June 23, 2024
(In this installment, I cover the crucial period from 1989 to the 1999 NATO enlargement. The subsequent developments will be dealt with in a follow-up essay.)
In recent days, both President Trump and UK’s Reform leader Nigel Farage have repeated the claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO’s eastern expansion. A key part of this argument is the claim that the West (specifically, the United States) made a series of promises to the Soviet Union during the turbulent 1989-90 that NATO would not expand “one inch east” as a result of the momentous changes in Europe. Subsequently, these promises were violated, which is said to have increased Russia’s sense of vulnerability, and gradually turned Putin from a cautiously optimistic cooperator with the West to one implacably opposed to it. The sense of betrayal arising from the violation of these promises is seen as an important catalyst of this change, and continued grievance in Russia.
Even the most ardent proponents of the “broken promises” narrative are forced to agree that no formal promises not to extend NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact members or Soviet republics have ever been made. Most honest analysts also concede that many of the verbal assurances are vague and open to multiple interpretations. They merely insist that the interpretation that there was a promise not to expand NATO eastward was at least implicit, that it was readily understood by the Soviets (and many Western experts and policymakers) as such, and that the Soviets, and later Russians, acted on the basis of such a promise until their illusions were rudely shattered in 1999 when Poland, Hungary, and Czechia joined the alliance, and devastated by the 2004 ascension of most other former Soviet satellites and, perhaps more importantly, the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
There is no need to rehash much of that debate as most of the evidence is by far widely known and accepted by scholars even if the interpretation remains contested. What I wish to offer here is an analysis that takes into account the historical context, in which the most famous promise was made, demonstrate how it quite unambiguously refers to the particulars of the German unification, and then show how the Soviets not only understood it that way, but insisted that it be codified in a written treaty, establishing as fact that the Soviets were not content with verbal assurances but demanded – and getting – very specific provisions implementing them. I then briefly go over several very important other diplomatic agreements that demonstrate that the Soviets explicitly agreed with the right of Warsaw Pact members to determine their own security arrangements, including potentially joining NATO, showing the absence of any serious concerns about that (or expectations based on prior reassurances). I further show that following the dissolution of the USSR, the Russians – along with the 10 other CIS members – also explicitly committed to respecting each other’s sovereignty in foreign affairs as well territorial integrity and the non-use of force in resolving disputes.
Since it is interesting to trace the evolving attitude of the Russians toward NATO expansion, I also note how the triggers for requesting membership by the Eastern European states is related to fears of Russian irredentism, and that Western reluctance to accept new members – initially quite strong in deference to Russia and the desire to establish a working cooperative relationship with it – was eroded by evidence of Russian aggression in the near abroad. In other words, the Russian wars in Moldova, Georgia, and Chechnya increased the perception of insecurity in its immediate neighbors who clamored for protection from NATO. After initially rebuffing them, the US and the Western Europeans eventually came around to offering some (tepid) compromise that involved membership but without NATO troops or nuclear weapons on their soil, per another explicit agreement with Russia. Even after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the changes in this arrangements were minimal and fewer than 5,000 NATO troops were stationed in former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltics. Only following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine did NATO move to strengthen its eastern flank, although even now the deployment of about 18,000 personnel in multinational battlegroups is woefully inadequate.
The Argument, In Brief
The “broken promises” narrative collapses for one simple reason that is impossible to overcome regardless of the number of verbal assurances one manages to uncover in the archives: the Soviets were not dilettantes at diplomacy. The Soviet diplomatic apparatus was enormous – one of the largest and most accomplished in the world, with presence in over 130 countries and in all important international organizations. They had thousands of staff, including analysts and intelligence officers (in fact, a very significant number of personnel were KGB officers). They were masters of carefully crafted propaganda, double-speak, and all the usual influence tools that diplomacy, economic, and cultural missions accord the state sending them. They knew that words cannot be trusted because they themselves constantly produced words that could not be trusted. Every single important detail from an international agreement would be carefully worded – poured over by a legion of security and legal experts – to make sure that it is either unambiguous or that whatever ambiguity remained was deliberate (usually permitting both sides to read the agreement slightly differently in a way that would allow both of them to claim the deal was beneficial, often to domestic audiences – the “One China” formulation that both PRC and USA use for Taiwan comes to mind).
The ”broken promises” narrative critically depends on the Soviets suddenly ditching all this expertise and the perennial suspicions of American motives in order to hang their entire future security on nebulous statements by a few American diplomats uttered in a different context despite having the opportunity to clarify these promises and write them into a treaty.
