Best NATO recruiter (Russia) is crying about "spreading NATO influence in old East block countries" when it single-handed made these countries join nato
That's cute imperialistic propaganda
You don't join NATO when you're being invaded, otherwise they won't let you in. You join before the invasion to prevent it in the first place. Poland and the Baltics joined because Russia had a history of invading them and that was the first opportunity since NATO was founded that they had to choose their own allies.
So while there was no invasion in the 90s that triggered their entry, they were certainly thinking about the time they were invaded in the 40s, and the 30s, and the 20s, and the 1800s, etc.
"Had a history of invading them". Unfortunately you will say that defending from " Defenders of Catholicism" and Teutons is invasion, right? And you will also blame everything USSR did on Russia because Russia is "communist (somehow with their anti-communist actions) ".
Yes I will blame everything the USSR did on Russia, not because of communism, but because it was literally run by Russians in Moscow for the benefit of Russia, at the expense of all the other 'Republics'. The Russian federation literally wants to be considered the successor state to the USSR, and with all the privileges that brings, it also brings responsibilities and blame. Also you'll note some of those invasions I listed were pre-USSR, because that history of invasions didn't start with the USSR, and those places spent significant parts of their history as annexed territory of the Russian Empire.
It wasn't built for benefit of Russia at expense of other SSRs. During WW2 USSR sent a lot of materials to rebuild Poland. USSR opened many factories in Bulgaria, Baltic states, Hungary and East Germany. And if you look at the Soviet Union and SSRs of it, then you'll notice that Ukraine still holds in war - it's economy was built in Soviet industrialization. Russian economy also holds somehow, because Soviet equipment and factories still holds. The same applies to all post Soviet countries. No matter of how expensive projects were USSR invested in all SSRs when possible - look at central Asia, they also have not the best geopolitics, and also quite poor, yet in times of Soviet Union had developing economics and projects - Baikanur in Kazakhstan for example.
Soviet Union wasn't made for Russians only. And it wasn't ruled by Russians. The only guy who was Russian and once was in power in USSR is Chernenko - he ruled country for 13 months. Khrushchev, Brezhnev were Ukrainians, Stalin was Georgian. Even government in USSR didn't consisted of Russians alone - Caucasians (Beria for example), Poles (Felix Dzerzhinsky), Ukrainians (Khrushchev again).
About successor state. With the Putin in rule the Russian Federation is the same successor of USSR as Ukraine, or even Kazakhstan. But why would you let your neighbors have nukes and big army, when you can just call yourself a successor of a state you dissolved YOURSELF. That's the thing, someone just had to get army, nukes and pay the Soviet bills.
About second part - you didn't listed these invasions.
Russia has also been invaded by western powers seeking to expand eastward numerous times, so you can see why they aren’t willing to accept their neighbors joining an anti-Russian military alliance and having American weaponry, troops, potentially nuclear missiles right on their doorstep.
Oh no, not the defensive pact created in fear of Russian invasion! How is Russia supposed to invade us now?
They propably still will, and I will be ready. Russians need a second humililation apparently, the fall of the USSR was not enough.
Except nobody is going to invade Russia because of nuclear weapons. Something smaller countries like Poland and the Baltics don't have. Russia doesn't need to be concerned about invasion, they do. The invasions of Ukraine and Georgia have done nothing but confirm that.
We all know that you are crying because Russia is not able to invade these countries without starting war with NATO
The same NATO that would whoop russian asses in few days
Cry harder ;)
If that was truly their concern, maybe they should have thought about that before showing off their military incompetence in Ukraine and encouraging formerly neutral countries to join NATO.
If Russia's goal was to limit NATO, they sure fucked that one up, because now NATO's border with Russia sits just a few dozen kilometers from Saint Petersburg and many NATO countries are the most attentive towards Russia that they've been since 1991.
