Joshua Shifrinson's article “Deal or No Deal?” presents a flawed account of the negotiations in 1990 that led to the reunification of Germany.1 His observations at the end of the piece about Russian foreign policy under Vladimir Putin overlook the continuity of Russian policy toward neighboring countries since 1992, long before Putin came to power.2
In an article published in April 2009, I set out to determine whether it was true that, at some point during the 1990 negotiations on Germany, Soviet leaders received a promise that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would not eventually grant membership to countries beyond the German Democratic Republic (GDR).3 In the latter half of the 1990s, I frequently heard from Russian officials and from some Western observers that NATO leaders in 1990 had secretly offered “categorical assurances,” “solemn pledges,” and “binding commitments” that no former Warsaw Pact countries (aside from...
