The false historian of NATO promises to Russia. Putin, on the other hand, has violated treaties

22 March 20222 years ago babelfish

While alleged verbal commitments with the USSR, which no longer exists since 1991, are being dusted off, the actual treaties signed by Russia and violated today by Putin are forgotten

And here we go again, one more time. After the "scoop" of Italia Oggi (which mentions Der Spiegel ) and the interview with Giulio Sapelli at Formiche.net , also Panorama , with a report by Elisabetta Burba, accompanied by original documents and an interview with the ambassador Umberto Vattani explains to us that it was we who betrayed Russia and provoked its harsh reaction. How? Violating the now famous and well-cited pacts of 1990 with which we promised not to expand NATO to the East. Instead, NATO has expanded to the borders of Russia and then you can understand why in Moscow they hate us.

Too bad: it's all false. Or rather: so out of context, as to be false. The documents are authentic, they are there to see. The declassified documents report the verbal commitments between the leaders of the two blocs discussing the reunification of Germany: the USSR, West Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the USA. “We do not intend to advance the Atlantic Alliance beyond the Oder. And therefore we cannot grant Poland or other Central and Eastern European nations the possibility of joining it ”, is written in the minutes. James Baker also hoped for future "iron guarantees that the jurisdiction or NATO forces do not move east". Helmut Kohl, future chancellor of reunified Germany, told Mikhail Gorbachev: "We believe that NATO should not expand its range of action". So, did NATO lie? Did he not respect the agreements? Is Russia right to hate us?

Not even for an idea: look at the date. These conversations took place between September 12, 1990, on the eve of German reunification, and March 6, 1991, the day after that. Let's take the last date: March 6, 1991. There was the Warsaw Pact, there was the USSR, the three Baltic republics were still an integral part of the Soviet territory, there were still the bases of the Red Army in the countries of 'Central and Eastern Europe we talked about. A retreat had just begun, but the events that would take place from there to the end of the year were not even on God's mind. It happened, then, that the Warsaw Pact, already in disarmament, was dissolved on 1 July 1991. In the Soviet Union, the military and secret services tried to take power, with a coup, a month later. Failing to do so, they accelerated the decline and dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991 the red flag was lowered, for the last time, from the highest flagpole in the Kremlin. From that day other independent and sovereign republics were born, including Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, political opponent of Gorbachev and his late Soviet line.

Russia is not the Soviet Union. He inherited his seat at the UN and, since 1994, has maintained a monopoly on the nuclear arsenal of the former Red Empire. But it did not inherit the debts with foreign countries, nor the agreements with other powers. With NATO, Russia signed the Partnership for Peace agreements in 1994, but above all the NATO-Russia Founding Act of May 27, 1997. The latter established the criteria for the partnership relations between the Atlantic Alliance and the new Russian Federation .

Nor is the USSR the Commonwealth of Independent States (CSI), born from the 1991 Minsk agreement, to create an area of free trade and military cooperation between former Soviet republics. Unlike the USSR, it is neither a federation nor a confederation and is on a voluntary basis. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, despite being former Soviet republics, have never been part of it. Georgia withdrew from the CSI in 2009 after being attacked by Russia.

Ukraine withdrew in 2018 after Russia occupied it and annexed Crimea. Originally, there were four nuclear arsenals in the CSI: in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Ukraine, at the time of its independence, was the third largest atomic power in the world, just behind the USA and Russia. His legacy of the vast Soviet arsenal caused two very serious crises, one in May 1992, when the officers in command of the strategic air and missile force split between those who remained loyal to Moscow and those who swore loyalty to Kiev. And then in September-October 1993 when, due to the failed National-Communist coup against Yeltsin, the Russian strategic forces were placed on high alert and the Ukrainians feared they would suffer a preemptive attack. In the end, the tension subsided only thanks to the mediation of the US which convinced Ukraine to give up all its arsenal to Russia, as Belarus and Kazakhstan had already agreed to do.