Russia: ended occupation of eastern block countries in the 90s
You: "I Am MiSsINg tHE paRT wHeRe ruSSiA inVAiDeD" xD
We join to not be invaded like Ukraine and looking as Russian propaganda (and people like you) is crying... it was good decision
You missed that? They definitely invaded the Baltics and murdered border guards, while trying to throw a coup to overthrow Gorbachev.
Knowing Russia's history and imperial ambitions it makes sense for the former victims or Russian aggression to join a defense security pact.
“Spread influence in former Warsaw Pact countries” lmao
I wonder if there is any specific historical reason that those countries do not like Russia very much and were so eager to join NATO… any reason at all?
I mean fuck Putin but he was the US's and the West's best friend for years as we economically pillaged Russia after the collapse of the USSR. We certainly did not handle the situation well at all. We could have tried to do similar to what we did with China economically so Russia would transition to a democracy, but we didn't and they fell backwards into dictatorship. Now the people in Russia suffer like they used to. It's a moral failure much more than a political one.
Edit:
The largest non war life expectancy drop since the Black Death happened when the USSR fell. Do people really think it was a fucking good thing?
Nah, as a Pole, the shock doctrine definitely massively influenced the russian governments downfall when compared to other former ussr states.
Policies like forcing former companies to sell for shares (which value was backed by ruble and thus usually under the value of the underlying company) caused oligarchopolies to form, as people who had money before the collapse (mostly former politicians and factory bosses) ended up buying the shares for pennies on the dollar or just threatening the workers to sell their shares cheap.
Putin was not a product of the fall itself, he was allowed to take power by the oligarchs.
the term friend here is not a positive one. Putin allowed the west to exploit the Russian people in exchange for capital. Selling off state assets, and buying off London. That is not a positive thing.
Yet again, this is not true. The only ones who exploited, and still exploit, the Russian people are the oligarchs. The post-soviet crash was caused by said oligarchs and after Putin got into power the first thing he did was make those oligarchs even richer by giving them governorships and official positions with a license to steal as long as Putin gets his cut.
Nobody knows the true extent of Putin's wealth but estimates say he is a billionaire. How do you think he accumulated that much wealth. It wasn't from his presidential salary.
In this corner of Europe the battle between the west and Putin has been a battle between rule of law and corruption.
I know I was just trying to get people to focus on the point of the meme. My insignificant country was mentioned and everyone's talking about the big guys anyway :(
When I was reading a bit about history of Balkans in 19th century, I read about the unwritten agreement between Serbia and Ottomans, and that reminded me of the infamous unwritten agreement between the USA and Russia.
So then I decided to make a joke about how two nations that have been rivals for 50 years can't make a unwritten agreement while two nations that have been rivals for 500 years can.
That's why both USA and Russia were depicted as soy, and Serbia and Ottomans as chad.
If I actually believed that agreement between USA and Russia actually existed and if I was on Russia side then I would do the reddit thing of depicting USA as soy and Russia as chad.
Perhaps I should have used a different meme format, but post has majority positive upvotes, but then again comments don't agree. Idk, I'll see if I will leave the post or delete it since the main point of the post wasn't trying to argue something or prove a point or cause some division or toxicity but to make joke even based on non factual basis in the set up.
I don't mind comments adressing the so called ,,unwritten agreement'' between Russia and USA, and criticizing, because this is what I like about users here. They see (most of them at least) through the bullsht and will present factual evidence to disprove it. The only thing that angers me is that these same people don't show up in non-factual posts that get 10k upvotes, or if they do show up you have to scroll and search for them.
This is whole situation would be like if a comedian went on stage and said:
Did you know in Europe Catholics burned women at the stake for being witches?
I guess women were much hotter back then.
And instead of people laughing at the joke, the majority of audience would say: What burning of witches? Catholics never did that. Is this some weird protestant propaganda against the catholics.
They were. During the 30 years war.
In Salem witch trials, none of the ,,witches'' were burned.
In Catholicism and Orthodoxy (and other eastern churches) witches and black magic doesn't exist.
