Thread by @Julieoz836

@SenatorWong @AlboMP Hi Penny and Anthony please read this: 👇👇👇👇counterpunch.org/2022/01/07/six… Western media & their political analysts have cast Putin’s demands that NATO not expand further east to Ukraine & that NATO not establish military bases in former Soviet states nor use them to carry out

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 2. military activity as bold and impossible. Here are six crucial pieces of background that the western media will not tell you. 1. February 9, 1990, Sec State James Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany a huge concession NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 3. The West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made the same promise to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadz. Earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had already publicly declared in a major speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 4. the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.” Recently declassified documents make it clear that all the Western powers, including the USA, Germany, UK and France, repeatedly made Russia the same promise. Seven years later, when the US had already

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 5. broken that promise, Pres Clinton made Russia a second promise. Having expanded NATO far east of Germany, at least they would not permanently station substantial combat forces. That was the promise the US signed in the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations.

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 6. It was a reiteration of the earlier February 1990 promise that, not only NATO membership, but NATO troops would not extend east. So, far from being bold or ridiculous, what Putin is asking for are not new Western concessions. He is asking that the West honor its commitments

@SenatorWong @AlboMP 7. The question is will the Labor Opposition be bold enough to take a Foreign policy stance on the Ukraine Russia standoff that varies even one millimetre from that of the failed Morrison government. An LNP government who are nothing more than US flunkies. Well #Albo & #Penny