And this when Western democracies saw regular changes in government – there were three different administrations in the US alone before the first postwar NATO enlargement took place – with no expectation that whatever verbal promises made by some officials would be carried over to the ones that replaced them. And all of this in a context of a very visible and at time rancorous domestic debate about whether NATO should accept members of the former eastern bloc. Basically, one must be willing to entertain the notion that the Soviets were watching all these developments without an attempt to make these verbal assurances more specific or codify them in an internationally binding treaty.
Not only that, it requires one to maintain this belief in incredible incompetence and naivete even when the Soviets did deliberately write down the commitments implied by the often-quoted assurances in the 1990 treaty about the unification of Germany. Moreover, it requires one to maintain this belief in criminal negligence even when the Soviets signed treaties that explicitly confirmed the right of signatories to decide their security arrangements on their own without breathing a word about “except NATO, of course.” And finally, it requires one to maintain that this debility in foreign affairs also extended to Russia, whose government also agreed to this for former Soviet republics.
It beggars belief that so many Soviet and Russian leaders and diplomats were so singularly incompetent for such a long time and that they not only failed to clarify these supposed promises but somehow managed to agree to the exact opposite of what they are supposed to have implied.
The reality, of course, is much simpler. In 1989-90, the focus was on what to do with the impending German unification, specifically whether Germany should remain in NATO, and if it did, what would happen with the territories of the former GDR. The collapse of the USSR, which nobody could have foreseen at the time, was still nearly two years in the future. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which was becoming a possibility given the changes in Eastern Europe, was on the minds of some policy-makers but it was still more than a year in the future. The context in which the verbal assurances were being made was that NATO stationing troops on the territory of the former GDR would present a security risk to the Warsaw Pact countries (recall the wording in Baker’s memo) and since the Americans and the West Germans really wanted Germany to remain in NATO (in part in order to restrain any revisionist foreign policies or rearmament), the compromise they offered to the Soviets was to not put nukes or any NATO foreign troops there.
This is what the “not one inch east” refers to in that memo, and this is precisely what the Soviets understood. They were not content with mere verbal assurances, however, but instead had this written in the Two Plus Four Agreement (September 12, 1990) – the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany – which recognized its borders, ended occupation rights, transferred full sovereignty to unified Germany, maintained restrictions on its military capabilities, and also specifically stipulated that Germany would be free to choose its alliances (so it can remain in NATO and EC) but that foreign NATO forces would not be stationed in East Germany, and neither would any nuclear weapons (Article 5). The Soviet – and later, Russian – troops were given until the end of 1994 to withdraw, which they did four month prior to the deadline.
The Context
To understand these “assurances” one must remember the international situation at the time. The velvet revolutions of 1989 had brought to an end the communist party monopoly on power in Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet satellites were grappling with transitioning to democracy and market economies while dealing with potential security implications of Gorbachev’s foreign policies. It was Gorbachev’s refusal to lend coercive power to backstop the tottering communist regimes that pushed them into not ordering the mass repression of reform movements (except Romania). While the Soviet forces stationed throughout would not be used in their traditional role to prop the Moscow-dependent communist governments, it was by no means obvious what had to be done about external security. And external security issues abounded because of unsettled borders from WW2 and more recent events (e.g., the repression of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria with the resulting exodus to Turkey and worsening of relations between Bulgaria and its southern neighbor).
Among the more worrisome developments was the two Germanys hurtling into unification that both the Americans and the Soviets eyed warily, and that neither felt they could stop. The old security problem of a unified Germany was immediately resurrected – what would the Germans do once they unified? Would they be content to live under externally imposed restrictions on their armed forces and nuclear capabilities? Will they honor existing – but not yet formalized – borders? Or will they become revisionist and against seek to undo the unjust peace of a Versailles? What choice would then the UK and France have but to arm substantially to prevent German domination of the continent? And wouldn’t violence become much more likely in this “multipolar” world deprived from the discipline of the two superpowers?
