NATO deceived Russia about expansion and a British document proves it, top German weekly discovers
A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French and German officials discussing a pledge made to Moscow that NATO would not expand into Poland and beyond. Its publication on Friday by the German magazine Der Spiegel comes as a result of the military standoff in Eastern Europe over the expansion of the US-led bloc.
Minutes of the March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn between the political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France and Germany made several references to the "2+4" talks on German reunification in which Western officials "clarified" it. "To the Soviet Union that NATO will not enter Germany's former territory.
“We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks as well as other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe,” the document quoted the US Assistant Secretary of State as saying. Is. Raymond Seitz for Europe and Canada.
"NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or informally," Seitz said.
A British representative also noted the existence of a "general agreement" that NATO membership is "unacceptable" for Eastern European countries.
"We made it clear during the 2+4 talks that we will not push NATO beyond the Elbe [sic]," said West German diplomat Juergen Horbog. "That's why we couldn't offer Poland and others membership in NATO."
Honored to work with @derspiegel's Klaus Wiegrefe in drawing attention to British documents (cc: @UkNatArchives) from 1990-1991 showing senior Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge. Link below:https://t.co/hep8aCKRrM
— Josh Shifrinson (@shifrinson) February 18, 2022
Minutes later it was clarified that he was referring to the Oder River, the border between East Germany and Poland. Horbog further noted that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher also agreed with the position.
The document was found in the National Archives of the UK by Joshua Schiffrinson, Professor of Political Science at Boston University in the US. It was marked as "secret", but was declassified at some point.
Schiffrinson tweeted on Friday that he was "honoured" to work with Der Spiegel on the document, which showed "Western diplomats who believed he had indeed pledged NATO non-expansion "
“Senior policymakers declined to offer a non-expansion pledge. This new document shows otherwise,” Schiffrinson said in a follow-up tweet, noting that Eastern European countries “beyond the Elbe or Oder by any standard” included in which NATO began to expand after just eight years.
During a major press conference in December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West had promised the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand "an inch" in the East, but "shamelessly betrayed Moscow" for doing so. " and "cheated".
In response to these remarks, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the coalition has "promised never to expand." Later in an interview with Der Spiegel, Stoltenberg reiterated that "no such promise was ever made, such a behind-the-scenes deal was never done, it is absolutely not true."
NATO acknowledged Poland, Hungary and Czechia in March 1999, just before launching an air war against Yugoslavia without the permission of the United Nations Security Council. This placed NATO directly on the Russian border - the enclave of Kaliningrad - for the first time. The next round of expansion in 2004 included the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, keeping NATO's eastern border just 135 kilometers (84 mi) from St Petersburg.
In a series of security proposals made public in December, Russia called for publicly renouncing the expansion of the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia from NATO and, among other things, the withdrawal of US forces to the 1997 borders. The US and NATO have rejected it, arguing that the coalition's "open-door" membership policy is a fundamental principle for them.