Breaking a promise to Russia

History and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Hitler’s invasion, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of Nato, have shattered the Russian people’s equilibrium and self-regard time and time again.
At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the Nato-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards a new kind of future were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at Nato’s table. Later it would join Nato. Later still, the European Union. Some said this would happen over ten years, others twenty.
Then, smash, the dream came to an end as President Bill Clinton, bucking the advice of nearly all America’s academic foreign policy elite, decided to expand Nato’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. George Kennan, America’s elder statesman on Russian issues, commented, “It shows so little understanding of Russian and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the Nato expanders will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are- but this is just wrong.” He characterized it as the most dangerous foreign policy decision that the US had made since the end of the Second World War. Indeed, it is the root of the present day estrangement and hostility.
Defending Clinton and, later, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump who all continued the Nato expansion policy, their supporters have said that in expanding Nato eastward the West did not break any promise to Moscow not to. There was no written promise.
Some re-writing of history has gone on. Now Baker has ambiguously denied there was any such agreement. He said, “he never intended” to rule out the admission of new Nato members.
Nevertheless, the evidence that a commitment was made not to expand is strong.
Jack Matlock, who was ambassador to Moscow for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior, and who was in the room when Baker met Gorbachev, has said on a number of occasions that Gorbachev was given “a clear commitment” not to expand Nato. “If a united Germany was able to stay in Nato, Nato would not move eastward”.
The British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, when meeting his German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, on February 6th 1990 to discuss Hungary’s forthcoming free elections, was told that the Soviet Union needed “the certainty that Hungary will not become part of the Western alliance.” The Kremlin, Genscher said, would have to be given assurances to that effect. Hurd agreed.
I talked with Georgi Arbatov, the chief foreign policy advisor to Gorbachev, at his dacha a couple of years before he died and he admitted that Russia made a mistake in not getting these promises formalized in a proper signed agreement. But, he told me, “You have to remember the feelings at the time- both in Russia and the West- that the Cold War was over and done with. We were now friends. There was talk of Russia entering Nato, even the European Union. No one could have imagined that all these good feelings would come to an end.” To quote the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Schevardnadze, “It was beyond the realm of our comprehension”.
Der Spiegel, the German political weekly, has been through the German and British archives. It found a minute of a conversation on February 10, 1990 when Genscher spoke with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Genscher said, “For us one thing is certain: Nato will not expand to the east.”
In a major speech on January 31st 1990 in Tutzing, Genscher said, “Whatever happens to the Warsaw Pact an extension of Nato territory to the East, in other words closer to the borders of the Soviet Union, will not happen.” Genscher’s intention was to make it easier for the Soviets to go along with the reunification of Germany on terms the West could accept. He went on to say, “The West must be guided by the realization that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German reunification process cannot be allowed to compromise Soviet security”.