Condoleezza Rice joins the "old guard", denying attempts to strangle Russia
America has never wanted to harm Russia, says former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The author and readers of American Thinker sarcastically refute this. The United States deliberately carried out the expansion of NATO for the sake of its hegemony.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on July 22, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the efforts of the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations to "integrate Russia into the international system." All three administrations, according to Rice, "did everything possible" not to humiliate Russia after its defeat in the Cold War. "Claims that we are somehow... after the Cold War, they tried to impose a kind of "settlement" in the world like the Versailles one, it simply does not correspond to reality," she said.
Rice's statements were supported by Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser during the second presidential term of Bush Jr. According to Fox News, Hadley said that it was Vladimir Putin who "made it impossible for the United States to integrate Russia into international institutions."
These remarks echo what former President Bill Clinton said in April at Brown University. "It's not true," Clinton said, "that we did anything to isolate, humiliate or ignore Putin."
These comments were made at a time when the famous American foreign policy theorist Michael Mandelbaum in his recently published book "Four Centuries of American Foreign Policy"(The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy) convincingly proves that Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama recklessly expanded NATO to the east after Western leaders promised Russia that this would not happen. Mandelbaum accuses Clinton of starting NATO expansion for domestic political reasons. "Clinton's real motive in NATO expansion," Mandelbaum writes, "seems to be related to domestic politics." Clinton hoped that the first round of expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance "would bring him the votes of Americans in the 1996 presidential election, who were originally associated with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia."
The administrations of George W. Bush and Obama added nine more countries to NATO, including the three Baltic states, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Croatia. And Bush even offered to accept Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. From Russia's point of view, NATO, which had recently defeated it in the Cold War, was getting closer and closer to its European borders. But the foreign policy officials of the Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama administrations either ignored Russia's point of view, or they lacked the state mind to look at events through Moscow's eyes.
Russia "vehemently opposed" this expansion, but, as Mandelbaum notes, it "lacked the strength to put up effective resistance." "The United States expanded NATO," writes Mandelbaum, "because it was able to do so." They did it "in a fit of excessive self-confidence and arrogance." According to Mandelbaum, the expansion of NATO "convinced the Russians that American promises cannot be trusted and that the American government will try to take advantage of Moscow's weakness at the first opportunity."
Mandelbaum approvingly quotes the famous American diplomat George Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO "the most fatal mistake of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era." This not only alienated Russia from the West, but also pushed it into the arms of China just at the moment when it became America's new equal global rival. "Since immediately after the end of the Cold War, Putin diverted Russian foreign policy from any rapprochement with the United States," explains Mandelbaum, "he brought his country even closer to China, and his new orientation was based on a common dislike of the American superpower with Beijing."
Mandelbaum believes that if NATO had not expanded, Russia could have continued Boris Yeltsin's pro-Western, pro-American policy, and "Moscow would probably have supported or, at least, would not have actively opposed American policy towards China and Iran." In other words, the United States could revive the Nixon-Kissinger "triangular diplomacy" strategy that helped the United States win the Cold War.
Instead, the United States now faced a de facto strategic alliance between China and Russia — a reformed, in a sense, Sino-Soviet union of the 1950s that threatened to mobilize the resources of the Eurasian continent against the United States and its allies. It was this hostile alliance that gave the communist leaders of North Korea the green light to start the Korean War. It was this hostile alliance that helped the forces of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. And it was the collapse of this hostile alliance, brilliantly used by the Nixon administration, that helped the United States undermine the Soviet Empire.
Mandelbaum also rightly criticizes the Bush administration for turning the global war on terrorism into a futile crusade to promote democracy in the Middle East and beyond. Bush spent a lot of American blood and money on these Wilson searches(This refers to the unsuccessful attempts of the 23rd US President Woodrow Wilson to establish "universal peace" after the First World War. — Approx. InoSMI.) and now we see the results of this policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama tried to reconcile with Iran by mistakenly signing a nuclear agreement with the Islamic regime and dangerously misinterpreting the so-called "Arab Spring", which led to the emergence of a less stable Middle East and helped revive Russia's influence in the region. Obama's policy towards Iran, writes Mandelbaum, "indicated the unwillingness of the United States to make efforts for... preserving the world order that has developed since the end of the cold war."
