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Comment by icare_1er | Hacker News Reader

That's because you lack historical culture. You should re-read about that lengthy negociations that took place in the 90s re. the dismantling of the USSR. It came with a lot of conditions, negociated for years, with Kohl and Mitterrand playing the middle-men. Conditions that the newly recreated eastern countries would stay neutral and not become NATO, were very clear, and signed off by Baker on the US side. I've given you enough key words for you to go and catch up a bit.

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That is simply not true. No organization had the right to decide the defense strategy of the newly freed Eastern countries. And Russia itself had zero leverage, they were starving.

Well no, that's factually false. Every NATO member can deny the entry of any country in NATO. So, the US, Germany and France absolutely have the right to decide their defense strategy doesn't involve being part of NATO.

Please reread my post, I never said that.

Yes, you did. You said, in context, that no organisation had the right to decide the defense policy of the post Soviet states with regard to NATO. That's not true.

I said the Eastern countries had the right to align their defense strategy to NATO's policy and values, even if for joining they had to meet certain requirements.

But the decision to apply or not was theirs and other NATO members welcomed them exactly because that was conforming to NATOs values and principles.

Most tellingly, these were countries that were in a similar treaty before with Russia - the Warsaw Pact. The one that crushed the Prague Spring. They knew exactly what the difference between the two treaties were.

Of course they do, that's even why Japan has been pretty much not allowed having an army for the past 80 years.

It is common practice, after big wars, to negotiate what newly created states can or cannot do, this was done in Europe for centuries (Belgium, Poland were often under such constraints and used as buffer zone between empires).

Absolutely, what was negotiated was the budapest memorandum and the paris charter.

What treaty are you referring to?

do you happen to have any links to such documents, preferably originals? Because it sounds suspicious that US agreed on some conditions for whole NATO. Especially by the time when USSR basically lost any leverage and couldn't dictate any conditions to anyone.

It's a propaganda point, and false. So - I doubt you'll get any proof from them.

Documents don't really matter in such situations. When a state believes it's in a survival fight, it doesn't care about international laws or anything, because nothing can be worse than it's death.

The US has been working on surrounding Russia with NATO states, putting bases and nuclear next to Russia, Russia tried to do the same in Cuba during the cold war but the US did not accept it and was ready to sink the Russian ships, Cuba was "free" to do that but that doesn't matter because the US beleived it's a threat. Now that Russia beleives it's strong enough to face the US on some small issues (the US is still much stronger but not as before) it no longer accepts to have NATO on it's border, especially in Ukraine because historically that's where Russians come from plus it would hurt their access to sea.

Anyways, that's how it looks like for me as a bystander.

Sure: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

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