Six months six days later he died last Tuesday, August 30, at the age of 91, after the invasion of Ukraine began. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and head of state who relinquished power to the people, left behind a divided legacy for a nation of 290 million. A sobering farewell to the tsar’s infamous willfulness was held in Moscow yesterday, in the House of Unions, marking a moment that many observers described as a reckoning with the past and its unfinished promises.
Putin faced release despite intelligence warnings from the United States and repeated cautions from President Joe Biden. What followed was a plan that aimed for a grand military display, a parade meant to project strength, yet the realities on the ground confounded those calculations as Ukrainian resistance held firm. In Kiev, at the banks of the Dnieper, the movements of tanks and trucks faltered, held back by the border and the resolve of Ukrainian forces, with the distance from the capital hovering around sixty kilometers in the earliest weeks of the conflict.
Obituaries of Gorbachev’s era abound, many reflective and admiring of a leader who negotiated reunification in 1990. Politicians who once bridged East and West praised his willingness to unwind control, even as they faced the hard truth that Western assurances often came with strategic tradeoffs. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization had expanded since 1999 and continued to evolve after the Warsaw Pact dissolved, leaving an alliance that remains central to European security in a new century while still fueling debates about its aims and limits.
This period of change featured assurances from Western officials that NATO would stay a defensive alliance and would not turn into an instrument of aggression. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the treaties of friendship and cooperation that once bound Eastern and Western Europe faded from memory as new arrangements emerged. Those debates remained a backdrop to the actions of leaders who navigated a shifting geopolitical map, including debates about how far the alliance should extend eastward and what guarantees would accompany that expansion.
Historical records from the era reveal a tense dialogue among American and European leaders about NATO enlargement. In the years following the reunification of Germany, documents from the late 1980s and early 1990s show discussions about the willingness to ensure that the alliance’s eastward move did not threaten Soviet security, even as the United States and its allies contemplated a broader security architecture for post–Cold War Europe. A well-known account recounts that a key American official emphasized that eastward expansion should not be pursued at the cost of others’ security, highlighting an effort to secure guarantees for both sides as the alliance redefined its role after 1991. These discussions are drawn from declassified archival materials and later scholarly analyses, which provide a granular view of the negotiations and the human moments behind policy decisions.
In 2004 NATO added Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, and Montenegro followed in 2017 amid large, sometimes heated protests. In December 2017, a nonprofit archival project published confidential discussions from Gorbachev’s talks with prominent Western leaders and presidents around 1990. The publication carried the label NATO Enlargement What Gorbachev Heard, drawing on unclassified documents to illuminate the conversations that shaped the alliance’s trajectory. These materials reflect the exchanges among Gorbachev and his ministers with American colleagues and key European leaders, including ministers and heads of state from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Britain. The record underscores how the question of NATO expansion was repeatedly framed as a bilateral and multilateral matter requiring careful balancing of security needs and political realities.
Accounts from the early 1990s recount the insistence on a careful approach to eastward expansion. In a notable moment described by observers, a top American envoy affirmed that the goal was to secure guarantees not just for the Soviet Union but for all European states, while insisting that the United States would maintain its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO. The phrasing not an inch east became a symbol of the intense debate over whether the alliance should advance toward new frontiers while striving to uphold stability across the continent. The dialogue also features leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and John Major in conversations about how NATO should adapt to a changing Europe, with emphasis on political evolution within the alliance rather than a purely military posture.
As the Cold War era closed, Gorbachev’s decision to resign and the Soviet collapse in 1991 reshaped the security landscape. He later reflected that NATO’s enlargement choices would influence the level of trust in European security for years to come, remarks that echoed in later discussions about the balance between security guarantees and the risk of provoking a defensive response from Russia. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate spoke in 2019 about how the alliance’s post–Cold War choices affected the strategic dynamics of the region, recognizing that the security framework used to stabilize Western Europe could also challenge Russia’s sense of security.
Putin attended the funeral of his predecessor this Saturday in Moscow, a ceremonial moment above the frictions that defined many years of late 20th and early 21st century politics. In a symbolic gesture that drew attention, a portrait of Tsar Nicholas I, long associated with past military campaigns, was placed at the entrance of the presidential offices in the Kremlin. The administration framed the gesture within a broader narrative of national strength, while critics argued that it signaled a desire to reshape regional dynamics and to assert a more expansive vision for Russia in the modern era.