It’s easy to look back at these worries now but at the time they were quite acute, especially among Germany’s neighbors whose postwar borders were an issue. Mearsheimer fans might be surprised to learn that this was precisely what he was arguing would happen should the Warsaw Pact and NATO withdraw from Europe. It was, in fact, one of the principal concerns of both Americans and Soviets as they tried to deal with the rapidly changing political landscape of Europe. One option was for a unified Germany to be outside NATO and neutral, but there was no guarantee that the Germans could be held to any promises with respect to their armed forces. The other option was to have unified Germany be in NATO, but then there was concern that the sudden thrust of NATO into the former Soviet bloc would cause even more anxiety among the neighbors, which both the Americans and the Soviets feared could derail their domestic reforms and plunge them under some national-security motivated anti-democratic rule. Nobody wanted that. It was in this context that Baker proposed a potential solution to the Soviets.
The (In)famous Baker Memo
The Baker memo notes that a primary reason to have unified Germany in NATO rather than it becoming neutral is to put it under the NATO security umbrella so it would not suddenly decide to develop nuclear weapons. (There was quite a lot of worry about resurgence of German nationalism at the time too.) Moreover, he underscores that American presence in Europe is entirely through NATO, and should NATO dissolve, the Americans would leave. He further notes that all allies and Eastern Europeans the US had talked to “have told us that they want us to maintain a presence in Europe.” And then comes to crucial quite (italics mine):
“We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”
Gorbachev responds by noting that while for the USSR “there is nothing terrifying in the prospect of a unified Germany,” others, like UK, France, Hungary, and Poland, might see it differently. He then notes that the question “is critical to the Poles.” Gorbachev further notes that “for France and Britain the question is whose [sic] going to be the major player in Europe” but that the US and USSR “have it easier. We are big countries and have our own weight.” All of this meaning that as far as the Soviets were concerned the actual problem with German unification was more about how their Eastern European allies, especially the Poles, would take it. This is totally understandable because one must recall that at the time there were still various unresolved issues with Germany’s borders, and one could wonder just what kinds of demands a unified Germany would start making on its neighbors.
Baker confirms this: “The internal aspects are for the two Germanies to determine. The external aspect has to be accomplished with due regard to Germany’s neighbors. Their security concerns will have to be taken into account.” One should not need a map to know that the USSR was not a neighbor to Germany, but Poland was. Baker then asks Gorbachev bluntly, “would you prefer a united Germany outside of NATO that is independent and has no US forces or would you prefer a united Germany with ties to NATO and assurances that there would be no extension of NATO’s current jurisdiction eastward?” Part of the text that follows is redacted, but judging from the (also partially redacted) reply by Gorbachev, I would guess that Baker described what the Germans might do if the Americans were to leave (the redaction would makes sense as it would be quite offensive to the Germans). Gorbachev says, “We don’t really want to see a replay of Versailles, where the Germans were able to arm themselves… The best way to constraint that process is to ensure that Germany is contained within European structures. What you said to me about your approach and your preference is very realistic. So let’s think about that. But don’t ask me to give you a bottom line right now.”
All of this makes it abundantly clear that the discussion was how to manage the inevitable German unification that Poland and Hungary, among others, could consider threatening to their security. The US was proposing to keep Germany in NATO so that it would not have an excuse to arm and potentially go nuclear, and also not to put any NATO troops in the former GDR, which would mean that despite the territorial enlargement of a NATO member, NATO’s jurisdiction would not move eastward. This would reassure Germany’s neighbors and their security concerns. Gorbachev is noncommittal, obviously so, given the need to consider various aspects of this proposal, which would mean internal consultations. Despite the pressing timeline, there is no sense that such an important decision would be made in haste and any critical detail would be overlooked.
Nothing here suggests any hint about possible future NATO membership for Warsaw Pact countries – which are in fact described as being so worried about German revisionism that they prefer the Americans to stay in Europe to restrain that – let alone republics of the very much existing Soviet Union that would not be independent for years. It’s a fancy projection to read anything different into this memorandum. The gloss provided by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton at the National Security Archive is so obviously tendentious that it borders on historical malpractice.
In the end, you don’t have to take just the above logic and evidence for my interpretation. This is what Gorbachev himself said in October 2014:
Journalist: One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.”
Gorbachev: The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context.
I think Gorbachev put it best later in that interview: “don’t portray Gorbachev and the then-Soviet authorities as naïve people who were wrapped around the West’s finger.”
The Paris Charter
One could, of course, argue that while the 1989-90 talk mentioning NATO and European security structure was only about Germany, it’s not unreasonable to extend this argument to the rest of Eastern Europe (I will deal with the former Soviet republics separately because these really were beyond the thoughts of the participants at that point).
