Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in his end-of-the-year press conference that Western “promises that they had given us about refraining from expanding NATO were being ignored.” Just two days earlier in a Dec. 17 meeting with the Russian Defense Ministry’s Collegium, Putin said Russia was “insisting” that NATO fulfill a supposed promise not to enlarge. He made a similar claim in a Dec. 4 press conference in New Delhi. The notion that Moscow received a promise that NATO would not enlarge has become a standard Putin talking point.
It’s a canard.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev denied the supposed promise had been made. Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president after the Soviet breakup, did not raise it publicly or with his American counterpart. And Putin himself also did not raise it for the first seven years of his presidency.
A Russian Claim Takes Hold
The Kremlin did not like NATO enlargement from the beginning, and significant voices in the West, such as George Kennan, criticized Alliance enlargement. However, the notion of a NATO promise not to enlarge has gained currency only in the past two decades. That reflects sometimes contrasting statements made by Western officials in 1990 as well as successful Russian disinformation efforts launched after Putin had been president for years.
The supposed no-enlargement commitment has been adopted by a disparate group of Western commentators. For example, in May 2016, Texas A&M Professor Joshua Shifrinson wrote that NATO had pledged not to enlarge in 1990. Right-wing influencer Candace Owens tweeted on Feb. 22, 2022, on the eve of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine: “NATO (under the direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward,” citing remarks made by Putin.
What Was Agreed
As talks about the reunification of West and East Germany began in early 1990, some U.S. and Western officials floated the idea that NATO could agree not to enlarge. Some suggested a broad commitment while others focused more narrowly on what the Alliance might or might not do in East Germany. In one frequently cited conversation, Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev in Moscow in February 1990: “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” (I was then a deputy director on the State Department’s Soviet desk and a member of Baker’s delegation in Moscow, and understood this to mean no expansion of NATO forces into East Germany.)
In any case, as American University Professor James Goldgeier has noted, U.S. officials “backed away” from the broader suggestions. Instead, the negotiations on German reunification addressed the narrow issue of not introducing NATO forces into former East German territory after reunification. NATO member states made no broad undertaking to not take in new members.
The “two-plus-four” negotiations between West Germany and East Germany plus Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and United States produced the treaty on German reunification, signed in September 1990 in Moscow. The treaty includes no commitment not to enlarge NATO. Its Article 5 addresses the status of military forces in Berlin and former East Germany:
• As long as Soviet forces still remained in East Germany (withdrawal would not be completed until 1994), the only Western units that could deploy there were German territorial defense forces not under NATO command.
• The United States, Britain, and France would not increase their troop levels in Berlin.
•After completion of the Soviet withdrawal, German units assigned to NATO could deploy into former East Germany, but foreign forces could not.
In sum, the treaty ruled that non-German NATO military forces could not deploy into what had been East Germany, but it contained no broad commitment that the Alliance would not enlarge.
Gorbachev Denied It
Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union in 1990 when the reunification treaty was concluded. In an October 2014 interview, he denied a NATO promise not to enlarge: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years.”
What was discussed, according to Gorbachev, was ensuring that NATO military structures did not deploy in former East Germany. That was a logical point given that Soviet forces would not complete withdraw for four years. As noted above, the reunification treaty addressed that.
Yeltsin Did not Raise It
The Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991. The new Russian leader, Yeltsin, was no fan of NATO enlargement, but there is no record of Yeltsin publicly claiming that the Alliance had committed not to enlarge. In an October 1993 letter to President Bill Clinton, Yeltsin wrote that enlargement violated “the spirit” of the German reunification treaty and seemed to suggest that the treaty’s limits on deploying foreign troops in former East Germany amounted to a broader ban on NATO enlarging to the east. However, he made no mention of any promise not to enlarge.
The issues of enlarging the Alliance and NATO-Russian relations arose regularly in talks between Clinton and Yeltsin. Most U.S. records of those conversations have been declassified. They do not reveal a Yeltsin claim to Clinton that NATO was breaking a commitment not to add new members. Did no one in the Kremlin or in the Russian foreign ministry tell Yeltsin of this supposed promise? My own recollection from my time at the National Security Council from December 1994 to August 1997 is that Yeltsin never raised an alleged no-enlargement promise.
