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1990 Security commitments to the Soviet Union on Germany's reunification and NATO's eastward expansion
The 1990 Commitments to Russia on NATO's eastward expansion were a series of diplomatic exchanges and a treaty in the lead-up to German reunification. The USSR and NATO member countries engaged in conversations on whether the USSR would allow East Germany to reunite with West Germany, ending the Soviet control of the former. With West Germany already a member of NATO, the USSR was concerned that a Soviet withdrawal would lead to a NATO expansion, which the USSR viewed as contrary to its security.
The negotiations famously included a conversation between U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Gorbachev in which Baker proposed that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east". The negotiations concluded with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany of September 12, 1990, which included a guarantee that in the until then Eastern Germany would only have German troops, and there would be no nuclear weapons.
When later in the 1990's NATO began the process of admitting countries formerly members of defunct Warsaw Pact, two different interpretations surfaced as to whether the guarantee of NATO not expanding to the east was limited to East Germany or more broadly the Eastern Bloc.
Two schools of thought have emerged in interpreting the scope of the assurances made by the West to the USSR.[1] The view that NATO and its members only made a narrow commitments stem from a focus on what was included and not included in written agreements, and that any references to "eastern expansion" made in the lead-up to the written agreements, were made specifically about East Germany. The view that NATO and its members were making a broader commitment to not expand to the countries of the eastern bloc stems from a series of diplomatic conversations held _________, and from interpreting "eastern expansion" not at a German level but at a pan-european level, both pointing to a "spirit"[2] of a broader set of assurances.
Proponents of the narrow interpretation point to the fact that no written agreement explicitly stipulated NATO's inability to allow new members.
New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon in reviewing contemporaneous sources from both sides, suggested that the misunderstanding [there were different interpretations] stemmed from whether the NATO assurances of limited military expansion to East Germany was limited to Germany itself, or whether it implied a guarantee of not expanding to any other eastern contries, former membersof the Warsaw pact.[3]
Whether NATO's explicit assurances of limited expansion to East Germany also carried an implied assurance of not expanding Eastward to other countries.
That while the concrete negotiations were [surrouindng] the quetions of German unification, that those negoatiations were speaking to a larger priciple of respecting the USSR (and Russia as its successor state) concerns of security.
When one reads the full text of the Woerner speech cited by Putin, it is clear that the secretary general’s comments referred to NATO forces in eastern Germany, not a broader commitment not to enlarge the Alliance.
The NATO countries have tended to point to written sources and written agreements as the basis for the narrrow scope of the non-expansion commitments made. On the other hand, Russian officials have made claims of broader commitments made in non-written commitments, as well as interpreting more broadly the "spirit"[4][5] of the written commitments.