Gorbachev did something like that when, speaking in the context of the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, he said that NATO’s enlargement violated “the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.” However, his actual explanation refers to the actions of the West from 1993 on, when he believes the decision to enlarge NATO was taken. In his view, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe was “a vital political document designed by all the European countries, the U.S., and Canada” should have been the foundation for security in Europe but that the West ignored Russia and failed to consider its interests, such as “NATO expansion, missile defense plans, the West’s actions in regions of importance to Russia (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine).”
This is somewhat curious interpretation of the Paris Charter, signed on November 21 1990, which contains the following provisions:
- we renew our pledge to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or from acting in any other manner inconsistent with the principles or purposes of those documents
- With the ending of the division of Europe, we will strive for a new quality in our security relations while fully respecting each other’s freedom of choice in that respect. Security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the others
- Our relations will rest on our common adherence to democratic values and to human rights and fundamental freedoms. We are convinced that in order to strengthen peace and security among our States, the advancement of democracy, and respect for and effective exercise of human rights, are indispensable
- The unprecedented reduction in armed forces resulting from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, together with new approaches to security and cooperation within the CSCE process, will lead to a new perception of security in Europe and a new dimension in our relations. In this context we fully recognize the freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements
- The participation of both North American and European States is a fundamental characteristic of the CSCE; it underlies its past achievements and is essential to the future of the CSCE process
- Although the threat of conflict in Europe has diminished, other dangers threaten the stability of our societies. We are determined to co-operate in defending democratic institutions against activities which violate the independence, sovereign equality or territorial integrity of the participating States. These include illegal activities involving outside pressure, coercion and subversion
The Charter, which the USSR signed and Gorbachev said was to be the basis for a new security structure in Europe explicitly says, more than once, that each state can choose its own security arrangements – joining NATO is certainly among them. It also says that the security of any one state is linked to the security of all, which means there is no basis for the USSR then and Russia now to be claiming some unique rights to determine the foreign policies of other states, let alone control them. In fact, the Charter commits everyone to work to ensure the “independence, sovereign equality or territorial integrity of the participating States.”
The Charter also makes it abundantly clear that the foundation of this security is to be found in the European countries being democratic. In other words, it is an explicit repudiation of the notion of spheres of influence or security buffers that Russia uses to claim influence in Eastern Europe and other former Soviet republics. Consistent with the spirit of the times which will find its ultimate expression in Fukuyama’s End of History (1992), the idea was that peace and security could only be achieved through a Kantian Peace (democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations) rather than the old-fashioned Realpolitik. The Charter reaffirms the pivotal role to be played by the USA in the security of Europe.
It is not easy to reconcile Gorbachev’s take with the contents of the actual document the USSR signed. While there is clearly a commitment to take Soviet (and later, Russian) security interests into account, it is also abundantly clear that this did not somehow mean that the sovereign rights of other states to choose their alliances would somehow be abridged, let alone that Moscow can demand an exclusion zone of interests that include all its neighbors. It was, in fact, Russia that violated not just the spirit but the letter of this treaty when it arrogated to itself the right to interfere in the politics of signatory states, violating their sovereignty, and eventually territorial integrity.
To maintain the idea that the Soviets were duped by Western promises is to willfully overlook that they signed a formal agreement that explicitly allowed states to choose to become NATO members. Unlike the German unification treaty, they did not include anything at all about NATO in this document.
The following year was even more eventful: 1991 saw the creation of the Visegrad Group (Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia) to seek integration in the EU and NATO (February 15), the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (July 1), and the NATO Rome Summit (November 8) that affirmed the commitment to NATO enlargement and created the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) to improve relations between the alliance and former Warsaw Pact members. During the inaugural meeting of NACC where NATO members met with non-member states and which began on December 20, the Soviet ambassador announced that the USSR had been dissolved and the was now representing Russia.
The Belovezha Accords and Creation of CIS
The breakup of the Soviet Union is important here for several reasons. First, it created 15 independent states, some of which already had conflicts that the Soviets had not managed to solve.
Second, three of these states – the Baltics – were special: many Western countries had never recognized their forced incorporation into the USSR in 1940 and the three had maintained active diplomatic representation in the respective Western states throughout the Cold War. When the Soviets asked the Americans not to support their independence, they were making a politically impossible request because in the eyes of the US the Baltics had been independent all along. The Baltics were therefore expected to distance themselves immediately from whatever form the post-Sovet arrangement of the other former republics took, and there was good reason to believe the West would welcome them before they would consider any other of these republics.
