Soviet attempts to change 1990 German unification treaty prove they were not deceived

Is Russian aggression a result, or a cause, of NATO expansion?

The easy answer— as we used to joke in the newsroom to many similarly thorny either/or questions— is "Yes". Both sides have a point, rooted, like most good propaganda, in some truth.

On the blame-NATO side, as  economist Geoffrey Sachs said to Tucker Carlson recently, “ [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev was promised in 1990 that NATO would not expand... U.S. Secretary of State [James] Baker promised that NATO would not move an inch east.”

There's also a somewhat more nuanced version, though the nuance tends to get lost in headlines, as in CNN's June 22 article, "UK's Nigel Farage sparks outrage from opponents after saying West ‘provoked' Ukraine war," in which the UK Reform party leader and Brexit standard-bearer said to the BBC, "the ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving this man [Putin] a reason to his Russian people to say they're coming for us again, and to go to war... We've provoked this war – of course it's his fault – he's used what we've done as an excuse.”

The "of course it's his fault" part tends to get passed over in an understandably painful, contentious and likely propaganda-fueled doubt: did we in the West cause this problem? Like the 1950s debate over 'who lost China?', scholars and policy makers struggle today over 'who lost Russia?' How did the fledgling democracy so painfully achieved there after the fall of the Soviet Union get derailed into a new, violent and aggressive tyranny, and is it our fault, either for not doing enough—or doing too much, in expanding NATO provocatively east when a more cautious, incremental and inclusive approach might have helped Russia find a better path forward?

The "not one inch" formulation has thus become such a point of contention that historian M. E. Sarotte chose it to title her definitive and exhaustively researched work on the subject, NOT ONE INCH - America, Russia, and the Making of Post–Cold War Stalemate.

Sarotte lays out the facts—unearthed in some cases as the result of years-long appeals to declassify documents—and the interactions between Western and Russian decisions and actions in careful detail.

The basic facts are not in dispute, and provide ammunition for both sides. Baker, during the 1990 negotiations on the unification of East and West Germany and its future within NATO, posed a "hypothetical  concession, asking whether there 'might be an outcome that would guarantee that there would be no NATO forces in the eastern part of Germany.  In fact there could be an absolute ban on that.'" (Not One Inch, p. 74)

Later, in conversation with Gorbachev, "Baker asked 'Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US 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?' The Soviet  leader replied that any expansion of the “zone of NATO” was not acceptable. And, according to Gorbachev, Baker answered, 'we agree with that.' "(Not One Inch, p. 75).

The resultant treaty, however, makes no mention of NATO forces outside of Germany, and the terms for NATO forces within Germany were explicitly spelled out and agreed to by both sides, allowing NATO forces east of the old East/West Germany border only after Soviet troops had left and with the express permission of the German government.

Thus the beginning of the dispute over Baker's remarks: the Soviets and later Russians believed a promise had been made to not expand NATO east, the Americans said it was a hypothetical remark, had nothing to do with anything outside of Germany, and in any case was not in the final treaty, which the Soviets expressly agreed to and signed.

As the Guardian's review of Sarotte's painstaking analysis summarizes, "The author concludes the charge of betrayal is technically untrue, but has a psychological truth." [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/12/russias-belief-in-nato-betrayal-and-why-it-matters-today]

Putin in 2007 accused the West of deceiving Russia and undermining international law, and now justifies his invasion of Ukraine partially as a self-defense measure against the resulting encirclement by NATO. Boris Yeltsin also objected in 1993 that the further expansion of NATO eastwards violated the spirit of the 1990 treaty. And Gorbachev in his memoirs said the Baker assurances cleared the way for compromise on Germany. So we know that Soviet/Russian leaders of various stripes, and at various times and under various circumstances have claimed they were deceived in 1990, and have to varying degrees used that to justify their past decisions, seek concessions from the West or rationalize support for aggressive actions.

But were they deceived? Like a politician caught with a scandal and claiming ignorance, one can fairly, if not kindly, ask, are you yourself guilty, or just incompetent?

To blame the West for being misled in 1990, Russian leaders must claim deception, or admit incompetence.

Neither argument is convincing.

The Soviets still had leverage in 1990 and were acutely aware of it. Despite the ongoing political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union, it remained one of the four legal and military powers occupying post-war Germany, with 338,000 soldiers in East Germany to back up its claim.

