State Department spokesman Ned Price explained the US’s violation of Russia’s promise not to expand NATO eastward. His words are quoted by RIA Novosti.
As Price explained, the White House is pursuing an “open door policy” and “NATO’s doors are open.” This is how he responded to a journalist’s reminder that Secretary of State James Baker had promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 not to expand NATO “not an inch to the East.”
Earlier, Blinken spoke about the factors that will be taken into account when drawing up a new NATO Strategic Concept. According to him, the last time such a document was drawn up in 2010, when the world looked completely different. He said that then Russia was still mentioned as a partner, and the topic of China was not touched upon. The American diplomat stressed that Russia still remains at the center of NATO’s concern, as well as the problem of terrorism.
The fact that the leaders of Western countries promised not to expand NATO eastward in the early 1990s was written in his book “How It Was” (published in 1999) by the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. In the book, Gorbachev recalled a meeting with US Secretary of State James Baker (held office from 1989 to 1992).