Third, it was not immediately obvious what relations Russia – the largest and most powerful of the successor states – would have with the others, especially with the three nominally nuclear states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
Fourth, the breakup created a new distribution of power in Europe because while Russia was still immensely strong militarily, it was considerably weaker than the Soviet Union had been. While it could present a threat to all its neighbors, its relative power with respect to NATO had plummeted. This suggested that there would be even greater interest in Moscow in maintaining cordial relations with the Alliance so that disarmament agreements could continue. On the American side, the collapse of the USSR ushered a whole new set of headaches, from worries about nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands to having to rethink the entire raison d’etre of its Alliance with the Europeans.
Since the admission into NATO of the (thus far only) former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia was more than a decade in the future, the most relevant aspect the needs to be discussed here is Russia’s attitude to the foreign policies of the other newly independent countries, and especially toward their territorial integrity and security arrangements.
The instrument of dissolution of the USSR known as the Belovezha Accords was signed on December 8 1991 in Minsk by Russia (Yeltsin), Belarus (Shushkevich), and Ukraine (Kravchuk). Even though these were among the four founding members of the Soviet Union (the other one, Transcaucasia was broken up in 1936 to form Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan), there was some question if they had the authority to decide for the rest. This was settled less than a fortnight later, on December 21 in Alma Ata, when eight of the remaining twelve Soviet republics joined the three in the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). With the majority declaring the Soviet Union was dead, it indeed was. Georgia, which had a reactionary regime, would not join CIS until 1992, and the Baltics refused to participate altogether.
The accords and the Alma-Ata declaration commit the signatories to the following principles:
- recognition and respect for each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of existing borders
- “respect for State sovereignty, the inalienable right to self-determination, the principles of equality and non-intervention in internal affairs, of abstention from the use of force and from economic or other means of applying pressure and of settling controversial issues through agreement, and other universally recognized principles and norms of international law”
- equality among existing members “through coordinating bodies constituted on the basis of parity and operating under a procedure to be determined by agreements between the parties in the Commonwealth, which is neither a State nor a supra-State entity.
- “unified command of strategic military forces and joint control over nuclear weapons will be maintained; the parties will respect each other’s efforts to achieve the status of a nuclear-free and/or neutral State”
The first three collectively affirm the rights of signatories to conduct their security policies – except for nukes – in a sovereign manner and commit all of them, Russia included, not to use military or economic coercion to settle any disputes. Thus, we see here Russia repeating to the other former Soviet republics the promise that the Soviets made to the Central and Eastern Europeans to let them choose their alliances freely.
The exception for nuclear weapons was designed to deal with the sudden proliferation of nukes. Belarus and Ukraine (in the Belavezha Accords) and Kazakhstan (in Alma-Ata Declaration) undertook to accede to the 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons as non-nuclear states. They were not to transfer any nuclear weapons, explosive devices in technology or control, direct or indirect, over such weapons to any third parties except for Russia. All tactical nuclear weapons on their territories were to be withdrawn to “central bases adjacent to the manufacturing plants for dismantling under joint control” by July 1 1992. Until nuclear disarmament was complete, Russia was to retain operational control of the nuclear forces, and decisions for their use would be made by the President of Russia with the consent of the participating states.
While Belarus and Kazakhstan ratified the CIS Charter in 1993 and duly complied with these provisions, Ukraine refused to do so (neither did Turkmenistan). I have detailed the acute security problem Ukrainians already felt and why they were reluctant to give up their nuclear status elsewhere, so I will not belabor it here. Suffice it to say that with enormous prodding by the West, especially by the Americans, Ukraine was induced to transfer to Russia or destroy its nuclear weapons and delivery systems in exchange for security assurances (not guarantees) of its territorial integrity by Russia (Budapest Memorandum, December 5 1994).
Ironically for the “broken promises” proponents, whatever vague assurances they claim the Russians inferred from verbal statements by Western policymakers, it was the Russians that would break the clearly written assurances they gave Ukraine in this agreement just a decade later. One pro-Kremlin “defense” of this is that these assurances are not legally binding (which is why they are often used with states not known to abide by agreements) but critics have widely deplored the practice of issuing them precisely because they do not seem to add anything to the existing situation.
The bottom line is that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia took a position with respect to the other republics that was essentially equivalent to what the USSR had with respect to the Eastern bloc. As we shall see next, it extended these principles to the CEE states as well.
