Secretary Baker's 'Not One Inch' Promise: NATO Expansion and the Two Plus Four Treaty

Ambassador Matlock settles a long-contested historical question with his eyewitness account of Secretary of State James Baker’s assurances regarding NATO expansion. Matlock was present multiple times when Baker made assurances to Soviet and Russian officials that NATO would not expand into East Germany or, by implication, beyond. The context was the 1989-1990 period, when German reunification was imminent and the legal basis for Soviet agreement rested on wartime treaties requiring four-power consent.

Matlock recounts Baker’s statement almost verbatim, heard three times across different meetings: “Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction, not one inch, wouldn’t it be better for the Soviet Union to have NATO preserved?” The logic was that a NATO-anchored Germany was preferable to an independent, potentially nuclear-armed Germany. Baker also emphasized that without NATO’s presence, there would be no legal basis for American forces in Europe, which Matlock understood as coded reassurance to contain German power. Gorbachev’s response acknowledged the logic but stipulated that NATO expansion was unacceptable.

Matlock then describes how the commitment was later narrowed and then violated. During the subsequent Two Plus Four negotiations over German reunification, lawyers determined that East German territory could not be formally excluded from NATO membership if East Germany became part of unified Germany. The compromise was territorial: non-German troops and nuclear weapons would not be deployed in former East German territory. However, this provision did not prevent NATO membership itself, and it certainly did not prevent expansion further eastward into Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Matlock emphasizes that opposition to NATO expansion was not merely Russian nostalgia but a legitimate security concern. He personally testified to the Senate against expansion, warning that it could provoke the most serious threat to the United States since the Cold War. Later, as a teacher at Columbia University, Matlock asked Putin directly about NATO membership for the Baltic states, and Putin said he would not actively oppose it so long as no bases were established. Yet bases were indeed built in Poland and Romania. Matlock argues this pattern of initial assurance, legal reframing, and subsequent expansion violated the spirit of post-Cold War agreements and helps explain current Russian grievances.