What was going on? Assuredly, many countries of Eastern and Central Europe applied for membership of NATO, and perhaps, knowing their history, it was difficult to expect that they would have a balanced and rational approach to the question after lacking independence for decades. That does not, however, mean that the overarching requirements of equilibrium and security should have been subordinated to their emotions. Alongside these there were entirely pragmatic vested interests involved that had little to do with security issues.
Russia, after initially failing to take a stand (on a visit to Poland in August 1993, Yeltsin even signed a declaration to the effect that if Poland preferred to join NATO, that would not be contrary to Russian interests), subsequently came to her senses and announced her opposition to the policy of expanding the North Atlantic alliance. Her views were effectively ignored. It was said that Russia had no right to veto decisions involving other states. This assertion, at first sight unchallengeable, implied that Russia was somehow not a party to general security matters.
The most the Americans would agree to was to sweeten the pill, but that made no real difference: Russia’s relations with the West were irreparably damaged. Did those who so advocated NATO expansion give any thought to the configuration of political forces in Russia at that time? Was the West really blind to the kind of sentiments NATO expansion aroused among influential circles in Russia?
It has to be said that attitudes in the West to NATO’s plans were far from uniformly supportive. I can instance my conversations with such prominent politicians as the former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti; the former British prime minister, Edward Heath; the former US ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock; the doyen of American diplomats, George Kennan; and leading politicians of Spain, Portugal and France.
By then I had many times visited the United States, had discussions with numerous leading politicians of both parties, with businessmen, intellectuals and ordinary Americans. I found few people in favour of NATO expansion to the East. There were, of course, those who, without any particular enthusiasm, were prepared to go along with it, but most Americans clearly had doubts about its wisdom, and many were passionately opposed. They were ignored.
In Russia, NATO’s expansion plans became an acute domestic problem. They were immediately seized on by those in favour of confrontation with the West, and by those who were intent on using the ‘external threat’ to their own advantage. There was much agitation among enthusiasts of blaming everything on Gorbachev, and people who simply did not know their facts and claimed I had failed to take measures that could have prevented the expansion of NATO. In the course of reunifying Germany I should have haggled harder and ruled out the possibility of any expansion of NATO in the future.
These charges were completely absurd. German reunification was completed at a time when the Warsaw Pact was still in existence, and to demand that its members should not join NATO would have been laughable. No organization can give a legally binding undertaking not to expand in the future. That was a purely political question, and all that could be done politically in the conditions of the time, was done. The agreement on the final settlement with Germany stated that no additional NATO troops would be deployed on the territory of the former GDR, and neither would weapons of mass destruction. That meant that NATO’s military infrastructure would not move eastwards.
The decision to expand NATO, taken after the break-up of the Soviet Union, was contrary to the spirit of those undertakings, as I have repeatedly pointed out when parrying baseless accusations. The main problem was that the policy of the leaders of NATO harboured a real threat, and not only to Russia. There was a danger that, half a century after the start of the Cold War, the world could again be plunged into something analogous.
The expansion of NATO fundamentally undermined the European modus vivendi established by the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975. It was a complete reversal of the strategy, jointly developed by all the states of Europe, to move beyond the Cold War. It shook the foundations of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, as a new line dividing Europe was drawn. NATO started behaving like a policeman charged with maintaining order in Europe and even the world. That began as early as the first half of the 1990s, with intervention in the conflict as Yugoslavia disintegrated.
Most acute and bloody was the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Western countries, instead of doing their utmost to support the efforts of the mediators, Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State, and Lord Owen [a former leader of the British Social Democratic Party], only made the situation worse. For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began direct military intervention, and, moreover, with a clear bias against the Bosnian Serbs. In 1995, Serbia was forced to accept NATO’s terms and the Americanimposed Dayton Agreement.
NATO’s new strategy, adopted on the alliance’s 50th anniversary at a session of the North Atlantic Council in Washington in spring 1999, provided for the possible stationing, deployment and use of NATO forces beyond the borders of the territories for which the bloc was directly responsible, anywhere in the entire European and Atlantic area. This new strategy was promptly applied in Kosovo, where Albanian separatists were fighting to detach the province from Yugoslavia.
In the end, after NATO’s intervention and the bombing of Belgrade, Yugoslavia was forced to concede and Kosovo was declared independent. The Serb minority there was reduced to the status of hostages and a dangerous precedent was created of military action undertaken against a sovereign country without authorization by the UN Security Council, in violation of the UN Charter and international law.
The world after 9/11
Despite this, the international community had an opportunity to return to the path of joint maintenance of security. It arose in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001.
I well remember how I heard about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I was working in my office at the Gorbachev Foundation when my assistant came in. ‘Mikhail Sergeyevich, something incredible is happening. A plane has crashed into a skyscraper in New York. Let’s turn on the television.’ And indeed, I could not believe what I was seeing on the screen. When I was in New York to address the United Nations in 1988, I had visited the World Trade Center and met businessmen there. Now those towers were on fire and belching smoke, the kind of spectacle you would have imagined possible only in a horror movie. That same day I sent a telegram of condolence to President Bush via the US Embassy in Moscow:
I am shocked by this unprecedented crime against the United States and all mankind. I offer you and all Americans my profound condolences, and I know that today all people of goodwill are united in solidarity with the citizens of America. Humanity is facing an unheard-of challenge. Only through joint efforts will we be able to stop this insanity.
I expressed my sympathy and solidarity with the American people also in a letter published in the New York Times. It evoked many responses, some of which I would like to reproduce here: