Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When the Soviet Union sent missiles to Cuba, within range of the U.S., President John F. Kennedy responded resolutely. Now that the U.S. is bringing countries in Russia's sphere of interest into NATO, why should we expect Russian leaders to react any differently? Klaus Wagener, Rio De Janeiro...
...Alexander Rahr, a Russian expert at Germany's Council on Foreign Relations, suggests that the business lobby played a large role in Merkel's "dramatic" climbdown from her outright endorsement of Georgia's NATO membership in Tbilisi last month to her softer stance in Brussels. John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany who is now the chairman of the German unit of investment bank Lazard, says that while he opposes sanctions himself, Germany's tolerant attitude toward Russia goes even deeper. "Germans are very, very ready to take the Russians' side," he says. "This crisis will make the appeasers...
...After the Soviet Union collapsed, recall, NATO membership was extended to the East European satellite states of the Soviet Union and to the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic. In 1999, NATO, ignoring Russian objections, went to war with Russia's ally Serbia over Kosovo. Just this year, most Western powers recognized Kosovo's independence, and - while the issue remains unresolved - at the very least considered eventual NATO membership for another two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine. So the question becomes: Has the West needlessly provoked Russia for more than a decade? Is it somehow to blame...
...those who warned that it was unwise to poke the Russian bear in the eye, there were those (myself included) who believed that as the principal victims of the Cold War, those who had lived under Soviet oppression deserved any protection they sought. If what they wanted was NATO membership, then that was what they should...
...Kosovo, arguably, was the hardest case of all. At the outset, I opposed the war, not just because the decision to get involved was taken in the teeth of Russian opposition, but also because NATO was openly taking sides in a civil war (Kosovo was legally part of Serbia). As the scale of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo became clear, I changed my mind, coming to believe that there were rare cases when humanitarian intervention - that sly little euphemism for war - was justified. But nobody can say they weren't warned about what would happen next. In their new book America...