,
5 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1. Just finished reading @e_sarotte fascinating account of the US decisions that led to NATO expansion. mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.11… Two thoughts follow. First - her suggestion that a different form of expansion (with proper development for PfP) might have integrated Russia better.
2. It's interesting to wonder whether the OSCE might have played a more substantive role in that counterfactual world, building a more robust domestic democratic architecture as Greg Flynn and I once argued it might - henryfarrell.net/dempeace.pdf
3. The other thought: that the detailed trail of notes, memos etc that allowed her to reconstruct the debates will not exist for great swathes of discussion in the Trump administration, where haphazard communications (no note-takers with Putin!) not only complicate lives
4. of future historians, but also make it extremely difficult to implement policy. The description of Yeltsin - making late night commitments that Poland could join NATO that his staff then had to try to walk back; the notorious drunken conducting of an orchestra ...
5. Are happening now on the other side of the U.S.-Russia divide. Trump is a teetotaler but has managed to recreate much of the chaos and lunacy of the Yeltsin era without the aid of alcohol.
