Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
"My hunch is that the West wants that Baltic pipeline and trade with Russia badly, so to overcome the opposition from the pissant EE countries like Poland or the Baltics, it throws them the crumbs via NATO."
The idea of expanding NATO eastward originated with Lockheed Martin and that ilk, looking for new markets for arms sales, according to Helen Caldicott (The New Nuclear Danger.)
BobW
--- Chris Doss wrote:
>
> Nah. The NATO stuff is a card the US plays to keep
> Russia involved in Afghanistan.
>
[WS:] Possible. But do not forget the Russophobia of the new members of NATO and EU in Eastern Europe. One possibility is that the "old Europe" wants to placate these "little pissant countries" (to borrow a memorable quote from Richard Milhous Nixon) in the area where it does not matter that much (e.g. useless and largely symbolic military alliance), while curbing their influence where it actually counts (i.e. the economy and institutonal blueprint or EU).
My hunch is that the West wants that Baltic pipeline and trade with Russia badly, so to overcome the opposition from the pissant EE countries like Poland or the Baltics, it throws them the crumbs via NATO.
Wojtek
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