| https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259933/not-one-inch M. E. Sarotte wrote a whole book on it. I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but it starts with the fall of the Berlin wall, and reunification, where US and Germany figured that it was possible to have their cake and eat it - Soviet troops out of East Germany, NATO being allowed to stay, Warsaw pact falling apart, and NATO enlarging as a military alliance instead of pan-european (Atlantic to Urals) security arrangement. Russia was at its very weakest, and not in the position to object much; plus missteps by Gorbachev and Yeltsin contributed to enlargement. You've got Yeltsin wanting Russia to join NATO, back when US enjoyed quite a bit of good will, only for them to slowly realize that plans like Partnership for Peace is meant to enlarge NATO; the US is not going to let Russia join NATO, despite some wishful-thinkng; NATO membership being dangled in front of Ukraine to encourage them to return the soviet era nukes back to Russia or have them destroyed; NATO's enlargement policies is basically neo-containment of Russia at the get-go... I'm sure it's only going to get more colourful as the book goes on. In any case, it's rather disingenuous for US and NATO to dangle membership to Ukraine. They know even in the 80s and 90s that Russia would strongly object to a military alliance that has Article 5 in it, not to mention a NATO member state would generally be required to have foreign troops and weapons (among other things nukes) on their soil. At the end of the day, US is probably not going to risk nuclear war over this, but at the same time, it just keeps using Ukraine to try and stick it to Russia. Regardless of what Ukraine's wishes actually are (and it's more diverse than the media generally likes to portray), realistically it's not something that Ukraine has the only say in the matter - US will continue to find any which way to further is neo-containment aims; Russia would continue to oppose that. |