Mikhail Gorbachev, however, claims that there was such a deal -- and his word counts, especially when assessing Russia's attitude about NATO then and today. Moreover, supporting his claim is German archival evidence, publicized by three writers for Der Spiegel.
According to a 26 November 2009 article in Der Spiegel, "On Feb. 10, 1990, between 4 and 6:30 p.m., [German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich] Genscher spoke with [Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard] Shevardnadze. And, according to the German record of the conversation, which was only recently declassified, Genscher said: "We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.' And because the conversation revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.'"
President Clinton came to office in the wake of a scandalous draft Defense Planning Guidance, written under the supervision of Paul Wolfowitz. The draft called for the exercise of diplomacy, backed by unassailable military power, in a quest for America's "benevolent domination" of the world. It sketched "a world in which there is one military power whose leaders "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.'" [New York Times, March 8, 1992]
(After Mr. Wolfowitz's abomination was leaked to the press, President Bush rushed to repudiate it as un-American. But it was resuscitated by neoconservatives during the presidency of George W. Bush.)
President Clinton had no plan as obnoxious as Wolfowitz's Defense Planning Guidance. Instead, on 22 October 1996 he asserted: "America truly is the world's indispensable nation. There are times when only America can make the difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression, between hope and fear. We cannot and should not try to be the world's policeman. But where our interests and values are clearly at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must act and lead."
During that same speech, Clinton acknowledged: "At the first NATO summit I attended in January of 1994, I proposed that NATO should enlarge steadily, deliberately, openly." By doing so, Clinton reneged on the pledges made by Baker and Genscher to Gorbachev and Shevardnadze.
Clinton made what George Kennan called a "fateful error." Writing in the New York Times on February 5, 1997, Kennan asserted: "Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era."
"Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."
I received a dose of such anti-American sentiment during my first and only meeting with Igor Sutyagin on 7 September 1998 at Moscow's Aerostar Hotel. A senior scholar in the Department for Military-Political Studies at the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Sutyagin had answered a series of questions about the economic crisis in Russia, before I asked him, "What do you make of President Clinton's recent decision to permit the expansion of NATO"
Much to my surprise, Igor's face turned crimson as he reached into his wallet to withdraw a folded newspaper article that described a deal struck between former Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
According to the article, Baker assured Gorbachev that, in return for the Soviet leader's assistance in accomplishing the peaceful unification of Germany, the United States would not pursue any further expansion of NATO. (Gorbachev reiterated Baker's promise as recently as March 2009) Having read Baker's promise, Igor characterized Clinton's decision to expand NATO as a "stab in the back." He quickly added: "Why should Russians trust the United States to honor any of its agreements?" Why, indeed?
Earlier in the year, a book edited by Ted Galen Carpenter and Barbara Conry and titled NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality suggested that Sutyagin's anger wasn't an isolated incident. "The rhetoric coming from Moscow suggests a continuing seething resentment about the West's determination to expand NATO and a growing determination to prevent any further rounds of enlargement. The danger is that, when Russia recovers economically and militarily, Russians will remember that the West exploited their country's temporary weakness to establish a dominant position in Central and Eastern Europe and seek to overturn that outcome."
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009. Russians could do little but seethe at the cumulative impact of Clinton's perfidy. (Yet, one could hardly blame these countries for voting with their feet, given their recent experience with the Soviet Union.)
Aggravating Russian sensibilities further was the fact that these countries were joining a NATO that was in the process of jettisoning the solely defensive posture of its organization. Its central stipulation, found in Article 5, was defensive. An armed attack against one member would be considered an attack on all. In 1991, NATO affirmed, "The Alliance is purely defensive in purpose; none of its weapons will ever be used except in self-defense."
Yet, it was impossible for NATO to claim self-defense when, on 30 August 1995, NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force -- the large-scale bombing of Serbian targets that constituted "NATO's biggest military assault in its entire history." After all, Serbia hadn't attacked a single NATO member.
According the Beverly Crawford, author of the 1998 working paper titled, "The Bosnian Road to NATO Enlargement," in the spring of 1994 a few top policy makers in the Clinton administration made the decision to support the enlargement of NATO as a way on strengthening it and keeping Russia out. (p.13)
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