The US promised the Soviets that, as part of Germany’s reunification in 1990, they would not seek the advantage of expanding NATO. There was no formal agreement.
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
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.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]…
After the USSR collapsed, all assurances were off the table.
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The mass media liars have proven to be so unreliable that we cannot accept a word they say about Putin or anything else. We have lived in a near total disinformation society while believing we were the leaders of the “free” world. What a joke!
The Obvious should not have needed a Contract. Pushing East Like, Adolph Hitler, would cause a WAR. Naturally, Common Sense is Missing in America.
It was still our word, which we violated.
The 2 agreements on Ukraine were official, and guaranteed neutrality. That makes us the bad side in Ukraine. As we found out recently, some officials never took the promise seriously. So, they were liars and cheaters.
I’ll stay right here on the US side of the fence, and back the real NATO. You people can be ruled under UN agenda 2030. Driven to and fro like sheep. Not on my time. And Putin was a avid backer of all the UN global mandates.
Russia today is NOT the same as it was under the Communist Soviet Union. Much like the Germany of today is not the same as Nazi Germany, Italy not the same as Fascist Italy, and Japan not the same as Imperial Japan. They are very different and we have been blowing an opportunity to turn an enemy to an ally like we did with Germany, Italy, and Japan after WWII!