Not one inch eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the origin of Russian resentment toward NATO enlargement in February 1990

Diplomatic History

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 119-140

  Sarotte, Mary Elise ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 74049102701     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: 14677709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2009.00835.x     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. George Friedman, "Georgia and the Balance of Power," The New York Review of Books 55/14 (Sept. 25, 2008), http://www.nybooks.com.
2. Bill Keller, "Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals," The New York Times, August 17, 2008; Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO's Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York, 2002), 4-6; Friedman, "Georgia and the Balance of Power," 24-26
3. Mark Kramer, "The Myth of the No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia," Washington Quarterly 32, no. 2 (April 2009): 39-61. The Washington Quarterly subsequently published a correction box informing its readers that the references to American documents in the Kramer article came from the author of this study.
4. Asmus, Opening NATO's Door, 4-6. For more on this topic, see Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York, 1996), 490; James M. Goldgeier, Not Whether but When: The US Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington, DC, 1999), 15; John Kornblum and Michael Mandelbaum, "NATO Expansion, A Decade On," American Interest 3/5 (May/June 2008): 56-62; Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany United and Europe Transformed (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 182; Alexander Von Plato, Die Vereinigung Deutschlands - ein weltpolitisches Machtspiel: Bush, Kohl, Gorbatschow und die geheimen Moskauer Protokolle (Berlin, 2002), 244
5. The best American sources are the Baker Papers at Mudd Library, Princeton, NJ, and the Bush Presidential Library materials, released early via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). German and Soviet documents are surprisingly accessible as well. A large number of Helmut Kohl's papers on German unification from mid-1989 to late 1990 or, to be more exact, the records of his office, the Bundeskanzleramt or Federal Chancellery, were published in the truly remarkable volume edited by Hanns Jürgen Küsters and Daniel Hoffman, eds., Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik: Deutsche Einheit, Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (München, 1998) (hereafter DESE). See also Hartmut Mayer, "Review of Dokumente zur Deutschlandpolitik: Deutsche Einheit," in International Affairs 74, no. 4 (October 1998): 952-53
6. In addition, I also received permission, via the German Freedom of Information Law, to see Bundeskanzleramt documents that were not released. On the Soviet side, materials have been available from the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow for a number of years. In 2006, Gorbachev decided to follow Kohl's example and publish a volume of hundreds of documents of his own. Edited by Anatoly Chernyaev and Alexander Galkin, a limited number of copies appeared under the title (: , 2006) (hereafter ). However, the documents have since become available online at http://rodon.org/other/mgigv/index.htm; I am grateful to Victor Grinberg for calling my attention to this site. For help in securing and reading Russian sources, I thank Mariya Grinberg, Mark Kramer, Alexander Polunov, Svetlana Savranskaya, and Jennifer Siegel.
