Cordon

Cordon (pronounced kawr-dn)

(1)  A line of police, sentinels, military posts, warships, etc., enclosing or guarding an area.

(2) A cord or braid worn for ornament or as a fastening.

(3) A ribbon worn usually diagonally across the breast as a badge of a knightly or honorary order.

(4) A projecting course of stones at the base of a parapet.

(5) The coping of a scarp.

(6) In architecture, a stringcourse, especially one having little or no projection.

(7) A cut-stone riser on a stepped ramp or the like.  Also called a string course or belt course, an ornamental projecting band or continuous moulding along a wall.

(8) In horticulture, a fruit tree or shrub trained to grow along a support or a series of such supports.  Tree consists of a single stem bearing fruiting spurs, produced by cutting back all lateral branches

(9) To surround or blockade with or as with a cordon (usually followed by off).

(10) In cricket, the arc of fielders on the off side, behind the batsman; the slips and gully (but not the more distant third man).

1400–1450: Borrowed by Middle English from Middle French cordon (ribbon), diminutive of the Old French corde (string), derived from the Classical Latin chorda (gut) and Ancient Greek (Doric) χορδή or khordḗ (string of gut, cord, string of a lyre).

The meaning "cord or ribbon worn as an ornament” dates from the 1560s.  Sense of "a line of people or things guarding something" is from 1758.  The form cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon), first noted in 1857, was a public health measure in the French Second Empire (Napoleon III), a guarded line between infected and uninfected districts during outbreaks of infectious disease.

The Cordon Sanitaire in Geopolitics

Originally a public health measure to contain the spread of infectious diseases, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; Prime Minister of France 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) conjured the phrase as a geopolitical metaphor in March 1919.  He urged the newly independent border-states, stretching from Finland to the Balkans (also called limitrophe states) that had seceded from the Russian Empire (and its successor the USSR) to form a defensive union and thus quarantine Western Europe from the spread of communism.

The concept evolved and was in its most politically and geographically defined form during the cold war when buffer states gave shape to the so-called iron curtain between east and west.  Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK Prime Minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) didn’t invent the phrase but made it famous in his address at Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he noted that “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”  This was the opposite of Clemenceau’s vision of protecting west from east; instead the buffer-states existed to protect the USSR from any prospect of another invasion from a resurgent Germany, a dominant theme in early post-war Soviet foreign policy.

Comrade Stalin's Cordon Sanitaire: the Cold-War Buffer States

The buffer states were a construct of Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), his words backed first by four-hundred divisions and later the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  They lasted more than forty years, the system beginning to fracture only in the mid-1980s when USSR Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR, 1985-1991) retreated from adherence to the Brezhnev (Leonid Brezhnev; 1906–1982; leader of the USSR, 1964–1982) Doctrine which held that if socialism was threatened in any state, other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to preserve it.  Gorbachev initiated the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), both of which exposed the contradictions inherent in the Soviet system.  By 1989, long an economic failure, the eastern bloc began politically to crumble and a wave of revolutions began.  In 1991, the USSR was dissolved.

Crowd control cordon creation: Metal outside & the velvet rope within, Mean Girls Premiere, Los Angeles, April 2004.

Temporary cordons are often not sufficiently robust physically to act as an effective barrier against a breach induced even by mild force and rely on their symbolic value in the same way the red, amber & green traffic signals controlling intersections usually achieve the desired effect even though pieces of illuminated colored plastic inherently can't stop a car.  Respect for them (coupled with a fear of the consequences if flouted) is what makes them effective.  The cordoning of crowds at events often works the same way.  While facilities such as stadiums or race tracks usually have permanent fences or other structures difficult to cross, ad-hoc events in spaces intended for other purposes use relatively flimsy temporary barriers which wouldn't withstand much pressure and rely on the cooperation (and again, fear of consequences) of those cordoned off.  Outside, cordons typically are created with movable metal or plastic modular fencing while inside, the favored form is the "velvet rope", strung between stanchions (although lengths of plastic chain are sometimes seen).  These have the advantage of being able to re-configure a cordon at short notice and when not in use, demand little space to store.         

Riband

Riband (pronounced rib-uh-nd)

(1) A decorative ribbon, especially one awarded for some achievement.

