Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
What “agreement”, the Budapest memorandum?
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Putin and the Russians saw it as an "agreement." In spite of the fact that there was no formal "agreement," Russia saw the discussions with Western leaders re NATO as assurances that NATO would not expand eastward. It is Putin's point of view that needs to be considered in an analysis of why he is destroying Ukraine.
For instance, exerpts from Politifact:
Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."
Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.
Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Robert Gates, the deputy national security adviser at the time. Gates said the Soviets "were led to believe" NATO would not expand eastward.
Gorbachev insisted that he was promised NATO would not "move 1 centimeter further east."
you have the very adamant Russian position: ‘We were totally betrayed, there’s no doubt about it.’
The [German Foreign Ministry] reported that Yeltsin’s complaint was formally wrong, but it said it could understand "why Yeltsin thought that NATO had committed itself not to extend beyond its 1990 limits,"
Shifrinson, an associate professor of international relations at Boston University, wrote that while no formal agreement restricted NATO’s expansion, Baker and other diplomats had offered the Soviets verbal assurances that NATO would not enlarge to the east.
The record, from 1991, quotes a German official as telling British and American policymakers, "We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe (a river in Germany). We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others."
Shifrinson said "There is a legitimate point to say that the U.S. offered assurances to the Soviets that NATO would do something, but that is not the same thing as saying NATO offered an agreement,"
Marc Trachtenberg, a professor emeritus from the University of California, Los Angeles, has summarized the research on the NATO-enlargement-promise debate. His writing also argued that U.S. officials made assurances to the Soviets that they ultimately reneged on.
Trachtenberg said that the term ‘tacit understanding’ [rather than formal agreement] is a better way to put it."
Given all that info as related by Politifact, it is not difficult to see why Putin, given his self-serving view of the world, would understand that NATO was reneging.
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