Thread by @MMazarr

Just another reminder that this is basically the same strategic norm the US claimed re: Cuba and enforced in the missile crisis + later. SecState Vance in 1979 about just the infamous Soviet brigade in Cuba: "the presence of this unit runs counter to long‐held American policies"

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1465678089497759749

Remember, too, that in the resolution of the crisis, in agreeing to (private) assurances to w/draw missiles from Turkey, the US explicitly affirmed the validity of this notion of equivalence: It is destabilizing for a great power to deploy certain weapons too close to its rival

I know that the debate over what Russia was + was not promised re: NATO enlargement still rages. Persuasive arguments on both sides, tho my best reading of the evidence = that Russia has a decent case to feel at least slightly misled. But ...
rferl.org/a/nato-expansi…

... I have to believe that if the US had casually dropped the idea of *Ukraine* as a NATO member back then, Soviet leaders would have been apoplectic. The West's assumptions about what is within the bounds of the acceptable have constantly expanded along w/NATO's borders

The day when the US could claim one standard for itself + another for its rivals is long past. If we won't constrain our military posture (esp provocative systems) in Europe, why should we expect others to do so in the W Hemisphere? How could we even demand it w/a straight face?

Limiting the unqualified assertion of our norms in order to recognize the vital interests of even hardened rivals is not Munich-style appeasement. It is statecraft. Its absence has produced wars every bit as numerous as failure to express sufficient strength