(2) A flat rail attached to posts in a palisade

(3) In heraldry, a narrow diminutive of the bend, thinner than a bendlet.

(4) An archaic form of ribbon with excrescent -d.

1350–1400: From the Middle English ribane, (the spelling ryban does exist in the record but it seems not to have attained much currency and may simply have been a mistake which spread briefly) from the Old French riban (ribbon), a variant of reuban & ruban, probably from a Germanic compound whose second element is related to band, similar to the Middle Dutch ringhband (necklace). The familiar modern spelling first appeared in the mid-sixteenth century, originally to describe as stripe in a fabric or material.  The spelling riband endures as descriptor of awards, often in polo or other equestrian hobbies of the horsey set although the informal phrase “blue riband event” is applied also to what is considered the premier contest in a particular competition.  This includes things like the men’s 100m sprint at the Olympics, the Melbourne Cup during the Spring Racing Carnival or the Monaco Grand Prix in the Formula One calendar.  The origin of this use is in the wide blue ribbon worn by members of the highest order of knighthood, L'Ordre des chevaliers du Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henri III (1551–1589; King of France 1574-1589) in 1578, an order colloquially known as “Le Cordon Bleus” (the Blue Ribbons).  From this the world of cooking adopted Cordon Bleu, the famous French cooking school, founded in 1895, where chefs wear blue cord on their aprons, a color scheme still seen in many chefs’ uniforms.

USS United States.

Although not formalized until 1935, the Trans-Atlantic Blue Riband is the honor awarded to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the highest speed.  Thirty-five Atlantic liners have held the record, the accolade first (retrospectively) won by the British SS Sirius in 1838 which crossed at 8.03 knots (14.87 km/h), the last by the USS United States which in 1952 made 35.59 knots (65.91 km/h).  The 1952 mark remains unbroken; those which subsequently have achieved higher speeds being specialized vessels and not liners in the Atlantic passenger service and other awards have been created to acknowledge the absolute speed records in various classes of competition.  The advent of the jet-age ended the era of the fast ocean-liner.  The Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8 both began regular trans-Atlantic services in 1958 and the business of the big ships went into decline, revived periodically during periods of economic buoyancy as cruise liners with an emphasis on packaged tourism for the middle-class and luxury for the rich rather than speed.  The Record of the USS United States seems unlikely to be broken.

Lindsay Lohan in Phillip Lim Runway Tiered Ribbon Shell; shoes are Yves Saint Laurent Tribute Pumps in black.

Tiered ribbon constructions are based on the idea of successive layers of ribbons assembled (usually horizontally) to create a fabric which can be used for any form of design.  The term is used also in the wedding cake business where a thick ribbon is used to encircle each layer of the cake, the idea usually that it ties in thematically some way with the ceremony, the bridesmaid's dresses or the table napkins being wise choices.  With the bride, the table cloths and the cake icing all in white, navy blue is a good choice.     

Ribbon dates from the 1520s and was a variant of the Middle English riband & riban.  The modern spelling was (more or less) standardized in the sixteenth century, describing a “stripe in fabric”, the sense of a "narrow woven band of some find material" for ornamental or other purposes known by the 1520s while the familiar meaning (long, thin, flexible strips) dates from 1763.  The use to describe the "ink-soaked strip wound on a spool for use on a typewriter" was from 1883 and the idea of a “torn strip of anything” was in use by 1820 and as a verb (adorn with ribbons), use dates from 1716.  The custom of wearing colored ribbon loops on the lapel to declare support for a cause (pink for breast cancer, copper for herpes etc) began is 1991 with AIDS red ribbons and there’s now such an array that of the hundreds of causes now ribboned, there are many duplications so the ribbons sometimes include text, the other differentiation being to use multiple colors, teal & purple for example claimed by suicide awareness.

Quarantine

Quarantine (pronounced kwawr-uhn-teen or kwor-uhn-teen)

(1) In historic English common law, the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her deceased husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.

(2) A strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease and (by extension), any rigorous measure of isolation, regardless of the reason.

(3) A period, originally 40 days (the historic understanding of the maximum known incubation period of disease) of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals, or plants on arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying some infectious or contagious disease; a record system kept by port health authorities in order to monitor and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.  The origin was in measures taken in 1448 in Venice's lazaret to avoid renewed outbreaks of the bubonic plague.

