Previous Subchapter → 3.5 NATO Denialism - Primary Arguments
Along with these main 2 arguments, there are 2 other less common denialist arguments surrounding NATO expansionism, these 2 arguments being that:
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There was no reason for the Soviet Union to seek guarantees surrounding NATO expansion, because they never expected Eastern European nations to ditch Communist Party rule
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And that there was no formal treaty between the West and USSR surrounding expansion, and so Western nations aren’t obligated to keep NATO contained
Here’s an example of these 2 points being perpetuated:
The first of these arguments is very easy to disprove, it’s another variant of the argument that the conversations never happened, but based on different logic, rather than an appeal to authority by citing Gorbachev, this interpretation tries to point to the timeline of events, the theory goes that in 1990, when the USSR and the Western Bloc were holding these talks, the Warsaw Pact was still very much intact, and the Soviet Union never expected that to change, so they didn’t discuss the idea of former Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO because it was just unimaginable that it could ever happen.
Again, as with the Gorbachev version of this argument, we can easily prove that this theory isn’t true by just looking the records, but we can also look to the timeline as well, while the Warsaw Pact didn’t legally dissolve until 1991, its members started drifting from Communist Party rule earlier than that, by the middle of 1990 every single Warsaw Pact country other than the USSR itself was ruled by Non-Communists, and most of them had already made the switch to Non-Communist rule by the end of 1989, when we look at when these events took place, the theory that the USSR had no idea the Eastern Bloc was over when they were holding talks with the West in 1990 can be seen for what it is, complete nonsense.
The second of these arguments, the treaty argument, is an interesting outlier, because unlike the other 3 arguments, it isn’t misleading or false, there is no treaty legally requiring NATO to avoid expansion into Eastern Europe and there never was one.
The only legal deal between Soviet and Western powers regarding NATO expansion is specifically related to Germany, where as part of the unification of East and West Germany, NATO powers agreed with the USSR that in exchange for unified Germany being allowed to remain in NATO, NATO troops would stay out of former East German territory. To this day, a lot of people have wondered why the Soviets made sure this deal was put in a binding treaty when it came to Germany, but not to the rest of Europe.
The answer is Germany was a special case, during the Cold War most of Europe’s nations were either part of the Eastern Bloc or the Western Bloc, aligned to the Eastern Warsaw Pact or the Western NATO Alliance, Germany was aligned to both because of its division between East and West, Germany ever since World War 2 was never a genuinely independent country, it was legally under a joint occupation between World War 2’s historic Allies, and so for Germany to be legally reunified and restored to independence, there had to be a treaty between those Allies addressing all of these issues, not just a series of promises in speeches and backroom conversations.
For the independence of the rest of the Eastern Bloc to be restored, these sorts of complex legal treaties weren’t needed, the Soviets were the only occupying power, so they simply needed to leave for the independence of these countries to return, Gorbachev didn’t seek treaties to keep these nations out of NATO because he simply believed what he was told by Western leaders that NATO wouldn’t expand, he was naïve.
The problem is that after the Soviet collapse, the two sides developed two very different points of view, the Russians (as the successors of the Soviet Union) believed that the West should still have stuck to their promises, even without there being a binding treaty forcing them to do so, Western nations on the other hand believed that since the nation they had made their promises to was gone, they had no reason to stick to them. In the end, the Western argument won out, and NATO was expanded.
There’s nothing illegal about this, but just because NATO expansion wasn’t criminal doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be criticised, even though there wasn’t a treaty legally blocking NATO expansion it’s still a fact that Soviet and Russian leaders were led to believe that expansion wouldn’t happen, and that they voluntarily dismantled their Cold War power bloc in the 1980s based on these promises, it’s not a surprise at all that they felt cheated after the promises were ditched, this experience taught the Russians the exact wrong lesson, that good faith doesn’t produce results.
By expanding NATO instead of rolling it back, we taught the Russians that the era of power blocs wasn’t over, the reason they’ve been stuck in a Cold War mentality is because we shackled them into it; In the 1990s there was a genuine, historic opportunity to promote peace, good faith and cooperation between East and West, and the Western powers took that opportunity and threw it into the trash bin.