Also, though Sarotte doesn't draw this conclusion, one very telling fact she reports proves that the Soviets were not deceived but fully aware of what they were doing, and very well knew the importance of the treaty:  they were working to change the language of the treaty in the final version to keep NATO troops out of East Germany, just as they thought Baker had promised. Negotiations had long since moved past the Baker hypothetical and it was a shock to the Americans to discover that the Soviets were trying to add such language to the treaty. The Soviets were called out on that, and though it was too late to change the treaty itself under the time pressure of upcoming German elections, a last minute codicil was added to clarify that the German government would have the ultimate authority to define the key word "deploy" in the treaty and thus could allow NATO troops in the former East Germany, if it so chose.

The Soviets knew exactly what they were signing, evidenced by that fact that they tried to change it.

Their overall bargaining position was just not strong enough to force the Western allies to agree to memorialize Baker's hypothetical "not one inch" statement into the treaty. That was not a product of deception— they were aware of what they wanted and tried to get it—but of their own political and strategic weakness, brought on by decades of economic failure, demoralizing oppression and the staggering cost of the military coercion and intimidation necessary to hold an unwilling empire together under those conditions.

In short, they lost.

Later, the Western allies would fall short too, in Sarotte's view, by not living up to Churchill's maxim, "In victory: magnanimity". Under pressure from Eastern European countries to join NATO, and with the terrifying spectacle of Russian brutality in Chechnya, efforts such as the Partnership for Peace, the NATO Russia Council and even talk of Russia itself joining NATO were not enough to stop the slide to renewed oppression in Russia and conflict with the West.

Like the tit-for-tat escalation during the Cold War, prospective and actual NATO expansion in the post Cold War period undoubtedly caused concern among Russian leadership, or at a minimum allowed them to whip up support from their public by saying, as Farage put it "they're coming for us again".  Like Stalin between the wars fearing an encircling imperialist conspiracy of Japan and Poland, possibly with Germany, as recounted by historian Timothy Snyder in Bloodlands (p157), Putin today uses the plots of enemies, real, imagined or exaggerated, to justify internal repression and external aggression.

Ambassador Robert Strauss, Sarrote wrote, "had always respected the way that,  at the end of World War II, the United States had 'decided to transform former adversaries  into allies, friends, and peaceful competitors...' and,  'in the aftermath  of the Cold War, we can do so again.'" (Not One Inch, p. 174)

Though we may share that hope, regret the loss of the opportunity to fulfill it the 1990s, and hope again for another chance in the future, it might also be wise, as least for now, to consider the views of our relatively new Eastern European allies, who, unlike us, lived through Soviet occupation.

For them, NATO expansion was not a mistake, or a mission, or a debatable policy, or even a geopolitically clever or not-so-clever strategy to contain or maybe pacify a former adversary, but a vital, absolutely necessary guarantee for national survival against the possible—now emphatically demonstrated to be very real —recurrence of a deadly oppression they knew only too well. After Chechnya and then the later near-disastrous conflict with Russia over Kosovo, the Eastern European NATO members, Sarotte writes on page 373, "said in effect, we told you so."

Yes, they did. Before we go too far down the road of regret over the missed potential for a peaceful, democratic Russia, we should consider also what was gained in reality: Eastern European democracies, shedding the shackles of tyranny and rebuilding free and prosperous societies, warts and all—and not only benefiting from NATO security to achieve that, but contributing toward it, in good times and bad: Poland lost 41 soldiers in the NATO operations in Afghanistan.

Lech Wałesa, the hero of Polish democracy, prophetically feared "that if Russia again adopted an aggressive foreign policy, that aggression would be directed toward Ukraine and Poland." He understandably sought the protection of 'US muscle' within NATO and chided the West for “'not capitalizing' on 'the biggest victory in history,' namely, the defeat of Communism." (Not One Inch, p. 190)

While keeping the door open as much as possible for peace and hopefully democratic reform in Russia—the Russian people are after all not only perpetrators, but also surviving victims of communism, struggling in their own way to find a path forward—it's past time to give the advice of our painfully experienced Eastern European allies the weight it deserves and build on, rather than disparage, our mutual achievements toward greater freedom and prosperity, not only symbolized, but enabled and secured through shared democratic institutions like NATO.

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