[I hate to get political but it has reached a point within the last year and a half that I can hardly tolerate it. But my take below has nothing to do with politics and, in my opinion, more to do with sanity.]
I highly urge anyone to watch the interview with Jeffrey Sachs in its entirety with an open mind. Jeffrey Sachs isn’t just some talking head that hasn’t a clue as you typically see in the media: in fact, the media largely avoids him for this very reason. He was directly involved with the reshaping of the Polish economy after the fall of the Soviet Union. He was also involved with Bolivia to assist them in their struggle with inflation. He also worked with Gorbachev and was around during the time when assurances were given, by the Bush administration, to Russian leadership that NATO did not seek to expand (the saying “… not one inch east…”). He spent nearly two decades as a professor at Harvard and is currently a professor at Columbia.
And here’s the last bit I want to say. We’ve all heard it, this talk of Russian aggression that was unprompted - and all the other words they use to misdiagnose what has happened. Zbigniew Brzezinski called for NATO expansion eastward towards Russia in the 1990’s - and, unsurprisingly, was backed with support from Kissinger. Later, neoconservatives formed a thinktank called The Project for a New American Century and penned an article, or manifesto, titled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” and in it they call for NATO expansion towards Russia and into southeastern Europe (you can read the entire piece for yourself at Archive.org). Many of the PNAC authors found themselves posted to positions within the Bush administration that began in 2000. In 1999 NATO expanded into the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In 2004 the Cold War relic expanded into Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. In 2008 it attempted to expand into Georgia, yet another state on the Russian frontier, which resulted in Russian military intervention: it failed. In 2009 it expanded into Albania and Croatia. In 2017 it was Montenegro. In 2020 it was North Macedonia. In 2023 it expanded into Finland. In 2024 it expanded into Sweden. In 2013/2014 it attempted to expand into Ukraine which resulted in the coup that took place after Maidan in early 2014. As you can see, the modern version of NATO has literally nothing to do with its history of being a North Atlantic military alliance. And of course, the events of 2013 and 2014 have a huge role in where we are now. The revolution that occurred in Ukraine in 2014 that resulted in the coup of an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, of course had true believers - but as always it is a loud minority. Also at work behind the scenes was Obama’s State Department as represented by Victoria Nuland and the ambassador, shady western NGO’s, and alphabet agencies (after all, regime change is the CIA’s favorite game). There literally exists a recorded call of Victoria Nuland having a conversation with another State Department individual about hand picking the new Ukrainian government. Now, if you believe that these people played no role in stoking the fires of Maidan I have a bridge to sell you. Of course the bulk, if not all, of the true believers during the “Revolution of Dignity” (a poor name) likely originated in Kiev… But you need to understand the makeup of Ukraine: In the west you have Hungarian and Romanian populations while in the east you have ethnic Russians (Ukraine nationalism is rather new - the lands it is composed of was at one time or another part of the Russian Empire, Hungary, etc.)… When you have a population center, as we do here in Oregon, that is so densely populated the rest of the region is dictated to by that one densely populated region (here, unfortunately, it’s Portland that rules despite however we vote)… And so, when the coup and the ousting of a neutral and Russian-friendly president took place in 2014, and a new government was chosen by foreign powers, many in oblasts like Donetsk wanted nothing more to do with Kiev and vied for their own independence. That independence brought down violence upon their region by the armed forces of Ukraine. Once again, we are talking about populations, from eastern Ukraine down to Crimea, that is vastly made up of ethnic Russians. The war began in 2014, not 2022 - and those people that sought to move beyond the grip of Kiev struggled for some eight long years on their own: in other words, it took eight years for Russia to become directly involved.
Beyond this, Russia has a history of desiring neutral states on her border. During World War II it is estimated that Russia suffered 27,000,000 casualties. Go back further and you have more incursions into Russia such as that by Napoleon in 1812. How is it that seemingly almost nobody wonders why Russia wouldn’t be more than happy to have NATO on her doorstep? It is a military alliance: with it comes military bases, weapons and missiles, and everything else. I know for a fact that the United States would never tolerate Canada or Mexico joining a Chinese-led military alliance. And here is just how absurd those in power are with their drive for NATO expansion and their pretend shock of a Russian response: The US has the Monroe Doctrine that declares the entire western hemisphere off limits to foreign powers. Yet, even setting aside concern for the ethnic Russians that reside in the region of Ukraine, somehow everyone is surprised, even after the attempted expansion into Georgia and the results it yielded, that Russia has a line in the sand.