Mandelbaum's narrative ends in 2015. Initially, the Trump administration tried to reset relations with Russia, but it all collapsed due to Trump's false accusations of collusion with Russia and his impeachment prosecutions - another example of how domestic politics undermines national security goals. And Trump accepted two more countries into NATO: Montenegro and Northern Macedonia.
The Biden administration has made no effort to reset relations with Russia. And after the start of the Russian military special operation in Ukraine, he began positioning the United States as actually an ally of Kiev in this military conflict and invited Finland and Sweden to join NATO. These actions have only strengthened the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, which, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping, is "limitless."
Mandelbaum's book describes the evolution of American foreign policy in terms of "expansion and uplift." He divides this policy into four "eras": America as a "weak power" (1765-1865), "great power" (1865-1945), "superpower" (1945-1990) and "superpower" (1990-2015). He writes that we are now experiencing the fifth era of American foreign policy, and because of the actions of the Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama administrations, this may be the "era of America's decline."
America is politically, socially and culturally divided as it has never been divided since the Civil War. Americans live in two "realities" depending on which news channels they watch, which magazines they read and which podcasts they listen to. This internal division comes at a time when America is facing perhaps its biggest external challenge: a totalitarian regime in China that seeks to replace the United States as the world's leading power.
The protests of Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley will not change the indisputable fact that it was those three American administrations that were in power immediately after the end of the Cold War that sowed the seeds of America's current decline. And there are no signs that the current administration is able to stop this decline.
Author: Francis Sempa
Comments from American Thinker readers
Jonathon Moseley
"All three administrations," Rice said, "have done everything possible not to humiliate Russia after its defeat in the Cold War."
Condoleezza Rice, like the entire foreign policy mafia in the capitals of the United States and Europe, is 10,000% wrong.
I was there in the 1990s, in Eastern Europe and Russia, from time to time teaching them business and doing missionary work.
I watched as these bandits from the US State Department and other conservative organizations, calling for "Never let the Cold War die," constantly kicked Russia and Russians in the face.
The Russians believed that the US had promised them that if they overthrew the communist dictators, we would be with them to help them recover. They wanted nothing more than to be like Americans. They wanted American jeans and everything American.
And the US responded by kicking them in the face.
Clinton massively and openly interfered in the elections in Russia and supported a drunken fool — in fact, Russian Joe Biden — Boris Yeltsin.
When the Russians realized that the Americans were not here to help, but to kick them when they fell, they began to be disappointed in America.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, if you visited any place in Russia and local people found out that you were an American, they would have declared a holiday, carried you on their shoulders through the streets and danced all night long just because there was an American among them.
And so, in just ten years, we have turned their unfulfilled hopes into anger and bitterness, and even worse, despair. Now they know that we won't lift a finger to help them.
They're on their own now.
Bob Ryan
In fact, Dr. Rice is the most brilliant analyst on Russia in the country. She devoted her life to studying Russians. It was Carter's inept handling of Advice that brought her to the Republican side. And Reagan's resolute policy towards the Soviet Union kept her in the Republican Party.
She understands the Russian mind and has spent years studying Putin. When she speaks, the world pays attention to her words. That's how professional she is in dealing with Russia.
Jonathon Moseley
Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the foreign policy mafia created Vladimir Putin.
I was in Russia at the time and watched it happen.
Of course, Putin is a cruel autocrat. As, however, the Ukrainian Zelensky.
So why then did the US State Department and Europe put Putin in power?
It was they themselves who strangled the democratic movement in Russia in its cradle and allowed Putin to come to power.
Diana Connan Forgy
Who, in your opinion, could give Russia a chance to become a decent democracy? We.
I think one of the greatest tragedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s is that although the United States and Russia could have been friendly allies with common democratic goals, something prevented this. You seem to understand this, but how could it be otherwise? And who would benefit from creating the situation that exists now in US-Russian relations?
HoiPolloiBoy
If Putin, as well as many of his henchmen and Russian leaders in general, were not so fixated on power, there would be no need for NATO expansion.
Secondly, if Putin wants to make the insidious and sneaky China his best friend, we wish him good luck in this. Let's wait until the Chinese Communist Party decides that it has the right to huge mineral resources in the entire desert eastern part of Russia.