(4) In historic French law, a 40-day period imposed by the king upon warring nobles during which they were forbidden from exacting revenge or to continue warfare.

(5) A place where such isolation is enforced (a lazaret).

(6) In international relations, a blockade of trade, suspension of diplomatic relations, or other action whereby one country seeks to isolate another.

(7) In computing, a place where files suspected of harboring a computer virus or other harmful code are stored in a way preventing infection of other files or machines; the process of such an isolation.

(8) To withhold a portion of a welfare payment from a person or group of people (Australia).

(9) To quarantine someone or something.

1600–1610: From the Middle English quarentine (period a ship suspected of carrying contagious disease is kept in isolation), from the Norman quarenteine, from the French quarenteine, from the Italian quarantina, a variant of quarantena, originally from the upper Italian (Venetian) dialect as quaranta giorni (space of forty days, group of forty), from quaranta (forty) from the Medieval Latin quarentīna (period of forty days; Lent), from the Classical Latin quadrāgintā (four tens, forty) and related to quattuor (four), from the primitive Indo-European root kwetwer (four).  The difference between quarantine and isolation is one of context; while people might for many reasons be isolated, quarantine is a public health measure to deal with those exposed to or at risk of having been infected by a communicable disease, the duration of the quarantine being sufficient to ensure any risk of spreading the infection has passed.  The name is from the Venetian policy (first enforced as the 30 day edict trentino in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for forty days to ensure no latent cases remained aboard.  The extended sense of "any period of forced isolation" dates from the 1670s.  A doublet of carene and quadragene.

In the context the L'Ancien Régime (pre-revolutionary France), it was a calque of the French quarantaine, following the edicts of Louis IX (and formalized by the quarantaine du Roi (1704) of Louis XIV which was a mechanism of quieting squabbling nobles).  Quarantine was introduced to international relations as a euphemism for "blockade" in 1937 because the Roosevelt administration was (1) conscious of public reaction to the effects on civilians of the Royal Navy’s blockade of Imperial Germany during World War I (1914-1918) and (2) legal advice that a “blockade” of a non-belligerent was, under international law, probably an act of war.  The use was revived by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962).  The verb meaning "put under quarantine" came quickly to be used in any sense including figuratively (to isolate, as by authority) dates from 1804.  Predating the use in public health, in early sixteenth century English common law, the quarentine was the period of 40 days during which a widow was entitled to remain in her dead husband's home while any dower is collected and returned.  The alternative spellings quarentine, quarantin, quaranteen, quarantain, quarantaine, quarrentine, quarantene, quarentene, quarentyne, querentyne are all obsolete except in historic references).  While not of necessity entirely synonymous, detention, sequester, separation, seclusion, segregation, sequestration, lazaretto, segregate, confine, separate, seclude, insulate, restrict, detach & cordon, are at least vaguely similar.  Quarantine is a noun & verb, quarantiner is a noun, quarantinable is an adjective and quarantined & quarantining are verbs & adjectives.

In scripture, the number 40 often occurs although Biblical scholars, always anxious to dismiss musings from numerologists, new age practitioners and crystal-wearing basket weavers, reject the notion it has any special meaning beyond the idea of a “period of trial or struggle”, memorably expressed in the phrase “forty days and forty nights”.  In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth in the Great Flood, he delivered rain for 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).  After killing the Egyptian, Moses fled to Midian where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30) and subsequently he stood on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Exodus 24:18) and then interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25).  In Deuteronomy 25:3, the maximum number of lashes a man could receive as punishment for a crime was set at 40.  The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25), the Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5) and before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1).  Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16) and when Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).  The number 40 also appears in the prophecies of Ezekiel (4:6; 29:11-13) and Jonah (3:4).  In the New Testament, the quarentyne was the desert in which Christ fasted and was tempted for for 40 days and 40 nights (Matthew 4:2) and there were 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3).  Presumably, this influenced Western medicine because it was long (and still by some) recommended that women should for 40 days rest after childbirth.

