NATO: The More the Merrier
NATO: The More the Merrier ? 4~T""\7" Te want to be embedded in the Western \ \ I camp," said a prominent Polish legisla-VV tor last week, as NATO acted to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech...
...We should gladly seize it...
...Happily, there is no real sign of a new nationalism or irredentism in Russia...
...The president and Congress should agree to keep U.S...
...Missing from their letter is any explanation of what that "primary mission" is...
...The new democratic Russia should be a friend and partner of the United States...
...And the Republican-led Congress should act to reverse the steep and dangerous decline of our military strength...
...In the coming months, critics of NATO enlargement will come up with a dizzying array of objections to the policy...
...We can help secure an increasingly peaceful and democratic Europe well into the next century...
...This was true long before the Soviet Union imposed its occupation on Eastern Europe...
...The Clinton administration has worked closely with Russia throughout the process of enlargement...
...For the rejection of NATO enlargement would set the stage for a new era of American isolationism...
...They oppose extending American commitments to countries with border disputes or potential ethnic problems, as if it were better to ignore these problems than to defuse them early...
...For if we decide next summer to wash our hands of Bosnia and allow the brutal war to resume, a vote to enlarge NATO will be hollow...
...Then there are lots of foreign-policy intellectuals, mostly doves from the '70s and '80s...
...troops in Bosnia beyond the June 1998 "deadline" if they are needed to preserve the peace there...
...Indeed, the cooperative agreements reached between NATO and Russia in recent months would probably never have come about if NATO had not taken in new members...
...It isn't...
...The good news is that the sacrifices we will have to make to preserve the American peace in Europe are likely to be relatively small...
...We will need both the political will and the military capability to make this commitment credible...
...Meanwhile, Russia's democracy seems, if anything, to be taking firmer hold...
...It is the logical follow-on to our long and successful struggle against Soviet communism...
...Similarly, both the Clinton administration and the Republican-controlled Congress seem to believe that we can expand our commitments abroad while eroding our military capacity to honor them...
...There have been legitimate cautions about NATO enlargement—above all, that it could have inflamed nationalist passions in Russia, weakened the fragile democracy there, and created a new line of confrontation in Europe...
...A 70-year-old woman in Warsaw who had turned out to see the president of the United States told a reporter, "We are finally free...
...The opportunity is ours...
...American leadership in Europe and in the world is not a divisible commodity...
...This mismatch of means and ends cannot last...
...For the rest of us, it is pretty clear that NATO's primary mission is to keep the peace in Europe...
...We will have fewer divisions, fewer aircraft and ships, and outdated weaponry—all to meet obligations that are greater than ever before...
...The monetary price of incorporating new NATO members is expected to be less than a billion dollars a year...
...Unlike some proponents of NATO expansion, we are not Russophobes...
...The enlargement of NATO, in short, is only one piece in an overall strategy of bolstering and extending America's global leadership...
...Exactly...
...Even so, a number of influential Americans are mounting an effort to ensure that we squander this historic opportunity to extend the zone of peace and democracy...
...We did not make the same mistake in the late 1940s...
...We cannot expect to help protect peace, stability, and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, for instance, if at the same time we abdicate our leadership in Bosnia...
...There is no third option...
...This is in Europe's interest, America's, and the world's...
...But when the time comes for the Senate to vote, the question will really be quite simple: Will the United States proudly shoulder its responsibilities in Europe, as it has for the past 50 years, or will it turn away and let the peace we have so painstakingly constructed be eroded...
...That is better accomplished by bringing new members in than by leaving them in a geopolitical no man's land...
...The enlargement of NATO to include the democracies of Eastern and Central Europe is the culmination of the events that began in 1989 with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall...
...If the Senate votes to refuse to admit new democracies to our alliance, that choice will be understood, both in the United States and in the world, as a victory for Buchananism...
...It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an extension of American leadership in Europe in the interests of stability and democracy—interests that a democratic Russia should share...
...Let us be clear: NATO expansion is our most consequential foreign-policy decision since the Gulf War...
...Polls show that the Russian people are generally unconcerned about NATO...
...military commitments, and they don't like U.S...
...They will try to make the issue appear maddeningly complex and hope that the American people get lost in the fog...
...Above all, it is the foundation for what can only be called an "American peace" in Europe...
...We close with a word to our fellow supporters of NATO enlargement, including the Clinton administration...
...Most Russians understand that NATO enlargement is not directed against Moscow...
...Europe without the United States simply doesn't work...
...In recent months, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have reached amicable agreement on the difficult issue of the Black Sea fleet and the ownership of naval bases in the Crimea...
...They don't like military alliances, they don't like U.S...
...The forces aligning to defeat NATO's enlargement in the Senate next year are a motley crew...
...Even in the face of impending NATO expansion, Boris Yeltsin has fired hardliners and appointed moderate reformers and committed democrats like Boris Nemtsov to top positions in the government...
...commitment to Europe...
...leadership, not to say preeminence, in the world...
...And rightly so...
...And they complain that the enlargement of NATO will somehow "degrade its ability to carry out its primary mission...
...We have shared these concerns...
...Bolstering Russian democracy is crucial to preserving the American peace in Europe...
...Although the enlargement of NATO is a prudent hedge against any resurgence of Russian imperialism, there is little evidence of such a resurgence today...
...Our departure from European affairs after World War I, when we looked to our own security between two oceans, was essential to Hitler's rise and the ensuing world war...
...NATO: The More the Merrier ? 4~T""\7" Te want to be embedded in the Western \ \ I camp," said a prominent Polish legisla-VV tor last week, as NATO acted to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to membership...
...More considerable is the fact that we must be prepared to fight, if necessary, to defend our new allies...
...In a recent letter to President Clinton, many of these high-toned opponents try to rally the American people against NATO enlargement...
...Our leadership in Europe— indeed, our willingness to risk nuclear attack to deter Soviet aggression against our European allies—led to a victory over the Soviet Union that cost us not a single life in a European war...
...They warn of the "high cost" of the new policy—as if a few hundred million dollars a year is too high a price for peace in Europe...
...Thus, as NATO expands over the next five years, our defense budget, locked in by the recent budget deal, will decline in real dollars...
...But we welcome this twin test of our willingness to preserve the American peace...
...But as the Second World War and the Cold War taught, a demonstrated willingness to fight for Prague, for Warsaw, or for Budapest is the best guarantee against our ever having to do so...
...There are a few nationalist and isolationist politicians, like Patrick Buchanan, who still believe, as their forebears did in the 1930s, not just in "America First" but in "America Alone...
...Some pro-NATO senators have worried that next year's vote on enlargement will likely come at about the same time as a vote on maintaining the American presence in the Balkans...
...Perhaps they don't know...
...The liberal intellectuals and retired policymakers who are fighting NATO enlargement may believe that a Senate rejection of the new arrangement is consistent with a continued U.S...
...In the absence of American involvement and strong leadership, Europe is prone to division and bloodshed...
...To expand NATO is to advance the cause of freedom and to strengthen the West—to increase its reach, to lock in its gains, to deepen its influence...
...Next year, therefore, the Senate should vote decisively to approve NATO enlargement...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 44
