En 1990, el Secretario de Estado James Baker le dijo a Gorbachov que la OTAN no se expandiría hacia el Este «ni una pulgada» si Alemania se reunificaba. Documentos desclasificados demuestran que esas conversaciones realmente tuvieron lugar y se prometió a Rusia que no tendría nada de lo que preocuparse por la supuesta expansión de la OTAN hacia el Este. Record of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow. (Excerpts)

Poco más de 5 años después, esas conversaciones no valieron para nada.

Los supuestos analistas y periodistas «objetivos» aducen que si no hay acuerdos firmados, no tienen validez legal las promesas hechas a viva voz.

No obstante, historiadores como Sarotte y Shifrinson presentan una perspectiva más compleja que considera la importancia de las conversaciones informales y los entendimientos políticos de la época:

The real issue, however, is not whether a formal agreement ruled out NATO
expansion—even Russian leaders claiming a broken promise do not argue that
the Soviet Union received a formal deal. Instead, the question of a nonexpansion
pledge involves whether various informal, even implicit, statements
of U.S. policy in 1990 can be viewed as promises or assurances against
NATO expansion, and whether discussions among U.S., Soviet, and West
German oficials related solely to East Germany or to Eastern Europe as a
whole. Here, even studies acknowledging that U.S. policymakers in February
1990 briefly discussed limits on NATO’s future presence risk understating the
significance of U.S.-Soviet bargaining in 1990 by missing the importance of
informal deals to politics, in general, and to Cold War diplomacy, in particular.
In U.S. domestic politics, for example, an informal offer can constitute a
binding agreement provided one party gives up something of value in consideration
of payment in goods or services. A similar principle applies to international
politics: not only are formal agreements often the codification of
arrangements that states would make regardless of a formal offer, but if private
and unwritten discussions are meaningless, then diplomacy itself would
be an unnecessary and fruitless exercise. Instead, a host of behaviors associated
with international bargaining and political understandings with other
states, including interactions with foreign leaders and conciliatory diplomatic
gestures, are based on what another side does or says independent of formal
arrangements. More generally, analysts have long understood that states do not need formal agreements on which to base their future expectations; as Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged, even non-”legally binding” agreements constitute a “necessary tool” of foreign policy. Put simply, explicit and codified arrangements are neither necessary nor suficient for actors to strike deals and receive political assurances.

(Shifrinson (Spring 2016), 17-18).

Por si fuera poco, el profesor Jeffrey Sachs es categórico al afirmar que la culpa de la guerra de Ucrania es de Estados Unidos y de Europa.