Clinton maintained a double discourse as Putin’s predecessor’s government ended

▲ Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-communist Russia (right), negotiated with US President Bill Clinton (left) some alliances between world powers.Photo taken from the Internet

▲ Above is an excerpt from one of the documents recently declassified by the US National Security Archive, which documents conversations between top officials who discussed Western plans for NATO.Photo taken from the Internet

Juan Pablo Duch

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, July 21, 2024, p. 25

First part

Moscow. Documents recently declassified by the National Security Archive (NSA) shed light on how Moscow and Washington negotiated, from the White House’s perspective, the thorny issue of NATO enlargement in the 1990s.

These documents, which were previously unpublished last week – memoranda for the head of the White House at the time, Bill Clinton; minutes of conversations between his American counterparts and the then president Boris Yeltsin, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and the deputy foreign minister Georgy Mamedov; letters from experts and cables from senior officials of the National Security Council in Washington – reveal that Russia considered the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic alliance to be a mistake and, after a mixture of initial categorical rejection and a clear desire to strengthen ties, ended up accepting it as an inevitable fact.

The Kremlin wanted to counteract the negative effects of North Atlantic expansion, hoping to convince the White House to establish closer cooperation between the two countries and thus achieve three major objectives: a sort of veto right over any NATO decision, the non-admission of any former Soviet republic, and a commitment not to install nuclear weapons on the territory of the new members.

At that time, the countries of the former Soviet bloc that wanted to join NATO did so not out of fear of Russia, which was mired in its internal problems, but in order to obtain a kind of guarantee in case the ousted communist elites tried to regain power by force.

In Russia’s first three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO enlargement was not on the Kremlin’s agenda until Yeltsin settled his dispute with the legislature by literally bombing its headquarters.

During that period, there was an intense debate within the US government between those who wanted to take advantage of the chaos in Russia and proceed without delay to expand NATO and those who proposed going slower, considering that it could be counterproductive.

Controversy resolved

From these declassified documents, it is clear that the controversy ended in the fall of 1993, when Anthony Lake, the U.S. national security adviser, recommended that Clinton adopt a dual position: to publicly imply that NATO would continue to expand, but without mentioning specific scope or dates, and at the same time, to calm Russia’s presumed discontent, to launch the Partnership for Peace program, which pleased Yeltsin because it invited Russia and the other ex-Soviet republics to participate, although without promising anyone a secure membership. (Memorandum to the President, October 19, 1993).

With opposition eliminated from parliament and a new constitution reinforcing his powers, Yeltsin feared that the United States’ intention not to give up on NATO expansion could provide additional arguments to win votes for his main rival at the polls, the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.

To reassure Yeltsin, who exploded in anger when he heard Clinton say in Budapest, at the summit of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on December 5, 1994, that The process of NATO enlargement has already begunthe White House tenant sent Vice President Al Gore to Moscow, who visited the Kremlin chief in the hospital where he was being treated after a severe heart problem.

Gore insisted to Yeltsin at that meeting that what he had heard in Budapest “is not really any change. It is the same thing that President Clinton told you in September of that year, that NATO would eventually expand, but the process would be gradual and subject to consultation with you.

The process would take place in parallel with the push for the EU-Russia partnership and Russia’s partnership with NATO.. (Minutes of conversation between Gore and President Yeltsin, December 16, 1994).

Faced with the unease over North Atlantic expansion perceived from Moscow, the White House even changed the title of its programmatic document. Moving Towards NATO Enlargementwhere the concept of the evolution of the alliance was set out, by the Building a new security system in Europewithout altering its essence, to highlight that Washington was open to partnering with everyone, including Russia (European security architecture, NATO expansion and Russia. Memorandum to Anthony Lake (National Security Adviser) and Samuel R. Berger (Number Two on the National Security Council), December 22, 1994).

Washington was clear that it had to insist to Moscow that dialogue is not the same as making joint decisions, but diplomats were advised to do so tactfully, avoiding harsh statements that could irritate the Russian side (Ibid).

“And for the military parade on May 9, 1995, to commemorate the victory over German Nazism in World War II in Moscow’s Red Square, Clinton himself traveled to the Russian capital, where Yeltsin told him that NATO enlargement is nothing but a humiliation for Russia. Clinton promised that there would be no extension in 1995 or 1996, implying that he would not do so until Yeltsin was re-elected (Report on progress in NATO enlargement and European security. Memorandum from Anthony Lake to President Bill Clinton. July 17, 1995).

The White House was aware that Russia, while keen to strengthen cooperation with the alliance, would not take kindly to the inclusion of more countries. “Russian opposition to NATO enlargement is unlikely to yield to any kind of grudging support in the near to medium term,” Lake writes in the memo. “Russian opposition to NATO enlargement is unlikely to yield to any kind of grudging support in the near to medium term; Russia’s opposition is deepening.”

In the period ahead, Russian leaders will do everything possible to derail our policy, given their conviction that any NATO expansion to the east is ultimately antagonistic to Russia’s long-term interests. (Ibid).