Today’s Letter to the Editor. NY TImes columnist Thomas Friedman asserts that NATO and its eastern European allies are patly to blame for Vladimir Putin’s attitude and behavior. My response:
Mr. Friedman is blaming the victims, the former eastern European vassal states of the Russo-Soviet Empire, for inciting Mr. Putin’s attitude and behavior. The Poles, Baltics, Hungarians, Czecks, Slovaks, Romanians, and Bulgarians rightly sought NATO protection from future Russian incursions to re-assert control, as happened so many times during the Cold War – 1956, ’68, ’80. True, NATO didn’t have to accept them into the alliance. But given the preceding 80 years of unstable geopolitics on the continent, and the US twice being pulled into shooting wars as a result, expanding the alliance was correct. Spurning their advances to join would have consigned them to perpetual fear of and risk from a resurgent Russian bully.