If you believe the Cold War culminated in the Soviet government suddenly putting 100% of its trust in the American government based on public statements from a few random officials, you are irredeemably retarded.
Implicit to the mere idea of any such promise regarding NATO is the premise that the US tricked the USSR into collapsing -- as though they had any real choice about the consequences of communist state policy.
The Russian government did have a choice about how to manage its crisis, and it chose to fake a bunch of reforms vis a vis Perestroika to lull the West into a false sense of security.
This idea that the conditional tactical downsizing of the Soviet Union was a mutual agreement between the USSR and the US was invented from whole cloth by Putin because he hates Gorbachev's guts, views the dismantling of the USSR as "the greatest geopolitical tragedy ever", and wants any excuse he can conjure to recapture former Soviet territory.
It's literally his life's mission.
Sovereign countries don't need permission to join mutual defense pacts.
The USSR can not "no longer exist" and be owed fidelity to some imaginary NATO red line simultaneously.
Implicit to the mere idea of any such promise regarding NATO is the premise that the US tricked the USSR into collapsing -- as though they had any real choice about the consequences of communist state policy.
The Russian government did have a choice about how to manage its crisis, and it chose to fake a bunch of reforms vis a vis Perestroika to lull the West into a false sense of security.
This idea that the conditional tactical downsizing of the Soviet Union was a mutual agreement between the USSR and the US was invented from whole cloth by Putin because he hates Gorbachev's guts, views the dismantling of the USSR as "the greatest geopolitical tragedy ever", and wants any excuse he can conjure to recapture former Soviet territory.
It's literally his life's mission.
Sovereign countries don't need permission to join mutual defense pacts.
The USSR can not "no longer exist" and be owed fidelity to some imaginary NATO red line simultaneously.