At the heart of the brewing conflict between (Putin’s) Russia and Ukraine is the claim that NATO promised during the reunification of Germany never to expand to the east. Former Soviet leader Gorbachev confirms that this claim is flatly FALSE, as you shall see below. Yet, the claim still garners undue currency from both America’s conservatives (who secretly worship Putin’s authoritarianism, militarism, racism, and sexism) and some of the America’s Left (who often start from a point of criticism of American policy and wrongly believe here that bashing NATO and the US will somehow “keep us out of war”). For what it’s worth, the concerns of war between Russia and the U.S are completely off base since we already know there is zero chance America will send soldiers to fight against Russia, even if Putin does start the largest bloodbath since World War II by invading and killing his own kinsmen in Ukraine.
So, why, do people still buy this outright and quite frankly audacious lie that NATO broke its “promise” not to expand east? Well, Putin gets a lot of credit for starting the lie through his propaganda operatives, who regularly seem to help him concoct revisionist, pseudohistorical lies by mining out-of-context quotes from old documents and then applying them to very different contexts than where were originally intended. For example, in Putin’s blustery and bellicose speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference he said the following:
February 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference:
And we have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? … I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.” Where are these guarantees?
While this quote may appear at first to raise a valid concern, it turns out to be 100% bogus borscht. When Mr. Woener said we would “not place a NATO army outside of Germany” he was referring specifically to not moving a non-German NATO army from West Germany to the territory of East Germany. The full text of Woerner’s speech makes it abundantly clear that the comments referred only to NATO forces in former East Germany, not a broader commitment to never enlarge NATO. But, in case you’re still not convinced, I also submit proof to you based on the unassailable logic of the historical timeline. At the time these comments were made in 1990, no one yet envisioned that all the countries of the Warsaw Pact would leave. They certainly did not envision that they would one day join NATO. This did not happen until 1997. So, the idea that a promise was made 7 years earlier about something that no one even conceived of at the time is a bit hard to believe. This would be a bit like making promises about the post-Brexit world 7 years before anyone had ever heard of Brexit.
However, Putin’s revisionism is part of a pattern in which he and his operatives selectively mine quotations from old speeches and then apply them a-historically to a situation that did not exist at the time the comment was originally made. When Putin originally invaded Ukraine in 2014 he seized on out-of-context quotes from a 2013 speech by Assistant Secretary of State Vicky Nuland where she mentions $5 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine (since its independence in 1991). He then claims the quotes prove that the US spent $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is rated as a Pants-on-Fire Lie by Politifact (see previous link). Similarly, Putin also appears to be behind a leaked phone call by Nuland from several weeks before Ukrainian President and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych fled the country. The fact that Nuland mentions “Yats is the guy...” is interpreted by Putin and his apologists as saying “the fix is in” for the U.S. to overthrow Yanukovych and “install” Arseniy Yatsenyuk. In actual fact, no one “overthrew” Yanukovych. He unpredictably fled in the night because his security detail deserted him. Also, the context of what Nuland actually said is that she thought “Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, he’s got the governing experience” ...to be Prime Minister...not President. He did ultimately end up becoming Prime Minister, but considering that he had already been a Deputy Prime Minister under Yanukovych and that Yanukovych himself had offered him the job of Prime Minister a month earlier makes Nuland’s speculation about “Yats” being a good guy for the job not exactly a difficult thing to imagine or think desirable, and hardly proof of a conspiracy theory.
But, getting back to Putin’s current conspiracy theories about NATO expansion, if you want to know precisely what was discussed regarding NATO and German reunification, we have it from no less an authority than former Soviet leader Gorbachev himself exactly what was agreed to in 1990:
“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 obeyed all these years.”
To put a final point on this issue, Mr. Gorbachev was then directly asked if the topic of promising to never expand NATO was discussed in any way. He unequivocally rejects this assertion, saying:
“The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
So, with all this documentation, I think reasonable people can put to rest the notion that any promises were ever made, whether written or verbal, to not expand NATO. But, there is another issue, of course. It is a practical one. Even if no promises were made, surely the expansion of NATO is a real concern for Russia and a sign that we are posing a grave threat to their security.
Well, there is no doubt NATO has expanded, and if you choose to see, as Putin does, NATO and Russia from an empire vs. empire perspective, I suppose that part of the argument seems intuitive. Although, to be more accurate, NATO is not a conscious entity that simply wished to expand. Additional countries requested permission to join the alliance. Many of them had a history of being invaded and occupied by Russia and/or the Soviet Union. So, many of them were quite keen on the idea of a defensive alliance to prevent future invasion. However, in most cases, the initial answer to these requests was a resounding “No!” But, after working to meet numerous requirements and persistently requesting membership, many former Warsaw Pact countries were eventually admitted to the alliance.
The point is, however, if NATO wished to expand its “empire” in order to menace Russia, why did it ever reject these Eastern European countries from membership and why does it continue to reject other countries, like Ukraine and Georgia today? If the narrative of an imperialistic NATO is to be believed, you’d think they would have jumped at the chance to have members states right up on the Russian border where they could mount a quick attack on Russia. However, first of all, it should be pointed out that with the exception of the tiny Baltic republics and the enclave of Kaliningrad, which the Soviet Union carved out of East Prussia, and still occupies today, NATO is not directly positioned on the borders of Russian territory. NATO countries border Ukraine and Belarus. Perhaps, it is telling that when Putin talks of how much NATO is butting right up onto “his” borders, he probably still considers the borders of these two independent republics to be “his” borders. However, the reality is, not only are NATO countries generally in no position to threaten Russian borders, the alliance has never stationed any significant outside military forces on the territory of its new Eastern European members. The only time even a small number of outside NATO assets have been stationed in Eastern Europe has been after Putin’s clandestine invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. So, if we want to say that anything is causing an increased risk to Russia, it appears that Putin’s own aggressive invasions of neighboring countries are what is causing them to adopt a more defensive posture toward him. This is not unreasonable.
So, why is Putin so obsessed with the idea that he is under threat from NATO? We obviously cannot see inside his mind, but we can say that there is no added threat to Russia purely because these countries in his general vicinity have joined a defensive alliance. It is only if Russia attacks one of these allied countries that it would come into conflict with the rest of NATO. To sum it up pithily:
Russia is intensely fearful that it has a long border with countries that are out to NOT LET Russia GET THEM.
Perhaps it is this backwards logic—that not allowing Russia to invade you is tantamount to threatening Russia—that drives most of Putin’s paranoia. But, if we want to identify an even bigger threat, and this one is very real, though it applies far more to Putin than to Russia itself: He is worried that many former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet Republics are better off now that they are independent. They are wealthier, more democratic, and Putin’s real fear is that the Russian people will see this and ask why can’t we be like those other countries. That would threaten Putin’s grip on power, so he can’t let that happen.
If we want to counter the anti-democratic tide of dictators like Putin who are promoting resurgent authoritarianism, we need to start by defeating the shabby lies they use to justify their aggression. This article puts to rest the dishonest and a-historical claims that NATO promised to never expand, as well as the idea that its expansion inherently threatens the security of Russia. If we defeat the propaganda, we defeat the dictator.
