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Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO
& these promises were broken
The events of three decades ago are haunting the politics of the present
By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory. He tweets at @tarikcyrilamar.
FILE PHOTO. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin (L) and former American President Bill Clinton (R).
© Getty Images / Larry Downing
With Russia challenging Western unilateralism in a way not seen since the end of the Soviet Union, two major issues keep coming to the fore. Both, it seems, are centered on America's flagship military bloc, NATO.
First, there is Moscow’s claim that there was a Western promise not to expand NATO beyond its Cold War area. Second, there is a Western claim that NATO cannot, let alone will not, put an end to admitting new member states.
This is no mere rhetoric; these are crucial points. Russia’s insistence on a thorough review and comprehensive, bindingly codified reset of post-Cold War security relations with the West hinges on its claim that prior Western assurances were broken. Talk and informal promises, the Kremlin says, are not enough anymore because they have turned out to be unreliable. On the other side of the quarrel, the West is rejecting a Russian key demand – to stop NATO expansion – by entrenching itself behind its claim that NATO simply must keep the door open to new members.
Both claims can be verified. Let’s take a look at the facts. Moscow is right in its assertion that the West has broken its promises.
Such pledges were made twice to Russia, as a matter of fact. In 1990, during the negotiations over the unification of West and East Germany, and then, again, in 1993, when NATO was extending its Partnership for Peace policy eastward. In both cases, the assurances were given by US secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, respectively. And in both cases, they took it upon themselves to speak, in effect, for NATO as a whole.
Despite clear evidence, there are still Western publicists and even active politicians who deny or relativize these facts, such as, for instance, Cold War Re-Enactor and former American ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Let’s address their objections.
Regarding the 1993 promises, the case is extremely simple. As Angela Stent – a widely recognized American foreign policy expert and practitioner with no bias in Russia’s favor – has summarized it in 2019, two “US ambassadors… later admitted that Washington reneged on its promises” – of 1993, that is – “by subsequently offering membership to Central Europe.” Then-Russian president Boris “Yeltsin was correct in believing that explicit promises made… about NATO not enlarging for the foreseeable future were broken when the Clinton administration decided to offer membership,” – and not merely partnership, as Christopher had assured Yeltsin – “to Central Europe.”
The 1990 case is a little more complicated, but not much. There, too, the evidence for an explicit promise is clear. Here is the foremost American expert, Joshua Shifrinson – like Stent beyond any suspicion of favoring Russia – on the issue, writing in 2016:
“In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer… Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, [the] U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’… Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”
To be clear, Shifrinson, a careful scholar, has also explained that American negotiators and leaders started going back on this promise very quickly. But that makes zero difference to two facts: First, the promise was made, and timing suggests strongly that it mattered to Russia’s acquiescence to German unification on entirely Western terms. In other words: Moscow kept its part of the deal, the West did not. Second, even while rapidly backpedaling internally, American politicians continued to give Russia the – false – impression that its security interests would be considered. Put differently, the initial – and consequential – promise was not only broken; the deception was followed up with even more deception.
Those representatives of the West still in denial of what happened in 1990, such as Mark Kramer, for instance, also often quote former Soviet president Gorbachev: He has stated, after all, that the infamous “not-one-inch” promise referred strictly to East Germany only. Hence, the West’s defenders argue, it wasn’t about NATO beyond East Germany at all.
Frankly, though popular, that is an extraordinarily silly argument: First, Gorbachev has an understandable interest in not being held responsible for the security-policy fiasco of letting NATO expand as it liked. Secondly, even if the 1990 negotiations were strictly about East Germany, please remember their real context: The Soviet Union was still there and so was the Warsaw Pact. Thus, two things are obvious – as long as we all argue in good faith: First, in specific terms, the 1990 promise could only be about East Germany. And, second, it of course clearly implied that anything east of East Germany would be, if anything, even more – not less – off-limits to NATO.
Another line of Western defense can only be described as fundamentally dishonest: NATO itself – and apparently the current American secretary of state Antony Blinken as well – now quite suddenly remember that “NATO Allies take decisions by consensus and these are recorded. There is no record of any such decision taken by NATO. Personal assurances from individual leaders cannot replace Alliance consensus and do not constitute formal NATO agreement.”
That sounds great! If only James Baker and Christopher Warren had known about it when making their promises about NATO to Gorbachev and then Yeltsin!
Seriously? Two US secretaries of state address Moscow as if they had the right to speak for and shape NATO. Moscow, very plausibly – given the way NATO really works – assumes that they can. And when these promises are then broken, that is Russia’s problem? News flash: If you really follow that twisted logic, you would have justified the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as “fraternal help” as well. Because formally that’s what it “was.”
