James Veverka: NATO expansion warnings have occurred since the 1990s

To The Daily Sun,

What I didn't know about NATO expansion into Ukraine: During the 1990s and 2000s, a broad coalition of prominent Western diplomats, military officials, historians, and geopolitical experts explicitly warned that expanding NATO eastward would provoke a hostile reaction from Moscow and potentially trigger a major European conflict. William J. Burns, Moscow embassy official in 1995 and ambassador to Russia in 2008, warned opposition to NATO expansion was universal across Russia, calling Ukrainian membership the "brightest of all red lines," bringing profound instability. George Kennan, Cold War containment architect, warned in 1997 that expansion "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era," predicting a revival of Russian nationalism and a new Cold War. Jack Matlock testified in 1997 that enlargement was "misguided," while Robert Gates later called the 2008 push for Georgia and Ukraine "truly overreaching." In leadership, there were William Perry and Sam Nunn: Defense Secretary Perry seriously considered resigning over early expansion plans, and Sen. Nunn warned it would alienate Russian reformers and foster militarism. Defense veterans Paul Nitze and Robert McNamara argued expansion threatened nuclear stability and arms control. In 1997, 50 prominent foreign policy experts signed a letter to President Bill Clinton, calling expansion "a policy error of historic proportions." Historians John Lewis Gaddis, Richard Pipes and Owen Harries warned that encroaching on Russia's borders would cause severe security anxieties and provoke future aggression from a recovering power. At the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed membership for Ukraine and Georgia, cautioning Putin would view it as a "declaration of war." Over this period, Russia repeatedly warned that NATO expansion to Russia's borders constituted an existential national security threat.

Between the U.S. and Israel, we'll be lucky if we don't start World War III.

James Veverka

Laconia