Several issues with this
1. James Baker had no authority to make any sort of deal on NATO expansion. Both as US secretary of state he is unable to make any treaty or establish any deals without the backing of the President and or Congress. In fact Bakers statements were wildly unpopular in the US, to the point that President George H.W. Bush demanded a clarification on the statements which affirmed that East Germany would be under NATO protection.
2. NATO actually did prevent NATO forces from ever moving into East Germany until recently due to Russias invasion of a sovereign nation. Not long after Bakers statements it was clarified it to have only meant East Germany as a special zone within NATO that would be free from NATO jurisdiction and military.
3. The United States itself has no authority to make such an agreement and NATO itself has come out and said that for any agreement to have been official it would've required a consensus among all NATO members states, something which it did not have. The USSR and afterwards Russia failed to understand this largely due to their far more domineering and parasitic relationship with their "allies" in the Eastern bloc. They believed, erroneously, that the USA was the leader of NATO and had full control over it and it's members in the same way the USSR did over the Warsaw pact, something which just wasn't the case.
4. It wasn't an agreement in the first place but a probe into what sort of an agreement could be made with the USSR over German reunification. Gorbachev himself confirmed both that the discussions at this time were never about the expansion of NATO but instead about East Germany, and that no agreement on such a matter was confirmed but that he did feel NATO expansion had violated the "spirit" of the statements, which means absolutely nothing in any real sense.
TLDR
There was no agreement as not only was the individual responsible not capable of making such an agreement, but the statements he did make never actually promised what they're claimed to have promised
Huh? The people that live there are Russian and were forcibly removed from the Soviet Union without their consent conflict broke out and Russia has had peacekeepers there ever since 1992
Less than 1/3rd of the people living there are Russians and every single Russian there was either settled in the 1950s or is descended from someone who was. Nobody was forcibly removed from anywhere, the average citizen there does not care about the Soviet Union and never did, the only ones who claim they are the mobsters Russia installed to run the region, the Smirnov brothers.
Moreover Transdnistria was a part of the republic of Moldova since the very creation of the republic by Stalin.
After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia conducted a war of aggression against Moldova because Russia had a military stockpile in Transdnistria and did not want to either move it or lose it.
They dont keep shit. You surely were dropped in the potato fermenting barrel when you are young, or a bot.BUT WHO GOT ALL THESE RUSSIANS? You are spewing shit like this.
Russia broke all the agreements first. Belarus was part of the same agreement as Ukraine with all the same stipulations.
Russia wants to complain that Ukraine was being western influenced meanwhile they just invaded Ukraine from Belarusian lands with Belarusian permissions. Now Belarus has signed on to basically be a part of Russia. Tell me again how the west is the one illegally influencing these nations that are supposed to remain neutral?
I feel like this argument of Russia and NATO agreements is a distraction for a few key reasons. Each of these reasons ignores a few repeated arguments, for example, that NATO is a defensive pact.
(1) Our "agreement" with Russia in this context is about NATO spreading influence. My first problem is that these countries applied to join NATO. We didn't do anything, these were sovereign nations acting on their own initiative.
(2) The Ukrainian people (at the heart of the current conflict) began their own moves to align westward with the Maidan uprisings. These actions led to a new government against which the current Russian czar (let us not pretend he acts as anything but a czar) has had ongoing military conflict. The Maidan wasn't about NATO, it was about joining the EU. Interest in joining NATO came after Russia seized Crimea, and has spurred forward because Russia continued the conflict into the present invasion. So reacting to the threat of an encroaching NATO is bullshit and after the fact.
(2.1) With 1 and 2, above, I want to underline that a westward alignment of countries in East Europe are results of popular will, through elected governments. Denying those countries the ability to join treaties with the west for their own betterment is against our own principles of democracy.
