Controversy regarding the legitimacy of eastward NATO expansion

The controversy regarding the legitimacy of eastward NATO expansion relates to the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, when the fall of Soviet-allied communist states to opposition parties brought European spheres of influence into question.

"[16][17] Genscher's speech was prepared by him without coordination with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, to whom he was a political competitor on the eve of the upcoming parliamentary elections and from whom he sought to "seize the laurels of the unifier of Germany",[18] at the same time, his proposals aroused interest among the leadership of Western countries, which began to consider the possibility of obtaining the consent of the USSR to the unification of Germany in exchange to limit the expansion of NATO.

[12][18][19][20][21] 10 days after his speech in Tutzing, Genscher repeated his words in an interview with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze: "It is clear to us that membership in NATO creates difficult problems.

"[12][26][27][28] Baker, at a press conference in Moscow on the same day, made public the resulting exchange, saying that the United States proposed, in order to mitigate the concerns of "those who are east of Germany,"[29][12] to prevent the expansion of NATO forces in the eastern direction and stated that the unification of Germany, according to the US position, is hardly possible without "certain security guarantees" with regard to the advance of NATO forces or its operation to the east.

So, on February 9, 1990, a similar guarantee (a united Germany "linked to NATO" but provided that "NATO troops will not go further east than they are located") was offered by Robert Gates, Deputy National Security Advisor to the US President, in his conversation with the head of the KGB of the USSR, Vladimir Kryuchkov,[31] and he described it as "an impressive offer"; this allowed us to speak of broader support for such than is claimed in a number of works, and conflicts with subsequent statements about the "speculative" nature of the statements.

"[a][12][18] As a result of negotiations with Kohl, the Soviet leadership gave the go-ahead for the creation of a monetary union of the GDR and the FRG, which became the first step towards the unification of Germany.

At the Camp David summit, the leaders of the United States and Germany agreed on their positions on the proposals to the Soviet side: the former GDR was supposed to be granted a "special military status", in which all of Germany would be considered a member of NATO and fall under the collective security guarantees of the bloc, the alliance would have "jurisdiction" over the territory of the former GDR even if they were not stationed there NATO military structures.

It was declared, in particular, that the American proposals for the unification of Germany, the "transformation" of NATO (shifting the emphasis of the organization from a military role to a political one) and strengthening the role of the CSCE "will not generate winners and losers", but "will create a new inclusive European structure", that US policy is not aimed at obtaining "unilateral advantages", nor on the separation of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union[39] and that the United States is striving for the USSR to be integrated into the "new Europe".

[12] The declarations of the US and NATO found a certain response in the Soviet leadership,[12] which in mid-July 1990 approved the unification of Germany on the basis of the "special military status" of the former GDR.

[45] Mary Elise Sarotte writes that the Soviet leadership "can be forgiven" for proceeding from the "leading positions" of the United States and Germany in the alliance and that their character is confirmed by a number of documentary evidence.

[33][18][47][13][48] Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze also claimed that the question of NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe "was not discussed at all in those years and did not arise", since the Warsaw Pact still existed.

[55] According to representatives of NATO and the US, the issue of restrictions on the accession of Eastern European countries to NATO could not be raised in principle because this restriction would contradict the "right to freely determine their own security" (recognized by the Final Act of the CSCE of 1975,[56][57] as well as the "underlying" Treaty on the final settlement with respect to Germany and confirmed by a number of subsequent acts signed, among others, by representatives of the USSR and Russia — in particular, the Paris Charter of 1990, the declaration of the Budapest OSCE Summit of 1994 and some others).

[58] As US representatives stated in 1996, the USSR's right to discuss and establish "security parameters" in connection with the unification of Germany, "essentially limiting its sovereignty," stemmed from the supreme rights of the four victorious powers (USSR, USA, Great Britain and France) established following the Second World War in relation to Germany and "it has not set a precedent for Russian surveillance of other Central and Eastern European states.