7. A list of interview partners is in the acknowledgements at the start of the notes.
8. Nearly all of the key individuals have produced memoirs, and they will be cited individually below. Particularly useful works of secondary literature are the following, in alphabetical order by author: Goldgeier, Not Whether; Thomas Blanton, Svetlana Savranskaya and Vladislav Zubok, eds., Masterpieces of History: The Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal from Eastern Europe (New York, 2010
9. Jeff Engel, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989 (Oxford, 2009); Hans-Hermann Hertle, Der Fall der Mauer: Die unbeabsichtigte Selbstauflösung des SED-Staates (Opladen, Germany, 1996
10. Hans-Hermann Hertle, "Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War," in Olav Njølstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, 265-87 (London, 2004
11. Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider's Account of US Policy in Europe, 1989-1992 (Washington, DC, 1997
12. Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1997
13. Christopher Maynard, Out of the Shadow: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War (College Station, TX, 2008
14. Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era (New York, 1991
15. Andreas Rödder, Deutschland Einig Vaterland (München, 2009
16. Angela Stent, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1999
17. Stephen Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York, 1992); Odd Arne Westad, ed., Reviewing the Cold War (London, 2000
18. Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified. See also the four-volume study by a group of German professors who received early access to West German documents: the result, Geschichte der deutschen Einheit (hereafter GDE), runs a cumulative 3,008 pages. The volume most relevant to this article is the fourth, Werner Weidenfeld, with Peter M. Wagner and Elke Bruck, GDE, Außenpolitik für die deutsche Einheit: Die Entscheidungsjahre 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998). There are also useful online sources; see http://www.chronik-der-mauer and http://www.chronik-der-wende
19. "Rede des Bundesministers des Auswärtigen, Hans-Dietrich Genscher . . . bei einer Tagung der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing," January 31, 1990, reprinted in Richard Kiessler and Frank Elbe, Ein runder Tisch mit scharfen Ecken: Der diplomatische Weg zur deutschen Einheit (Baden-Baden, 1993), 245-46. Translation by the author, but an English version with the same comment appears in Lawrence Freedman, ed., Europe Transformed: Documents on the End of the Cold War. Key Treaties, Agreements, Statements and Speeches (New York, 1990), 436-45. See also Szabo, Diplomacy, 57-58
20. Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 176
21. "JAB [James A. Baker] notes from 2/2/90 press briefing following 21/2; hr meeting w/FRG FM [Federal Republic of Germany Foreign Minister] Genscher, WDC [Washington DC]," folder 14, box 108, 8c monthly files, series 8, BP; Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Erinnerungen (Berlinr, 1995), 716-19; Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 174-77, Genscher quotation is on page 176. A similar quotation is in Al Kamen, "West German Meets Privately with Baker," The Washington Post, February 3, 1990, A20.
22. "Gespräch des Ministerialdirektors Teltschik mit Botschafter Walters, Bonn, 4. Februar 1990," Dok. 159, DESE, 756-57. See also Goldgeier, Not Whether, 14-17
23. Baker's scheduling calendars from his time as secretary of state are available in BP.
24. See his comments at the "Konstituierende Sitzung der Arbeitsgruppe Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik des Kabinettausschusses Deutsche Einheit, Bonn, 14. Feb. 1990" [hereafter KADE], Dok. 182, DESE, 830-31. For analysis, see Stent, Russia and Germany, 117-19
25. As Zelikow and Rice put it, he had not yet "internalized" the different view of the NSC; see their Germany Unified, 187. For more on Gorbachev's alternate vision, see my book 1989
26. Richard A. Falkenrath, Shaping Europe's Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 56. See also Andrei Grachev, "From the Common European Home to European Confederation," in Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow, and Leopoldo Nuti, eds., Europe and the End of the Cold War London 325-26, 2008, 207-19.
27. Vladislav Zubok, "New Evidence on the End of the Cold War: New Evidence on the 'Soviet Factor' in the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 11.
28. Political leaders often revert to beliefs and expectations established in younger years when facing challenges during their period of rule later. Such beliefs and expectations have been called an "operational code" by one political scientist. See Alexander George, "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Decision-Making," International Studies Quarterly 12 (June 1969), 190-222.
29. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1995), 24-26. While Gorbachev tells this story from memory without presenting evidence, its broad outlines nonetheless conform to numerous other stories of prisoners of Stalin's purges, as described in Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1989), 24-6
30. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York, 1968
31. Stéphane Courtois et al., Le livre noir du Communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (Paris, 1997
32. James A. Baker with Thomas A. Defrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989-1992 (New York, 1995), 61-62.
33. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 56-66
34. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 18, 37-38
35. Ibid., 72-77
36. On the problems facing Moscow, see Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge, England, 2002
37. Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington, DC, 1994), 419-20
38. Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (New York, 2001), 67, 88; Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA, 1993
39. Vojtech Mastny and Malcolm Byrne, eds., A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact (New York, 2005), 63.
40. "President George Bush: State of the Union Address, 31 January 1990 (Excerpts)," in Freedman, ed., Documents, 446-47. See also Falkenrath, Military Order, 62-63; Gates, From the Shadows, 485-89
41. Garthoff, Great Transition, 412-14; "Soviet-American Joint Statement, 10 February 1990," in Freedman, Documents, 469-71. For more on what was discussed with Shevardnadze, see Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 204; on CFE, see Falkenrath, Military Order.
