Chew on this:
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said in his interview with Tucker Carlson this week that he asked U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2000 if Russia could join NATO and, while Clinton allegedly said he was personally warm to the idea, his advisers decided it was politically impossible.
“I asked him: ‘Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?’ Suddenly he said, ‘You know, it’s interesting. I think so,’” Putin recalled.
“But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said: ‘You know, I’ve talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now,’” Putin continued.
“If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners,” the Russian dictator mused.
Given that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded to oppose the expansionist Soviet Union, and persists largely as a counter to the successor Russian government, it certainly would have been a historic event if Russia had been allowed to join. There is some historical evidence to suggest the idea was kicked around during the time period Putin claimed.
In a November 2021 interview recounted by the UK Guardian, former UK Defense Secretary George Robertson, who was the secretary-general of NATO from 1999 to 2003, told a story similar to the one Putin gave to Tucker Carlson.
Robertson said Putin spoke with him in Brussels soon after becoming president of Russia in 2000 and expressed a desire to become “part of that secure, stable, prosperous West that Russia was out of at the time.”
“When are you going to invite us to join NATO?” he recalled Putin asking.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Tucker Carlson he asked U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2000 if Russia could join NATO.
www.breitbart.com