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>> Who’s next? Bush Sr.? Let's see what Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze had to say: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-eduard-shev

>> Who’s next? Bush Sr.? Let's see what Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze had to say: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-eduard-shevardnadze-we-couldn-t-believe-that-the-warsaw-pact-could-be-dissolved-a-663595.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e... Denies that the subject even came up with Western representatives, Warsaw Pact leaders or Communist Party leadership. As he points out, nobody foresaw collapse of Warsaw Pact, so there was simply no reason to discuss anything like it. That would've made as much sense as discussing in 1999 what to build on World Trade Center grounds. Nobody knew that the WTC area would become a pile of rubble in two years' time.

avgcorrection 3y ago
> Denies that the subject even came up with Western representatives, Warsaw Pact leaders or Communist Party leadership. Please don’t lie. Der Spiegel mentions Hans-Dietrich Genscher who said that “NATO will not expand to the east”—who is also mentioned in my link of course—and then Shevardnadze says that: > Eventually, we agreed that a united Germany could be part of NATO under certain conditions. […] AN EXPANSION OF NATO BEYOND GERMANY’S BORDERS WAS OUT OF THE QUESTION. All-caps is mine since people seem to be hard of hearing or something. > As he points out, nobody foresaw collapse of Warsaw Pact, so there was simply no reason to discuss anything like it. Oof, such a nice attempt at muddying the waters. The intro question does not question the fact that NATO expansion was discussed at all (on the contrary it confirms it); it only asks why it wasn’t demanded in writing. > So why didn't you get this commitment from NATO on paper? Which was already indirectly stated by myself (I said “oral agreement, which I’m sure you can nitpick to death as well).[1] So I see that you are trying to conflate the fact that non-expansion was assented to verbally with the apparent totally unrelated fact that Soviet bigwigs didn’t see the point of worrying themselves about getting any actual guarantees from the Western elites since apparently (them being short-sighted, or not-caring) that wasn’t a real threat or concern to them. These things are completely unrelated. Shevardnadze has, through that interview, affirmed that the Westerners talked to them about non-expansion of NATO. And yet here you come and blurt out that he either wasn’t concerned about NATO expansion, isn’t concerned right now, or both. Huh? That doesn’t contradict anything that I’ve said and is just completely irrelevant. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534571
- chrysler 3y ago
  Shevardnadze says multiple times that NATO expansion was never discussed, no matter what angle the journalists used to ask about it. >> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990? >> Shevardnadze: The question never came up. >> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you? >> Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion. Couldn't be more clear. There's not a single Soviet representative who has said that yes, we had an agreement, and that it was violated. No paper trail of any kind either (discussion papers, meeting notes, personal diaries). It's a made up story.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Impressively mono-topical HN account that you’ve made. By the way.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Oh sure. Except I also quoted the same person who definitely confirmed that: > An expansion of NATO beyond Germany's borders was out of the question. From your own link. I don’t know what the hell he meant by “not came up for negotation”. Someone could tell me that I will definitely get five hot dogs for lunch and then I can later say that it “never came up for negotation” since I never cared about hot dogs to begin with. (What do I care whether he personally cared about Nato expansion or not? That’s irrelevant!) Dead politicians. You’re just mincing words (“agreement”) at this point, which I have already addressed.
    - chrysler 3y ago
      >> I don’t know what the hell he meant by “not came up for negotation”. Thankfully he clarifies that by saying "the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was beyond our realm of comprehension". The USSR was hosting elite divisions and nuclear weapons in Poland at the time and didn't expect anything to change, what was there to discuss or negotiate? The main question that came up was whether Americans would roll their tanks up to Polish border after German reunification, THAT is the "eastward expansion" they discussed.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Denies that the subject even came up with Western representatives, Warsaw Pact leaders or Communist Party leadership. Please don’t lie. Der Spiegel mentions Hans-Dietrich Genscher who said that “NATO will not expand to the east”—who is also mentioned in my link of course—and then Shevardnadze says that: > Eventually, we agreed that a united Germany could be part of NATO under certain conditions. […] AN EXPANSION OF NATO BEYOND GERMANY’S BORDERS WAS OUT OF THE QUESTION. All-caps is mine since people seem to be hard of hearing or something. > As he points out, nobody foresaw collapse of Warsaw Pact, so there was simply no reason to discuss anything like it. Oof, such a nice attempt at muddying the waters. The intro question does not question the fact that NATO expansion was discussed at all (on the contrary it confirms it); it only asks why it wasn’t demanded in writing. > So why didn't you get this commitment from NATO on paper? Which was already indirectly stated by myself (I said “oral agreement, which I’m sure you can nitpick to death as well).[1] So I see that you are trying to conflate the fact that non-expansion was assented to verbally with the apparent totally unrelated fact that Soviet bigwigs didn’t see the point of worrying themselves about getting any actual guarantees from the Western elites since apparently (them being short-sighted, or not-caring) that wasn’t a real threat or concern to them. These things are completely unrelated. Shevardnadze has, through that interview, affirmed that the Westerners talked to them about non-expansion of NATO. And yet here you come and blurt out that he either wasn’t concerned about NATO expansion, isn’t concerned right now, or both. Huh? That doesn’t contradict anything that I’ve said and is just completely irrelevant. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36534571

chrysler 3y ago
Shevardnadze says multiple times that NATO expansion was never discussed, no matter what angle the journalists used to ask about it. >> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990? >> Shevardnadze: The question never came up. >> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you? >> Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion. Couldn't be more clear. There's not a single Soviet representative who has said that yes, we had an agreement, and that it was violated. No paper trail of any kind either (discussion papers, meeting notes, personal diaries). It's a made up story.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Impressively mono-topical HN account that you’ve made. By the way.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Oh sure. Except I also quoted the same person who definitely confirmed that: > An expansion of NATO beyond Germany's borders was out of the question. From your own link. I don’t know what the hell he meant by “not came up for negotation”. Someone could tell me that I will definitely get five hot dogs for lunch and then I can later say that it “never came up for negotation” since I never cared about hot dogs to begin with. (What do I care whether he personally cared about Nato expansion or not? That’s irrelevant!) Dead politicians. You’re just mincing words (“agreement”) at this point, which I have already addressed.
  - chrysler 3y ago
    >> I don’t know what the hell he meant by “not came up for negotation”. Thankfully he clarifies that by saying "the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was beyond our realm of comprehension". The USSR was hosting elite divisions and nuclear weapons in Poland at the time and didn't expect anything to change, what was there to discuss or negotiate? The main question that came up was whether Americans would roll their tanks up to Polish border after German reunification, THAT is the "eastward expansion" they discussed.