The Biden administration and NATO have shown remarkable unanimity on one singular piece of phrasing in response to Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine:
President Biden, Feb. 24:
As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.
Vice President Kamala Harris, March 10:
As Russia’s war on Ukraine, at NATO’s doorstep, enters its third week, “the US is prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory,” said the US vice president in Warsaw on Thursday.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Feb. 24:
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that Russia’s attack on Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and he vowed that the alliance would defend “every inch” of its members’ territory.
White House National security adviser Jake Sullivan, March 13:
“The United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory, and that means every inch."
But this oft-repeated assertion that NATO will “defend every inch” of its territory is more than just a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin should he decide to expand his war on Ukraine to NATO member countries.
It’s more than just a tactic to shore up resolve and calm the fears of newer NATO members (such as Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, for example) and it’s more than simple bluster. In fact, every instance of a NATO member asserting that “every inch” of its territory will be defended is a deliberate and pointed reminder to Russia that the Cold War that existed for 45 years between the U.S./NATO and the Soviet Union had a winner and a loser. And the Soviet Union lost.
To understand just how viscerally the phrase “defend every inch” rankles those in the Kremlin, we have to travel back over 32 years, to a meeting that occurred on Feb. 9, 1990, between George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker, and the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.
In attempting to justify his grievances toward the West, Putin often refers to an alleged “promise” made by U.S. officials in the immediate wake of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, namely that NATO would not expand its membership “to the east,” i.e., into Central and Eastern Europe. As Slate national security correspondent Fred Kaplan, writing for the New York Review of Books, explains, this claim by Putin was made as recently as Dec. 2021, during the time when Russian forces were already being mobilized for the war on Ukraine.
Kaplan quotes Putin’s recent reiteration of these charges from a new analysis by author M.E. Sarotte which explores the crucial interactions between a victorious West and the rapidly disintegrating former Soviet empire during that time frame:
‘Not an inch to the east,’ we were told in the 1990s,” Putin said in a December 2021 speech. “They cheated us—vehemently, blatantly.”
Putin is ostensibly referring to a colloquy that occurred between Baker and Gorbachev at their 1990 meeting in the Kremlin, specifically a question posed by Baker during their discussion regarding the future of Germany. As Kaplan explains, at that time Gorbachev wanted assurances that the newly reunited German nation would not become a member of NATO. Of course, West Germany had been a member of NATO since 1955, so Gorbachev knew that his bargaining position on this demand was incredibly weak.
As Kaplan reports (summarizing Sarotte’s research): “Baker replied that a unified neutral Germany might not be in anyone’s interest, that it might even build its own nuclear arsenal.” The transcript of the meeting indicates that Baker asked Gorbachev the following question:
Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?
In other words, as Kaplan explains, “It was a question, not a pledge.” Gorbachev indicated, however, that he would “prefer the latter,” and Baker said he agreed that he would prefer that as well. But Baker made no commitment or assurances on the issue, because he had no authority or permission to do so.
As Kaplan explains, upon his return to Washington, Baker was immediately taken to the woodshed (metaphorically speaking) by President Bush for even posing the question in that way to Gorbachev.
“To hell with that!” President Bush exclaimed, dismissing the notion of letting the Soviets have a say on the fate of the new German state. “We prevailed and they didn’t. We can’t let the Soviets clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.” Baker never mentioned “not one inch” again.
This, then, is the flimsy pretense Putin relies on when he claims that the U.S. “cheated” the former Soviet Union. To understand just how flimsy this position is, one has to place the events in a historical perspective. The Soviet Union had, by 1990, unilaterally collapsed under its own weight, unable to economically or militarily sustain its buffer empire of vassal states in Eastern Europe, all of whom were demanding and asserting their independence. The Cold War was forever lost to the USSR, and neither Gorbachev (nor, for that matter, any KGB officer busy burning files in East Germany) had any right to expect or demand anything from the U.S, least of all an assurance of neutrality from a unified Germany.
More importantly, any decision by a reunited Germany to join NATO was ultimately not the province of the U.S., but of the German people and its own leadership. As Kaplan explains, Gorbachev acknowledged as much when he agreed that the Germans themselves should be permitted to make that choice:
Remarkably, though, Gorbachev gave up the one strong card in his otherwise meager hand. In a meeting the day after Baker’s, [German Chancellor Helmut] Kohl asked Gorbachev if he agreed “that the Germans themselves must now decide” all questions about unification. Gorbachev allowed that this was “very close” to his view.
Kohl was stunned. He proceeded to boast publicly that Gorbachev had agreed to German unification without conditions—and Gorbachev did not push back. The Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, later wrote in his memoir that the concession left him in “a melancholy and fatalistic mood.” Bush announced that the unified Germany would hold full membership in NATO.
Thus the pattern for NATO’s expansion—whatever the wisdom of that course might be—was established. As Kaplan notes, this was not simply a power play by the West, the way Putin frames it, but a consequence of fifty years of Soviet misrule and tyranny, as “The most excited advocates of enlargement were the leaders (and to a great degree the populations) of the Central and Eastern European states, who were eager to throw off the Kremlin’s yoke and join the West. ”As Kaplan notes, the Biden administration had already recognized that Russia could claim to a certain degree that Ukraine was within its sphere of influence, which is why (despite the wishes of the Ukrainian people) before Putin’s illegal invasion the country was unlikely to be accepted into NATO membership, “probably in [Putin’s] lifetime or beyond.”
But that reality does not preclude providing military and economic assistance in the event of an unwarranted invasion, where the perpetrator has already signaled his willingness to attack member NATO states in the same manner. Every time a NATO official reiterates that NATO will defend “every inch” of NATO territory, they are intentionally mocking—and seriously rebutting—Putin’s assertions. That is not an accident; it is simply reiterating a basic truth: there was a Cold War, and the U.S.S.R. lost it. In any war—cold or hot—the victor ends up with the right to claim the spoils. In this case, those former vassal Soviet states, propped up for years with corrupt, pro-Soviet governments, were allowed to choose their future course.
And nothing Vladimir Putin says—no “re-imagining” or rewriting of history—can change that.