42. For an in-depth study of USSR anxieties about the concept of German unity, see Rafael Biermann, Zwischen Kreml und Kanzleramt: Wie Moskau mit der deutschen Einheit rang (Paderborn, Germany, 1997
43. "JAB notes from 2/7-9/90 Ministerial Mtgs., w/ USSR FM Shevardnadze, Moscow USSR," Note "GERMANY 2/8/90," folder 14, box 108, 8c monthly files, series 8, BP; see also copies in folder 13, box 176, 12b chapter files, series 12; Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 202-06
44. "," December 9, 1990, , 333-34, 338. Excerpt published and translated in the briefing book for the conference "The End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989," held in 1998 at St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA, organized by the National Security Archive. These documents are also summarized in Gorbachev, Memoirs, 528-29. They agree with the summary of the conversation that Baker wrote for Kohl the next day; Kohl released Baker's letter in the original English text but with a German title added: "Schreiben des Außenministers Baker an Bundeskanzler Kohl, 10. Februar 1990," Dok. 173, DESE, 793-94. See also "JAB notes from 2/9/90 mtg. w/USSR Pres. Gorbachev, Moscow, USSR," folder 12, box 176, 12b chapter files, series 12, BP.
45. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 529
46. Kai Diekmann, Helmut Kohl, and Ralf Georg Reuth, Ich wollte Deutschlands Einheit (Berlin, 1996, 268-69
47. Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage (Berlin, 1991), 137; Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 206
48. "Schreiben des Außenministers Baker an Bundeskanzler Kohl," 793-94.
49. "Schreiben des Präsidenten Bush an Bundeskanzler Kohl, 9. Februar 1990," Dok. 170, DESE, 784-85.
50. Zelikow's e-mail with the author in 2008.
51. Multiple requests for an interview with Helmut Kohl in the years 2008-09 did not yield a positive result in time for the writing of this article.
52. Teltschik, 329 Tage, 135, and interview with J. D. Bindenagel in 2008.
53. Both the Russian and the West German records from this conversation are available. See "," February 10, 1990, , 339-55, and "Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Generalsekretär Gorbatschow, Moskau, 10. Februar 1990," Dok. 174, DESE, 795-807; quotation from page 799. See also the discussion in Teltschik, 329 Tage, 137-43
54. See the broadcasts of the television shows "Tagesschau" and "Heute-journal spezial," February 10, 1990, ZDF, KAS. See also "Soviet-German Joint Statement, February 10, 1990," in Freedman, Documents, 472-75; "Delegationgespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Generalsekretär Gorbatschow, Moskau, 10. Februar 1990," Dok. 175, DESE, 808-11, and the press conference text that follows, 812-13
55. GDE, vol. IV, 247.
56. The Ottawa conference is described in greater detail in my book 1989.
57. "EUR daily press guidances - February 14, 1990," run by Margaret Tutwiler, in NSC, Wilson, FOIA 2001-1166-F, BL. While Tutwiler ran the session, it is not clear if she was the person providing this answer or not.
58. Author's interview with Zelikow in 2008.
59. "Speech by NATO Secretary General Manfred Worner [sic], Hamburg," February 8, 1990, in Freedman, Documents, 462-66, see especially page 466.
60. Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 186-87,andfootnote 62 on page 423.
61. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998), 243.
62. Handwritten notes on side of "Moscow domestic service in Russian 1900 GMT 20 Feb 90," in Condoleezza Rice, NSC PRS files, released as part of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request number 2001-1166-F, BL.
63. The quotation is Szabo's summary of what Zoellick said, in Szabo, Diplomacy, 59.
64. Author's interview with Zelikow in 2008; Goldgeier, Not Whether but When, 15
65. "Proposed Agenda for Meeting with the President, Friday, February 16, 1990, 1:30pm," with handwritten notes by Baker, folder 7, box 115, 8e White House meetings and notes, series 8, BP.
