I was amused by Stephen Kinzer’s retelling of history, “In foreign policy, the best modern presidents have been Republicans — present company excluded.” (Ideas, May 17.)
In order to further state his case, Kinzer could have reminded us of James Baker’s famous promise to Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.”
The problem with Kinzer’s analysis is that he wants to freeze Eastern European nations in 1990, like a bunch of zombies. But Eastern Europeans do not want to be members of his army of the walking dead.
Starting 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Warsaw Pact nations began to flood into NATO and the European Union. The results have been transformative for the people of these countries, both in terms of economic growth and security.
Unfortunately, it was the Russian government that transformed into a zombie, killing its opponents, sucking the financial life blood from its citizens, and attempting to spread corruption to its neighbors. Now, Europeans are stuck guarding their skies against Russian drones and their strategic sites against Russian saboteurs — a sad event, but hardly the fault of the Americans.
Stuart Gallant
Belmont