NATO's missed opportunity: How US has failed to incorporate Russia into a Pan-Europe system -- expert

CRACKS (1994-1998)

That NATO started eastward enlargement dented Russia's fantasies about the West, Kang noted. From late 1993, the Clinton administration began to push NATO eastward in order to compete with the Republicans, curry favor with the domestic military-industrial complex, and win over Polish and Czech American voters.

The NATO foreign ministers' meeting announced an expansion roadmap without prior consultations with Russia, a move that infuriated Yeltsin.

In 1995, an expert panel appointed by Yeltsin proposed two options for NATO expansion: either NATO should give Russia membership, or NATO should be placed under the authority of an expanded United Nations-led Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in which Russia would have the right of veto.

In recent years, the Russian side has repeatedly mentioned that NATO has reneged on its "no eastward expansion commitment." In February 1990, when then US Secretary of State James Baker visited the Soviet Union to negotiate the reunification of Germany, he proposed to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the United States and NATO would guarantee that NATO jurisdiction and military presence would not move an inch to the east after the reunification of Germany.

In Russia's view, "no eastward expansion" certainly includes the Eastern European countries east of then East Germany, so it was equivalent to the US commitment of NATO not expanding eastward. But in the United States' view, this commitment was only aimed at the reunification of Germany, and the issue of eastward enlargement was not on the agenda of all parties at that time, so the commitment does not apply to Eastern Europe.