During the 1990 summit, Zoellick says President Gorbachev accepted
the idea of German unification within the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, based on the principle that every country should freely
choose its own alliances.
“I was in those meetings, and Gorbachev has [also] said there was no
promise not to enlarge NATO,” Zoellick recalls. Soviet Foreign Minister,
Eduard Shevardnadze, later president of Georgia, concurred, he says.
Nor does the treaty on Germany’s unification include a limit on NATO
enlargement. Those facts have undermined one of Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine — that the United
States had agreed that former Warsaw Pact nations would never become
part of the North Atlantic security alliance.
Zoellick, a former deputy and undersecretary of state, deputy White
House chief of staff, U.S. trade representative, and World Bank
president, shared his recollections about the Cold War’s end and its
ties to the ongoing war in Ukraine as part of a broader conversation
with Harvard Law Today about the 75th anniversary of the Truman
Doctrine, an American foreign policy aimed at containing Soviet
expansion following World War II.
He is the author of “America in the Word: A History of U.S. Diplomacy
and Foreign Policy.” An alumnus of both Harvard Law School and Harvard
Kennedy School, where he is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, Zoellick believes Putin’s false claim
about NATO enlargement is part of a disinformation campaign by the
former KGB agent to mask his true intentions.
Zoellick vividly recalls the White House meeting he attended nearly
three decades ago in which Bush asked Gorbachev if he agreed with the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe principle that nations
are free to ally with others as they see fit. When Gorbachev said yes,
he says, the Soviet leader’s “own colleagues at the table visibly
separated themselves.”
Sensing the import of the possible breakthrough, he says a colleague at the meeting, Robert Blackwill,
sent him a note checking what they had heard and asking if they should
ask Bush to repeat the question. “Gorbachev agreed again,” Zoellick
recalls, to the principle that Germany could choose to enter NATO.
“The reality was that, in 1989-90, most people, and certainly the
Soviets, weren’t focusing on whether the Eastern European countries
would become part of NATO,” Zoellick says. Knowing Soviet and Russian
diplomacy, he believes Moscow would have demanded assurances in writing
if it believed the U.S. had made such a promise. And even in 1996, when
President Bill Clinton welcomed former Warsaw Pact nations to join NATO,
he says that, “[o]ne of the German diplomats involved told me that as
they discussed the enlargement with the Russians, no Russian raised the
argument that there had been a promise not to enlarge.”
But if the West never gave the promise Putin has used to explain his
decision to invade Ukraine, what does Zoellick think motivates the
Russian president’s decision to inflict death and destruction on one of
Russia’s nearest neighbors? “Putin does not see Ukraine as an
independent and sovereign state,” he says. “He has a view of Russian
history where the Rus [the medieval ancestors of the people who came to
form Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] began in Kyiv. He believes that they
are all Russians, living in a greater Russia. And I think at age 69,
Putin feels that this is a question not only of Russian history, but his
place in Russian history.”
Zoellick says that when Putin’s earlier attacks in the Crimea and
country’s eastern regions failed to halt Ukraine’s drift towards the
West, the Russian leader believed he had no other choice but to invade.
“That’s his motivation. And I think we need to be aware that he’s going
to double down. The resilience and resolve of the Ukrainian people to
resist has been a surprise to him and everybody else. I don’t think he’s
going to ultimately be successful. In addition to today’s brutal
battles, Russia faces a difficult occupation and insurgency, even if it
can seize cities and territory.”
The experienced diplomat also credits Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky with rallying the Ukrainian people by refusing to flee Kyiv and
through adept use of social media and language.
“We’re seeing that the skills that he developed as an entertainer and
a communicator can be used in different ways, just as Ronald Reagan
did,” he says. “It does raise a concern that, if something happens to
Zelensky, what will that do to morale? Will he be a martyr or will his
loss break the public will?”
Zoellick also notes that, as the war in Ukraine has garnered the
world’s attention, many of the questions being asked today about the
West’s relationship with Russia are similar to those he had dealt with
at the end of the Cold War, including “Russia’s sense of whether it
feels like a great power or threatened by NATO … those are the issues
that are at very much at play in dealing with Ukraine.”
“Can Russia forge peaceful, constructive ties with the West?” he
asks. “Failed economic and political reforms left Russia behind. Its
economy depends on energy production. Putin played off public
frustrations, but many Russians don’t want war and isolation.”
When thinking about global diplomacy and the factors that might have
led to the Russian invasion, Zoellick harkens back to a comment made by
his boss for eight years, James Baker, who served both as secretary of
state and the treasury, as well as White House chief of staff: “As you
address the problems of one era, you’re often planting the seeds for the
next set of challenges. History doesn’t stop.”
More than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zoellick says
the legacy of decisions made at the end of the Cold War are echoing
throughout Europe today: “Would we keep NATO alive? Would it enlarge
into Central and Eastern Europe? How far? What would be the effects on
Russia of its loss of empire?”
“That leaves the question of whether the U.S. could have avoided
Russia’s turn,” he says. The answer, he believes, depended on Russia’s
choices. “Certainly, we wouldn’t have wanted East and West Germany to
remain divided.” The related questions are many: What if Eastern
European countries had been barred from joining NATO and therefore
remained, like Ukraine, outside the western security umbrella? And how
would they react to the Russian threat and being left again as “lands
between” Germany and Russia? The U.S. and Europe, he notes, offered
Russia partnerships, but Russia felt humiliated by the loss of its
empire.
“I was the U.S. negotiator for German unification,” he says. “We
wanted to make sure that a democratic Germany was unified in NATO. I
don’t think anybody would think that’s a bad idea today. And if
anything, we’re now seeing Germany stepping up to a security role for
NATO and the European Union.”
In 1989-90, Zoellick was also focused on the idea that Poland — long
subject to invasions by Russia and Germany — should be able to
eventually join NATO. He made sure that the treaty on German unification
kept that possibility open. “Given Putin’s behavior, can you imagine
what the effect would be on Poland today if it weren’t in NATO? I think
it’s wise to have Poland and Germany on the same side. The Baltic
countries were a tougher choice for NATO, not because they don’t deserve
the security, but they’re very hard to defend.” Nevertheless, he adds,
because the Baltic states are now NATO members, he believes we must
“take serious steps to defend them from both direct and hybrid threats.”
Ultimately, he believes supporting Ukraine economically and supplying
arms for self-defense, rather than opening the potential for eventual
NATO membership, would have been a better approach than the one the West
has taken in recent years.
“If NATO gives a security guarantee, it has to mean it,” he says. “It
has to be serious about providing deterrence under Article Five of the
North Atlantic Alliance treaty. … I support Ukraine’s economic reforms
and its democracy, [but] I doubted that the American people were
ultimately willing to fight for Ukraine. The worst thing to do was to
suggest Ukraine might join NATO, but without a serious pathway to
membership.”
The U.S., he adds, “isn’t going to defend everybody all the time,
everywhere in the world; we have to know what we will and won’t defend.
Having said that, I think the Obama and Trump administrations erred by
not giving more military support to Ukraine. I believe that we should
help the Ukrainians defend themselves. But those are the exact issues
debated today.”
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/there-was-no-promise-not-to-enlarge-nato/
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