Former Senator & US Presidential Candidate Bill Bradley Warns of Danger of NATO Expansion & Inevitable Reaction From Russia

Everyone still remembers Bill Bradley, right?

Bradley was the former New Jersey Senator who ran for the White House back in 2000, when he fought Al Gore for the Democratic nomination. In one of the most iconic moments in recent American political debate history, Bradley walked over to Gore in the middle of a debate and handed him his own record, which Gore was kind of forced to take. It made for some iconic photography, and may have ultimately contributed to Gore not winning the general election, where he failed to win his own home state of Tennessee.

Well here, at the very end of the George W. Bush years, Bradley talks about NATO expansion, and how the rise of an authoritarian figure like Putin - yes, he was already considered Russia's return to authoritarianism back then - was inevitable, mostly because the West, and particularly the United States, kept treating Russia like an untrustworthy enemy. And this then became a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Well, Bradley explains, this was completely unavoidable. He mentions how George HW Bush, the president when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War came to an end, had convinced Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to go along with German reunification by promising that NATO would not expand. Then, after Bush was defeated, the new Clinton administration went ahead and expanded NATO anyway, simply because they felt that they could not view the Russians as anything but enemies who needed to be kept in check. 

First Bush keeps his promise, according to Bradley. Then, Clinton expands NATO. Bradley suggests that we kicked Russia while they were down. Allows authoritarianism which has returned to justify their actions and their presence.  

Bradley calls it a “blunder of vision.” It is, according to him, a bureaucratic inertia in the best of circumstances, and in the worst it was a self-fulfilling prophecy by people in the Clinton administration who would forever be convinced that Russia is the enemy. 

I am inclined to agree. Seems to me that the very same military industrial complex – a bureaucratic nightmare – that Eisenhower once warned us about has taken control of the country. They were too used to their privileges from an obscenely inflated military budget. We Americans had a chance to finally move away from that, as their appeared to be no huge, glaring threat to try and keep in check. Instead, we collectively did everything possible at every political opportunity to continue down that path, instead of investing in other areas to, if you will, diversify the country’s portfolio. And now, not surprisingly, we seem to be revisiting all too familiar territory, with an apparent new Cold War once again dividing Europe, and NATO and Russia viewing one another as more than adversaries, but as deadly threats to each other's survival, even though they also kind of both need each other to justify their militant actions. China is also seemingly a rival to the West, and they may be siding more closely with Russia, although that remains to be seen. 

The late eighties and early nineties appeared to be a great time of change, with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the communist grip over one half of Europe. Shortly thereafter came the end of the Soviet Union itself. And apartheid ended in southern Africa, as first Namibia and then South Africa itself became multiracial democracies. 

Now, our world looks only too familiar and grim. It is a stark and harsh reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And mostly, we can blame ourselves, through the leaders we elect to power, for winding up in almost the same mess where we started.