Here you are implying all the KGB trained veterans of Soviet internal and external politics had no idea about the most basic pros and cons of a loose oral promise, nor the civics 101 of western countries. Or in other words, they were complete, naive idiots.This one. It's diplomatically ingenious. An oral promise. One that can't be fulfilled when your successor takes over and with Soviet credibility low the eastern countries wanted to join NATO. I know I would join NATO if I was one of those citizens living there and damn what James A. Baker III said.
As the article explains, it was not exactly a hard, indefinite promise the pro-Russia side now paints it as.
Let's be honest, diplomacy doesn't work like that, because it can't. If the words of any high ranking government official are expected to have indefinite, binding power over the current and all future administrations, what's the fucking point of treaties.
Obviously it is in the interest of Putin government to play victim while painting its predecessors as absolute idiots, but we, not bound by the political restrictions of living in Russia and threat of gulag, have no reason to roll with this bullshit.
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