Plague, the Venetians and Quarantino

The Plague of Justinian arrived in Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541, brought from recently conquered Egypt across the Mediterranean by plague-ridden fleas in the fur of rats on ships bringing loot from the war.  From the imperial capital it spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated thirty to fifty million, perhaps a quarter the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.  Plague never really went away, localized outbreaks happening periodically unit it returned as a pandemic some eight-hundred years later; the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed some two-hundred million in just four years and demographically, Europe would not for centuries recover from the Black Death.

There was at the time little scientific understanding of contagion but it became clear it was related to proximity so officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia) resolved to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until it was apparent they were healthy.  Initially, the sailors were confined to their ships for thirty days, formalized in a 1377 Venetian law as a trentino (thirty days), which radically reduced the transmission rate and by 1448, the Venetians had increased the forced isolation to forty days (quarantine), which, given bubonic plague’s thirty-seven day cycle from infection to death, was an example of a practical scientific experiment.  The word soon entered Middle English as quarantine (already in use in common law as a measure of certain rights accruing to a widow), the origin of the modern word and practice of quarantine.  The English had many opportunities to practice quarentine.  In the three-hundred odd years between 1348 and 1665, London suffered some forty outbreaks, about once a generation (or every twenty years), the significance of this pattern something which modern epidemiologists would later understand.  Quarentine laws were introduced in the early sixteenth century and proved effective, reducing the historic medieval death-rates to about twenty percent.

Eggs à la Lohan

In self-imposed quarantine in March 2020, Lindsay Lohan was apparently inspired by a widely shared motivational poem by Kitty O’Meara (on the internet dubbed the "poet laureate of the pandemic") which included the fragment:

And the people stayed home.  And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.  And listened more deeply.  Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.  Some met their shadows.  And the people began to think differently.

One of Lindsay Lohan's recommendations for a time of quarantine was to take the time to cook, posting a photograph of Eggs à la Lohan, a tasty looking omelet.  The poem also contained the words:

And the people healed.  And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.  And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

Unfortunately, viewed from early 2023, it would seem Ms O'Meara's hopes quarantine might have left us kinder, gentler and more thoughtful may not have be realized.  It may be Mr Putin didn’t read poem and just ate omelet. 

Buffer

Buffer (pronounced buhf-er)

(1) A static apparatus at the end of a railroad car, railroad track etc, for absorbing shock during coupling, collisions etc with the contact section made usually from spring-loaded steel pads or (in areas of low-speed activity such as shunting yards) timber.

(2) Any device, material, or apparatus used as a shield, cushion, or bumper, especially on machinery.

(3) Any intermediate or intervening shield or device reducing the danger of interaction between two machines, chemicals, electronic components etc.

(4) A person or thing that shields and protects against annoyance, harm, hostile forces etc, or that lessens the impact of a shock or reversal.

(5) Any reserve moneys, negotiable securities, legal procedures, etc., that protect a person, organization, or country against financial ruin.

(6) In ecology, as buffer state, an animal population that becomes the prey of a predator that usually feeds on a different species.

(7) In computing, a storage device for temporarily holding data until the device is ready to receive or process the data, as when a receiving unit has an operating speed lower (eg a printer) than that of the unit (eg a computer) feeding data to it.

(8) In electronics, a circuit with a single output activated by one or more of several inputs.

(9) In chemistry, any substance or mixture of compounds that, added to a solution, is capable of neutralizing both acids and bases without appreciably changing the original acidity or alkalinity of the solution; also called a buffer solution; any solution containing such a substance.

(10) To treat with a buffer.

(11) To cushion, shield, or protect; to lessen the adverse effect of; ease:

(12) In computing, temporarily to save data before actively accessing it so it may be loaded at a rapid or uniform rate.

(13) A device for polishing or buffing, as a buff stick or buff wheel, often in the form “floor buffer” for polishing floors; a worker who uses such a device.

(14) In admiralty slang, the senior non-commissioned officer serving on a ship or boat.

(15) In (mostly UK) colloquial use, a good-humored, slow-witted fellow, usually an elderly man, thus often as “old buffer” (archaic).

(16) In medicine, a preparation designed to decrease acidity in the stomach.

(17) In geopolitics, as buffer state, a country the land mass of which physically separates two opposing potentially powers and the existence of which is intended to prevent conflict or permit an attacked state a greater time to organize its defense.

