Now is the time for a serious, new arms control agreement. What do we get? Russiagate. Russiagate is one of the greatest threats to national security… - Stephen F. Cohen

As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders... From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only [President George H.W.] Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.

You have to ask yourself, why is it that Washington had no problem doing productive diplomacy with Soviet communist leaders... Why do we like communist leaders in Russia better than we like Russia’s anti-communist leader? It’s a riddle.

Since the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the U.S.-led West has been on a steady march toward post-Soviet Russia, began with the expansion of NATO in the 1990s under Clinton. ...Then came the decision to build missile defense installations along Russia’s borders, allegedly against Iran, a country which has neither nuclear weapons nor any missiles to deliver them with.... now the West is at the gates of Ukraine. So, that’s the picture as Moscow sees it. And it’s rational. It’s reasonable. It’s hard to deny.