para bellum
Platinum Member
You are completely misreading my post, or we are on a totally different planet.Each of the nations that joined NATO did it entirely voluntarily.
I was pointing out that there were formal agreements that were made long after whatever informal promises were made to Gorbachev- specifically the 1994 and 1997 agreements between Russian and Ukraine, and Russia and NATO. Those must supersede any verbal assurances made to Gorbachev.
Otherwise no agreements are ever worth anything. In a sense all agreements can be construed as promises made and broken- you make agreements to change the status quo.
I don't doubt the doubt the authenticity of the memo that was posted, it doesn't matter if it's authentic or not. There were things that happened later on that make it irrelevant.