The Westerners that saw this war with Russia coming…

Here is a list of Westerners that had warned about NATO expansion to the east.

– Jack F. Matlock Jr., U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, said in 1997 that NATO expansion was “a profound strategic blunder, encouraging a chain of events that could produce the most serious for security since the collapse of the Soviet Union”.

– Famous Cold War strategist George Kennan declared in 1998 that NATO expansion was a “tragic mistake” that would provoke a “bad reaction from Russia”.

– Bill Burns, ex-director of the CIA, declared in 2008 that “Ukraine’s entry into NATO is the brightest of all the red lines” and that he had not yet “found anyone who considers that ‘Ukraine in NATO’ as something other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”.

– Henry Kissinger, ex-Secretary of State for Richard Nixon, declared in 2014 that “Ukraine should not join NATO”.

– Stephen Cohen, an American researcher in Russian studies, stated in 2014 that “if we move NATO forces to Russia’s borders, it will obviously militarize the situation [and] Russia will not back down, because it is existential”.

– Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s former prime minister, said in 2014 that “NATO’s eastward move is provocative, reckless and sends a very clear signal to Russia”.

– Renowned scholar John Mearsheimer wrote in 2015 that “the West is leading Ukraine down the path to war and the end result is that Ukraine will sink. What we’re doing is actually encouraging that outcome”.

– Robert Gates, former US Secretary of Defense, wrote in his 2015 memoirs that “moving so quickly to expand NATO is a mistake. Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is really overkill and a particularly monumental provocation”.

– William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, explains in his Memoirs that NATO enlargement is the cause of “the breakdown of relations with Russia” and that in 1996 he opposed it so much that under the strength of his conviction, he “considered resigning”.

– Noam Chomsky, an American professor, said in 2015 that “the idea that Ukraine could join a Western military alliance would be completely unacceptable to any Russian leader” and that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO “would not protect Ukraine, but would threaten Ukraine with a major war”.

– Vladimir Pozner, a Russian-American journalist, said in 2018 that NATO expansion into Ukraine was unacceptable to Russians, and that there must be a compromise where “Ukraine would not become a member of NATO”.

– Liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote in the Financial Times in 2022 that “NATO expansion is completely misguided and risky. True friends of Ukraine and world peace should call for a compromise between the United States, NATO and Russia”.

– Sir Roderic Lyne, ex-British ambassador to Russia, declared in 2021 that “pushing Ukraine into NATO is stupid on all levels”. He added: “If you want to start a war with Russia, this is the best way to do it”.

For the US neocons and President Joe Biden, provoking a war with Russia was evidently the main objective.