Author: Iakob Dadvani
For the past two decades, the narrative of a “broken promise” regarding NATO’s non-enlargement has been central to Russian foreign policy discourse. Russian senior officials have repeated this narrative in various forms on multiple international platforms. The most prominent example came in the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security conference in 2007, when he criticized the West: “NATO expansion represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”
This narrative serves two primary objectives:
- Targeting the Russian domestic auditorium
- Sending a message to the West of the consequences of potential enlargement in its “backyard.”
Domestically, the narrative served to create a moral high ground and to generate national support for invading neighboring independent countries, such as Georgia in 2008, Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Given the profound impact of this claim on geopolitical tensions and military conflicts, it is essential to scrutinize its validity through a historical lens by examining diverse sources, such as briefing books from national security archives and other relevant sources.
First, it is crucial to establish what type of assurance was given, if it was given at all. Second, it is important to investigate why Soviet leader Gorbachev did not insist on formalizing this assurance as a legally binding commitment. Finally, it is worth looking into the explanation that former CIA director Robert Gates posited: “Gorbachev and others were led to believe it wouldn’t happen[1]”.
Gorbachev’s view on the “broken promise”
On examining the statements made by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev regarding the alleged NATO non-enlargement promise, it becomes evident that his remarks were mixed and ambiguous about whether any assurance as made by the U.S. or NATO member states. Gorbachev claimed that “NATO expansion was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years[2],” yet in parallel, he stated:
To understand the ambiguity surrounding Gorbachev’s stance on this matter, it is essential to explore why he agreed to Germany’s reunification without securing a formalized assurance regarding NATO’s future. I will examine potential reasons as to why his stance on that “broken promise” is ambiguous.
Diplomatic negotiations on the reunification of Germany
The reunification of Germany marked a critical juncture in West-Soviet relations, a time when assurances like those in question were most likely to have been made. The first meeting between President H.W. Bush and General Secretary Gorbachev took place at the Malta Summit in December 1989. At this meeting, the U.S. did not provide any formal assurances regarding NATO’s future non-enlargement. However, President Bush did make it clear to Gorbachev that “I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall,” signaling that the U.S. was not interested in supporting revolutions or anti-Soviet movements that would undermine the Soviet position within the Warsaw Pact countries.
The civil unrest and mass demonstrations that began in Leipzig and spread across East Germany in early 1989 were key drivers of the reunification process. In a 1990 speech at Tutzing in Bavaria, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher mentioned that the reunification of Germany and independence of Warsaw Pact countries must not damage the strategic interests of the Soviet Union. He highlighted that “NATO should rule out an expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.”
The first clear verbal assurance of NATO non-enlargement from the American side was made by State Secretary Baker in February 1990, in his meeting with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze. There, he explicitly mentioned that the reunification of Germany would not be utilized by the U.S. and its NATO allies for relative strategic gains, nor would it pose an increased level of threat to the Soviet border. Most importantly, Secretary Baker proposed two case scenarios of how the inevitable reunification process might occur: “Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces? Or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?” A reunified Germany without NATO forces in the country was not the best scenario for either the Soviets or the European countries. Given Germany’s role in starting both world wars, its reunification was viewed as a potential challenge to global stability and balance of power in future.
The negotiations were clearly focused on the reunification process, and it is likely that these alleged assurances were given verbally, specifically in relation to the timeline of German reunification. At that time, the collapse of the Soviet Union was likely seen as a distant prospect, therefore, in the context of the great power competition, the Soviet Union was still treated as a superpower with significant geopolitical interests in the Warsaw Pact countries.
To further analyze the two scenarios Secretary Baker proposed, it is critical to look at them from the Soviet perspective. For Gorbachev, Germany as a member of NATO was a much preferable scenario, as it reduced the likelihood of Germany instigating another world war. The phrase “not one inch eastward” was reiterated by West German chancellor Helmut Kohl during his meeting with Gorbachev in the Kremlin the following day.
