The West once promised Russia not to expand NATO to Eastern Europe. The expansion has now reached the Russian border, making the situation very serious, academic Jonathan Power told Sputnik.

Jonathan Power, associate professor at Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research talks to Sputnik radio about the dangerous situation the world is heading to due to NATO’s expansion.

The West once promised Russia that it will not expand NATO to Eastern Europe.

However, that promise was broken when President Bill Clinton decided to expand NATO’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact.

Jonathan Power talking to Sputnik said, “It’s been going on since the time of Bill Clinton. What is extraordinary in my mind about President Clinton was that on one hand he was trying to build up a relationship with President Yeltsin and he had some success with that, but then he pulled out this bird out of the sky called the ‘expansion of NATO’ and since then despite criticism, continued the NATO expansion.”

“Now it has expanded all the way till Russian borders.”

Power said that the world is in danger of heading for a big car crash. He said that he doesn’t always agree with everything that is being said and done on the Russian side but he does criticize the West more severely.

“We in the West have supported right-winged elements in Ukraine during the protest over a year ago. We don’t push Poroshenko to say loudly and clearly that membership of NATO is not a possibility. We don’t have Obama making that clear nor are the other leaders of the West making that clear.”

“I do understand the Russian point of view that until it’s made clear with no reservations, Russia is going to feel threatened.”

He further talks about how Russia feels that the West is undermining it. It goes against all the promises that were made towards the end of the cold war around 1990 made by senior officials of the West, the American Secretary of State James Baker, Jack F. Matlock who was the US Ambassador to Moscow at the time.

The promises were also made by the British foreign minister and by the German foreign minister who played a very important role, all of them made it clear that NATO would not expand.

“We all know that NATO did expand and now we are living with some serious consequences and I think the West has led us, particularly the Americans with European complicity into a dangerous and counterproductive policy.”