What about the West’s contention that NATO must maintain an “open door” policy, or, put differently, cannot possibly agree with Russia to stop expanding? That claim, unlike Moscow’s about NATO promises, is incorrect. Here’s why:
NATO argues that its inability to ever close its doors is based on the NATO treaty, its constitution, as it were. Here is NATO’s argument in the original:
“NATO's ‘Open Door Policy’ is based on Article 10 of the Alliance's founding document, the North Atlantic Treaty,” which “states that NATO membership is open to any ‘European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area’.” And that “any decision on enlargement must be made ‘by unanimous agreement.’… Over the past 72 years, 30 countries have chosen freely, and in accordance with their domestic democratic processes, to join NATO. This is their sovereign choice.”
If all of the above were correct, it would still be a stretch to believe that such things can never be changed – as if they were a natural force akin to gravity – but, at least, we could understand why it is a challenge to make such changes.
Yet, in reality, in this case there is no reason to accept NATO’s surprisingly far-fetched and inconsistent interpretation of its own founding document. Because what Article 10 actually says is that the door is open to every European state that can “contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area” and that the admission of any such state to the bloc can only happen by the “unanimous consent” of all current NATO members.
None of this, actually, contradicts the possibility of NATO one day stating that for the future (unlimited or with precise dates) no further states can possibly help “contribute” to its security and therefore no further states can be admitted. NATO would be entirely within its rights doing so; and Article 10 would be perfectly fine.
Regarding NATO’s statement that it is every European state’s sovereign right to “join,” it does not withstand elementary scrutiny: If that were so, then both the “unanimous consent” of all current members and the distinction between applying and joining would be meaningless. That is an obviously absurd position. In reality, states have a right to apply, not to join – by NATO’s own rules, which someone at NATO seems to very badly misunderstand.
Put differently: NATO’s “Open Door Policy” is exactly that: a policy. It is not a natural law or even something that NATO is obliged to do by its own founding document (which would still not bind anyone else, actually). A policy, however, is, of course, open to revision. NATO’s claims that it “cannot” stop admitting is, therefore, strictly nonsensical. In reality, it chooses not to want to stop admitting, unfortunately.
In sum, Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO, and these promises were broken. NATO is wrong: It can, actually, shut the door; it just doesn’t feel like it.
These things are, actually, not hard to grasp. Hence, what is perhaps most worrying about the currently dominant Western narratives on these issues is not even that they are incorrect but that, apparently, parts of the Western elites, intellectual and political, really believe their own nonsense. But let’s hope they are deliberately distorting the truth. Because otherwise they have started buying into their own propaganda. And if that is the case, it is very hard to see how negotiations will ever succeed.
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Ukraine says Russia not responsible for massive cyberattack
Kiev claims ‘cyber espionage’ group backed by Belarusian intelligence
hacked Ukrainian websites
Friday’s massive cyberattack targeting Ukrainian government agencies was carried out by a group linked to Belarusian intelligence services, a senior Kiev security official claimed in a statement on Saturday.
"Our preliminary belief is that the group UNC1151 may be involved in this attack," the Deputy Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Sergey Demedyuk, said in a written comment to Reuters.
The “cyber-espionage group” in question is understood to be “affiliated with the special services of the Republic of Belarus,” according to the official.
The attack on the government’s websites “was just a cover for more destructive actions” which took place “behind the scenes,” Demedyuk said. He did not offer any further details, only suggesting that the “consequences” of the attack will be felt “in the near future.”
According to Demedyuk, UNC1151 has had a “track record” of targeting numerous countries. He claimed that the malicious software used in the attack was “very similar” to the one used by ATP-29 – the group often referred to as the “Cozy Bear.” ATP-29, along with “Fancy Bear” hackers, has been blamed for compromising the Democratic National Committee’s computers ahead of the 2016 US presidential election by American media.
Demedyuk added that the “cyber espionage” tactics of the group have been “associated with the Russian special services (Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation).”
Notably, Demedyuk appears to be the first Ukrainian official who has publicly confirmed that the attack was not carried out by a Russian group.
Another senior Ukrainian figure, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Alexey Danilov, previously alleged in an interview with Britain’s Sky News that he was “99.9% sure” Moscow was behind the hack.
Ukraine changes its mind on culprit behind cyberattack
One day after blaming Belarus, Kiev has now labeled Russia the perpetrator
of a huge cyberattack
A Ukrainian ministry now says “evidence” indicates Moscow was behind Friday's attack on Kiev's governmental websites. The move comes after another official earlier pointed the finger at hackers backed by Belarusian intelligence.