Yeltsin’s 1993 Letter to Clinton
On October 9 1993, Yeltsin wrote to Clinton after trips to Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia where he had seen the “rather explicit aspiration of these countries, as well as of a number of other states of Central and Eastern Europe, to get closer to NATO and to achieve integration, in one form or another, into the alliance.” What follows is a very candid acknowledgement of their security concerns and the repeatedly affirmed Soviet/Russian acceptance of their right to choose how to deal with them:
“Naturally, we expressed our appreciation of the sovereign right of any state to choose how it ensures its own security, including by participation in politico-military alliances. We are also sympathetic to the by no means nostalgic sentiments of the East Europeans toward past ‘cooperation’ within the framework of the Warsaw Pact. Overall, the impression is that they do have grounds for a certain amount of apprehension about their security.”
But then he goes on to essentially ask the Americans to deny any such request for entry into NATO because “the primary threat to Europe is now posed, not by confrontation between East and West but by a new generation of inter-ethnic conflicts. Quantitative expansion of NATO will hardly solve the problem of how to counteract these conflicts effectively.” Not only does he not base the argument on alleged Russian vulnerability arising from this proposed expansion, but he explicitly says so: “we understand, of course, that any possible integration of East European countries into NATO will not automatically lead to the alliance somehow turning against Russia. NATO is not being viewed as a bloc in opposition to us.” Instead, he argues that public opinion “might react to such a step. Not only the opposition [that is, the anti-Western camp], but moderate circles as well, would no doubt perceive this as a sort of neo-isolation of our country in diametric opposition to its natural admission into Euro-Atlantic space.”
To buttress his argument that NATO should not accept former Warsaw Pact members, Yeltsin also cites “the spirit of the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, signed in September 1990, especially its provisions that prohibit the deployment of foreign troops within the eastern lands of the Federal Republic of Germany, precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East.” Note, in particular, that there is no reference to any verbal assurances for non-enlargement. Yeltsin infers a commitment from the “spirit” of the treaty, not from statements made by Western officials.
(It is worth noting that the NSA gloss on this is appalling: they describe the letter as expressing “Yeltsin’s strong stance against rapid expansion” and claim that “the letter cites the security assurances that the Russians thought they received during the negotiations on German unification.” How strong the opposition was given the reasons Yeltsin decided to highlight is at least debatable, but the claim about citing assurances is plainly false.)
What is one to make of this? On the one hand, Russia is publicly telling everyone that they have the sovereign right to choose their own security arrangements, but on the other hand it is privately asking the US to deny that right. Yeltsin argues that there’s no reason to expand NATO because the conflicts in Europe are inter-ethnic, which of course conveniently ignores the already-apparent problem of Russia intervening in its neighbors’ domestic policies over such conflicts – the wars in Moldova (Transnistria, 1990-92) and Georgia (Abkhazia, 1992-93) were already facts at the time.
Yeltsin, of course, had in mind the breakup of Yugoslavia, where wars had been raging since 1991. Here, we must also recall that President Bush sent James Baker to Belgrade in June 1991 to warn the republics that the US would not recognize them and that Washington preferred Yugoslavia to remain unified. (Bush would tell essentially the same thing to the Ukrainian Parliament in August of that year.) Predictably, this had no effect on the conflict, which then engulfed Bosnia-Herzegovina. In January 1993, the US and UK formulated the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, which the Croats and Bosniaks agreed to but the Bosnian Serbs torpedoed. The EC threatened to sanction Yugoslavia on the presumption that its President Milosevic was pulling the strings at the time when the Bosnian Serbs under Karadzhich were openly defying him. By the time Yeltsin wrote his letter, the Bosniaks had lost nearly 90% of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s territory to Serbs, Croats, and fellow Muslims fighting against them.
In the end, it would take a NATO intervention to eventually bring this conflict to an end in 1995. This is especially ironic given Yeltsin’s assertion that NATO would not be helpful in solving “inter-ethnic” conflicts (despite frequently asserted to be such, the Wars of Yugoslav Dissolution were much more complicated than that).
In the letter, Yeltsin also implicitly threatens with “public opinion” that should enlargement happen, the hardliners in Russia might derail further cooperation because it would undermine the domestic standing of reformers. In this Yeltsin was likely right in the sense that many Russians did perceive – and did not like – their waning influence in world affairs.
