Loading ...When the USSR was broken up , Baker,US Sect’y of State apparently made a verbal commitment ( unfortunately or deliberately not formalized in writing ) not to put NATO into those newly resurrected independent states along the Russian Border .
The West appears to have broken one formal treaty after another with Russia since then .
After Trump was in office for a while both he and Putin were at a G-7 or G-20 meeting and Putin tossed a soccer ball to Trump , non-verbally saying “the ball is now in your court ( to undo Obama’s subversive tactics ? or rein in the DC Neocons ?) ” .
During Trump’s Presidency he was surrounded by Deep State types trying to scuttle his initiatives . As a former CEO , he was used to having his team support his initiatives , not undercut them , as the DC Establishment did at every turn .
As a child and teenager growing up in a home where escapees from Communism were housed and boarded , I shared the dinner table with , first , a young East German who swam to freedom in frigid winter waters , lived with us for several years until killed in a small plane crash outside Windsor, Ontario in the autumn of 1953 when he was just 23 . Then in 1956 we took in several Hungarian refugees who came to Canada after their escape , leaving behind friends , family , and in one case , his diploma as a graduate chemist . He was hired by Dow Chemical , and did rise to the level of a unit operator there , but never worked in their research labs , as he was qualified to do.
As a result , I am no fan of Communism , nor Russia , per se , but if I am honest with myself , have to admit that I see Putin as a model of forbearance for decades now , including a time when the US was likely involved in heavily damaging a Russian Naval vessel sailing in the Black Sea not so long ago . The Russian Navy’s warm water port is in the Crimea .
I do not want to see a nuclear holocaust – my career was in nuclear power and I understand very well the somatic damage of ingested or inhaled nuclear contaminants which will be widespread if there is a nuclear war .