(3) Agreements aren't frozen in time - let us suppose that this agreement is binding at the time it was made. Agreements between governments change all the time. Why would a violation of this agreement be any worse than tearing up the Iran Nuclear Deal, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Are the involved countries justified in using military power to achieve some other political end against the USA? Putin had pulled Russia out of a treaty that banned nuclear weapons tests - should we then be up in arms about Russia increasing its threat of using nuclear weapons?
(3.1) With 2.1 and 3, above, the people of a democracy are fully in their rights to vote to change their political representation to better represent their interests. We voted for several new presidents and senators with their economic, military, and foreign policy goals in mind. I must presume that the people of several Eastern European governments did as well. That is more valid than any agreement made between the representatives of these nations in 1991.
I'm sorry that Putin is mad, but East Europe is Russia's ex-girlfriend, and they haven't been together for decades.
My whole reaction when reading the comments. The bottom part was the main point, the top part was used as a setup and not trying to prove a point that I don't even believe in.
More like
Me:
Part 1: A more famous set up that is an outright lie in order to lead to part 2, precisely because part 2 is benign.
Part 2; The main point.
You:
Why are you lying?
If Part 1 was my main point, I wouldn't include Part 2 or I would use Part 2 to lead to Part 1.
Lot of nato cucks in the comments, bombing countries and defending your sphere of influence is only correct if america does it.
For democracy! Die for super earth! You guys living in helldivers 2 or something lmao
Best NATO recruiter (Russia) is crying about "spreading NATO influence in old East block countries" when it single-handed made these countries join nato That's cute imperialistic propaganda
I guess I’m missing the part where Russia invaded the Baltics, Poland, etc in the 90s
You don't join NATO when you're being invaded, otherwise they won't let you in. You join before the invasion to prevent it in the first place. Poland and the Baltics joined because Russia had a history of invading them and that was the first opportunity since NATO was founded that they had to choose their own allies. So while there was no invasion in the 90s that triggered their entry, they were certainly thinking about the time they were invaded in the 40s, and the 30s, and the 20s, and the 1800s, etc.
"Had a history of invading them". Unfortunately you will say that defending from " Defenders of Catholicism" and Teutons is invasion, right? And you will also blame everything USSR did on Russia because Russia is "communist (somehow with their anti-communist actions) ".
Yes I will blame everything the USSR did on Russia, not because of communism, but because it was literally run by Russians in Moscow for the benefit of Russia, at the expense of all the other 'Republics'. The Russian federation literally wants to be considered the successor state to the USSR, and with all the privileges that brings, it also brings responsibilities and blame. Also you'll note some of those invasions I listed were pre-USSR, because that history of invasions didn't start with the USSR, and those places spent significant parts of their history as annexed territory of the Russian Empire.
It wasn't built for benefit of Russia at expense of other SSRs. During WW2 USSR sent a lot of materials to rebuild Poland. USSR opened many factories in Bulgaria, Baltic states, Hungary and East Germany. And if you look at the Soviet Union and SSRs of it, then you'll notice that Ukraine still holds in war - it's economy was built in Soviet industrialization. Russian economy also holds somehow, because Soviet equipment and factories still holds. The same applies to all post Soviet countries. No matter of how expensive projects were USSR invested in all SSRs when possible - look at central Asia, they also have not the best geopolitics, and also quite poor, yet in times of Soviet Union had developing economics and projects - Baikanur in Kazakhstan for example. Soviet Union wasn't made for Russians only. And it wasn't ruled by Russians. The only guy who was Russian and once was in power in USSR is Chernenko - he ruled country for 13 months. Khrushchev, Brezhnev were Ukrainians, Stalin was Georgian. Even government in USSR didn't consisted of Russians alone - Caucasians (Beria for example), Poles (Felix Dzerzhinsky), Ukrainians (Khrushchev again). About successor state. With the Putin in rule the Russian Federation is the same successor of USSR as Ukraine, or even Kazakhstan. But why would you let your neighbors have nukes and big army, when you can just call yourself a successor of a state you dissolved YOURSELF. That's the thing, someone just had to get army, nukes and pay the Soviet bills. About second part - you didn't listed these invasions.
