The conditionality of the Soviet Union\u2019s agreement to allow East Germany to be taken by West Germany and for the Cold War to end, was that NATO would not expand \u00abone inch to the east\u00bb. This was the agreement that was approved by the Russian President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, a great man and a subsequent hero to democrats around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n He agreed then to end the Soviet Union and abandon communism and thus to end the entire Cold War; he agreed to this because he had been promised that NATO would expand not \u00abone inch to the east,\u00bb or \u00abone inch eastward,\u00bb depending upon how the promise was translated and understood \u2014 but it has the same meaning, no matter how it was translated. He trusted American President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose friend and Secretary of State James Baker made this promise to Gorbachev. With this promise, Gorbachev agreed to end the Soviet Union; end the communist mutual-defense pact which was their own equivalent of NATO, the Warsaw Pact; and he believed that the remaining nation that he would then be leading, which was Russia, would be accepted as a Western democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n He was even promised by the United States that \u00abwe were going to make them a member [of NATO], we were \u2013<\/strong> observer first and then a member\u00bb. In other words: the U.S. promised that NATO would not extend up to the borders of Russia and so become a mortal threat to the national security of the Russian people \u2013 now isolated and separated from its former military allies. Instead, Gorbachev was told, Russia would itself become welcomed into the Western Alliance, and ultimately become a NATO member. That was the deal, ending the 46-year Cold War.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia kept its part of the bargain. The United States did not; the U.S. instead lied through its teeth and so has since expanded NATO to absorb former member-nations of the Warsaw Pact into NATO as being, now,\u00a0an anti-Russian military alliance<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 exactly what the U.S. had promised would never happen. U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush in private told West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (who had wanted to go along with what James Baker had arranged): \u00abTo hell with that! We prevailed, they didn\u2019t\u00bb. He didn\u2019t want peace with Russia; he wanted to conquer it; he wanted to rub Russians\u2019 noses in their inferiority to Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n Russia\u2019s continued (and continuing) desire to join NATO has simply been spurned. This is war by NATO in intent; it is the exact opposite of what the U.S. had promised to Russia, on the basis of which the Warsaw Pact ended. How can the Russian people then trust such a country as the United States? They would need to be fools to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n But this deceit, this double-cross, isn\u2019t\u00a0merely<\/em> America\u2019s shame; it has also become the shame by the entirety of the nations that joined in that Western promise at the time. Because all of them accepted America\u2019s leadership in this double-crossing war against Russia, America\u2019s war to conquer Russia. They accept this merely by remaining as members of the now-nefarious military gang, which NATO has thus become. Worse yet, some of the other member-nations of NATO at the time were (like West Germany\u2019s Kohl, the model for his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Angela Merkel, who now continues the crime) themselves key participants in the making, and now breaking, of that promise to Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is the evidence regarding this massive and ongoing historical international crime \u2014 the crime that\u2019s now the source of so much misery and even death in not only Russia but the rest of Europe, and of millions of refugees fleeing from Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and other former Russian-allied nations \u2014 the chaos that\u2019s being led by America:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abI was there when we told the Russians that we were going to make them a member, we were–observer first and then a member\u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/span>: Lawrence Wilkerson, 3 October 2014, on The Real News Network, at 18:54 in the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abWhen I spoke with Baker, he agreed that he told Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union allowed German reunification and membership in NATO, the West would not expand NATO \u00abone inch to the east\u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/span>: Bill Bradley, 22 August 2009, in\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abMr. Kohl chose to echo Mr. Baker, not Mr. Bush. The chancellor assured Mr. Gorbachev, as Mr. Baker had done, that \u2018naturally NATO could not expand its territory\u2019 into East Germany\u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u2026 Crucially, the Gorbachev-Kohl meeting ended with a deal, as opposed to the Gorbachev-Baker session the previous day\u2026 Mr. Kohl and his aides publicized this major concession immediately at a press conference. Then they returned home to begin merging the two Germanys under one currency and economic system: Mary Louise Sarotte,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, 29 November 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abAccording to records from Kohl\u2019s office, the chancellor chose to echo Baker, not Bush, since Baker\u2019s softer line was more likely to produce the results that Kohl wanted<\/a><\/strong>: permission from Moscow to start reunifying Germany. Kohl thus assured Gorbachev that \u2018naturally NATO could not expand its territory to the current territory of [East Germany].\u2019 In parallel talks, Genscher delivered the same message to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, saying, \u2018for us, it stands firm: NATO will not expand itself to the East.\u2019\u2026 But Kohl\u2019s phrasing would quickly become heresy among the key Western decision-makers.<\/span><\/p>\n Once Baker got back to Washington, in mid-February 1990, he fell in line with the National Security Council\u2019s view and adopted its position. From then on, members of Bush\u2019s foreign policy team exercised strict message discipline, making no further remarks about NATO holding at the 1989 line. Kohl, too, brought his rhetoric in line with Bush\u2019s, as both U.S. and West German transcripts from the two leaders\u2019 February 24\u201325 summit at Camp David show. Bush made his feelings about compromising with Moscow clear to Kohl: \u2018To hell with that!