Mikhail Gorbachev himself has declared that "The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was never discussed; it was not raised in those years. I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either".
This author can personally testify that enlargement was not a hot topic in NATO circles in 1990-1991: rather, many encouraged new democracies to seek integration into the EU as an alternative. Furthermore, at that time, when pressed by new leaders of Central Europe, both US and NATO officials told them that the issue was not on the agenda.
Some Western officials such as German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher did declare that they would not seek NATO enlargement, or that they did not think it could happen. But they spoke in a personal capacity (and could not comment on other NATO members anyway).
No US or NATO promise was ever made to not enlarge to the East of Germany. Scholars who argue otherwise refer to alleged Soviet perceptions. But there is scant archival evidence that such perceptions existed. Moreover, such a promise would have broken the OSCE Founding Act, which grants its signatories "the right to be or not to be a party to treaties of alliance". Finally, a simple argument should put the controversy to rest: if such assurances had been given, can one seriously believe that Moscow would not have insisted that they are put in written form and/or made public?
Moreover, up until recently the Kremlin never really complained about NATO enlargement. In 1997, Boris Yeltsin asked Bill Clinton to refuse any admission of a former Soviet Republic in the Alliance. Clinton declined. This would not deter Russia from signing the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Yeltsin later recognized that he failed to persuade Clinton and did not seem to make it a cause for crisis. In line with Yeltsin’s admission, Vladimir Putin did not make the second wave of NATO enlargement a casus belli with the West: when it was formally decided to invite the Baltic States to join in 2002, he stated that their entry would "not be a tragedy". That same year, Moscow welcomed the creation of the NATO-Russia Council. In fact, Mr. Putin only started to complain about NATO enlargement after his return to the presidency in 2012, concurrently with the radicalization of his domestic policies.
The EU as a force of attraction
The case for enlargement to the East as a NATO provocation is thus more than dubious. And the Kremlin knows very well that Ukraine, just like Georgia, is not about to join the Atlantic Alliance. To be sure, they were both offered to do so in 2008. However, due to French and German opposition in particular, this was stated just as a principle, with no immediate pathway opened to membership. (In retrospect, this may have been a bad compromise, since it opened the way for Russian military intervention without fear of Western military involvement.) As a result, there is zero chance of a consensus in the North Atlantic Council to include them any time soon.
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