William Bennet Munro History Seminar Series

Abstract: Did the United States promise Russia, at the end of the Cold War, that it would not expand NATO eastward?  Washington says no; Moscow says yes; what does the evidence say?  In a scholarly effort to move beyond the heated rhetoric and to document the sequence of events that resulted in post-Cold War NATO enlargement, Professor Sarotte has conducted extensive research in the US, Germany, Britain, France, and Russia.  In this lecture, she will analyze the evidence on the origin of post-Cold War NATO expansion – much of which she has gotten declassified – and assess enlargement's legacy for international relations today.

Speaker's Biography: Professor Sarotte is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC.  Her five books include The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, both of which were named Financial Times Books of the Year, along with receiving other awards and commendations.  Sarotte earned her AB in History and Science at Harvard University and her PhD in History at Yale University.  After graduate school, she served as a White House Fellow and subsequently joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge.  Sarotte received tenure at Cambridge in 2004 and returned to the United States to teach at University of Southern California as the Dean's Professor of History before moving to Hopkins.  Sarotte is a former Humboldt Scholar, a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a research associate of Harvard's Center for European Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She is currently writing a book on NATO expansion; it is based on formerly secret Defense Dept., State Dept., and White House documents which she has declassified though Freedom of Information appeals.