“James Baker - you know, the Secretary of State - was low ranking?”
Ye gods, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? Did they not teach you basic civics at your school? YES. In the context of making verbal assurances that were later overriden by far more, far more SENIOR people, yes he was way down in the pecking order.
Under modern international AND American law, an agreement between the USA and another country is only legally binding if all these things apply:
1. its content explicitly makes it binding - e.g. by describing it in terms like pact, treaty, convention, accord, memorandum of understanding
2. it has an executive sign-off by POTUS, or a ratification with the “advice and consent” of the Senate.
3. it is formally entered into the public record as a referenceable treaty/accord/memorandum/convention, versioned and dated.
Did all those things happen with Baker’s assurance? No.
Did all those things haoppen with the Treaty on the Final Settlement? YES.
What does the Final Settlement include?
“The treaty allows Germany to make and belong to alliances, without any foreign influence in its politics.”
Did Russia, the USA, France and the UK sign it? YES.
Did both the BRD and DDR also sign it? YES.
Did Baker say it? Who bloody cares, six different countries’ leaders signed it.
Does that final settlement agreement override the earlier Baker assurances? ABSOLUTELY.
If the collapse of the Soviet Union had worried Russia, the fix would’ve been simple; Yeltsin and Bush could’ve sat round the table and drafted a newer, updated treaty/memorandum etc. to take the new realities into account. They didn’t. So, by the time both Presidencies changed hands, Baker’s nonbinding agreement wasn’t just long dead, it was long buried.
Here’s some light reading to help you understand it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany - Yes.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
By the way - just to pick a few more holes in it:
“neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place”
Issue 1: Binding agreements tend to contain assurances or commitments related to DEFINED actions and DEFINED circumstances. There’s neither of those in here. Since you seem to be struggling with the basics - In plain English, Baker said “Us two guys don’t intend America to benefit any more than the Soviet Union will, from whatever unspecified stuff might happen”. That might be binding to someone like Jeb Clampett, but it’s not an enforceable contract on the international stage.
When an agent represents an institution, company or country, it is customary to use the third person, or the name of the organisation. Not the first person, which is predominately used to express opinions.
Issue 2: Because it’s so open-ended it’s got more loopholes than a chicken wire fence. The biggest one being, the minute the Soviet Union broke up there was no way for the Soviet Union to enforce any expectation on the USA because the Soviet Union no longer existed. Tell you what: how about you buy a chunk of a business that’s being broken up, change its name, change the people running it, and then tell me this: are ALL supplier’s contracts with OldCorp still just as enforceable as if it hadn’t been broken up? Yes or no?
Issue 3: If a diplomat wants their statements to be legally binding and enforceable even for a short term period, they can’t prevent it from being scrutinised by lawyers.
“So what we tried to do was to take account of your concerns expressed to me and others, and we did it in the following ways: by our joint declaration on non-aggression; in our invitation to you to come to NATO; in our agreement to open NATO to regular diplomatic contact with your government and those of the Eastern European countries; and our offer on assurances on the future size of the armed forces of a united Germany – an issue I know you discussed with Helmut Kohl. We also fundamentally changed our military approach on conventional and nuclear forces. We conveyed the idea of an expanded, stronger CSCE with new institutions in which the USSR can share and be part of the new Europe.”
Issue 4: All these things were delivered on. Future size of the NATO force IN A UNITED GERMANY remains limited even to this day - check. Non-aggression - America and NATO have not attacked Russia since the Berlin Wall fell. So, again, check. Greater role in Europe? Yes, they got on the Council of Europe, and into Eurovision, and into European tournaments. So, check.
No wonder even Gorbachev said, everything that was expected of America was delivered. There is nothing in the agreement following Baker’s conversations that wasn’t signed, sealed AND delivered.
“Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO. Instead, the dissolution of the USSR was brought about by Russians (Boris Yeltsin and his leading advisory Gennady Burbulis) in concert with the former party bosses of the Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, in December 1991. The Cold War was long over by then. The Americans had tried to keep the Soviet Union together (see the Bush “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1, 1991).”
Issue 5: It was the RUSSIANS, not the Americans or NATO, who broke the Soviet Union apart. Russia didn’t “lose” the Cold War. Ukraine, and the Warsaw Pact countries, were willingly freed from the Soviet Union by Russia, and alonside Russia they were recognised at the UN. Russia even signed off their recognition!
Putin’s invasions of Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine are all based on the fact that he thinks Russia has a divine right to their territories. But he is utterly, utterly wrong. Russia didn’t “lose” ALL past, present and future legal jurisdiction over their territories, IT GAVE THAT JURISDICTION AWAY.
And because it did that, the conditions you talk about, vis-a-vis Baker, are UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.
The Secretary of State is low ranking? You mean the guy who is 4th in line to succeed to the Presidency and the President’s chief foreign officer? Don’t be ridiculous. You obviously don’t understand that relatively little of what is agreed between countries involves treaties. Even if there is a treaty, what is this “legally binding” nonsense? Nothing internationally is legal binding in the same way that domestic contracts are because there is no way short of some form of nation state force to enforce international agreements. My point is that 1. the US government got the Constituent states of the Soviet Union to agree to dismantle the Soviet Union in a particular way because they relied on our promise, 2. breaking our promise was dishonorable, although the promise is no more “enforceable” than other international agreements, and 3. breaking the promise was very bad foreign policy from a realpolitik standpoint. Leaving aside things agreed in the 90s, the US/NATO/Soros 2014 coup was also both morally reprehensible and foolish from a realpolitik perspective. The Ukrainians have been used like pawns by the West, and the genius Biden administration inspired sanctions are bankrupting Europe, profoundly harming the global south, causing shortages of fertilizer and other commodities here, driving Russia closer to China, and driving the Ruble to new highs and enriching Russia. Our adventure in the Ukraine is also likely to end the status of the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. See if you can figure out what that means.
Other than these things, we are in total agreement. /sarc/