From the Western perspective, keeping NATO to its Cold War borders was only valid so long as Soviet forces remained in Eastern Europe. But this exchange has been largely halted since Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2014.Īll the while, NATO maintained an "open door" policy on membership and stood by all countries' right to choose their alliances. Moscow received access and a permanent presence at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In 1997 NATO and Russia signed the "Founding Act" on mutual relations, cooperation, and security, and the NATO-Russia Council was founded in 2002, both of which were intended to boost cooperation. However, there was disagreement over whether that was an alternative to NATO membership or a pathway to it. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video NATO's open-door policy with RussiaĪfter the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Eastern European military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, disbanded in 1991. US president Bill Clinton pursued Partnership for Peace, which Russia joined in 1994. The three states pointed to the UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States, which refers to "political independence both internally and externally." Moreover, they took place in a specific contemporary historical context: The Berlin Wall had just fallen in 1989.Įspecially the Baltic Sea states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia - which were part of the Soviet Union from the 1940s to 1991 - saw an increased drive for political self-determination and a reorientation of the region's security structure. None of these discussions ever became official policy, and none of the alleged pledges ever made it into a legally binding document with Russia. Such a coalition would be perceived very negatively by the Soviets." Post-USSR order: Changing security policy " do not, in any case, wish to organize an anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border. "In the current environment, it is not in the best interest of NATO or the US that states be granted full NATO membership and its security guarantees," according to a State Department memorandum in 1990, while those states were still emerging from Soviet control as the Warsaw Pact disintegrated. Indeed, documents show a pattern of promises US negotiators made to their Russian counterparts as well as internal policy discussions opposing NATO expansion to Eastern Europe. "We believe that the eastward expansion of NATO is a mistake and a serious one at that," Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president, told reporters at a 1997 news conference with US President Bill Clinton in Helsinki, where the two signed a statement on arms control. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A hammer without a nailĪmid intense political and economic instability in Russia during the 1990s, opposing the Western alliance was one of the few issues that united the country's fractious political spectrum, according to declassified documents maintained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
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