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The most alarming aspect of the current NATO expansion project is its nearly unbounded reach, which could bring up to 30 new members into the alliance, accompa-nied by an unprecedented expansion of United States security commitments. However, a better conceived U.S. policy could convert this drawback of multiplicity into a powerful asset. Canada and Denmark already have approved acceptance of the first three NATO candidates the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. The U.S. Senate is expected to consider the issue March 9, and it appears that there will be a sufficient majority for passage. There are now nine other official candidates for NATO membership: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. Five of these - the three Baltic states, Slovenia and Romania - already have been invited by NATO to apply for NATO membership at the Washington NATO summit in April 1999. Three European neutrals - Finland, Sweden and Austria - also are considering applying for NATO membership. If the Baltic States do enter NATO, there will be great pressure on Ukraine to apply. That would add a potential total of 16 new NATO members, doubling the present size of the alliance. And the enlargement process can go even further. In addition to the 16 candidates just listed, there are 10 or 11 more Partnership for Peace members who, in theory, are eligible for NATO membership. Already in Phase 2, with the candidacy of the Baltic States and Romania, the risks and dangers of NATO enlargement will mount spectacularly. Russia has threatened to withdraw from the newly established NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council if NATO is enlarged to include the Baltic States. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger has testified before the Senate that the Baltic States can be defended only by U.S. nuclear weapons. Any NATO plan to do this would elicit a dangerous Russian move toward even greater emphasis on Russia's nuclear forces aimed at the United States and Europe. If the United States tries to do the job with conventional weapons instead, this would mean very large increases in NATO and U.S. naval and air force capabilities in the Baltic and in the Black Sea to defend Romania and Bulgaria. As a result, Russia's heartland will be threatened by a giant pincer movement, like the one the Germans tried in World War II. In fact, a Jan. 23 resolution in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, equates NATO enlargement with the Nazi invasion. That's why this next round of enlargement is so dangerous. The official Russian National Security concept adopted last December states explicitly that Russia regards NATO expansion as a threat to its national security. We should pay real attention to warnings like this. Even beyond Phase 2, there is literally no end of this enterprise in sight. The Clinton administration refuses to place any limits on it. But Phase 3 could complete the encirclement of Western Russia, with membership for Ukraine and tough little Finland in an increasingly serious confrontation with Russia that would continue indefinitely. Given this rocky future, it is probable that Senate action on NATO enlargement will be accompanied by many proposals from worried senators urging that there should be a sizable pause after the first phase of enlargement. Whether or not these concerns take the form of formal reservations to Senate action on the accession protocol for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, their trend will be clear. A wise administration will act to create a pause of two or three years in considering further expansion of NATO. If this happens, a major opportunity will open up to limit the damage from the NATO expansion project and to convert this potentially disastrous scheme to a brilliant foreign policy achievement. The basic problem of NATO enlargement is that it includes some countries and excludes others, prominently Russia, establishing in Europe a new dividing line of serious political and military friction. What is clearly missing is a comprehensive all-European solution. Both the logic and the politics of the situation require that, following possible acceptance of the first three candidates, the United States go the next step and develop an approach to NATO enlargement that is comprehensive and covers all European states, including Russia. Specifically, the administration should use the pause to prepare a 20-year plan for the comprehensive enlargement of NATO, a plan that would provide for NATO membership for all of the candidates, including the Baltic States, and for Ukraine, if it so desires, and also, at the end of the 20-year period, of Russia itself. The plan should be detailed and credible. Russia can be genuinely convinced that there is a solid plan and real prospects for its own ultimate NATO membership, whether or not it now wishes to act on that possibility, it will not object in the interim to membership even for the Baltic States and Ukraine, as well as for others. There are some difficulties for such a solution, although none of them are as large as those caused by the current expansion project itself. First, one current function of NATO is to ensure against a resurgent Russia - a not unreasonable mission, given Russia's unstable polity, and one that could continue. That is why the present proposal suggests a 20-year period for Russia to settle down. Russia will either stabilize during that period or at some point take such a negative course as to make its entry into NATO impractical. Second, adding 10 or 12 more members, including Russia, would probably change the nature of NATO as it has been up to now. But this change will happen anyway under the administration's present scheme. Over time, as Vaclav Havel suggested a few years ago, NATO's nature should slowly change - from a military alliance directed against a specific enemy to a collective security organization, one that has merged with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an all-European organization with U.S. and Russian membership that specializes in conflict prevention and alleviating ethnic tensions. This would be a new form of collective security institution, one which has the capability of mounting military missions supported by coalitions of the willing among its members. After a 20-year transition, during which NATO will be maintaining most of its present military capability and missions, this broader organization, melding NATO's strengths of military organization and of creating consensus with a comprehensive membership, will emerge as the overarching European security structure people have been hoping for since the end of the cold war. Contact GRN for reprint information on this article. Return to The Great NATO Debate Return to Global Beat Home Page Nuclear Watch | East Asian Security | Economic & Monetary Union | NATO Expansion | Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation | U.S. Defense Policy | Publications | Events | |
