MOSCOW, May 15 (RIA Novosti) – The West has never broken the promise of not extending NATO beyond East Germany because it never made such commitments, according to a new report from the NATO Defense College Research Division published Wednesday.
“The debate about the enlargement of NATO initially evolved solely on the context of German reunification,” the report said.
“In the crucial 2+4 negotiations, which finally led [President of the Soviet Union Mikhail] Gorbachev to accept a unified Germany in NATO in July 1990, the issue was never raised," it added.
The political situation radically changed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, as new sovereign states appeared on the world map.
“The idea of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dissolving and NATO taking in former Warsaw Pact members was beyond the imagination of the protagonists at the time,” the report said.
Statements made by some Western politicians, including then US Secretary of State James Baker, could have been interpreted by Soviet leaders as a NATO promise to reject any expansion plans, the author of the research admitted.
According to the 1975 Helsinki Charter, every sovereign country has a right to decide on its alliances, thus NATO would have breached international law by categorically refusing membership requests, the report said.
In the post-Cold War era, NATO saw a 75 percent increase in membership – from 16 to 28 members. The twelve new members were all in Eastern Europe and all were either former Warsaw Pact member states, including three former Soviet republics, or former Yugoslav federal republics.
Relations between Russia and NATO soured after Crimea rejoining Russia in March. It was earlier reported that NATO is considering permanently stationing troops in parts of Eastern Europe as tensions over Ukraine are on the rise. This move has come as another sign that the alliance was tightening its grip on Eastern Europe where it is already running air-policing and surveillance missions over Poland, Romania and the three Baltic countries.