Below is an excerpt of a conversation James Baker, then the Bush Secretary of State, had with Gorbachev in February of 1990. [Keep in mind it was not the Bush Sr. administration that expanded NATO but Clinton’s.]
[Baker to Gorbachev in response to being asked about the potential for a US military presence being unwanted in a unified Germany] If that happens, our troops will return home. We will leave any country that does not desire our presence. The American people have always had a strong position favoring this. However, if the current West German leadership is at the head of a unified Germany then they have said to us they will be against our withdrawal. And the last point. NATO is the mechanism for securing the U.S. presence in Europe. If NATO is liquidated, there will be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand 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.
The machine of the establishment has made it extremely difficult for anyone to attempt to research anything, such as, if Russia was provided with assurances that NATO would not push east. When you attempt to find documented evidence like this you will frequently see things like “Fact Check: Was Gorbachev told… …”. Some of these people behind these efforts could be ignorant of fact and history and some could be purposely placing firewalls in an effort to thwart attempts to obtain information. You work, go to school, have kids, whatever - you don’t have all the time in the world to dig for info and the proverbial they know this: make it hard and many will abandon the task. As Sachs says, you are just simply to believe Russian actions are unprovoked and expected to make no attempts to inform yourself outside of turning on your television or reading The New York Times. Social engineering is a fact and it is running on all cylinders to make certain your mind falls in line. [The “proverbial they” in this case being every mainline media entity from Google/Alphabet Inc to these goofy “fact check” sites like Politifact]
And then one wonders what has all this accomplished. What it has accomplished has been a misadventure in creating massive instability. The Cold War ended in 1991 and with it the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact ended. So too should NATO have ended. Instead it has continued to grow like some sort of cancer that never seems sated and with no real reason to exist. Yet, through its continued existence, activity, and unwarranted growth the reason for NATO’s existence has now been finally realized - regardless of how absurd it is from the ground up. And for the rest of us, we now have to endure a more instable world, likely a new arms race, a far more polarized world that is divided rather than working together - we are simply going in the wrong direction, and a new potential cold war that hopefully never grows as hot as it could. And all the while, as the past eighty years unfortunately demonstrates, nuclear arms were a means of deterrent: the whole mutually assured destruction scenario. But just as Annie Jacobsen [the author of Nuclear War: A Scenario] says, it is a deterrent until it is not… And that is the primary deterrent Russia has to keep NATO troops off Ukraine soil which is scoffed at and ignored by our fearless, unscrupulous leaders. From where I sit, when I think of who has been the most destabilizing force on the planet over the last several decades, Russia and Putin don’t even enter the picture: however there is another nation that has a military presence in some eighty foreign nations and seeks more, plays the regime change game as if it were a national pass time - including sponsoring terrorism - which culminates in subverting its interests, believes it runs the entire planet, possesses the hubris that the hemisphere in which it exists it has ultimate ownership, has dumped depleted uranium all over foreign soil (in some cases stirring conflict in which its population was lied to in order to gain popular support) which has caused both cancer and birth defect rates there to sky rocket, spends more on the machine of war than any other state, and has been in a state near-perpetual conflict for decades.
*One more thing. There is a good book on the history of Russia in relation to Europe, the UK, and the US and how it ties into modern realities and Putin. I am not a fan of the author per se, and I do believe with some of his work he shows bias, but most of his work is grounded on historical fact however uncomfortable it may be for some to contemplate. I read it years ago and I highly recommend it (remember we now live in a world where even attempting to interview Russian leadership is considered treasonous - we are officially shown only one side of reality and not even a true shade of reality at that - and a reality in which the White House simply refuses to utilize dialog and diplomacy with Russia and has done so for decades): he provides a lot of information you can check and contrast it to the book’s contents: War Against Putin: What the Government-Media Complex Isn't Telling You About Russia