At no point, however, does Yeltsin cite alleged security concerns of the Russian Federation. Instead, he goes to some lengths to deny that the expansion would cause them.
To understand what Yeltsin is really asking, imagine if the US had agreed to this, blocked the eagerly-sought entry of the three Visegrad countries, and went with Yeltsin’s proposal to address their concerns through some sort of official Russian guarantees of “sovereign territorial integrity, inviolability of frontiers” that would be joint with NATO, with which Russia’s relations would be “a few degrees warmer than those between the alliance and Eastern Europe.” If you missed that last bit, read what he says next —
“Russia-NATO rapprochement, including through cooperation in the area of peacemaking, should proceed at a faster rate. It would be possible to involve the East Europeans in this process as well.”
— before dangling the prospect of Russia even perhaps joining NATO one day.
The “broken promises” supporters somehow read this as Yeltsin pursuing an “indivisible” security based on “pan-European security structure” that would fully integrate Russia on an equal basis with everyone else. Except that what he is proposing here is very different: it is that Russia and NATO should cooperate over the heads of the CEE countries (the temperature reference), settle issues amongst themselves, and then “involve” the CEE states in what effectively be a fait accompli. This is an argument for a return to Realpolitik, not a new security architecture for Europe.
What would be the reaction of CEE countries in the context of Russian irredentism in its near abroad if the US denies their entry into NATO while Russia loudly proclaims that they have the right to enter? This is not difficult to foresee: it would have seriously undermined the pro-democracy reforms in these countries by amplifying the opposition that pushed for retaining close ties with Russia. None of these countries could hope to withstand Russian interference in their politics without the security provided by NATO, and everyone understood that, including the Russians.
Thus, while it is true that Yeltsin did not like the idea of NATO enlargement, his reasons were not some security concerns for Russia but the very real dilution of Russian influence over its neighbors because the NATO security umbrella would allow the CEE countries to pursue policies they want rather than the ones Moscow wished them to. But Yeltsin was not prepared to come out and say it, so he tried to get the Americans to take the hit instead. So what did the Americans do?
The NATO-Russia Founding Act, 1997
The Americans engaged in a very public internal debate about the desirability of accepting the CEE candidates. While Gorbachev cites 1993 as the year in which the decision to expand NATO was irrevocably taken, the debate would not be resolved until December 1996, when President Clinton publicly called for the first three new members to be admitted in 1999.
Opponents focused on the costs of this enlargement and argued that the US did not have core interests in Eastern Europe, that the CEE countries would not contribute meaningfully to NATO’s capabilities, and that the enlargement would anger the Russians, causing a deterioration in the emerging cooperative relationship. They argued that enlarging NATO at a time when Russia’s conventional forces were in disarray would cause Moscow to double down on its nuclear deterrent, which would derail arms control treaties (START II ratification, for example).
The supporters argued that NATO’s open door policy is an essential component of the alliance, that NATO membership would buttress the political and economic transitions in CEE, that it was purely defensive, and that Russia’s security concerns can be alleviated in a manner similar to what had been done with respect to the GDR: admittance into the alliance structure but without stationing of nuclear weapons or foreign troops in these countries.
It is important to remember that all these discussions were taking place against the backdrop of the First Chechen War that broke out in December 1994 and that would last until August 1996. During this war, the US and the EU supported Russia even after this became difficult following the revelations of war crimes the Russians were committing in Chechnya. Clinton refused to criticize Yeltsin’s conduct of the war, and the EU actually signed a Partnership Agreement with Russia right in the middle of the war.
The contrast between the West and the former Eastern bloc was stark: Poland, the Baltics, Czechia, and Ukraine all offered open and unequivocal support for Chechnya, with Hungary being somewhat more cautious, and even Romania and Bulgaria condemning the violence. Popular opinion tended to sympathize with the Chechens, and soon support for NATO membership swelled. In Bulgaria, the Socialist Party that had been opposing it was swept from power. It was during this period that cooperation with NATO intensified as states in the former Soviet sphere became very concerned about the direction that Russia was taking and sought enhanced security within NATO.
