Implausible Deniability on Nostr: That particular moment in 2001, when Vladimir Putin presented George W. Bush a 1954 ...

That particular moment in 2001, when Vladimir Putin presented George W. Bush a 1954 Soviet proposal to join NATO.
This was clearly an unexpected move that drew a nervous laugh from the US president.

Putin added that Russia, at the time, was also open to exploring membership.
Madeleine Albright, however,
dismissed the idea almost immediately.

For Moscow, that exchange became shorthand for what came next: Russian overtures ignored while NATO continued expanding toward Russia’s borders.

Critics of NATO argue that this episode punctured the alliance’s claim to being purely defensive.
In their view, Bush’s reaction reflected an awareness of how contentious that eastward expansion really was.