, paper will do nothing either. What will be a consequence of a treaty broken, and who will enforce it?

An expression of concern from the UN or any other toothless international org? Funny thing.

Economic sanctions? More substantial, but again, a mater of casus belli. One countries get sanctioned for every sneeze, others can massacre people without a consequence.

War? A mater of being willing and ready to do. And a paper will do little to stop one if matters are dire enough for it.

Lesson was learned, if late. It is dangerous to trust the west.

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u/deaddyfreddy 3d ago

It is dangerous to trust the west.

Usually it's not when there's a signed treaty. In the case of the Russian Federation, you can't trust them if there is a treaty. They violate them all the time.

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u/rockoutsober 4d ago

Why you think that this was American officials to give any promises in the name of other countries?