\u2019 he said. \u2018We prevailed, they didn\u2019t.\u2019\u2026 In April, Bush spelled out this thinking in a confidential telegram to French President Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand\u2026 Bush was making it clear to Mitterrand that the dominant security organization in a post\u2013Cold War Europe had to remain NATO \u2014 not any kind of pan-European alliance.<\/span><\/p>\n As it happened, the next month, Gorbachev proposed just such a pan-European arrangement, one in which a united Germany would join both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, thus creating one massive security institution. Gorbachev even raised the idea of having the Soviet Union join NATO. \u2018You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities,\u2019 Gorbachev told Baker in May, according to Soviet records. \u2018Therefore, we propose to join NATO.\u2019 Baker refused to consider such a notion, replying dismissively, Pan-European security is a dream.\u2019 \u2026 By the time of the Camp David summit, \u2026 all members of Bush\u2019s team, along with Kohl, had united behind an offer in which Gorbachev would receive financial assistance from West Germany \u2014 and little else \u2014 in exchange for allowing Germany to reunify and for allowing a united Germany to be part of NATO\u00bb: Mary Louise Sarotte,\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em>, October 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abA failure to appreciate how the Cold War ended has had a profound impact on Russian and Western attitudes \u2014 and helps explain what we are seeing now<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0The common assumption that the West forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus won the Cold War is wrong. The fact is that the Cold War ended by negotiation to the advantage of both sides. At the December 1989 Malta summit, Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush confirmed that the ideological basis for the war was gone, stating that the two nations no longer regarded each other as enemies. Over the next two years, we worked more closely with the Soviets than with even some of our allies. \u2026 \u2018By the grace of God, America won the Cold War,\u2019 Bush said during his 1992 State of the Union address. That rhetoric would not have been particularly damaging on its own. But it was reinforced by actions taken under the next three presidents. President Bill Clinton supported NATO\u2019s bombing of Serbia without U.N. Security Council approval and the expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries. Those moves seemed to violate the understanding that the United States would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat from Eastern Europe. The effect on Russians\u2019 trust in the United States was devastating\u00bb: Jack Matlock,\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, 14 March 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00abSir Rodric Braithwaite GCMG, former British Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Russia, informed us that assurances were given in 1990 by the US (James Baker, US Secretary of State) and Germany (Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor), and in 1991 on behalf of the UK (by the then Prime Minister, John Major, and the British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd) and France (by French President Francois Mitterrand)<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0Sir Rodric Braithwaite said that this \u2018factual record has not been successfully challenged in the West\u2019\u00bb:\u00a0The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine<\/em>, 20 February 2015, British House of Lords, paragraph 107.<\/span><\/p>\n Gorbachev\u2019s failure to demand these assurances in writing has been widely criticized, but handshake agreements in international affairs are common, and no treaty was to be signed at the end of the Cold War because it hadn\u2019t been a hot war: there were no claims, no restitution or reparations to be paid by either side to the other. Gorbachev thought that the U.S. was honest and could be trusted \u2014 that understandings reached in private and witnessed by numerous participants would be honored by the West, as they would be by Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n Sadly, he was trusting mega-crooks who were led by a super-gangster, G.H.W. Bush, and the entire world is suffering from those crooks today, and every day. Instead of the West apologizing, and stopping, it insults Russia constantly. It\u2019s digging in deeper, into G.H.W. Bush\u2019s original sin, the West\u2019s mega-crime, which produces increasing global chaos and bloodshed, in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and now a resulting refugee crisis throughout Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n For example,\u00a0Defense News<\/em>, the trade journal for U.S. military contractors, headlined on 4 September 2015,\u00a0\u00abUkraine\u2019s New Military Doctrine Identifies Russia As Aggressor, Eyes Naval Acquisitions,\u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0and reported that:<\/span><\/p>\n Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk\u00a0<\/em>[whom Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department had\u00a0appointed on 4 February 2014<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, 18 days before the\u00a0coup<\/a><\/strong><\/span>]\u00a0said that the country\u2019s new draft military doctrine is the first in Ukraine\u2019s history to clearly identify Russia as an enemy and an aggressor. The announcement was made Sept. 1 during the prime minister\u2019s visit to Odessa. \u2026 Yatsenyuk said that \u2026 the Ukrainian President \u00abwill sign the corresponding decree\u00bb\u2026 Vice Admiral James Foggo, commander of the US 6th Fleet, and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt\u00a0<\/em>[who\u00a0took instructions from Nuland and ran the coup for her<\/a><\/strong><\/span>]\u00a0took part in the ceremony\u2026 \u00abWe feel as one force with our partners, NATO\u00a0<\/em>[member]\u00a0states, with our American partners. Therefore, the American ships have entered and will\u00a0<\/em>[defeat the Russians in Crimea and expell from the naval base there the Russian navy which has been headquartered there since 1783, and so]\u00a0enter the Ukrainian territorial waters in the future. We will continue our joint exercise,\u00bb Yatsenyuk said.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0and of\u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\nTHE TESTIMONY<\/strong><\/h2>\n
CONCLUDING NOTE<\/strong>:<\/h2>\n