NOT AN INCH EAST - NATO AND THE BROKEN PROMISE The Ukrainian crisis has once again stirred up the debate about whether Moscow in 1990 was given a promise - subsequently broken - that NATO would not be expanded eastwards. In recent years there has been a growing literature in the US denying this and I have noticed that some of the arguments are being picked up in internet comments. This issue really requires a lengthy discussion but I thought I would simply summarise what I think is the position here. Firstly it is hardly possible to deny that a promise was given since it is not only clearly recorded in the records of the diplomatic discussions that took place in 1990 (the words not an inch east were actually used by James Baker in a conversation with Gorbachev in February 1990) but was actually said in public on a number of occasions including by Hans Dietrich Genscher and Baker himself. In fact I can actually remember hearing it said. Since it is impossible to deny that the promise was made the focus of those who wish to deny it was broken is to deny the meaning the Russians attach to it. These people rightly point out that at the time the promise was given the subject of discussion was East Germany and that no one at the time supposed that the USSR or the Warsaw Pact would shortly disappear. Supposedly all that was intended by not an inch east was that in return for Moscows agreement for German unification NATOs military presence would not be extended into the territory of what was East Germany though it was always agreed that Germany would be part of NATO. Supposedly because the promise was only about East Germany it had no bearing on what happened to other countries in the Warsaw Pact that lay further east. Having read the literature extensively what I would first say based on experience is that when people engage in this sort of sophistry they can have little faith in the argument they are making and are first and foremost trying to convince themselves. To say that because a promise in the terms that was given (not an inch east) was made over the course of a discussion about East Germany that means that the promise was only intended to apply to East Germany is in the absence of any qualifying words simply a non sequitur. If George H.W. Bush, Baker, Kohl and Genscher had intended to limit the promise in that way then the burden was on them to make that clear. I have seen no evidence in any of the literature I have read that they did and in the absence of any words of qualification the Russians were fully entitled to treat the words according to their plain meaning, which is as a promise that if they agreed to German unification NATO would not be extended eastwards. It is an entirely different matter that the promise that was given had no legal force since it was never set out in a treaty. Gorbachev and his foreign minister Eduard Shervadnadze behaved completely irresponsibly and seriously let their country down by failing to insist that a promise made on an issue of such importance was given formal standing either through a formal treaty or at the very least in some form of international declaration. However that is an entirely different question from whether the promise was given or not. As I have said, there is no serious doubt that it was. It is often also said that any promise given in 1990 when the USSR and the Warsaw Pact were still in existence was somehow voided by their disappearance the following year. I have never understood this argument given that it was expressly agreed when the USSR broke up that Russia as its successor state would inherit its treaty rights and obligations. As it happens the clearest evidence that the US continued to see itself as bound by its promise even after the USSR broke up is that for some years it actually abided by the promise. Initially the US resisted demands to let former states of the Warsaw Pact join NATO and limited them to Partnership for Peace programmes. As is well known the policy then changed when under political pressure from Washingtons east European lobby and with barely any debate the Clinton administration in the late 1990s reversed the policy and reneged on the promise with the disastrous consequences we now see.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 23:21:52 +0000
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