War re Ukraine: Thread

[grarpamp]

Amid separatists attempts to trigger war, and various bigger
dick contests, some historians go digging for docs...


Germany's Spiegel Asks "Is Vladimir Putin Right?" Over NATO Expansion

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/newly-declassified-documents-gorbachev-told-nato-wouldnt-23629
https://twitter.com/shifrinson/status/1494696937496399873


Random twitters from Juan's friends...
https://twitter.com/rianru
https://twitter.com/kremlinrussia_e
https://twitter.com/kremlinrussia
https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa
https://twitter.com/michaelh992
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba
https://twitter.com/OSCE
https://twitter.com/edgarsrinkevics
https://twitter.com/trussliz
https://twitter.com/SecBlinken
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen
https://twitter.com/jensstoltenberg



With all eyes on the situation unfolding at the Ukraine border - as
separatists in Donbas reporting intensified shelling amid a "general
mobilization" of military-age males - Germany's left-leaning Spiegel
asks a question fundamental to the entire conflict...

    "Vladimir Putin insists that the West cheated Russia by expanding
NATO eastward following the end of the Cold War. Is there anything to
his claims? The short answer: It's complicated."

The essence of the argument is this; In September 1993, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin penned a long letter to US President Bill
Clinton, which railed against the eastward expansion of NATO at a time
when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were interested in joining
the organization. Yeltsin argued that the Russian public saw this "as
a sort of neo-isolation" of Russia, and that the "Two Plus Four
Treaty" linked to Germany's 1990 reunification "precludes the option
of expanding the NATO zone into the East."

As Spiegel writes, "There is essentially no other historical issue
that has poisoned relations between Moscow and the West as much in the
last three decades as the disagreement over what, precisely, was
agreed to in 1990."

Since the 1990 letter, NATO has accepted 14 countries in Eastern and
Southeastern Europe, which the Kremlin has complained of haaving been
duped every step of the way."

According to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, "You cheated us
shamelessly."

"You promised us in the 1990s that (NATO) would not move an inch to
the East," he said late last month in comments used to justify his
current demands for written guarantees that Ukraine will never be
accepted into the Western alliance.

    But that’s not all. At the end of January, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an open letter to his Western
counterparts in which he cited additional understandings. In
particular, he focused on the Charter for European Security, rooted in
agreements reached in 1990. East and West had concurred at the time
that every country has a right to freely choose the alliance it wished
to be part of, while also emphasizing the "indivisibility of
security." Later, that became "the obligation of each State not to
strengthen its security at the expense of the security of other
States," as Lavrov explicitly mentions in his letter. -Spiegel

Ukraine, meanwhile, wants to know how fast they can join.

Muddied waters

Post-1990 NATO expansion isn't black-and-white though, according to
Spiegel - and is muddied by a chorus of 'he-said-she-said' between
prominent officials from the early 1990s.

    There is no lack of accounts from a variety of witnesses to the
various discussions between the West and Moscow following the fall of
the Berlin Wall. In 1990, a veritable army of politicians and
high-ranking officials from Moscow, Washington, Paris, London, Bonn
and East Berlin met for discussions on German reunification, on the
disarmament of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and on a new charter for
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – which
became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
in 1995. -Spiegel

For example - former French foreign minister, Roland Dumas, said that
a pledge was made that NATO troops wouldn't advanced closer to the
former Soviet Union's territory. Former US Secretary of State James
Baker denied it - saying no such promise was ever made. Yet, several
diplomats under Baker have contradicted him.

Former US ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, has said that
"categorical assurances" were given to the Soviet Union that NATO
wouldn't continue expanding eastward.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said on
one occasion that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had made assurances
that NATO "will not move one centimeter further east." Another time,
Gorbachev said that "the topic of NATO expansion was never discussed,"
while saying that the West had violated the spirit of various
agreements regardless.

What's more, US government documents declassified in 2017 appear to
confirm that assurances were given.

