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After Maidan: Re-Starting NATO-Russia Relations 47
Then, as the Federal Republic of Germany pressed with
American support for a fast-track towards unification – following
chancellor Helmut Kohl’s abrupt announcement at the end of
November 1989 of a ten-point programme towards the creation of
confederative structures in Germany – Soviet leaders called for the
establishment of new European institutions from the Atlantic to
the Urals and for the creation of a “common European home” that
would overcome the continent’s division, while containing a
reunited German state 1 . While striking a chord with Britain and
France and with part of the West German government, particularly
Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, the Kremlin’s proposals
were rejected by the United States, which perceived a pan-
European institution as too preponderant for securing a
multilateral governance of Germany and the preservation of the
transatlantic link. By contrast, Washington, with the Federal
government’s support, demanded Moscow’s consent to a united
Germany’s unrestricted membership in NATO, while providing
the Kremlin with vague assurances that the alliance’s jurisdiction
would not be shifted eastward from its present position 2 . As
1 On Moscow’s common European vision see N. Malcolm, “The ‘Common
European Home’ and Soviet European Policy”, International Affairs, vol. 65, no. 4,
Autumn 1989, pp. 659-676. See also H. Adomeit, “East Germany: NATO’s First
Eastward Enlargement”, in A. Bebler (ed.), NATO at 60: The Post-Cold War Enlargement
and the Alliance’s Future, Fairfax, IOS Press, 2010, p. 17; R.T. Gray, S. Wilke (eds.),
German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from the Peaceful Revolution, Seattle,
University of Washington Press, 1996, p. xlvii.
2 M.E. Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 2009, pp. 107-111, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/
opinion/30sarotte.html?pagewanted=all. Of the same author see also “Not One Inch
Eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the Origin of Russian
Resentment toward NATO Enlargement in February 1990”, Diplomatic History, vol. 34,
no. 1, January 2010, pp. 119-140; “A Broken Promise? What the West Told Moscow About
NATO Expansion in 1990”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 5, September/October 2014, pp. 90-97; and
“Enlarging NATO, Expanding Confusion”, The New York Times, 30 November 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/30sarotte.html?pagewanted=all. For a similar
account see J.M. Goldgeier, Not Whether But when: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO, Washington,
D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1999, p. 15. See also P.K. Hämäläinen, Uniting Germany: Actions
and Reactions, Boulder, Co., Westview Press, 1994, pp. 114-116. See also G.H.W. Bush, B.
Scowcroft, A World Transformed, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, pp. 240-242.