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Leave it to Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
to raise the stakes on the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
even as he and other senators were concluding that the first round of such
expansion is a done deal. Unless the European allies are ready to make a greater commitment toward the former communist states of Eastern Europe, the North Carolina Republican warned last week, the expansion of the West's most successful military alliance could also lead to its collapse. Helms was addressing the cost issue, and he indicated that the Senate would insist "that a majority of the cost of making and keeping NATO militarily effective will be the responsibility of our allies." But the echoes of Sen. Joseph Biden, the pro-expansion Democrat from Delaware, went further than just dollars and cents. The European Union has "not been very generous or speedy" concerning its Eastern European brethren, said Biden, a point that encompasses the common complaint that the United States still shares a heavier burden when it comes to its old Cold War foes than do our allies, and that the European Union needs to get more aggressively in step. Critics of expansion, and there are many of them, might argue that such warnings are too little, too late, coming as they did in the Foreign Relations Committee's final hearing on the issue before a full Senate vote, expected early this month. They have continued to apply the heat, nevertheless. The foremost critic, professor Michael Mandlebaum of Johns Hopkins University, has just recently raised five points that should be answered, ranging from the Baltic Charter security agreement the Clinton administration has entered into with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to the administration's handling of the Iraqi crisis. Fresh opposition also has emerged in the Senate, notably from Larry Craig of Idaho and John Chafee of Rhode Island. And The New York Times, in an editorial Sunday, urged senators to reject the rush to ratification. The real battle, however, is likely to take place over a second round of enlargement. As Baroness Margaret Thatcher has reminded U.S. audiences, NATO membership for the three first-round states - Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - would right a historic wrong: the West's failure to come to their aid as they were first consumed by Nazism and then Communism. But, she added, NATO enlargement should stop there. It probably won't, at least not if pro-expansion forces continue to have their way. For one, the Clinton administration wants to keep the options open for a second round of expansion, with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright warning than any pause in the enlargement process would remove the incentive for other nations in Eastern Europe to continue along the democratic reform path. And the allies want some say as well. France was a vigorous supporter of adding Romania and Slovenia on the first round, and will continue the push when the second round comes up, whenever that might be. Ukraine and the Baltic states also would like to be in the club; so too Croatia. Politicians in Federal Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) do not discount the possibility of seeking membership if democracy ever takes root there (a big if, indeed), and eventually Bulgaria, Albania, Cyprus and host of newly independent states of the former Soviet Union might all be knocking on NATO's door. Aside from some real concerns that such activity will do nothing but awaken from hibernation a still very large Russian bear with nuclear weapons, NATO expansion beyond the three While Albright touts NATO membership as a reward for nations that democratize on the Western model, much as Spain and Portugal did in the 1970s, there is also Turkey, the glaring exception. So if democracy is not the prime criterion, what is? Skeptics suspect it is to gather more armies under a united command for peacekeeping operations "out of theatre," much like the on-going Stabilization Force effort in Bosnia-Herzegovian. Certainly, NATO's original mission - to be a vanguard against Soviet expansion into Western Europe - no longer exists. What its mission will become, however, no one is quite willing to say. This leaves critics to ponder why NATO enlargement was pushed so quickly when other institutions such as the European Union were seemingly sitting on their hands. The E.U. now has committed itself to a process of expansion, although its timetable lags far behind NATO's. And the single currency issue remains its driving force, at least until the Euro kicks into circulation next year. It is that monetary union, more under-reported and under-appreciated in the United States than even NATO expansion, which might in time have more impact on global peace and stability than troops conducting joint training exercises. One probably should not rush to make such judgments, however. As the now-diminished crisis over Iraq indicates, reports of the death of the Age of Militarism are greatly exaggerated. Just because much of the world is embracing the free market does not mean that the capacity for mischief is over. Nor are there any answers should the new world economic order collapse; only the catastrophic reminder of earlier 20th-century history as tragic precedence. Among the first-round states, the Czech Republic struggles economically under a caretaker government. Problems are so severe in many of the oft-mentioned second-round candidate states, most notably in the Balkans, that health-care officials note declining birth rates and increases in deaths from ailments such as heart disease. So the bigger question of whether an enlarged NATO can provide the necessary security for democracy and free markets to flourish is still very open. Unless other pieces of the puzzle also fit, a greatly enlarged NATO could conceivably collapse under its own weight, whether it be because of cost or just simply too much bloat to be an effective military alliance united against no common foe. And this, perhaps, is proof that this debate is not over; it has only just begun. James Hill, a fellow of the Center for War, Peace and the News Media, has served as an assistant op-ed editor of the Los Angeles Times and, until its closing last year, as editor of the editorial pages of The Phoenix Gazette. He now edits James Hill's Weekly, a review of news and commentary on world affairs. 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 | |
