[nimbius]

Americans adore the idea that just because it wasnt written down, it somehow holds no value to the parties involved. History remembers a broken promise differently...

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

[spamizbad]

And yet, nearly 2 years later, at the end of '91, Yeltsin said the long-term goal of Russia was to join NATO[1]. And they were slowly moving in that direction through the aughts.

If your goal is to prevent NATO expansion, the Ukraine invasion makes no sense. In its wake it has caused multiple neutral countries to explore membership (Finland, Sweden) and has caused an otherwise austere Germany to increase defense spending. It has also laid-bare problems in the Russian military on the global stage. Massive unforced error.

The counterfactual where Russia never invaded Ukraine in 2022 or 2014, we'd still be talking about leaving NATO - something Trump was floating in 2016. There were rumblings about dissolving it prior to these actions. If Putin had simply waited, further entangled Europe into its fossil fuel industry, and continued overtures to western right-wing parties, he could have probably eliminated NATO as a "threat" to Russia within a decade. Without a single shot fired, without a soldier stepping foot on foreign soil.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yel...

[scotty79]

Most painful mistake was that right at the end of the cold war Russia wasn't strongly encouraged, even pressured or bribed to join NATO.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

[dragonwriter]

> Most painful mistake was that right at the end of the cold war Russia wasn't strongly encouraged, even pressured or bribed to join NATO.

Because NATO works by consensus not majoritarianism, that would have given Russia a NATO veto, in effect. Despite that, Russia was on the NATO onramp from almost immediately after independence from the USSR until Putin demanded that Russia bypass the readiness criteria being applied to other new members and be immediately granted membership (and still technically was on the onramp after that, though no real progress was made between that point and when relations seriously started to degrade with Russia’s invasions of various of neighbors that were also, and more serious, NATO aspirants.)

[dfxm12]

If Putin had simply waited, ... he could have probably eliminated NATO as a "threat" to Russia within a decade.

At 70, I wonder if Putin thinks he doesn't have a decade to wait.

[spamizbad]

He was 62 when he drew up plans to invade Ukraine in 2014. But neither of those actions in 2014 and 2022 really work towards the goal of protection against a NATO threat. It's clear he had other motivations.

[MrMan]

if I were him I would see Europe as a very easy-to-manage relationship unless "viral democracy" is somehow a real threat, which I dont really believe. China is a real threat to Russia, and it seems that Putin has decided to become a supplicant to China by buying into their Us vs the West paranoia (which I also dont quite believe literally, I feel it is a rhetorical device to increase nationalism in China to keep people bonded together. )

[CapricornNoble]

Rumor mill is that he travels with a cancer doctor, and that he's dying of cancer.

[kingcharles]

Wasn't there some leaked medical records recently saying he has cancer?

[yodon]

In Diplomacy, like in legal contracts, the written agreement is the binding agreement. Experienced negotiators like Gorbachev and Baker know this.

Baker's un-written assurances may have bound him (Baker) to personally help ensure his assurances held, if only to preserve his credibility in other negotiations, but all parties involved understood they were not being written into the agreement and therefore were not a formal agreement. These words had meaning, even when not written into the agreement, because Baker was telling Gorbachev the truth, which was that the US understood that moving the borders of NATO east would be a bad idea. Gorbachev heard that the US understood this. It wasn't a binding legal agreement, it was a statement about the political landscape at that time.

Baker is long gone from the diplomatic landscape and so is that assurance. This isn't actually a surprise.

[scotty79]

Not really since countries are freely violating written agreements that became inconvenient for them or accuse of breaking unwritten ones.

Diolomatic agreements serve one purpose, to enable future diplomacy and their importance should be evaluated through that lens.

[AnimalMuppet]

But the written agreements are the "diplomatic agreements". A lot of things get said, a lot of positions get stated. It's the written agreements that are the actual binding promises.

Of course, as you say, those aren't really binding either. The written promises sometimes are worth the paper they're written on. Verbal promises are worth less than that.

[scotty79]

Sure, but diplomacy it's much wider than dipomatic agreements and diplomatic agreements are just one tool of it that actually seems easier to be discarded than signed with informal communication shaping actual relations and tone way more.

Written agreements are usually cherry on top of the cake made entirely out of verbal promises and real world balance of force.

[tptacek]

Americans adore the idea that...

I don't know what this sentence means, but you're not supposed to write arguments like this on HN. You can make your point without casting aspersions across entire populations.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[mongol]

It is not that it was not written down, it is that it was not their promise to make. Even though the US president may be the most powerful person in the world, his time in power is limited, and the powers he is granted are limited as well. There are well considered reasons why treaties are acknowledged by national parliaments.

[dragonwriter]

> Americans adore the idea that just because it wasnt written down, it somehow holds no value to the parties involved.

Yeah, pretty much all of the world recognizes that there is a pretty big difference, especially as to applicability several decades later, between different governments (one one side not even of the same entity, but instead the entity that was a leader among those overthrowing the one directly involved in the initial conversation) between something one official said to another in the course of negotiation and a signed and ratified treaty.

(Not that even a signed and ratified treaty between Russia and every single member of NATO in 1989 being violated would be, under international law, a justification for invasion of Ukraine—who is not in any version of any story a party, except perhaps as co-inheritor of Soviet interests, to the alleged commitment—in violation of the UN Charter and, in the case of the original 2014 invasion, Russia’s treaty obligations to Ukraine, and not that even if there was a legal justification for the invasion it would justified Russia’s rampant war crimes during the invasion.)

[scotty79]

> Americans adore the idea that just because it wasnt written down, it somehow holds no value to the parties involved

I recently noticed the same thing. That this idea of innocent because of insufficient evidence (by some conveniently chosen, case by case, definition of insufficient) is pervading some Americans thinking on the variety of subjects including US foreign policy but also for example corporate responsibility.

[scottLobster]

Do we think so little of the Soviet leadership that they had no idea how our government works? That they were so ignorant of world affairs to assume a verbal handshake deal would hold?

The word of an administration is only good for the duration of that administration, assuming said administration is even trustworthy. If it isn't written down it's a pinky swear. To hold future administrations accountable for the 30 year old pinky-swears of previous administrations is just contriving excuses to blame America/NATO.

Did the the west screw over Russia? Sure, in many ways (support for color revolutions, not properly supporting Russia during it's economic transition in the 90s, denying it NATO membership, etc). But this latest bout of violence is all Putin's ego and Russian national insecurity. So long as they maintain the world's largest nuclear arsenal, no one is marching on Moscow regardless of where their borders are, and independent nations like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States should be free to make their own decisions without being held to the standard of Russian paranoia.

[jacobsievers]

The context of Baker and Gorbachev's discussion was only within the reunited Germany, not Europe generally. See Gorbachev's explanation at https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbac...

[gunfighthacksaw]

> Americans adore the idea that just because it wasnt written down, it somehow holds no value to the parties involved

This is actually a point of friction between settlers and North American Indigenous communities.

As predominantly oral communities, your word holds as much weight as a written contract. They got burned by written contracts in the past wrt land usage too.

Woe betide a naive bureaucrat who makes empty promises to a First Nations / American Indian community. Speak carefully, because people will remember.