    Luckily, there are plenty of documents available from the various
countries that took part in the talks, including memos from
conversations, negotiation transcripts and reports. According to those
documents, the U.S., the UK and Germany signaled to the Kremlin that a
NATO membership of countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic was out of the question. In March 1991, British Prime
Minister John Major promised during a visit to Moscow that "nothing of
the sort will happen." Yeltsin expressed significant displeasure when
the step was ultimately taken. He gave his approval for NATO’s
eastward expansion in 1997, but complained that he was only doing so
because the West had forced him to. -Spiegel

Der Spiegel also published a document on Friday from March 1991 which
shows US, French, UK and German officials discussing the pledge not to
expand to Poland and beyond. The document contains multiple references
to "2+4" talks regarding German unification - which makes clear that
NATO would not expand east of Germany.

The document was found in the UK National Archives by Boston
University political science professor, Josh Shifrinson.

    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

"We made it clear to the Soviet Union – in the 2+4 talks, as well as
in other negotiations – that we do not intend to benefit from the
withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe," reads the document,
citing US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, Raymond
Seitz.

"NATO should not expand to the east, either officially or
unofficially," he added.

A UK official mentioned the existence of a "general agreement" which
held NATO membership for eastern European countries as "unacceptable."

"We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not
extend NATO beyond the Elbe [sic]," according to West German diplomat
Juergen Hrobog. "We could not therefore offer Poland and others
membership in NATO."
Minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting of German, UK, US and French
diplomats discussing NATO expansion

Der Spiegel also notes a January 1990 initiative from German Foreign
Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who said in a Jan. 31, 1990 speech
that NATO should issue a statement saying: "Whatever happens to the
Warsaw Pact, there will be no expansion of NATO territory to the east
and closer to the borders of the Soviet Union."

Genscher's American counterpart, James Baker, said he "wasn't exactly
elated" at the idea, but admitted it was "the best we had at the
moment."

    In early February, Genscher and Baker presented the idea in Moscow
independently of one another. The German foreign minister assured the
Kremlin that: "For us, it is a certainty that NATO will not expand to
the east. And that applies generally," clearly meaning beyond just
East Germany. The American, for his part, offered "ironclad guarantees
that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward." When
Gorbachev said that NATO expansion was "unacceptable," Baker
responded: "We agree with that." -Spiegel

Baker and Genscher have since downplayed the events, with Baker saying
that his exclusive focus had been on Germany, and Genscher later
saying he wanted to simply "gauge" the Soviet response.

    The message was clear. If Gorbachev were to provide his
acquiescence for German reunification within NATO, the West would aim
at establishing a Western security architecture that took Moscow’s
interests into account.

    Informal assurances were not unusual during the Cold War. U.S.
political scientist Joshua Shifrinson compares the 1990 discussions
with the verbal agreements made between the Americans and Soviets that
led to the easing of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

    ...

    Given the documents available, some even speculate that the West
intentionally misled the Soviets from the very beginning. A few weeks
after his trip to the Kremlin, in any case, Baker expressly told
Genscher that some Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO,
engendering Genscher’s response that the issue "shouldn’t be touched
for now." A formulation which kept all options on the table for later.
-Spiegel

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, however, said that the
alliance "has never promised not to expand," and told Spiegel that
"there has never been such a promise, there has never been such a
behind-the-scenes deal, it is simply not true."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ©  Reuters / Ints Kalnins

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted into NATO in
1999, right before launching an air war against Yugoslavia which put
NATO forces along the Russian border for the first time.

In 2004, the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia
joined the Organization, putting NATO even closer to Russian assets.

Now, Russia is demanding that NATO publicly renounce expansion into
the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine, and recall US
forces to the 1997 boundaries of the bloc.

The US and NATO have told Putin to pound sand, and that NATO's "open
door" policy is fundamental.

Which brings us to today. Ukraine wants to join NATO, while the threat
implied by the buildup of Russian forces at the border couldn't
couldn't be more clear: call it off or we're taking Kiev.