Interesting interview, Bolton is a neocon scumbag and this is a good take on their reckless thinking.
Used to be a time when Bolton was thought of as a hero by conservatives, even by some here on FR.
My how times have changed.
The West's NATO CommitmentWhat Gorbachev heard and remembered:What the Germans, Americans, British and French did agree to in 1990 was that there would be no deployment of non-German NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR. I was a deputy director on the State Department's Soviet desk at the time, and that was certainly the point of Secretary James Baker's discussions with Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 1990, few gave the possibility of a broader NATO enlargement to the east any serious thought.
The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:
Former Soviet President Gorbachev's ViewWhat was under discussion at the time was NATO expansion into East Germany during German reunification, before the USSR collapsed. It was not about expanding into other countries before or after the USSR collapsed, that happened afterwards.We now have a very authoritative voice from Moscow confirming this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO's military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification.
2. Since I break FR Rule #1 of not reading the thread or not watching the video, watching the video shows Bolton was tricked into making misstatements, not that anyone wanting to take advantage of that would care.
Vovan & Lexus asked a question asserting that George W Bush said Baker made that promise (9m27s). Bolton's response (10m26s) was that nations who join NATO see themselves as immune to Russian attack, and that if Ukraine had joined NATO in 2008, what happened in 2014 and today would not have happened. Then after that, he gets his history wrong (10m51s), and says Baker promised not to expand NATO east, which is not accurate. Look at how the question was phrased, asserting George W Bush said it first, that's how Bolton was tricked.
When someone asks loaded or trick questions, the person answering often gets tripped up. This reflects on the people asking and grasping at straws more than on the person who was tricked into misspeaking.