NATO Enlargement—Was There a Promise?

To the Editors (Mark Kramer writes):

Joshua Shifrinson’s article “Deal or No Deal?” presents a flawed account of the negotiations in 1990 that led to the reunification of Germany.¹ His observations at the end of the piece about Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin overlook the continuity of Russian policy toward neighboring countries since 1992, long before Putin came to power.²

In an article published in April 2009, I set out to determine whether it was true that, at some point during the 1990 negotiations on Germany, Soviet leaders received a promise that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not eventually grant membership to countries beyond the German Democratic Republic (GDR).³ In the latter half of the 1990s, I frequently heard from Russian officials and from some Western observers that NATO leaders in 1990 had secretly offered “categorical assurances,” “solemn pledges,” and “binding commitments” that no former Warsaw Pact countries (aside from the former GDR) would be brought into NATO. Those allegations continue to be voiced in Russia to this day.

Archival documents bearing on those claims were declassified in Germany in the 1990s, but it took much longer for relevant Soviet documents to be released. However, after crucial Soviet materials finally became available in the late 2000s, including detailed notes from the negotiations, I sought to determine whether the Russian allegations are well founded. I concluded that they are not. The declassified negotiating records reveal that no such assurances or pledges were ever offered.

Subsequently, in 2015, together with colleagues from Austria and Germany, I published a thick volume of recently declassified Soviet documents pertaining to German reunification. The collection includes materials released from the Russian Presidential Archive as well as lengthy excerpts from the diaries and notebooks of Teimuraz Stepanov-Mamaladze, the chief aide to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who took notes on Shevardnadze’s discussions and thoughts before, during, and after the 1990 negotiations.⁴

Shifrinson does not make use of Soviet documents. Instead, he insists that “the key to determining whether Russian accusations have merit is understanding the rationale behind U.S. actions at the time,” and he draws on formerly secret U.S. documents to present his interpretation of the matter. Shifrinson deserves credit for having obtained declassification of U.S. materials, but the problem is that his account does not provide a basis for “determining whether Russian accusations have merit.” What U.S. officials said among themselves is not of direct relevance unless they conveyed it to their Soviet counterparts. An evaluation of Russian claims thus depends foremost on scrutiny of Soviet documents to gauge what Soviet leaders were aiming for, what they were told, and what they believed they were told.

Most of the primary sources about Soviet perceptions and goals are in Russian. But even if Shifrinson cannot use Russian sources, a few important items are available in English, including an illuminating interview with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in October 2014 that appeared in English translation. Shifrinson has definitely seen the interview (I sent a copy of it to him in November 2014), but he never cites it directly and instead paraphrases it inaccurately. In the interview, Gorbachev was asked whether the topic of NATO enlargement beyond eastern Germany ever came up during the negotiations in 1990 on German reunification. Gorbachev’s response was unequivocal: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all [in 1990], and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either.”⁵ Instead of citing these comments, Shifrinson briefly and misleadingly paraphrases Gorbachev as having remarked: “NATO expansion may not have been explicitly discussed in 1990” (p. 13). This cursory paraphrase misrepresents what Gorbachev actually said. The former Soviet leader did not use the equivocal formulation “NATO expansion may not have been explicitly discussed.” He said very plainly that NATO expansion “was not discussed at all” and “was not brought up.”

Shifrinson also omits any mention of Shevardnadze’s repeated insistence that “a possible eastward expansion of NATO” beyond Germany “was never discussed in...