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Ukraine-Russia crisis: Where do we go from here? | Conflict Zone

Here is what Gorbachev actually said to RBTH in 2014:

Mikhail Gorbachev: I am against all walls

"The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed."

Prior to the above statement one can read how RBTH presented his other claims about this matter:

"RBTH: 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.""

"M.G.: 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 singe 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. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it."

"Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled. The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been observed all these years. So don't portray Gorbachev and the then-Soviet authorities as naïve people who were wrapped around the West's finger. If there was naïveté, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia at first did not object."

Gorbachev's version of the story, as presented by RBTH, is confusing, but he did say that NATO expansion " ... was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990". So according to this particular claim it's technically not untrue to say that NATO didn't make any promises in 1990, because NATO made assurances. Tim Sebastian presented fake news when he didn't inform the audience about what Gorbachev actually said.

It was arguably the biggest contractual blunder of the 20th century when the Russian leaders didn't demand that NATO's assurances should be written down in a way that's legally binding. Perhaps they were too shocked by events in 1990 to keep in mind that a proper contract was necessary. But the crucial point is that the Russians seemed to get a deal in regard to Eastern Germany which NATO respected, or as Gorbachev said in the interview: "The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been observed all these years." This is crucial info when trying to determine whether NATO or Kremlin is being the most truthful in this case. I will argue that Kremlin is closest to the truth, because it's obvious that when Russia objected to Western military expansion in East Germany it also naturally implied that NATO should not expand farther east than East Germany. It doesn't make sense that Russia would tolerate NATO expansion in Poland but object to Western military expansion in East Germany.

The well-known history of Russia (1812 and 1941) and the basic principles of political realism (balance of power etc) make it clear that Russia in 1990 would never have agreed if the topic of NATO expansion eastward, all the way to Russia's border, had been discussed back then. (As we'll see below this general expansion was indeed discussed, or so it appears...)

NATO knew in the 1990s and still knows today that Russia never wanted NATO expansion eastward, but tricky Washington politicians saw a big "loophole" in the agreements with Kremlin and exploited it for all it was worth. This "loophole" was the lack of a written treaty.

Russia is an empire, similar more or less to how the US and EU are empires. I don't feel sorry for any empire. Kremlin got screwed, because it forgot basic political realism: a deal made behind closed doors doesn't exist if it's not written down, if it's not a legally binding document. NATO however forgot a more basic feature of international politics: the anarchic condition between states, which implies that raw power is ultimately more important than any verbal or written agreements. Hence Russian military forces near Ukraine's border today.

Neoliberal NATO ignored warnings from George Kennan. The Financial Times:

Letter: Kennan did not mince his words on Nato expansion

"The architect of the cold war policy of containment did not mince words in arguing that "expanding Nato would be the most fateful error in American policy in the entire post-cold war era"."

Washington's neoliberal shock doctrine contributed to destroying Russia in the 1990s, cf The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Russia was initially open to the idea of NATO membership. The Guardian:

Ex-Nato head says Putin wanted to join alliance early on in his rule

In the book No Room for Russia by William Hill (Columbia University Press, 2018) one can read: " ... the European Union ... explicitly excluded Russia. ... When Brussels explained that Russia was simply too big to be integrated successfully into the growing "United Europe," Moscow understood it to mean too alien, too eastern, too Soviet, too "Russian.""

Russia is no saint, far from it, see Chechnya for example, but it's unrealistic to demand that a chaotic poverty-struck empire in the 1990s should have acted rationally and civilized. American and Western European countries have been involved in torture, war crimes and illegal renditions after 9/11. Amnesty said in 2009 that Norway uses torture, because of its practice of solitary confinement. NRK: Regjeringen anklages for tortur This is not whataboutism. Two wrongs don't make a right. Just saying that human beings are carnivores who sometimes do bad things after their attempts at doing good have been thwarted. Russia should have been integrated in the international system like Germany and Japan after 1945. But integration requires that also Russia does it part. Have not studied all the details of what happened since 1990, but Russia is an empire, so one can take it for granted that Kremlin has not always made it easy for NATO and EU.

To read transcripts which show that the West assured Russia of "not one inch eastward" check out National Security Archive (Dec 12, 2017):

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard

"The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates's criticism of "pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn't happen."[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is "led to believe."" (...)

"This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about "closer to the Soviet borders" is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did." (...)

"Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the "not one inch eastward" formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev's statement in response to the assurances that "NATO expansion is unacceptable." Baker assured Gorbachev that "neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place," and that the Americans understood that "not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction." (See Document 6)"

When you study the entire nuanced history of NATO expansion from the 1990s to 2022 you will see that corporate and state media today are often embarrassingly misleading. When NATO continues to present a clearly inadequate version of the story it only confirms that you can't trust NATO. Don't trust Kremlin either. Power corrupts, so from this axiom it follows that all empires are corrupt, both in the East and West.