{"id":28971,"date":"2017-12-18T07:33:45","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T12:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28971"},"modified":"2017-12-18T07:33:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T12:33:45","slug":"sorry-chump-you-didnt-have-it-in-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28971","title":{"rendered":"‘Sorry Chump. You Didn’t Have it in Writing’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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`SORRY CHUMP. YOU DIDN\u2019T HAVE IT IN WRITING\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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At a time when the United States is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in 1990.<\/p>\n

I was covering Moscow in those days and met some of the key players in this sordid drama.\u00a0\u00a0 Ever since, I\u2019ve been writing that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, were shamelessly lied to and deceived by the United States, Britain, and their appendage, NATO.<\/p>\n

All the western powers promised Gorbachev and Shevardnadze that NATO would not expand eastward by \u2018one inch\u2019 if Moscow would pull the Red Army out of East Germany and allow it to peacefully reunify with West Germany.\u00a0 This was a titanic concession by Gorbachev: it\u00a0led to a failed coup against him in 1991 by Communist hardliners.<\/p>\n

The documents released by George Washington University in Washington DC, which I attended for a semester, make sickening reading (see them online).\u00a0 All western powers and statesmen assured the Russians that NATO would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat and that a new era of amity and cooperation would dawn in post-Cold War Europe. \u00a0US Secretary of State Jim Baker offered \u2018ironclad guarantees\u2019 there would be no NATO expansion. \u00a0Lies, all lies.<\/p>\n

Gorbachev\u00a0was a humanist, a very decent, intelligent man who believed he could end the Cold War and nuclear arms race.\u00a0\u00a0 He ordered the Red Army back from Eastern Europe.\u00a0 I was in Wunsdorf, East Germany, HQ of the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany, and at Stasi secret police HQ in East Berlin right after the pullout order was given.\u00a0 The Soviets withdrew their 338,000 troops and 4,200 tanks and sent them home at lightening speed.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

`SORRY CHUMP. YOU DIDN\u2019T HAVE IT IN WRITING\u2019 At a time when the United States is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[149,17564,2864,2534,553,694,742,827],"class_list":["post-28971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-cold-war","tag-eric-margolis","tag-lies","tag-mikhail-gorbachev","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-soviet-union","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28972,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28971\/revisions\/28972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}