This is John Bachelors. I asked John Bolton, former National Security

Advisor, about the Bush administration's intention to bring Ukraine and

Georgia into NATO at the end of 2008. John's response is filled with the twists of

these last 15 years, not the least being that if that plan had gone through, it

was opposed by France and Germany worrying about provoking Russia. That plan had

gone through. History would have changed profoundly here in 2023. Here's John

Bolton. What we had, what what had happened after the end of the Cold War was

not as some say NATO rushing to expand Eastern. It was the liberated central and

Eastern European countries rushing toward NATO to join and they came in in in

in no particular order but through the 1990s. What NATO failed to do was to

reckon with the uncertainty that would be created by leaving a gray zone

between NATO's Eastern border, if you will, and Russia's Western border. Bush

was trying to solve that problem certainly by bringing Ukraine in. But France

and Germany objected because they didn't want to offend the Russians.

And so the Bucharest summit, NATO summit ended up with the worst of all worlds.

Ukraine and Georgia not brought in to NATO but a declaration issued saying they

would be at some time in the future. And the consequence of that was four months

later in August of 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and a few years later invaded

Ukraine. This is John Bachelors.