With or without Russia? The Boris, Bill and Helmut Bromance and the Harsh Realities of Securing Europe in the Post-Wall World, 1990-1994

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much controversy exists over the making of Europe’s security architecture after the end of the Cold War, specifically how and why the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] emerged as the preferred solution to the continent’s security conundrum, and where this development left Russia. These questions have puzzled historians and political scientists. Crucially, they also continue to resonate politically, as the Ukraine crisis of 2021/22 shows. For more than 15 years, the Vladimir Putin government has propagated the view that Western governments reneged on binding pledges made to Moscow in 1990 during German unification diplomacy that NATO would never expand beyond Germany into Central and Eastern Europe, or even what had been theSoviet space. As well as accusations of Western betrayal, Russian leaders have also talked of an expansionist American agenda, all of which supposedly culminated in ‘nothing, but [the wilful] humiliation’ of Russia. Existing scholarship has largely fixated on Russo-American ‘Great Power’ relations. By exploring the competitive co-operation within the Boris Yeltsin-Bill Clinton-Helmut Kohl triangle, this article depicts the push-and-pull factors within and between East and West, and especially inside the Alliance, as these three leaders set out to secure a post-Wall Europe together that was far more complex and multi-layered than hitherto appreciated.