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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 5239923" data-attributes="member: 56035">they invaded it because of NATO expansion.  ukraine is too strategically important for russia to let it go just like the other 17 NATO countries which werent supposed to be NATO members since WARSAW collapsed.  btw didnt america have nukes during cuba missile crisis?  and yet it really bugged you guys.[URL unfurl="true"]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.111/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-423-Transcript.pdf[/URL]Chris Hedges: Right. So I was there. First of all, we thought NATO was obsolete, which showsyou how naïve we are, because NATO was created to prevent Soviet expansion into Central andEastern Europe. Well, that was over. In fact, Gorbachev was negotiating observer status atNATO and speaking about building a joint security alliance between the United States, Europeand Russia. There were promises by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister,Margaret Thatcher and James Baker, as you said, the secretary of state under Reagan, all ofwhom promised that NATO would not be expanded beyond the borders of a unified Germany.And everybody understood from Henry Kissinger to George Kennan. It didn't matter, that thiswas absurd; this was a clear provocation against a Russian government that wanted to work withus. But it expanded anyway. And why? Well, because it was a multibillion-dollar a yearbonanza.You had, if you expanded NATO, then Soviet Bloc militaries or countries that had Soviet Blocmilitary equipment would have to reconfigure their equipment to make it NATO-compatible.And that's exactly what happened. I was in Warsaw a couple of years ago and there werebillboards all over the place from Raytheon because, of course, they're bilking the Polish people .. . a lot of this is paid for with loans but it was what George Kennan later called the expansion ofNATO the gravest mistake of the post-Cold War era. And then you had not only the expansion ofNATO, but during the Clinton administration there were promises that NATO troops would notbe deployed in Central and Eastern Europe, and now there are thousands. And we've got to alsoacknowledge that Ukraine, in many ways, is a de facto NATO country. It also has been floodedwith NATO military equipment. It had I think 150/200 NATO military advisors before this warbegan. So yes, Russia has every right to be concerned. We almost went to nuclear war with theSoviet Union when the Soviets attempted to station or put missiles in Cuba, which is 90 miles offthe Coast of Florida, while you have NATO missile bases being constructed 100 miles from theRussian border. Again, that doesn't excuse what Russia did. They were baited, without question,but they did pull the trigger. But you can't even begin to acknowledge this in the kind of giddyeuphoria. I think a lot of it is really wrapped up in the kind of self-adulation that we've probablynot been able to visit on ourselves over the last two decades.</blockquote>

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