Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series)

«Not one inch» is the title of a book by Yale professor Mary E. Sarotte. It comes from a question the then secretary of State James Baker put to Gorbachev on February 9, 1990:“Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?”How different the world was then. The Soviet Union, with hindsight then in its death throws, still had to be consulted about the unification of Germany, let alone expansion of NATO to the previous sphere of influence of the Soviet Union.The book is well written; I read it almost like a thriller. It covers the period from the fall of the Berlin wall to 1999, when the opportunities of a close cooperation between Russia and the US-dominated world had all but faded. I, who lived through all these years and followed the news reasonably well, am struck by how little I knew, but then I didn’t have access to all the archives that professor Sarotte has managed to pry open to study all the secret notes and documents from this period.The book makes it abundantly clear that the roots of the war in Ukraine are long and twisted. Would a more accommodating and cooperative attitude by the US to Russia have managed to avoid it? Is the eastward expansion of NATO the direct cause of the present war? Professor Sarotte apparently has much sympathy for that hypothesis, even if she doesn’t say so directly, and would probably be the first to acknowledge that such counterfactuals can never be proven.But there is another possibility which she also allows for, even if with less emphasis. Was Russia, sooner or later, bound to act aggressively to dominate its neighbors, simply because of its size, history and power, the latter even encompassing the ultimate, nuclear weapons? It is, to say the least, understandable that the previous Soviet satellites and the Baltic states tried everything they could to get NATO security guarantees as soon as possible. They knew from their own experience what Russian domination means. A more surprising fact is how eager successive American presidents were in providing those guarantees. Nobody knows better than the Americans themselves that without them NATO would not even deserve to be called a paper tiger. So much is clear from the present war in Ukraine; the military aid the Americans have provided dwarfs all else.Professor Sarotte’s book is not just a great read, it is a thoroughly scholarly work, well illustrated by the fact that almost half of the book is endnotes! The general reader who buys the hardcover edition will end up with a lot of pages he’ll never flip, but that is a minor inconvenience.

In February, 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met with Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, to discuss a topic that, even a year earlier, would have been considered a pipe dream: reunification of East and West Germany. Gorbachev, a staunch Communist but also a naïve idealist whose grip on power was slipping, was willing to discuss German reunification but had one principal concern. If the USSR agreed to reunification of Germany, would NATO expand and post troops or station nuclear weapons in this former Soviet sphere of influence? Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain: what if, in return for the USSR agreeing to German unification, NATO would agree “not [to] shift one inch eastward from its present position?”President George H.W. Bush disagreed with and quickly sought to disown and deemphasize Baker’s suggestion, and U.S. negotiators took pains not to recognize it as an explicit condition of German reunification. In return for a massive economic assistance package from West Germany, the USSR agreed to German reunification, removing hundreds of thousands of its troops from East Germany. The vaguely-worded German reunification agreement did not make it clear that NATO could never expand. But Gorbachev and other Soviet officials later claimed they agreed to reunification based on an understanding that NATO would not expand.In late 1991, Gorbachev completely lost control as the USSR suddenly collapsed and dissolved, breaking up into its constituent parts including Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Boris Yeltsin, an alcoholic populist and non-Communist, was elected president of Russia. He forged a close friendship with U.S. President Bill Clinton and helped usher in a remarkable era of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. The two countries reduced stockpiles of nuclear weapons, “de-targeted” ballistic missiles aimed at each other’s cities, and sent troops to serve alongside each other in a Bosnian peace-keeping mission. A primary U.S. goal at this time was persuading former Warsaw Pact and USSR territories—including Ukraine—to return tens of thousands of nuclear weapons to Russia, to prevent de facto creation of a dozen new nuclear nations and prevent sale of weapons on the black market. The U.S. engaged in considerable arm-twisting to persuade Ukraine to return thousands of nuclear weapons to Russia, assuaging Ukrainian concerns about future Russian aggression by agreeing to help preserve (but not “guaranty”) Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.That era of U.S./Russian cooperation is only a distant memory today as the U.S. and Russia seem close to war in the wake of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. In her detailed and informative book, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, M. E. Sarotte, who teaches at John Hopkins and serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, analyzes the missteps and missed opportunities that led to the collapse of relations between the U.S. and Russia.With the demise of the USSR, over a dozen countries and territories in Central and Eastern Europe that had suffered under Soviet or Russian domination suddenly won independence. They immediately began clamoring for admission into NATO, to obtain the benefit of its Article-5 protection before the “bad bear” of Russian imperialism had a chance to re-emerge. Yeltsin did not help calm fears when he invaded Chechnya, where Russian troops committed atrocities similar to those inflicted on Ukrainians today. The Clinton administration initially prioritized good relations with Russia and the opportunity for historic reductions in the countries’ nuclear arms. But with the collapse of the USSR, members of the U.S. state and foreign service departments (along with counterparts in other NATO countries) saw another historic opportunity—to expand NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries and protect them from future Russian imperialism.Despite fierce opposition from a Russia too weak at the time to stop it from happening, in 1996 Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were invited to join NATO. Soon thereafter, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were invited to seek membership. This shifted the old Cold War dividing line many Russians viewed as an important buffer zone (won at great cost in the Second World War) against possible future invasions like those of Napoleon and Hitler—to the borders of Russia. These Russian leaders—who included a former mid-level KGB agent named Vladimir Putin—were resentful and felt the West had taken advantage of Russia in a time of economic and military weakness. “[O]ne day,” warned French President Jacques Chirac, “there will be dangerous nationalist backlash.” British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind warned of another potential problem: “[O]ne should not enter into solemn treaty obligations involving a potential declaration of war . . . based simply on an assumption that one would never be called upon to honor such obligations.”On the other hand, those who supported NATO's quick expansion might argue that Russia's actions in Ukraine entirely justifies that expansion.In any event, this is an excellent read for anyone interested in the detailed history of how the current Ukrainian crisis arose.

If you think you know what happened you will learn much more and become to understand why and how it happened. This is a book you simply can not not read.

The Book is about the events before and after the fall of Berlin Wall and the promises made and agreements reached between the USSR and the West for reunification of Germany..The West is agreed to not to expand NATO one inch towards the East ..but mischievously skipped the promise in agreement..in other words Gorbachev was cheated..and NATO was expanded to the borders of Russia..the meek submission to the west by Gorbachev ultimately lead to August coup of 1991 and fall of USSR..Well researched and must read...

“How we got here” could have been the title of the book. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia did not come really out of the blue. The book which is extremely well researched shows the events of the 1990s sowed the seeds of rising tension between the West and Russia that Putin has chosen to exploit. The author sets out the history without pushing an agenda leaving the reader to make up his own mind. Definitely a must read book.

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