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.