(18) In geopolitics as buffer zone, a region separating two areas, often demilitarized, to segregate antagonistic populations: based usually on regional, ethnic or religious lines.

1835: The noun buffer in the sense of "something that absorbs a blow, apparatus for deadening the concussion between a moving body and that against which it strikes" was an agent noun from the obsolete verb buff (make a dull sound when struck), from the mid-sixteenth century Old French buffe & bufe (a blow, slap, punch).  The figurative sense of "anything that prevents impact or neutralizes the shock of impact of opposing forces" is from 1858 and was adopted universally by the railroad industry.  The sense of “one who or that which polishes by buffing” dates from 1854, an agent noun from the verb.  The verb use extended to “lessen the impact of” by 1886.  The use in chemistry began in the mid-nineteenth century, borrowed by analogy from the railroads although the meaning in science was soon extended and was adopted in electrical engineering.  In geopolitics the term wasn’t used until the mid-nineteenth century, the word again picked up from the general use inspired by railroads.  However, the concept had been well-understood for centuries.  The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern day Belgium & the Netherlands) to remove the means of conflict between the UK, France & Prussia and although it lasted only until the separation of Belgian in 1830, the defined land-mass continued to fulfil the same function.

The derived forms include buffering, buffered & bufferize; the noun plural is buffers.  In the nineteenth century, a number of languages picked up buffer directly from English, including Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese & Romansch, spread apparently by the international growth in railroad construction.

Europe 1945-1989.

The deployment of ten-odd Russian army divisions on the border with Ukraine’s revived interest in the old squabble about whether, in the last days of the USSR, politicians from the West made promises or at least provided assurances to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastwards.  The archivists have for decades been looking for any document which might clarify at least what was at the time discussed but nothing emerged until some material was declassified in 2017.  The conclusion is that the USSR was never offered any formal guarantee about NATO membership but the interpretations of what happened after 1990 vary, the view from the West that the enlargement of NATO was undertaken honorably and in accordance with the rights international law accords to sovereign states whereas Moscow’s narrative is one of Western deception and duplicity. 

Most scholars of the Cold War seem to agree the story begins in February 1990 when James Baker (b 1930; US secretary of state 1989-1992), secretary of state under George HW Bush (1924–2018; US president 1989-1993 (George XLI)) met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (b 1931; leader of the USSR 1985-1991) in Moscow.  Only three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the matter of immediate interest was whether Germany, divided since 1945 into east and west, would be reunified, something that was most feared, though for different reasons, in the Kremlin and Downing Street.  London’s concern was its traditional fear to the emergence of an overwhelmingly strong Germany; Moscow feared the specter of NATO’s missiles being stationed in the GDR (East Germany). 

What both Russian and US transcripts of the meeting reveal was that the US position was it was in everyone’s interest that a unified Germany existed within NATO's political and military structure but at no point did either side discuss any of the nations aligned with the Warsaw Pact joining NATO.  That was not on the agenda because the thought of the imminent collapse of the USSR had not then occurred to many, none of whom were prominent in the US administration.  Orthodox political thought in the US, across most of the political spectrum, was that the Soviet empire probably was doomed but it’s life was expected to extend for at least decades.  A similar spirit animated the discussion Gorbachev had the next day with the FRG’s (West Germany) Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1930–2017; Chancellor of FRG or Germany 1982 to 1998), most taken up with the matter of German unification, NATO enlargement not even mentioned.  What was agreed was that the US, France, the UK and Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

However, in the great geopolitical event of the second half of the twentieth century, the USSR did in 1991 collapse, ending the perhaps unhappy but essentially stable post-war arrangement whereby east and west were separated by an array of buffer states, the cordon sanitaire which was built by Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953), which constituted the line of the Iron Curtain from “…Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic…”.  They were difficult years for the post-Soviet buffer states but, in 1999, NATO welcomed as members, three nations of the former Warsaw Pact: Hungary, Poland & the Czech Republic.  That sounds now like an event of great significance and of course it was but with all the social and economic disruption happening in Russia, it evoked surprisingly few complaints, the political faction in Moscow which tilted towards Europe and saw their country’s future there, much more influential than today.  Some did however dwell on things.  A decade after the first NATO expansion, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow, claiming he’d been assured NATO would not be moving “one centimeter further east."

