You’re right, it is imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.

• NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
• The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
• Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
• US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
• Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
• Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
• The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine In May of [2022] Ukrainian media reported that then-British prime minister Boris Johnson had flown to Kiev the previous month to pass on the message on behalf of the western empire that “Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”

• The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
• CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
• Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
• Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism

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