An Alternative to NATO Expansion

Abstract

Reluctant to let well enough alone, the administration of President Bill Clinton in the United States has persuaded its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to push eastward. Who will be included and when they may join is still up for grabs. But expanding the Western alliance into the former Soviet empire will probably make Europe and the world less secure. For NATO to set up camp closer to Russia's borders is a recipe for strengthening Russian nationalism, militarism, and imperialism. To be sure, NATO does not plan a new Drang nach Osten to bully or invade Russia. But any government would worry if its historic foe were to multiply its allies and edge closer. Russian leaders threaten a variety of counter-measures if NATO expands eastward. They are unlikely to be placated with saccharine words ('it is no longer you versus us') or by trivial concessions. Fortunately, weighty precedents suggest an alternative future for east central Europe -- neutralization. This alternative would lower the chances that hardline expansionists would gain the upper hand in Moscow. NOT THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM Why enlarge NATO? Advocates say that NATO'S 'opening' (an Orwellian euphemism) to the east is not directed against Russia. It aims rather to manage conflict, democratize and integrate all Europeans, and fill a power vacuum in east central Europe.(f.1) Despite sweet talk, however, NATO is still a military alliance against Russian attack. NATO'S basic aim in the 1990s, as it was in the Cold War, is to prevent the world's largest country -- now occupying one-seventh of the world's land -- from expanding westward.(f.2) But NATO enlargement is the wrong answer to the problems it purports to solve. Taking new members into NATO is not necessary for managing ethnic conflicts, democratizing east central Europe, or uniting all Europeans. Under United States leadership, NATO as it now stands is quite capable of such operations as enforcing the Dayton accords in the Balkans.(f.3) Without adding to NATO'S ranks, the existing Partnership for Peace (PFP) facilitates closer co-operation among Russia, NATO members, and the non-aligned countries of Europe. Countries such as Lithuania need not join NATO in order to send troops to serve with NATO peacekeepers. Even Russian troops are serving under tactical NATO command in Bosnia -- with a Russian officer stationed in the Pentagon as part of the bargain. Nor is NATO enlargement necessary for democracy in the former Soviet empire. Democratization depends in the first place upon internal conditions -- development of the political and economic prerequisites for a civil society. Development of these conditions could suffer if NATO enlargement were to stimulate an anti-Western response in Russia. Moscow might choose to destabilize neighbours such as Ukraine and Latvia by mobilizing fifth columns of those who still identify themselves as Russians. To be sure, power vacuums can elicit dangerous interventions. For the foreseeable future, however, Russia has only limited means to reconquer its western neighbours. Its conventional forces are depleted both in quantity and quality from those that sustained the Soviet empire just a decade ago. Still, Russia's potential for military action remains vast; its existing forces are far larger than many observers acknowledge.(f.4) Piecemeal expansion of the Western alliance would accentuate the frailties of those countries in east central Europe omitted from the first wave of NATO expansion. Russia might well try to regain such non-aligned spaces before they, too, are occupied by the Western alliance. In 1992-3 some Kremlin leaders dreamed of NATO membership for Russia. When they were told that this was a dream, many Russian authorities warned that Moscow would treat NATO expansion as a threat to Russia's vital interests. From 1994 to 1997 most Russian officials averred that the Kremlin would interpret any NATO enlargement as a hostile act -- little altered by offers of a NATO-Russia 'charter' (a fortiori if, as the West prefers, it is non-binding), by assurances that NATO has no desire or plans to station nuclear weapons closer to Russian soil, or by higher limits for Russia in permitted conventional forces. …