Germany blocks ex-Soviets’ Nato entry( Historical article ,2008).

2 comments

1. Merkel’s role in the events of today cannot be understated 

   Just denying Ukraine  and Georgia a feasible path to NATO membership has literally cost hindreds of thousands of lives and ruined millions.

   Then she oversaw Germany’s phasing out of their nuclear energy production.

   Then she set about increasing the integration of Germany’s economy with Russia, making them more and more energy dependent on Putin, an autocrat who’d already semi occupied Abkasia and S.Ossetia and then Crimea.

   And didn’t move to try and militarise in the face of these growing threats( see: the French, the Poles)

   NS2 shouldn’t have even been conceived at all or even built.

   She is one of the worst leaders in European history in terms of geopolitical fumbling.

   Even Neville Chamberlain at least oversaw a massive rearming of the British army as a plan B in case his appeasement failed.

   Merkel left Germany weak and vulnerable

   I hope history doesn’t forget her role in making things as bad as they are now.

2. It’s easy to look at this in hindsight and call it stupid, but people forget (or were too young) to remember how controversial this was in Ukraine itself. The majority of the population was [consistently against it](https://freepolicybriefs.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/fpb20231030_figure1.png) until 2014, and the next government passed a law forbidding Ukraine from joining any military alliances- which was 100% aimed at NATO. Ukraine back then was ping-ponging between a pro-Western and anti-Western stance.

   Then there was the issue that the proposal was never for Ukraine to join NATO “tomorrow”. It was to put them on a membership path, which would have taken at least a decade and there was a, I think now obviously well founded, worry about a Russian reaction in the interim. Even if the vote was made for Ukraine to join, Russia still could have attacked in 2014 and it still would have blocked Ukraine from entry.

   All in all, not as simple as people want to make it out.

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