一、俄罗斯一贯反对北约东扩，北约向东扩张将构成对俄罗斯的不必要挑衅。

“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand NATO eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (p. 45). I wrote those words in 1994, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York City and Washington, D.C. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia.”

(Feb. 24, 2022, CATO Institute, Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy)

Moscow’s patience with NATO’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich Security Conference. “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. NATO expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” 

(Feb. 24, 2022, CATO Institute, Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy)

二、北约的五次东扩使北约的军事设施已经部署在紧邻俄罗斯边界的地区。俄罗斯认为自己对捍卫地区稳定和安全负有责任。

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Thursday that NATO's expansion was a "serious threat" to the region's security and stability, the semi-official Nour News reported."NATO's expansion eastward creates tension and is a serious threat to the stability and security of independent states in various areas," Raisi was quoted saying following Russia's military attack on Ukraine.

(Feb. 25, 2022, Reuters, Iranian president tells Putin that NATO’s expansion is "serious threat" to region's security and stability)

The United States of America (USA) and its military allies made various attempts and agreed on a mechanism of consultation between representatives of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia before taking the decision on expansion of NATO eastward in view of Russia’s objection to such a move. But they failed to nullify Russia’s national security concerns and apprehensions which emerged because of the proposed NATO expansion. In fact, it was difficult for the West to convince Moscow about the need of NATO expansion amidst the profound changes brought about in the nature of relations between Russia and its Western neighbours as well as the USA in the post-Cold War period. Though President Boris Yeltsin of Russia agreed to allow the expansion of NATO, Moscow has never missed an opportunity to express its disapproval on the expansion of NATO because it undermines Russia’s national security.

(Mehrotra, O. N. (1998). NATO eastward expansion and Russian security. Strategic Analysis, 22(8), 1225-1235.)

三、一旦乌克兰加入北约，俄罗斯的国家安全将直接受到威胁。乌克兰将可以被用作是北约进攻俄国的跳板。俄罗斯绝大多数人口居住在该国临近欧洲的一侧，而莫斯科距乌克兰东北部仅约400公里。

"If Ukraine were to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia," Putin said in televised remarks on Monday, during which he described Ukraine as a "springboard" for a NATO strike against Russia.

NATO has dismissed Putin's sense of encirclement, given Russia's massive size that extends to the Pacific Ocean. However, the vast majority of the Russian population lives on the country's European side.

JD Bindenagel, a former deputy US ambassador to Germany, told DW that he believes NATO's mistake was not so much the actual enlargement, but with not taking seriously the Russian view that it had been betrayed.

(Feb. 23, 2022, DW, NATO: Why Russia has a problem with its eastward expansion)

YaroslavTrofimov: Russia sees NATO as an alliance whose primary aim is to make Russia weaker, and so it sees any expansion of NATO as a direct threat to its own interests. And obviously, it would also, as Moscow points out, give the possibility of NATO missiles being within relative short distance of Moscow. Moscow's only about 400 kilometers from northeastern Ukraine.

(Feb. 18, 2022, WSJ Podcasts, Why NATO Is at the Center of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict)

四、美国和北约将莫斯科的安全要求视为无效的要求。西方国家对俄的新冷战变成了热战，俄应对局势的最新发展承担主要责任，但北约在过去二、三十年对俄罗斯的立场充耳不闻的傲慢态度也是局势发展到如今地步的重要原因。

The United States and NATO dismissed Moscow’s security demands as nonstarters in a written response to the Kremlin delivered last week by the US ambassador to Russia.

While the current standoff between Russia and the West is based on many grievances, the narrative of Western betrayal has featured prominently in Moscow's rhetoric for decades.

(Jan. 30, 2022, France24, Did NATO ‘betray’ Russia by expanding to the East?)

Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between NATO and Moscow even more dangerous. The West’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, tone‐deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐century deserves a large share as well.

(Feb. 24, 2022, CATO Institute, Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy)

For many years, the question of NATO enlargement has fuelled tensions between the United States and its allies, on the one side, and Russia on the other. In August 2008, Georgia's NATO and EU ambitions helped prompt Moscow to back pro-Russian separatists in Georgia’s self-proclaimed autonomous republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia also views the alliance's anti-missile shield – established in 2016 in NATO member Romania – with great suspicion. A similar NATO base exists in Poland.

(Jan. 30, 2022, France24, Did NATO ‘betray’ Russia by expanding to the East?)

NATO’s eastward expansion may have played a role in straining the relationship between Russia and the West, but mainly because, for Russia, seeing former satellites eagerly abandon it for the greener pastures of Euro-Atlantic integration stung.

(Feb. 25, 2022, Just Security, Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is Essentially Not About NATO) 

五、俄罗斯官员指责美国在北约东扩问题上未能遵守其诺言，而是对俄步步紧逼，让俄别无选择。

Russian officials say that the U.S. government made a pledge to Soviet leaders not to expand the alliance’s eastern borders, a commitment they say came during the flurry of diplomacy following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and surrounding the reunification of Germany in 1990. Proponents of this narrative often cite the words that U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker said to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” They say the United States and NATO have repeatedly betrayed this verbal commitment in the decades since, taking advantage of Russia’s tumultuous post-Soviet period and expanding the Western alliance several times, all the way to Russia’s doorstep in the case of the Baltic states.

(Jan. 20, 2022, Council on Foreign Relations, Why NATO Has Become a Flash Point With Russia in Ukraine)

撰稿：程泽笠

核稿：许馨匀 张立荣