News Release

How Biden Could End the Ukraine Crisis

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DAVID GIBBS, dgibbs@email.arizona.edu
Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona and has written extensively on NATO. He recently wrote the piece “Claims Over Broken Promises About NATO Simmer at the Heart of the Ukraine Crisis.”

He said today: “In its efforts to expand NATO into Ukraine, the Biden administration is recklessly inflaming the international crisis, endangering global security. It is often forgotten that in 1990, the U.S. promised that NATO would not expand into the former communist states of Eastern Europe; ‘not one inch Eastward,’ Soviet leaders were assured by the U.S. Secretary of State at the time. Despite this promise, NATO soon expanded into Eastern Europe, eventually placing the alliance up against Russia’s borders. To resolve the current crisis, the Biden administration should offer a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO. To do this would satisfy the key Russian demand, consistent with the 1990 U.S. commitment.”

Gibbs is author of the book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, published by Vanderbilt University Press.