Exactly. It was just a verbal promise! There’s no reason America should exceed the values of used car lot. Why should we care if we can lie, mislead, and act in a dishonest manner?
Everyone that deals with us needs to get everything in writing, and read all of the fine print.
That’s how a man builds a good reputation in a community! Finally time people recognized that.
Former Soviet leader Gorbachev and former Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze both have said, there was no promise to not enlarge NATO. The only treaty signed between NATO and the USSR before its breakup in 1991 was the Treaty of Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The NATO promise relates to non-deployment of NATO forces or nuclear weapons to the former GDR.
I am not arguing that a verbal promise by a U.S. President is meaningless. What I am saying is that it is just his personal promise of his Administration, and is understood as as such unless it is subsequently ratified or otherwise implemented by Congress. When Obama leaned over to Medvedev and said "I can show more flexibility after the election", is that something that should have been binding on the U.S. government even if he had lost??
George H.W. Bush made that promise through Baker in a specific context. That's how it was understood by Gorby at the time - just read his own statements on it - and Bush kept his word.
It is the attempt to convert that promise to the status of a super-treaty that can never be abrogated that is messed up.
It's not like formal treaties and other written agreements between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were unknown. Both sides knew exactly how to do that when they intended to make a more permanent agreement. The fact that they didn't do that here means that your assumption this was intended as a permanent agreement is simply wrong.