With our free press under threat and federal funding for public media gone, your support matters more than ever. Help keep the LAist newsroom strong, become a monthly member or increase your support today.
NATO could be enlarging. What does that mean for Russia?
Finland and Sweden are strongly considering submitting bids to join NATO as early as mid-May.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in a European enclave if the military alliance expands.
So what could happen ? And why is NATO support waning amongst Republicans?
Former President Bill Clinton writes in The Atlantic :
When I first became president, I said that I would support Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his efforts to build a good economy and a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but I would also support an expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states. My policy was to work for the best while preparing for the worst. I was worried not about a Russian return to communism, but about a return to ultranationalism, replacing democracy and cooperation with aspirations to empire, like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. I didn’t believe Yeltsin would do that, but who knew what would come after him?
We talk with NATO experts and diplomats about the road ahead.
Copyright 2024 WAMU 88.5. To see more, visit
WAMU 88.5
.