Sorry, Gorbachev didn’t get it in writing

AT a time when the US is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonisation of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in 1990.

I was covering Moscow then and met some of the key players in this sordid drama. Ever since, I’ve been writing that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, were shamelessly lied to and deceived by the US, Britain, and their appendage, Nato.

All the western powers promised Gorbachev and Shevardnadze that Nato would not expand eastward by “one inch” if Moscow would pull the Red Army out of East Germany and allow it to peacefully reunify with West Germany. This was a titanic concession by Gorbachev: it led to a failed coup against him in 1991 by Communist hardliners.

The documents released by George Washington University in Washington DC make sickening reading. All western powers and statesmen assured the Russians that Nato would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat and that a new era of amity and cooperation would dawn in post-Cold War Europe. US Secretary of State Jim Baker offered “ironclad guarantees” there would be no Nato expansion. Lies, all lies.

Gorbachev was a humanist, a decent, intelligent man who believed he could end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. He ordered the Red Army back from Eastern Europe.

Promises made to Soviet leaders by President George W. H. Bush and Jim Baker quickly proved to be empty. They were honourable men but their successors were not. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush quickly began moving Nato into Eastern Europe, violating all the pledges.

The Poles, Hungarians and Czechs were brought into Nato, then Romania and Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Albania, and Montenegro. Washington tried to get the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine into Nato. The Moscow-aligned government of Ukraine was overthrown in a US-engineered coup. The road to Moscow was open.

All the bankrupt, confused Russians could do was denounce these eastward moves. The best response Nato and Washington could come up with was, “well, there was no official written promise”. This is worthy of a street peddler selling counterfeit watches. The leaders of the US, Britain, France, Belgium and Italy all lied. Germany was caught between its honour and imminent reunification. So even its Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to go along with the West’s prevarications.

At the time, I wrote that the best solution would be for the demilitarisation of Eastern Europe. Nato had no need or business to expand eastward. Doing so would be a constant provocation to Russia, which regarded Eastern Europe as an essential defensive glacis against invasions.

Comments: letters@thesundaily.com