A few thoughts on this very interesting @ForeignAffairs piece on #Ukraine and the history of post-Cold War relations between the West and Russia. 1/ https://twitter.com/e_sarotte/status/1197905426521526273

As noted in the piece, SecState Baker wanted the inherited nukes out of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. But that position was controversial in USG. Scowcroft told me + @McFaul for our book Power and Purpose (p. 43) that the nukes “didn’t bother me at all. They bothered Baker…2/

..."I wouldn’t have been so frantic about it. They were not run by nuts. Especially Belarus then.” @McFaul and I also describe the debate w/in the Pentagon re Ukraine keeping its nukes. 3/

The piece is correct that SecDef Perry asked for a meeting in Dec 1994 w/ Pres Clinton and was told by latter that NATO enlargement was moving forward, but Clinton had already told Yeltsin that at their meeting in Washington in September, as Talbott wrote in his memoir. 3/

On 2008 Bucharest NATO summit declaration that Georgia/Ukraine “will become members of NATO” authors write this was “keeping the promise of membership alive but the door to the alliance closed.” Putin acted as if door was open, as Bill Burns describes in his excellent memoir. 4/4

Sorry for the misnumbering! Forgot I had to break up one of the items!