Since Russia began its "military operation" in Ukraine, Russian officials have accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of breaching a vow not to expand after the Cold War towards the east.
In the following lines, we'll try to verify the fact and figure out if NATO betrayed Russia or not.
First, let's figure out the Russian side's story as follows:
Russian President Vladimir Putin says that US secretary of state James Baker under President George HW Bush, in a discussion on 9 February 1990 with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, made "the promise that Nato would not expand to the east if Russia accepted Germany’s unification."
Moscow says that it was given "verbal assurances about the limits of Nato’s expansion, but no written guarantees."
According to the France Press Agency (AFP); in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin accused Western powers of violating a solemn pledge by considerably enlarging NATO – most notably with the Baltic countries joining the Alliance in 2004 – asking, "What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?"
The idea of NATO expansion beyond a united Germany was not on the agenda in 1989, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed. This was confirmed by Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview in 2014: "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either."
Secondly, the NATO side denies giving any promises to Moscow in this regard, stressing that it believes in the open-door policy.
According to the NATO's official website; this “Open Door Policy” is enshrined in Article 10 of NATO’s founding treaty, which says “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic” can apply for membership. Decisions on membership are taken by consensus among all allies. No treaty signed by the United States, Europe and Russia included provisions on NATO membership.
Jordan Bardella, a European parliamentarian and acting head of the right-wing French National Rally party, stressed during Marine Le Pen's presidential campaign that Russia's demands not to expand NATO to the east are "fair."
This came in a statement by Bardella to BFMTV, where he said: "The demands of Russia and (Russian President) Vladimir Putin from NATO that it should not approach their borders are legitimate."
To sum up, there are two scenarios now. The first is that Russia was given assurances from NATO that are being denied now. The second is that Russia is lying and it has never discussed this issue with the NATO.
In both scenarios, Russia made a big mistake. If Moscow is telling the truth, it must get a written pledge not just a verbal promise. It's not a personal issue, but we are talking about a destiny of peoples and countries.
Moreover, NATO is on the safe side. If it has never given Moscow any assurances, nothing can prove otherwise. In the meantime, if NATO gave truly assurances to Russia in the nineties, it has the full right to reconsider the issue at anytime as there is no timed accord.
The learned lesson in this case is countries' destiny is not made by verbal assurances.
https://see.news/sisi-putin-discuss-latest-developments-of-ukraine-crisis/
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