In May 1990, Secretary Baker had two meetings with the Soviet leaders. In his meeting with Shevardnadze, he used different rhetoric on the Germany reunification issue: “the process would not yield winners and losers. Instead, it would produce a new legitimate European structure – one that would be inclusive, not exclusive.” This statement illustrates that Secretary Baker did not make any promises to his Soviet counterpart; instead, he assured Shevardnadze that the reunification would not damage the Soviet positioning or reputation on the global stage, as an artificial wall which separates people of the same nation from each other is “cold war cruelty,” and destroying the Berlin Wall would bring both parties out of the crisis as winners.
The new European security structure was a new possibility, yet not a guarantee. When Kohl met Gorbachev in February 1990, they noted that “as part of the Helsinki formula that states choose their own alliances, so Germany could choose NATO.” On account of this, as per the Helsinki formula, Germany was free to choose an alliance. The possibility of a new European security structure, where the Soviet Union was represented, was not in the interest of Germany at this time. Secretary Baker’s second meeting in May was with Gorbachev, where he pointed out that “our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. We had that policy before. Today, we are interested in building a stable Europe and doing it together with you.”
In the wake of this, French President Francois Mitterrand visited the Kremlin in May 1990, where his rhetoric was softer than that of the American. With Gorbachev, he discussed the need for a comprehensive transformation of the European security architecture and the dismantlement of military blocs. Complimentary to this, he highlighted the importance of “creating security conditions [for you], as well as European security as a whole.” In June 1990, his British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, met Gorbachev at the London Summit, where her aim was to transform NATO from a military alliance to a more political one. She also emphasized the need for the Collective West to find ways to reassure the Soviet Union of its security. The rhetoric from both European leaders clearly held contours of assurance, yet neither of them promised NATO non-enlargement.
A changed narrative and diminished assurance from the U.S.
U.S. officials quickly revised their position on the verbal assurances given to Gorbachev. The idea of NATO refraining from eastward expansion was swiftly abandoned by the U.S. and its allies. In a unified Germany, where NATO’s jurisdiction was initially restricted only to the western part of the country, the implementation of Article 5 and its collective security guarantees became technically unfeasible. As a result, President H.W. Bush’s National Security Council opposed the idea of restricting NATO’s expansion. When the final German unification treaty was signed on September 12, 1990, GDR was given “special status.” NATO non-enlargement into East Germany was not mentioned in the memorandum. Despite the verbal assurances, the “special status” did not explicitly state that NATO would refrain from deploying conventional military forces throughout the entirety of unified Germany.
The main question now is why Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany without a formalized, legally binding commitment that NATO would not expand towards Warsaw pact countries, especially considering the conflicting verbal assurances he had received from the U.S. and its NATO allies since the Malta Summit in 1989. Prominent historian Mary Sarotte mentioned in her article that, ultimately, Gorbachev “received 12 billion Deutsch marks to construct housing in exchange for withdrawing Soviet troops, and another three billion in interest-free credit. What he did not receive were any formal guarantees against NATO expansion.”
Conclusion
Gorbachev did not oppose the changed rhetoric from the U.S. and its European allies at the time. Moreover, the absence of any formally signed memorandum containing assurances from the U.S. clearly indicates that initial promises were made verbally to establish the Soviet Union’s negotiating position. In reality, Gorbachev’s stance during the negotiations was even more lenient than U.S. and European officials had anticipated. Throughout the negotiations, Gorbachev was “led to believe” that the reunification of Germany would not be seen as an opportunity by the U.S. and its NATO allies to threaten the Soviet Union’s strategic interests. More importantly, while the Soviet Union had the chance to participate in shaping the new European security architecture, no formal treaty was ever signed to solidify this arrangement.
The reason Gorbachev did not seek a formal agreement on NATO’s future enlargement may lie in the complexities of Soviet domestic politics, particularly the ongoing Perestroika and Glasnost. Instead, he secured much-needed financial aid from West Germany in exchange for refraining from formalizing the “promise”- an assurance that was only relevant during the initial stages of reunification talks.
The Russian propagandistic narrative regarding a “broken promise” on NATO non-expansion is a speculative and historically unfounded claim. Moreover, the verbal assurances given to Gorbachev regarding NATO’s non-expansion lost their significance after the Cold War, since they were never formalized into legally binding agreements and were not recognized by the political leadership of the newly independent states. Even if such assurances had been codified into a formal treaty, their legal validity would have been nullified with the dissolution of the USSR, unless explicitly ratified by the national parliaments of the former Soviet republics.
