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Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University gave an interview to Tucker Carlson recently, in which he stated (25:45 into the interview):

The US had promised, unequivocally, to the Soviet Union, in the context of German unification, as of February 1990, that NATO would not move one inch eastward. This remains, by the way, highly contested to this day. But if anyone wants the information, you go on something called the National Security Archive of George Washington University, and you can read the dozens and dozens of statements and all of the archival material making completely absolutely unequivocally clear that the United States and Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch eastward. So the record is absolutely clear.

But this promise was not part of any ratified treaty, and the Soviets must have known that. Would it be reasonable to argue then that such a promise was, in fact, not made in a way that formed a binding obligation in international law?

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The US has not promised that.

This was discussed (although Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, the Soviet leaders at the time, contested the current Russian interpretation of that discussion), but never made it into the actual treaty. But even if it had - there's nothing preventing the US from withdrawing from it, or plainly violating it (similarly to Russia's violation of the Budapest Memorandum).

This answer summarizes the various ways to determine if something is "International Law". Let's see how they apply:

  • Treaty - as mentioned, there's no formal treaty between the US and Russia in which the US makes commitments with regards to supporting new NATO membership applications.
  • Customary law - there's no customary law with regards to this. Generally, customary law is that every sovereign country is entitled to join any treaty it wants. In terms of negotiation tactics and drafts, then it is pretty customary for negotiations to happen and promises to be made, only for agreements to never materialize. For example the TTP treaty had a lot of commitments and promises, but it has never been ratified. While the US signed the treaty, it is not a binding obligation given that it has not been ratified and eventually withdrawn. In the example cited in the question, the treaty has in fact been signed, and even ratified, but included no such promise.
  • Declaration - there was no unilateral declaration in that regard by the US either. Neither through internal legislative action, nor through judicial rulings, nor through executive action. While in closed-door talks this may have been discussed, it was not a publicly made commitment.
  • Jus cogens - similarly, there's nothing applicable here. Joining a defense treaty is a pretty routine thing, and many countries form those with many other countries. The Soviet Union was a party to the "Warsaw Pact", which is similar in nature to NATO, and there are many other examples where countries joining defense treaties is perfectly fine from the international community standpoint.
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  • "The US has not promised that." -- whether the promise was actually made is more of a question for historians. I'm assuming that we can trust Sachs when he says that there are mountains of evidence (see the recent Question edit for his sources) Commented Sep 27 at 2:14
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    @MWB I wouldn't trust Sachs, and I linked an article by ... an historian, disputing Sachs' claim with some fairly reliable references. Commented Sep 27 at 2:28
  • I'm not inclined to trust the author of your article (Mark Kramer). He said in 2008: "if history is any indication, the recent Taliban insurgency won't last very long." It's just a ridiculous thing to say, considering the sad history of several invasions of Afghanistan by Britain and the USSR in the 19th and 20th centuries. Commented Sep 27 at 5:31
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    @MWB I can bring some quotes from Sachs too. Bottom line, people believe what they want to believe, and I believe Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, who were actually in the room, and James Baker, to whom the promise is attributed. All three refuted the claim. Commented Sep 27 at 5:40
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My understanding is that nobody has claimed that NATO has breached "a binding promise in international law".

They are claiming that a political promise has been broken and that the foundations of detente between the US and Russia have therefore been undermined. Such a promise was "binding" not in law but in the fact that it's breach would lead to exactly the current situation, of war.

Those pointing out these facts are not only countering straightforward historical disinformation, but emphasising that the terms of political peace between the US and Russia have been known all along, and yet have been aggressively uprooted by the continued expansion of NATO anyway.

The fact that the Soviets did not insist on some legal prohibition is not a sign that the relevant constraint was not taken seriously, but that firstly the strain between the USA and USSR was at a relative nadir, and secondly the Soviets may have felt that the constraint could only be enforced by the latent threat of military force (i.e. it was pointless to expend energy on formulating ineffective legal wordings).

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  • Surely by definition a political promise cannot be "broken" after the politicians who made the promise are no longer in power? The whole point of a democracy is that future politicians can do things differently to the previous politicians and we can't meaningfully say that if they do so they are breaking the previous politician's promises. Commented Sep 29 at 12:57
  • @JBentley, all that happens if a later crop of politicians do not renew the commitment is that war returns. I think you're tending to think that it is the breach of a positive promise given that is cause for war, but so can the failure to supply a demanded promise be a cause for war. The point is that Western liberals are trying to pretend they didn't know that the extension of NATO to Russia's borders could be a cause for war with Russia, when the discussions in the 90s clearly show that they explicitly understood the extension of NATO could be a cause for war with Russia. Commented Sep 29 at 15:10

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