The Myth of a No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia

摘要

In the latter half of the 1990s, as the North Atlantic TreatyrnOrganization (NATO) was preparing to expand its membership for the firstrntime since the admission of Spain in 1982, Russian officials claimed that thernentry of former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO would violate a solemnrn‘‘pledge’’ made by the governments of West Germany and the United States inrn1990 not to bring any former Communist states into the alliance.1 AnatoliirnAdamishin, who was Soviet deputy foreign minister in 1990, claimed in 1997rnthat ‘‘we were told during the German reunification process that NATO wouldrnnot expand.’’2 Other former Soviet officials, including Mikhail Gorbachev, madernsimilar assertions in 1996—1997. Some Western analysts and former officials,rnincluding Jack F. Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Union of SovietrnSocialist Republics (USSR) in 1990, endorsed this view, arguing that Gorbachevrnreceived a ‘‘clear commitment that if Germany united, and stayed in NATO, thernborders of NATO would not move eastward.’’3 Pointing to comments recordedrnby the journalists Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, former U.S. defensernsecretary Robert McNamara averred that ‘‘the United States pledged never tornexpand NATO eastward if Moscow would agree to the unification of Germany.’’4rnAccording to this view, ‘‘the Clinton administration reneged on thatrncommitment . . . when it decided to expand NATO to Eastern Europe.’’5