Thread by @michaeljohns

On Russia:

1. In final years of the Cold War, as a leading proponent of the Reagan Doctrine, I distinctly remember a moment in 1989 when many of us began to conclude that the doctrine was proving so effectual that the entire Soviet empire faced a realistic prospect of collapse;

2. I then recall our internal discussions shifting quickly to a new question:

What do we now do to ensure that the Kremlin, facing an imminent collapse of its empire and with little to lose, does not lash out with a final kinetic burst of military aggression against the West?

3. We concluded that Gorbachev needed to be assured publicly and privately that, in exchange for allowing the Cold War to end peacefully and allowing a united Germany in NATO, we would not seek any further eastern expansion of NATO;

4. I recall feeling then that, given the magnitude of the stakes, this was the least we could offer. And for eight years, from 1991 until 1999, we kept this promise until Clinton, GWB, and Obama violated it repeatedly, adding about a dozen Warsaw Pact and Baltic nations to NATO;

5. Prior to Russia's Crimea and Ukraine invasions in 2014 and 2022 respectively, Putin and Russia described NATO's eastern expansions as provocative and threatening. Supporters of the Ukraine War, in turn, predictably later labeled this response "Russian propaganda"; and

6. But the fact that we issued such assurances is now beyond dispute. In December 2017, these declassified documents available @NSArchive and elsewhere, demonstrate that we made such assurances publicly and privately at many levels and did so repeatedly:

nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/…