Nor Did Putin …
Putin became president of Russia on Jan. 1, 2000. In his first years as president, Putin seemed to want to cultivate positive relations with the United States and the West, though as it turned out, he apparently wanted to entertain ties only on his terms.
A few memoranda of conversations of meetings between Putin and President George W. Bush have been declassified. In their first meeting in June 2001, Putin questioned the need for NATO enlargement and said Russia felt “left out” but did not cite a NATO promise not to enlarge. When asked about the prospective entrance of the Baltic states into NATO in a November 2001 interview, Putin questioned whether “mechanical enlargements” of the Alliance would increase security in the 21st century but voiced no word about a no-enlargement commitment.
Putin attended the May 28, 2002, NATO-Russia summit in Rome that produced a declaration in which the sides said they would deepen relations between the Alliance and Russia. At a subsequent press briefing, Putin did not claim the Alliance had committed not to enlarge, though he had to know that allied leaders would hold a summit that November and extend invitations to additional countries to join NATO, likely including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Just days earlier, on May 17, Putin had appeared at a press conference with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Instead of complaining about NATO breaking a no-enlargement commitment, he encouraged Kuchma to take Ukraine as far as it wished with the Alliance: “Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.” (With that encouragement from Putin, Ukraine publicly announced just six days later its intention to seek NATO membership.)
Putin had obvious opportunities in subsequent years to raise NATO’s supposed promise. For example, in an April 2004 meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin said NATO enlargement would not address contemporary threats but assessed NATO-Russia relations as developing in a positive manner. The Kremlin website makes no mention of an Alliance commitment not to enlarge.
In a May 2005 interview with a French TV company, Putin was specifically asked “does it irritate you that NATO is seeking to expand its influence among your neighbors and partners, in Ukraine and Georgia, for example?” Putin responded “This does not irritate us… If NATO wants to expand to take in these countries as members, that, of course, is another question.” Putin went on to call enlargement a “technical process,” said he did not understand how enlarging to include the Baltic states would promote greater security, but added “I want to stress that we will respect their choice because it is their sovereign right…”
The interview gave Putin the ideal opportunity to remind the journalist and the world of any supposed commitment by the Alliance not to enlarge. According to the Kremlin website’s transcript of the interview, he said nothing about it.
… for Seven Years
By late 2006, Russian relations with the West, particularly the United States, had become more difficult. It appears that Putin publicly raised the alleged no-enlargement promise for the first time only at the February 2007 Munich Security Conference: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation to modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. … And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances [about not enlarging] our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?”
Putin and Bush met in April 2008 immediately after the Bucharest NATO summit at which Bush had sought but failed to secure NATO leaders’ consensus for membership action plans for Ukraine and Georgia. Putin spoke at length about his concern about the Alliance taking in Ukraine or Georgia. Curiously, however, more than a year after his speech in Munich, Putin said nothing to the American president about a promise or assurance that NATO would not enlarge.
When Putin spoke in Munich, he had been president of Russia for seven years. So, are people to believe Putin only learned about this “promise” that late in his presidency? Even if in his early years as Russian president Putin sought good relations with the West, would he not have gently mentioned the promise? Or, more logically, did Putin and the Kremlin in late 2006 or early 2007 simply manufacture the argument based on some loose talk in 1990?
Putin uses this now as a pretext to help justify his neo-imperialist war on Ukraine. However, it is a promise denied by Gorbachev, never raised by Yeltsin, and not mentioned by Putin for seven years and then only when U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia relations had begun to deteriorate.
FEATURED IMAGE: French President Jacques Chirac (L), Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and US President George W. Bush react after military jets conduct a ceremonial flyover on May 28, 2002, during a group photo opportunity at the Pratica di Mare airbase, near Rome, during meetings of NATO allies and Russia to identify and pursue opportunities for joint action, such as terrorism. (Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)
