Politics & Government
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Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series)
A leading expert on foreign policy reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics
● A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2021 and winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize
"Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative tale draws on thousands of memos, letters, briefs, and other once secret documents-including many that have never been published before-which both fill in and complicate settled narratives on both sides."-Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker
"The most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available."-Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs
Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately over this 1990 exchange-but more important was the decade to come, when the words took on new meaning. Gorbachev let his Germany go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not least after the Soviet Union's own collapse in December 1991. Washington realized it could not just win big but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off limits to NATO.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet collapse, this book uses new evidence and interviews to show how, in the decade that culminated in Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the United States and Russia undermined a potentially lasting partnership. Prize-winning historian M. E. Sarotte shows what went wrong.
● A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2021 and winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize
"Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative tale draws on thousands of memos, letters, briefs, and other once secret documents-including many that have never been published before-which both fill in and complicate settled narratives on both sides."-Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker
"The most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available."-Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs
Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately over this 1990 exchange-but more important was the decade to come, when the words took on new meaning. Gorbachev let his Germany go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not least after the Soviet Union's own collapse in December 1991. Washington realized it could not just win big but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off limits to NATO.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet collapse, this book uses new evidence and interviews to show how, in the decade that culminated in Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the United States and Russia undermined a potentially lasting partnership. Prize-winning historian M. E. Sarotte shows what went wrong.
Editorial Reviews
"Sarotte has the receipts, as it were: her authoritative tale draws on thousands of memos, letters, briefs, and other once secret documents-including many that have never been published before-which both fill in and complicate settled narratives on both sides."-Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker
"Prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte . . . charts all the private discussions within the western alliance and with Russia over enlargement and reveals Russia as powerless to slow the ratchet effect of the opening of Nato's door."-Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
"Sarotte is the unofficial dean of ‘end of Cold War' studies. . . . With her latest book, she tackles head-on the not-controversial-at-all questions about NATO's eastward growth and the effect it had on Russia's relations with the west. I look forward to the contretemps this book will inevitably produce."-Daniel W. Drezner, Washington Post
"‘Not one inch to the east' . . . [is] a history so often repeated that it's practically conventional wisdom. Mary Sarotte . . . [describes] what actually happened [between the US and Russia], and how both the reality and distortion really shape today's events."-Max Fisher, New York Times, from "The Interpreter" newsletter
"A riveting account of Nato enlargement and its contribution to the present confrontation. Sarotte tells the story with great narrative and analytical flair, admirable objectivity, and an attention to detail that many of us who thought we knew the history have forgotten or never knew."-Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times
"Masterful and exhaustively researched. . . . For this well-written and pacy book, [Sarotte] has uncovered previously unpublished details of former president Bill Clinton's role in deciding Europe's fate."-Con Coughlin, Sunday Telegraph
"Highly detailed, thoroughly researched, and briskly written."-Fred Kaplan, New York Review of Books
"There's no one who has researched the relevant sources more thoroughly than historian Mary E. Sarotte, who has just published Not One Inch . . . successfully reconstructing the most significant days [in NATO expansion]."-Stefan Kornelius, Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Sarotte weaves together the most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available."-Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs
"Prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte . . . charts all the private discussions within the western alliance and with Russia over enlargement and reveals Russia as powerless to slow the ratchet effect of the opening of Nato's door."-Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
"Sarotte is the unofficial dean of ‘end of Cold War' studies. . . . With her latest book, she tackles head-on the not-controversial-at-all questions about NATO's eastward growth and the effect it had on Russia's relations with the west. I look forward to the contretemps this book will inevitably produce."-Daniel W. Drezner, Washington Post
"‘Not one inch to the east' . . . [is] a history so often repeated that it's practically conventional wisdom. Mary Sarotte . . . [describes] what actually happened [between the US and Russia], and how both the reality and distortion really shape today's events."-Max Fisher, New York Times, from "The Interpreter" newsletter
"A riveting account of Nato enlargement and its contribution to the present confrontation. Sarotte tells the story with great narrative and analytical flair, admirable objectivity, and an attention to detail that many of us who thought we knew the history have forgotten or never knew."-Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times
"Masterful and exhaustively researched. . . . For this well-written and pacy book, [Sarotte] has uncovered previously unpublished details of former president Bill Clinton's role in deciding Europe's fate."-Con Coughlin, Sunday Telegraph
"Highly detailed, thoroughly researched, and briskly written."-Fred Kaplan, New York Review of Books
"There's no one who has researched the relevant sources more thoroughly than historian Mary E. Sarotte, who has just published Not One Inch . . . successfully reconstructing the most significant days [in NATO expansion]."-Stefan Kornelius, Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Sarotte weaves together the most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available."-Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs
Readers Top Reviews
MillanTGmichel parad
“How we got here” could have been the title of the book. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia did not come really out of the blue. The book which is extremely well researched shows the events of the 1990s sowed the seeds of rising tension between the West and Russia that Putin has chosen to exploit. The author sets out the history without pushing an agenda leaving the reader to make up his own mind. Definitely a must read book.
Richard M.
M. E. Sarotte provides a better narrative of the fall of the Soviet Union than I have read. The story lays out the undercurrents that may have been festering for many years among hard right Russian leaders. I will likely read this again because there is so much detail.
Jim Benso
This heavily documented work details US foreign policy toward Russia after the fall of Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. What’s important is that we made a number of promises to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, or led the Russians to believe, that we would not expand Nato to the borders of Russia, especially the Ukraine. We have broken all these promises. This obviously plays a role in our evaluation of the current war in the Ukraine. The book is heavily fact-filled and detailed, and it drags at times. Nonetheless, I would think it essential for those interested in US foreign policy toward Russia since 1991, and the background to the current Ukrainian conflict.
JamesM
Filed under: Right Place, Right Time ‘Not One Inch’ Pulls NATO’s expansion into methodical line Connecting the fumbled opportunities of Gorbachev/Bush/Kohl, to the Putin/Clinton point of no return. Finely balanced on an impressive array of footnotes, the narrative is careful to convey the whole story And so Unencumbered by a fact-hiding agenda Sarotte lets events point their own fingers Casually quoting, then defense secretary, Dick Cheney’s position that America should be the only superpower and so spiritually begins our current self-fulfilling conflict. Then, un-ironically, highlighting the smug stroll of our foreign born secretary of state, one Madeleine Albright, as she takes a victory lap of her home town in Czechoslovakia after securing America commitment to defend that country via NATO A small anecdote illustrating how personal affinities and the need to please ethnic minded voters, like the, then influential, Polish-Americans, stole the opportunity for big-picture thinking. Of course the unintended consequence of NATO plodding expansion to the borders of the former Soviet Union is that it pushed Russia into a corner Isolation encouraging it to play its spoiler’s game And although that story is not part of this book This book helps you understand how that story started.
