Mr. Speaker, in my youth I visited Poland when it was under the communist regime. At the time, General Jaruzelski was in power in Warsaw.
I was also able to travel to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which both had communist governments. I understand that these countries sought to get out from under the control, or at least the influence, of their powerful neighbour Russia, then the Soviet Union.
That is not the point I want to make. I am simply pointing out what Jocelyn Coulon, a former Liberal adviser, said about how NATO failed to keep its word. NATO promised Mikhail Gorbachev that it would never expand beyond East Germany.
That said, the countries in question were clearly acting in good faith by wanting to join NATO. That is not what this is about. This is about the promises that the west made to Russia, to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany.
From the Russian perspective, we failed to keep our word, but does that undermine the legitimacy of the countries that wanted to join NATO? Absolutely not.