The statement arrived less than a day after the deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Sergey Demedyuk, blamed the incident on Belarus. The large-scale hack is said to have rendered the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a number of other government agencies temporarily inaccessible.
According to Demedyuk’s written declaration to Reuters on Saturday, the defacing of the websites’ landing pages was merely a “cover” for unspecified “destructive actions … behind the scenes.”
However, the Digital Transformation Ministry now says that “all the evidence points to the fact that Russia was behind the cyberattack,” in its statement issued on Sunday. It provided no specific examples to back up the assertion and called on Ukrainians not to “panic,” assuring them that their personal data was securely stored in “appropriate registers” that were inaccessible to hackers.
“Moscow continues to wage a hybrid war” against Kiev, the ministry claimed, adding that the cyberattack was “one of the manifestations” of this conflict. It accused Russia of attempting to destabilize Ukraine by undermining public confidence in its government institutions through exposing their supposed vulnerabilities and shutting down their online services.
The previous day, Demedyuk had insisted that the “cyber-espionage group” in question is understood to be “affiliated with the special services of the Republic of Belarus." He noted that the malicious software used in the attack was “very similar” to that used by groups previously blamed for cyberattacks in the US, such as those accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Immediately after the attack, which took place on Friday, Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko suggested Moscow might be behind it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN in an interview scheduled for broadcast on Sunday that Russia had “nothing to do with these cyberattacks.” He brushed off the allegations against Moscow as “yet another baseless accusation.”
Gorbachev faces lawsuit over killings
The action has been brought forward by relatives of some of those who died
in the final days of the USSR
By Layla Guest
The families of six people who lost their lives amid a Soviet crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence government have filed a lawsuit in the capital, Vilnius, against the USSR’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The lawsuit, which was initiated on Thursday on the 31st anniversary of the event, seeks undisclosed damages for the now-90-year-old’s alleged failure at the time to stop the operation, which was carried out by Soviet troops.
“We have presented evidence that the then-president was in control of the army but did not act to prevent the planned criminal actions and did not stop the international crime while it was being executed,” a notice said.
The legal action “is aimed to hold Gorbachev, the highest-ranking USSR official, accountable for the January 13 massacre,” the relatives said in a statement.
Vilnius has attempted to persecute key-participants in the so-called January events in recent years. In 2019, a Lithuanian court found then-Soviet Minister of Defense Dmitry Yazov guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was jailed for 10 years in absentia for the “exercise of Soviet aggression.”
There have been past efforts to summon Gorbachev to court over the 1991 crackdown, which proved unsuccessful. In 2016, Vilnius Regional Court ruled that the former leader should stand in the docks, with its presiding judge Ainora Kornelija Maceviciene stating that any person having important information about the case can be called as a witness.
The event came after authorities declared independence from the USSR and adopted the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, which Soviet authorities denounced as violating the Constitution.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were the last nations to be incorporated into the Soviet Union. Vilnius was the first of the republics to declare its independence. Relations between Russia and Lithuania have been strained since the collapse of the USSR, with the Baltic state going on to join the US-led military bloc NATO in 2004, alongside Tallinn and Riga.
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German politician compares anti-Russian sanctions to atomic bomb
Suspending Russia from the banking network would be an atomic bomb for capital markets
Cutting Russia off from the international banking payment system SWIFT would have a serious impact on Western economies, according to the incoming leader of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz.
The politician stressed that the suspension of the system for Moscow “would basically break the back of international payment traffic,” damaging not only European-Russian trade in goods and services, but global trade as well.
“Calling SWIFT into question could be an atomic bomb for the capital markets and also for goods and services. We should leave SWIFT untouched,” Merz said, as quoted by DPA International News Service.
“I would see massive economic setbacks for our own economies if something like that happens. It would hit Russia, but we would be damaging ourselves considerably,” he warned.
The remarks come amid repeated threats from the US and its allies to introduce a wide set of punitive measures against Russia if the country’s troops invade Ukraine.
The new penalties are aimed at targeting Russian banks and the Russian sovereign wealth fund. They would also make it harder to convert rubles to foreign currencies, as well as seizing opportunities for investors to purchase Russian debt on the secondary market, and potentially disconnecting the country from the SWIFT banking network.
Merz’s warnings come ahead of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit to Ukraine and Russia, which is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
Washington has repeatedly raised the issue of Russia’s intentions in relation to Ukraine over the past several months, while Moscow has denied all allegations of military planning and has vowed to respond in kind in the event of sanctions.
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