The Russian reaction to Clinton’s 1996 announcement was not to denounce the enlargement and demand that it be stopped. Instead, it signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security on May 27, 1997. This agreement stated the following:
- “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries,” and both NATO and Russia had carried out radical reductions of its armed forces, conventional and nuclear, with Russia withdrawing its nuclear forces from all other countries
- Affirmation of the “respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples’ right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents”
- The “German formula” of NATO enlargement in the explicit promise not to station nuclear weapons “on the territory of new members” (including no new nuclear storage facilities and no change to NATO’s nuclear posture) as well as to not station foreign NATO troops on their soil (integration would be carried out “by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces”
In other words, whatever grumblings the Russians had about CEE countries joining NATO, the document they signed clearly envisioned that the expansion would take place under the German formula of “no nukes, no troops” and that Russia was (again!) explicitly acknowledging the right of independent states to pursue their foreign policy objectives in a sovereign manner. It is simply impossible to argue with a straight face that some previous assurances that NATO would not enlarge were the driving motivation for their behavior.
No such reference is made in the June 26 1997 open letter signed by more than 40 American foreign policy experts urging Clinton not to accept new members because Russia was not a threat. They called it “a policy error of historic proportions.” This letter did not mention Russia’s aggressive policies in Moldova and Georgia, let alone the war in Chechnya. It did not mention any security concerns of the CEE countries, let alone their right to self-determination and alliance choices. Instead, it claimed that the enlargement “will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems.” None of the three candidates had any of these, as did any of the ones admitted in the wave that followed. It should surprise no one who reads the list of signatories to see a who’s who of Cold War-era policy-makers and academics who were not only accustomed to thinking in superpower bloc-style politics that disregarded the sovereign wishes of “insignificant” countries but had also managed to demonstrate their expertise by utterly failing to foresee the demise of the Soviet Union, which started with the Velvet Revolutions in exactly these insignificant countries they dismissed as mere satellites to Moscow.
It should be pointed out that NATO has scrupulously observed the commitments it made in the 1997 agreement with Russia. Until the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Alliance only sent small advisory and training teams to its eastern flank members. Even after 2014, the revised Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) framework that envisioned the stationing of several multinational battlegroups there only led to the deployment of about 4,600 NATO troops by 2021 (these were spread into several small battlegroups). Even now, after two years of war in Ukraine, these battlegroups have not grown appreciably except in Poland, where the US-led group has swollen to 10,500. The total number of troops NATO deploys in CEE now is about 18,000 in the battlegroups, and if we include air and naval assets, high readiness teams, and logistical support, the total would go up to 40,000. In contrast, in 1989 the US was still maintaining about 250,000 troops in Germany alone.
Also per this agreement, no nuclear weapons were ever placed in CEE countries.
Conclusion
Russia was never misled, deliberately or otherwise, by the West when it came to NATO, and the West never sought to take unilateral advantage of the events unfolding in Europe. Looking back at the events, the inescapable conclusion is exactly the opposite. Confronted with events beyond their control – ironically driven by the states dismissed as irrelevant – both Russia and the US sought to manage them in a way that would reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding and new tensions. They both did this as the superpowers were accustomed to: finding a mutually acceptable modus vivendi given the things they could not stop, and then “selling” the smaller powers on participating in that arrangement. NATO enlargement was not sought by the US as a matter of policy. The US administration was, quite reluctantly as the evidence shows, pushed into considering first unified Germany and then the Eastern European countries for membership in the alliance. In the German case, security concerns about the consequences of unification eventually drove both sides to agree that a unified Germany should remain in NATO. In the Eastern European case, the nature of democratic politics at home made it virtually impossible to resist their ascension to NATO. The desire to support the democratic process there as well as their continued integration into Europe meant that their security concerns arising from Russia’s behavior in its near abroad could not be ignored. It took several years of domestic deliberation for the side supporting their admission into NATO to emerge victorious. But even then, the US took care to assuage any potential security risks to Russia by repeating the formula that had worked so well for Germany: no nukes, no troops.
The Russians did not like their waning influence in Central and Eastern Europe, and certainly did not welcome NATO enlargement or the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1995. But, contrary to the projections of the advocates of “broken promises” narrative, they did not articulate specific security concerns. Rather, they wanted to curb Western influence in their near-abroad and they sought America’s cooperation for that. The US played a similar game, trying to accommodate the Russians more often than not. Eventually, the domestic criticism by conservatives that Russia is getting too much of a say in our foreign policy and the impossibility of resisting the aspirations of the Eastern Europeans while claiming to be the beacon of democracy – a policy especially prominent with Clinton’s “democratic enlargement” – gave the proponents of enlargement the upper hand in Washington.
What happened with the relationship after 1999 will be the subject of the next installment.
Branislav L. Slantchev 