66. "Proposed Agenda for Meeting with the President, Friday, February 16, 1990, 1:30 pm"; see also Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 109-14.
67. Kohl, Erinnerungen 1982-1990, 1080
68. Teltschik, 329 Tage, 159
69. Hutchings, American Diplomacy, for more discussion of difficulties within the USSR.
70. Bush and Scowcroft, World Transformed, 253. In general, the quotations in this book correspond very closely to the documents that have been released, so presumably quotations from unreleased documents, such as this one, may be used with a high degree of confidence. For an analysis of this particular comment, see Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "Economic Constraints and the Turn towards Superpower Cooperation in the 1980s," in Njølstad, Last Decade, 105-06.
71. "Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Präsident Bush, Camp David, 24. Feb. 1990," Dok. 192, DESE, 868-69; Bush and Scowcroft, World Transformed, 253; Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 215; GDE, vol. IV, 269
72. On the Caucasus agreement and its consequences, see the documents from July, August and September 1990 in DESE, discussed at greater length in my book 1989; see also Hannes Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev (Baden-Baden, 1998).
73. On the lack of clarity, see Stent, Germany and Russia, 140-1: "The record shows that no explicit promises on NATO expansion were made, but what was implied during the negotiations ultimately lies in the eyes of the beholder."
74. Memorandum from Harvey Sicherman to S/P - Dennis Ross, and C - Robert Zoellick, March 12, 1990, in folder 14, box 176, series 12, BP.
75. Gyula Horn's comment is discussed in Mastny and Byrne, Cardboard Castle, 71; the direct quotation from Horn is in Mark Kramer, "The Myth of the No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia," 41; see also 58, footnote 16 in Kramer for a description of the Polish proposal by Jan Rylukowski.
76. Interviews with the author in 2008 and 2009.
77. "Notes from Jim Cicconi [notetaker] re: 7/3/90 pre-NATO Summit briefing at Kennebunkport," folder 3, box 109, 8c monthly files, BP.
78. Interview with Baker in 2009
79. "Telefongespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Präsident Gorbatschow, 7. September 1990," Dok. 415, DESE, 1527-30 and "," September 7, 1990, , 554-559. Quotation is on DESE, 1529
80. I have filed a FOIA request for this document, and I am grateful to both Asmus and Kornblum for discussing it and e-mailing about it with me in 2008. See also Asmus, Opening, 307-08, footnote 7
81. Particularly at the summit in July 1990, where the decisions to be reached were essentially agreed by Washington and Bonn in advance. When Washington and Bonn disagreed, as they did over short-range nuclear forces, then matters became more problematic. See my book 1989 for discussion of both.
82. Philip Zelikow, "NATO Expansion Wasn't Ruled Out," International Herald Tribune, August 10, 1995
83. Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, Andrei Kolesnikov, and Vladimir Putin, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Putin, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York, 2000), 81; 169. In making these remarks, Putin said that he was agreeing with an analysis offered by Kissinger. Putin also recalls Kissinger talking about how he (Kissinger) got his start in intelligence, just like Putin, 81.
84. Asmus, Opening, 4-6; Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Ignatius and Brent Scowcroft, America and the World (New York, 2008), 172; first Medvedev quotation, from speech of November 5, 2008, cited in Sergei L. Loiko, "Russia Plans to Counter US Antimissile System in Eastern Europe," Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2008, http://www.latimes.com; Mikhail Gorbachev, "Russia Never Wanted a War," New York Times, August 20, 2008; second Medvedev quotation, cited in Steven Erlanger, "NATO Duel Centers on Georgia and Ukraine," New York Times, December 1, 2008, all http://www.nytimes.com. For more on the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, see Keller, "Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals"; Charles King, "The Five-Day War: Managing Moscow after the Georgia Crisis," Foreign Affairs (November/December 2008), http://www.foreignaffairs.com. For broader history and context, see Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand (New York, 2003