In exchange for this sale, which gave Russia back the status of a nuclear superpower, Ukraine asked for guarantees for its independence. They were established in Budapest, with a memorandum signed on December 5, 1994 by Russia, Ukraine, the USA and the United Kingdom: Russia, in exchange for the nuclear disarmament of Kiev, undertook not to invade Ukraine and to respect its borders (for the distracted : Crimea included) and territorial integrity. Thus the "Ukrainian missile crisis" was resolved, a rhetorical image that Russia has been using in recent months, drawing the parallel with the Cuban missile crisis, out of time and now without reason, to justify its invasion of Cuba. 'Ukraine. The agreements were first violated in 2014, with the Russian annexation of Crimea. And they were definitively violated on February 24, with the invasion of Ukraine. A blatant violation, which is incredibly little talked about.

Putin, in his final requests to Brussels and Washington (December 17, 2021), however, calls for a review of the NATO-Russia Founding Act . It is therefore worthwhile to re-read in more detail what that agreement envisaged.

"Consistent with the OSCE's work on a common and global security model for Europe for the 21st century, and taking into account the decisions of the Lisbon Summit on a European Security Charter, NATO and Russia will seek the widest possible cooperation between the OSCE participating States with the aim of creating a common area of security and stability in Europe, without dividing lines or spheres of influence that limit the sovereignty of any state ”.

Let those who, today, speak and rant about "respecting the Russian sphere of influence" remember this. Because Russia itself has signed a commitment not to create new ones in Europe.

Let us remember what Europe was in 1997: the Cold War ended less than a decade, the democracies of central Europe eager to free themselves from the communist past and enter a liberal future, accessing the EU and NATO, a perpetually Russia poised between Westernists who looked to Europe and orientalists nostalgic for the USSR (or the empire), the former ruling in the Kremlin, the latter in the Duma. The countries of the former Warsaw Pact watched with fear the growth of the revanchist tendencies of Russian politics, in nationalist (Zhirinovskij), communist (Zjuganov) parties, in a government led by a former KGB agent (Primakov) and in the army, which had never changed since the end of the USSR and was still practicing to fight against NATO in Europe. They looked with apprehension at the wars in the former Yugoslavia, fearing that someone in Russia could do as Milosevic: take back pieces of Serbia, after the end of the Yugoslav federation, even by resorting to ethnic cleansing. The Russians had intervened straight-legged in Moldova and Georgia, between 1992 and 1994, in a not too dissimilar way. And they maintained an exclave-fortress in Kaliningrad, looming over Poland and Lithuania.

The purpose of NATO, and of the Clinton administration, was twofold: to protect the former Communist countries from the eventual return of the Moscow flame, from a possible “nuclear Yugoslavian” scenario. And at the same time create a partnership relationship with Russia, which although not wishing to join NATO (due to the opposition of the Duma, the government and the army), could at least cooperate, on an equal footing, for stability in Europe.

The two sides undertook to cooperate, "refraining from the threat or use of force against each other and against any other State, its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence in any way contrary to the Charter of Nations United and with the Declaration of Principles guiding relations between participating States contained in the Helsinki Final Act "and" respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all States and their intrinsic right to choose means to guarantee their own security, the inviolability of borders and the right of peoples to self-determination enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents "(italics ours, ed ).

Finally, it should also be remembered: "The provisions of this act do not give NATO or Russia, in any way, a right of veto over the actions of the other, nor do they violate or limit the rights of NATO or Russia to a decision-making process and to independent action. They cannot be used as a means to disadvantage the interests of other states ”.

Putin wants to rewrite these pacts, signed by his country in 1997, when Yeltsin was the president of Russia. He wants to go back to creating his sphere of influence, he wants to go back to having the power of veto over the choices of other states. Allowing him to rewrite the rules is a political choice, frankly self-defeating from a Western point of view. But, in Italy, we cannot always brush up on alleged verbal commitments with the USSR, which no longer exists, and forget real treaties signed by Russia and violated today by Putin. Who benefits?

Among other things, the events of recent days in Ukraine, but also those of 2014 (Russian annexation of Crimea) and those of 2008 (Russian invasion of Georgia), demonstrate precisely that the fears of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact for revanchism post-Soviet imperial were more than founded. The only Eastern European countries that have not yet been destabilized by Russia are, coincidentally, those that have joined NATO.

The post The false historian of NATO promises to Russia. Putin, on the other hand, violated treaties appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-falso-storico-delle-promesse-nato-alla-russia-putin-invece-ha-violato-trattati/ on Tue, 22 Mar 2022 03:47:00 +0000.