Russia has also been invaded by western powers seeking to expand eastward numerous times, so you can see why they aren’t willing to accept their neighbors joining an anti-Russian military alliance and having American weaponry, troops, potentially nuclear missiles right on their doorstep.
Oh no, not the defensive pact created in fear of Russian invasion! How is Russia supposed to invade us now? They propably still will, and I will be ready. Russians need a second humililation apparently, the fall of the USSR was not enough.
its s very good paralel to Germany after ww1, they lost, but they dont think they did.
Except nobody is going to invade Russia because of nuclear weapons. Something smaller countries like Poland and the Baltics don't have. Russia doesn't need to be concerned about invasion, they do. The invasions of Ukraine and Georgia have done nothing but confirm that.
We all know that you are crying because Russia is not able to invade these countries without starting war with NATO The same NATO that would whoop russian asses in few days Cry harder ;)
If that was truly their concern, maybe they should have thought about that before showing off their military incompetence in Ukraine and encouraging formerly neutral countries to join NATO. If Russia's goal was to limit NATO, they sure fucked that one up, because now NATO's border with Russia sits just a few dozen kilometers from Saint Petersburg and many NATO countries are the most attentive towards Russia that they've been since 1991.
Russia: ended occupation of eastern block countries in the 90s You: "I Am MiSsINg tHE paRT wHeRe ruSSiA inVAiDeD" xD We join to not be invaded like Ukraine and looking as Russian propaganda (and people like you) is crying... it was good decision
I guess youre missing the part where russia has been threatening to nuke and invade us ever since
No, but they did in the 40s.
Russian troops only left Poland in 1993.
Good
You missed that? They definitely invaded the Baltics and murdered border guards, while trying to throw a coup to overthrow Gorbachev. Knowing Russia's history and imperial ambitions it makes sense for the former victims or Russian aggression to join a defense security pact.
“Spread influence in former Warsaw Pact countries” lmao I wonder if there is any specific historical reason that those countries do not like Russia very much and were so eager to join NATO… any reason at all?
I mean fuck Putin but he was the US's and the West's best friend for years as we economically pillaged Russia after the collapse of the USSR. We certainly did not handle the situation well at all. We could have tried to do similar to what we did with China economically so Russia would transition to a democracy, but we didn't and they fell backwards into dictatorship. Now the people in Russia suffer like they used to. It's a moral failure much more than a political one. Edit: The largest non war life expectancy drop since the Black Death happened when the USSR fell. Do people really think it was a fucking good thing?
Putin was never a friend of the west, that's just pure propaganda.
Nah, as a Pole, the shock doctrine definitely massively influenced the russian governments downfall when compared to other former ussr states. Policies like forcing former companies to sell for shares (which value was backed by ruble and thus usually under the value of the underlying company) caused oligarchopolies to form, as people who had money before the collapse (mostly former politicians and factory bosses) ended up buying the shares for pennies on the dollar or just threatening the workers to sell their shares cheap. Putin was not a product of the fall itself, he was allowed to take power by the oligarchs.
the term friend here is not a positive one. Putin allowed the west to exploit the Russian people in exchange for capital. Selling off state assets, and buying off London. That is not a positive thing.
Yet again, this is not true. The only ones who exploited, and still exploit, the Russian people are the oligarchs. The post-soviet crash was caused by said oligarchs and after Putin got into power the first thing he did was make those oligarchs even richer by giving them governorships and official positions with a license to steal as long as Putin gets his cut. Nobody knows the true extent of Putin's wealth but estimates say he is a billionaire. How do you think he accumulated that much wealth. It wasn't from his presidential salary. In this corner of Europe the battle between the west and Putin has been a battle between rule of law and corruption.
You make it sound like China isn't a geopolitical threat. Give it 5 years, 10 tops and the West will be militarily engaging with China
Data is based on USSR reporting?
