Column erred on U.S. intentions on NATO expansion

Regarding the column “Stop double standard; tell truth about Ukraine,” ([Recorder, June 9], the writers begin with the tired assertion that James Baker made a “promise” about U.S. intentions east of the edge of NATO as it then existed. “Not one inch.” They describe it as the United State’s “1990 commitment not to expand NATO.”

In a New York Times article by Peter Baker (Jan 9, 2022), we find the following passage: “The bottom line is, that’s a ridiculous argument,” Mr. Baker said in an interview in 2014, a few months after Russia seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine. “It is true that in the initial stages of negotiations I said ‘what if’ and then Gorbachev himself supported a solution that extended the border that included the German Democratic Republic,” or East Germany, within NATO. Since the Russians signed that treaty, he asked, how can they rely “on something I said a month or so before? It just doesn’t make sense.”

The column should not have been allowed to run in the Recorder with the unambiguous statement of a fact that is simply wrong. The treaty states the commitments of the parties, enforceability aside, and it included nothing like the promise the authors claim was made.

I do admire the authors’ willingness to view U.S. imperial behavior with skepticism, but they do need to proceed based on facts. That particular fact was just wrong.

John Yannis

Colrain

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