in the entire post cold war era ? look, i don t. i think the enlargement of nato was the single wisest security decision taken in europe in the last three decades. imagine the citizens of warsaw, prague, and budapest if they were not guaranteed their security by nato s article five. imagine where they would be right today. imagine the citizens of the baltic states and the threat that they would feel from putin s russia. i mean, we re talking about tens of millions of peaceful citizens across eastern europe that would potentially be suffering the exact same fate as the citizens of ukraine are today. that s not a place we would want to be. nato is a defensive alliance, stephen. so nato has never posed a serious threat to russia. and all you have to do is look at the nato infrastructure on russia s borders. look at the battalions that nato has deployed to the baltic states and compare that
after 2014 as well. as far as nato, consider this. if we had not enlarged nato and by the way, it wasn t nato that decided to expand into other countries it is countries seeing the threat coming from russia, desperately wanting to join nato so that they could have some protection. well, with respect, it s a two way street, of course. you know, there is a feeling in many of the post soviet east european countries that they wanted the protection of nato, but the existing nato membership had to want to embrace them and feel that was a wise thing to do. i mean, you re a very experienced diplomat. did you never read george kennan before his death writing and saying, expanding nato would be the most fateful error of american policy in the entire post cold war era ? look, i don t. i think the enlargement of nato was the single wisest security decision taken in europe