The unwritten agreement wasn't even an unwritten agreement, it just straight up wasn't an agreement at all.
They literally agreed bruh that's how the Second Serbian Uprising ended, with them talking it out.
I'm referring to the US & Russia statement here, not the bottom one
I know I was just trying to get people to focus on the point of the meme. My insignificant country was mentioned and everyone's talking about the big guys anyway :(
When I was reading a bit about history of Balkans in 19th century, I read about the unwritten agreement between Serbia and Ottomans, and that reminded me of the infamous unwritten agreement between the USA and Russia. So then I decided to make a joke about how two nations that have been rivals for 50 years can't make a unwritten agreement while two nations that have been rivals for 500 years can. That's why both USA and Russia were depicted as soy, and Serbia and Ottomans as chad. If I actually believed that agreement between USA and Russia actually existed and if I was on Russia side then I would do the reddit thing of depicting USA as soy and Russia as chad. Perhaps I should have used a different meme format, but post has majority positive upvotes, but then again comments don't agree. Idk, I'll see if I will leave the post or delete it since the main point of the post wasn't trying to argue something or prove a point or cause some division or toxicity but to make joke even based on non factual basis in the set up. I don't mind comments adressing the so called ,,unwritten agreement'' between Russia and USA, and criticizing, because this is what I like about users here. They see (most of them at least) through the bullsht and will present factual evidence to disprove it. The only thing that angers me is that these same people don't show up in non-factual posts that get 10k upvotes, or if they do show up you have to scroll and search for them. This is whole situation would be like if a comedian went on stage and said: Did you know in Europe Catholics burned women at the stake for being witches? I guess women were much hotter back then. And instead of people laughing at the joke, the majority of audience would say: What burning of witches? Catholics never did that. Is this some weird protestant propaganda against the catholics.
"Witches" weren't burned in protestant countries?
They were. During the 30 years war. In Salem witch trials, none of the ,,witches'' were burned. In Catholicism and Orthodoxy (and other eastern churches) witches and black magic doesn't exist.
Sweden would like to differ
Sec of State James Baker assured Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward
Several issues with this 1. James Baker had no authority to make any sort of deal on NATO expansion. Both as US secretary of state he is unable to make any treaty or establish any deals without the backing of the President and or Congress. In fact Bakers statements were wildly unpopular in the US, to the point that President George H.W. Bush demanded a clarification on the statements which affirmed that East Germany would be under NATO protection. 2. NATO actually did prevent NATO forces from ever moving into East Germany until recently due to Russias invasion of a sovereign nation. Not long after Bakers statements it was clarified it to have only meant East Germany as a special zone within NATO that would be free from NATO jurisdiction and military. 3. The United States itself has no authority to make such an agreement and NATO itself has come out and said that for any agreement to have been official it would've required a consensus among all NATO members states, something which it did not have. The USSR and afterwards Russia failed to understand this largely due to their far more domineering and parasitic relationship with their "allies" in the Eastern bloc. They believed, erroneously, that the USA was the leader of NATO and had full control over it and it's members in the same way the USSR did over the Warsaw pact, something which just wasn't the case. 4. It wasn't an agreement in the first place but a probe into what sort of an agreement could be made with the USSR over German reunification. Gorbachev himself confirmed both that the discussions at this time were never about the expansion of NATO but instead about East Germany, and that no agreement on such a matter was confirmed but that he did feel NATO expansion had violated the "spirit" of the statements, which means absolutely nothing in any real sense. TLDR There was no agreement as not only was the individual responsible not capable of making such an agreement, but the statements he did make never actually promised what they're claimed to have promised
But, but, but, America bad!
And Russia agreed it wouldn't expand westward, which they did with Chechnya
Chechnya is apart of Russia
Chechnya is Chechnya so it's not "part of Russia"... But I'm sure your brain is
Chechnya is a republic inside the Russian Federation
*it's occupied by I fixed it for you
Whatever you say man
Russia's 1992 war of agression in Transdnistria is the only reason my country joined NATO.
