National Security Archive documents show US President George H W Bush and his Secretary of State James A Baker had indeed assured then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev of no eastward expansion of NATO.
@prashanthamine
Mumbai: The Western media and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have been in vehement denial that there was never any “Deal” made to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev of “No eastward expansion of NATO”. Yes, there was “No Deal” on NATO expansion since German reunification in 1990, only solemn assurances were made with no deal inked on paper.
It was former US President William Jefferson Clinton (Bill Clinton) with his firm categorical assertion in 2008 of “gradual, steady, measured” NATO expansion would happen, that started it all. All this while the US very cleverly had lulled the Russians, its then President Boris Yeltsin into believing that Russia would be made a partner in the larger European security infrastructure with the Partnership for Peace program, by not creating new members list.
The program actually was a barter deal which quite explicitly stated a “gradual expansion” of NATO eastwards.
So floored was Yeltsin with the deal that he remarked on October 22, 1993, “this is genius”. To which then US Secretary of State Warren Christopher later claimed in his memoir that Yeltsin misunderstood – perhaps from being drunk – the real message that the Partnership for Peace would in fact “lead to gradual expansion of NATO.”
Contrary to the image created by the United States of America, the Western media and the NATO, declassified official documents with the National Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University, both Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor President of new Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin were indeed assured and reassured by US President’s George H W Bush and Bill Clinton that NATO will not be expanded beyond the borders of Germany.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson in his 2016 article appearing in International Security titled “Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion”, had made two main claims.
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First, during the diplomacy surrounding German reunification in 1990, the United States repeatedly offered the Soviet Union informal assurances against NATO’s future expansion into Eastern Europe. In addition to explicit discussion of a NATO non-expansion pledge in February 1990, assurances against NATO enlargement were epitomized and encapsulated in later offers to give East Germany special military status in NATO, to construct and integrate the Soviet Union into new European security institutions, and to generally recognize Soviet interests in Eastern Europe.
However, declassified documents of conversation between then US Secretary of State James Addison Baker (James Baker) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, show categorical assurances were made by Baker to Gorbachev during the reunification of Germany.
Baker goes on to say, “We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces one inch to the east.” Gorbachev’s response that indeed such an expansion would be “unacceptable”. Baker then had famously quipped to Gorbachev “not one inch eastward”.
If that is not enough, then a Page from Stepanov Mamaladze‘s notes from February 12, 1990, reflecting James Baker’s assurance to Shevardnadze during the Ottawa Open Skies conference: “And if U[nited] G[ermany] stays in NATO, we should take care about non-expansion of its jurisdiction to the east.”
Baker repeated his assurance this time to Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. This was just three days after Baker met Gorbachev. Mamaladze was the then Secretary to Eduard Shrevardnadze. He noted the assurance in Russian in his diary, which is now accessible in the declassified document by the National Security Archive.
The then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Robert Gates had been critical of the US and its allies, of NATOs eastward expansion. Gorbachev and others were ‘led to believe that would not happen’ (NATO expansion).
If that was not enough then US President George H W Bush during his December 1989 Malta Summit had assured Gorbachev – “US would not take advantage of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests”. He then went on to famously quote, “I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.”
Then French president Francois Mitterrand during his May 25, 1990 Moscow visit told Gorbachev that he was “personally in favour of gradually dismantling the military blocs”; but Mitterrand continued the cascade of assurances by saying that the West must “create security conditions for you, as well as European security as a whole.”
Thereafter, Mitterrand immediately wrote US president George H W Bush in a “cher George” letter about his conversation with the Soviet leader, and said that “we would certainly not refuse to detail the guarantees that he would have a right to expect for his country’s security.”
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The “Iron Lady” (then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher) also pitched in, after the Washington summit, in her meeting with Gorbachev in London on June 8, 1990. She said to Gorbachev: “We must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured…. CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) could be an umbrella for all this, as well as being the forum which brought the Soviet Union fully into discussion about the future of Europe.”
The US had tried to convey to Boris Yeltsin that there would be no predetermined new members in NATO. However, at the same time it was making it abundantly clear that the Partnership for Peace was open for all.
The impression that the US drew from the meeting between then US Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott and Yeltsin was that the latter was more interested in hearing what he wanted to hear. What Yeltsin did not read the real message of the Partnership for Peace was – “PFP today, enlargement tomorrow”.
It was only after the Clinton presidency began aggressively pushing the NATO expansion narrative that Yeltsin appeared to have come down to his senses. It was in his September 15, 1993 letter to Bill Clinton that Yeltsin first termed the PFP as the “neo-isolation of Russia”.
As the US began making moves to include Belarus into NATO with an ultimate aim to rope in Ukraine, Yeltsin strongly protested the moves to Clinton in his November 29, 1994 letter. Clinton then had tersely insisted that a “gradual, steady, measured” expansion of NATO would happen.
According to a US-CRS background research paper, in 1994, Ukraine was the first post-Soviet state (after the Baltic states) to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace. A NATO-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997. Former Ukraine President Yanukovych, Ukraine adopted a non-bloc (non-aligned) status, rejecting aspirations of NATO membership. After Russia’s 2014 invasion, Ukraine’s parliament rejected this non-bloc status.
Since then, Russia has been making it abundantly clear at international forums and bilaterally that it objected to NATO’s expansion eastwards towards its borders as threatening its security.
Russian President Vladimir Putin since his speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 10, 2007 first voiced his opposition to the NATO expansion plans. Since then, in April 2008, he had warned NATO over plans to include Georgia and Ukraine into its fold. More recently in December 2021, Putin had termed the NATO expansion as “unacceptable”.
While Putin may be livid at what Gorbachev and Yeltsin did in blindly trusting the US and its NATO allies on no NATO expansion eastwards, his predecessor Gorbachev was simply unaware of the mechanisations of the US. The US took full advantage of a weak USSR, later on Russia and ramped up its act of encircling Russia on its eastern Europe, Baltics borders.
It was during the run-up to the process of German reunification, that then US President Ronald Wilson Regan during his speech at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987 asked Gorbachev – first to ‘open this gate’ (Brandenburg Gate separating East and West Germany) – and then – “tear down this wall!” (Berlin Wall).
After 1987 in the run-up to the final reunification of Germany in 1990, Gorbachev too was swept off his feet with international praise for his Perestroika (economic liberalisation) and Glasnost (openness). After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1990, Russia had pinned its hopes on a similar dissolution of NATO, which was never going to happen.
In June 2008, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had in vain tried to moot a new proposal for a new European security architecture in the form of a legally binding treaty. The US, UK, Baltic States and Poland had rejected the Russian proposal in 2009.
The writing on the wall was pretty much clear for the Russians, as the US under the Clinton administration began inducting Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (in 1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (in 2004) and Albania and Croatia (in 2009) and Montenegro (in 2017) into the NATO fold.
Alarm bells started ringing loud and clear in Kremlin, in Moscow as it was proposed in 2008 to grant membership to Georgia and Ukraine. Back then France and Germany had argued that this could not be done while antagonising the Russians. What is interesting to note here is that the inclusion of Republic of North Macedonia in 2020 was met with stiff resistance from Greece.
