Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas Debunks the Lie that ‘Nothing Was Promised’ to Russia about Expanding NATO

PARIS, Feb. 15, 2022 (EIRNS)—In a powerful intervention into the current crisis, Roland Dumas, French President François Mitterrand’s Foreign Minister, and therefore a direct eyewitness, gave a video interview to the French website Les Crises, posted on Feb. 13, completely debunking the Anglo-American claims that “nothing” was promised to the Soviet Union about NATO’s not expanding east of the border of reunified Germany. The interview also includes four versions with subtitles in Russian, English, German, and French posted to interview page on Les Crises.

RT France reported on the interview on Feb. 13: “The former head of French diplomacy explains that he took part in the discussions to which Russia refers today when it evokes Western promises of non-expansion of NATO, made to the U.S.S.R. at the end of the Cold War.” Moscow’s claim that the West had sworn it would not expand NATO eastward “are strongly questioned within the Western political-media landscape, where they are sometimes presented as a ‘myth’ or as a ‘historical untruth.’ ” In an interview with the French website Les Crises, “How the West Promised the Soviet Union that NATO Would Not Expand Eastward,” former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas relates his memory of the 1990 discussions that Russia has raised:

“In 1990, then-French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas took part in the negotiations upstream of the Moscow Treaty, which primarily concerned the reunification of Germany, and during which general considerations aimed at bringing an end to the Cold War.

“ ‘We especially wanted to avoid a return to the Cold War,’ the former senior diplomat says today. According to him, the U.S.S.R. delegation had submitted two major requests to its Western allies at the time: one concerned maintaining monuments to the glory of the Red Army after the departure of its troops; the other was for a Western commitment that ‘there would be no movement of NATO troops into Soviet pact regions which [were] to be disarmed.’

“ ‘This discussion took place, first of all because the Russians asked for it [and] because we supported it: I was first, the Americans too, and the Germans, obviously.... I remember the scene very well, [U.S. Secretary of State James] Baker intervened after me, and said: “Even if Mr. Dumas had not asked for it, I would have asked for it,” ’ he recounts, referring to the Western commitment for a non-expansion of NATO to the East.”

RT further quotes a 2014 interview Gorbachev gave to Russian Beyond the Headlines, that: “Another issue we raised was discussed: ensuring that NATO’s military structures did not advance and that additional Alliance armed forces were not deployed on the territory of the former G.D.R. [East Germany] after German reunification.” Although RT doesn’t quote him, the former Soviet President also told RBTH, in that interview six months after the February 2014 Ukraine coup:

“Today we need to admit that there is a crisis in European (and global) politics. One of the reasons, albeit not the only reason, is a lack of desire on the part of our Western partners to take Russia’s point of view and legal interests in security into consideration. They paid lip service to applauding Russia, especially during the Yeltsin years, but in deeds they didn’t consider it. I am referring primarily to NATO expansion, missile defense plans, the West’s actions in regions of importance to Russia (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine). They literally said ‘This is none of your business.’ ”

RT goes on:

“At the end of 2021, in the midst of a diplomatic crisis over the thorny Ukrainian issue, Gorbachev said about the West: ‘It has gone to their heads, ... they have proclaimed themselves winners of the Cold War while we both saved the world from confrontation.... How can we expect fair relations with the United States, with the West, in this situation?’ According to him, the West wanted to ‘build a new empire’ and ‘that’s where the NATO enlargement was born.’ ”