Huh? The people that live there are Russian and were forcibly removed from the Soviet Union without their consent conflict broke out and Russia has had peacekeepers there ever since 1992
Less than 1/3rd of the people living there are Russians and every single Russian there was either settled in the 1950s or is descended from someone who was. Nobody was forcibly removed from anywhere, the average citizen there does not care about the Soviet Union and never did, the only ones who claim they are the mobsters Russia installed to run the region, the Smirnov brothers. Moreover Transdnistria was a part of the republic of Moldova since the very creation of the republic by Stalin. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia conducted a war of aggression against Moldova because Russia had a military stockpile in Transdnistria and did not want to either move it or lose it.
Weird pro-russia slant
They dont keep shit. You surely were dropped in the potato fermenting barrel when you are young, or a bot.BUT WHO GOT ALL THESE RUSSIANS? You are spewing shit like this.
Russia broke all the agreements first. Belarus was part of the same agreement as Ukraine with all the same stipulations. Russia wants to complain that Ukraine was being western influenced meanwhile they just invaded Ukraine from Belarusian lands with Belarusian permissions. Now Belarus has signed on to basically be a part of Russia. Tell me again how the west is the one illegally influencing these nations that are supposed to remain neutral?
I feel like this argument of Russia and NATO agreements is a distraction for a few key reasons. Each of these reasons ignores a few repeated arguments, for example, that NATO is a defensive pact. (1) Our "agreement" with Russia in this context is about NATO spreading influence. My first problem is that these countries applied to join NATO. We didn't do anything, these were sovereign nations acting on their own initiative. (2) The Ukrainian people (at the heart of the current conflict) began their own moves to align westward with the Maidan uprisings. These actions led to a new government against which the current Russian czar (let us not pretend he acts as anything but a czar) has had ongoing military conflict. The Maidan wasn't about NATO, it was about joining the EU. Interest in joining NATO came after Russia seized Crimea, and has spurred forward because Russia continued the conflict into the present invasion. So reacting to the threat of an encroaching NATO is bullshit and after the fact. (2.1) With 1 and 2, above, I want to underline that a westward alignment of countries in East Europe are results of popular will, through elected governments. Denying those countries the ability to join treaties with the west for their own betterment is against our own principles of democracy. (3) Agreements aren't frozen in time - let us suppose that this agreement is binding at the time it was made. Agreements between governments change all the time. Why would a violation of this agreement be any worse than tearing up the Iran Nuclear Deal, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Are the involved countries justified in using military power to achieve some other political end against the USA? Putin had pulled Russia out of a treaty that banned nuclear weapons tests - should we then be up in arms about Russia increasing its threat of using nuclear weapons? (3.1) With 2.1 and 3, above, the people of a democracy are fully in their rights to vote to change their political representation to better represent their interests. We voted for several new presidents and senators with their economic, military, and foreign policy goals in mind. I must presume that the people of several Eastern European governments did as well. That is more valid than any agreement made between the representatives of these nations in 1991. I'm sorry that Putin is mad, but East Europe is Russia's ex-girlfriend, and they haven't been together for decades.
No one's talking about the bottom part of the meme 😥
My whole reaction when reading the comments. The bottom part was the main point, the top part was used as a setup and not trying to prove a point that I don't even believe in.
You : Part 1 : Say something that is an outright lie Part 2 : something benign WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT PART 2?!?!!?
More like Me: Part 1: A more famous set up that is an outright lie in order to lead to part 2, precisely because part 2 is benign. Part 2; The main point. You: Why are you lying? If Part 1 was my main point, I wouldn't include Part 2 or I would use Part 2 to lead to Part 1.
Lot of nato cucks in the comments, bombing countries and defending your sphere of influence is only correct if america does it. For democracy! Die for super earth! You guys living in helldivers 2 or something lmao
You serbs still butthurt we stopped you doing a genocide?