Gorbachev later retreated from that, in 2014 admitting that in all the discussions which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification Germany, the topic of “NATO expansion” was never raised by either side, adding that not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved 1991.  Equally sanguine seems to have been the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007; president of the Russian Federation 1991-1999).  Although hardly enthusiastic about NATO expansion, he raised no objection but did urge caution on the West, warning it was important to take into account public opinion in Russia.  In that he may have had some misplaced faith in realism of those he viewed as his new Western partners, writing later that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."  None of that was in writing of course, the generous interpretation being inferences were drawn where no implications were intended.  Either that or, in Washington, views changed in the post Cold-War world.

Still, for a time, tensions seemed not great and cooperative structures were created including NATO-Russia Founding Act, a kind of statement of peaceful co-existence and in 2002, a joint consultative council was established as a framework in which differences could be resolved; rather wishy-washy in detail, it was regarded by most as ineffectual but at least harmless.  The real crossing of the Rubicon came in 2004 when NATO undertook its largest expansion, admitting seven more Eastern European countries including, critically, the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia, Latvia, all of which had been republics, unhappily, of the USSR.  It was the closest NATO’s divisions & missiles had ever been to Moscow.

By 2007 with the oil price high and the Russian economy thus buoyant, if rather distorted by its reliance on energy exports, the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999) made the official Russian position explicit, accusing NATO (ie the US) of duplicity and threatening Russia:  “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”  “What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?"  There being no documents, it seems Mr Putin might be relying on Mr Yeltsin’s evocation of the “spirit” of the discussions which both he and Mr Gorbachev had earlier confirmed contained no discussion of NATO expansion.  Still, some sense of realism was on display at a summit in Bucharest in 2008 when NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured both they would eventually join the alliance.  No date was mentioned and it seemed a quiet triumph of Realpolitik for the Kremlin.

However, four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, crushing its armed forces and occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy.  Then, in 2014, after seizing and then annexing the Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, Moscow equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking the war that continues to this day, the death toll some fourteen-thousand.  NATO and the Kremlin no longer have active anything but emergency channels of communications.

Mr Putin is quite emphatic that assurances were provided NATO would never expand beyond what was necessitated by the unification of Germany and the last US ambassador to the USSR did insist, in his testimony to a congressional enquiry, that Mr Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united and remained in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward and declassified documents released in 2017 do suggest Mr Baker may well have said “not one inch eastward” (source or Mr Gorbachev’s “one centimetre”) but that this was subsequently vetoed by Mr Bush who had a different vision of a “new world order”.  In the West, over the years, many seemed to treat all this as hearsay evidence and prefer to cite the 1990 treaty (the 2+4 Treaty) which created the framework by which German unification would be achieved.  There was no mention of NATO enlargement.  Beyond that, also invoked in the West is an argument apparently based on the doctrine of “acceptance by acquiescence” from contract law: Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed.  One can see what they’re getting at but to use an analogy with domestic contract law seems a bit of a stretch but NATO expansion anyway didn’t happen in isolation.  The first expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO’s bombing campaigns in the Balkans, a traditional Russian sphere of influence and aimed at their traditional allies the Serbs.  While sympathetic to the US operation in Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq raised Moscow's ire.

Mr Putin’s position has since hardened.  The massing of infantry and cavalry divisions on the border has a nineteenth century feel but the economic and cyber warfare is already being waged and what’s already being called the Ukrainian crisis has attracted speculation from military and political theorists.  All agree (1) Mr Putin wants his buffer states back, (2) this is the first time in history the timing of military action must await the end of the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics and (3), the Kremlin learned certain lessons about the nature of the Biden administration from the scuttle from Afghanistan.  There the consensus seems to end but Mr Putin's ambition, no less than a re-configuration of the architecture of European security arrangements back to the 1992 lines on the map, is breathtaking.  This is not however 1941 and the world isn't (yet) quite holding it's breath.  Mr Putin has gambled before and won and if he can emerge from this round with something tangible, like a land bridge to the Crimea, he'd take it.  He plans anyway to still be Tsar when all the Western leaders facing him are gone and believes Russia's position in the future will only strengthen.