'..The Soviet leadership's power was eroding so fast that it was pointless to make carved-in-stone promises. So later, when the Soviet Union crumbled and East European countries wanted the Cold War victors' protection, there was also no point to keep them out of NATO.''None of the reassuring talk turned into specific agreements because the Soviet Union was practically bankrupt, in need of the aid that Germany offered in exchange for acquiescence to its unification, and generally dependent on Western loans. It was in no state to demand anything from the West; even the insistence on a common security system was a bluff. That's why Gorbachev, who doesn't like to admit he was desperate and unable to push back, has said that the West kept its promises -- or at least one promise: That no non-German NATO troops would be stationed in the former East Germany.
The U.S., unlike cautious Germany, was talking to the Soviets as a winner speaks to a loser, not particularly careful about non-binding offers and assurances to Gorbachev and Shevardnadze. The Soviet leadership's power was eroding so fast that it was pointless to make carved-in-stone promises. So later, when the Soviet Union crumbled and East European countries wanted the Cold War victors' protection, there was also no point to keep them out of NATO.
That brings us back to Putin's style and worldview. He has clearly pored over Soviet documents from 1990 and 1991 -- he quoted Woerner on non-expansion in his famous, belligerent 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference. And he appears to want to negotiate with the West the way he feels Westerners negotiated with the Soviets back then. That means, to him, feinting, dissembling, offering meaningless assurances of non-aggression, denying Russia's military actions in Ukraine, offering concessions in Syria that he never intended to make. Irritated Western interlocutors find that it's impossible to negotiate with him because he doesn't mean what he says and doesn't say what he wants. He sees it differently -- as talking like a winner.
Putin the ex-KGB officer appeared for a while to be a convert to Western ideas -- at least when he worked for St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. But studying the Soviet collapse, which he has described as a tragedy, was almost certainly one of the factors that led him to revert to type. He became convinced the West will only respond to force. As he projects it, whatever he tells Western leaders is only cover -- just the game that, he appears to believe, Baker and President George H.W. Bush were playing with Shevardnadze and Gorbachev. Putin's worldview is one of all-embracing cynicism and mistrust. The broken promise story is his excuse -- not an entirely groundless one, judging by the GWU documents -- to refuse to play fair.
That's why the West is getting nowhere, and will get nowhere, with Putin. Moreover, it's highly unlikely that any successor to Putin will simply cast aside the broken promise story, which is by now embedded in the Russian government's post-Soviet DNA. For years, perhaps decades, maintaining a confrontation with Russia will be easier than rebuilding trust.'
- Leonid Bershidsky,
The Story Behind Putin's Mistrust of the West, December 13, 2017
ContextMikhail Gorbachev: I am against all walls, October 16, 2014
NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard, December 12, 2017
The U.S. Has Way Too Many Secrets, December 9, 2017
'On Russia, we have no illusions about the regime we are dealing with..' - Tillerson'..Peace doesn’t demand the absence of strength. It asks each side to see and understand the suffering of the other, whether that suffering is rooted in reality or misperception..'