Still Waiting for NATO Debate

A NATO preparing itself to expand eastward and a Russia that views that prospect with impotent anger have reached an agreement on their future relations, though hardly an understanding. President Boris Yeltsin, eyeing his hostile and nationalistic parliament, claims the new pact gives Moscow the right to block NATO decisions it dislikes. Not so, President Clinton responds. While Russia will have a formal mechanism for consulting with NATO and airing its disagreements, it will have no veto over the alliance’s actions. There’s no question about who’s right in this clash of interpretations. NATO will listen to Russia but in the end NATO will do what it wants.

The new agreement, called the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, signals Moscow’s grudging acceptance of what it now regards as inevitable. In July, NATO will invite Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all formerly the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies, to apply for membership. Russia protests that NATO’s enlargement is provocative and a threat to its security. NATO denies this and says that it doesn’t plan to station large numbers of foreign troops or nuclear weapons in the projected new member states. While less than a binding commitment, that assurance is the best Moscow can hope for.

But while the Clinton administration has been offering assurances to Moscow, it has yet to make a coherent case at home that NATO’s enlargement is necessary or that it would serve vital U.S. interests. Its advocates say NATO’s expansion is a means to promote democracy and stability in Central Europe. But that frothy generality leaves hard practical questions unanswered. If NATO expands, Washington automatically assumes new and costly defense responsibilities. Will taking on those responsibilities make the United States more secure? And how will they be paid for?

Critics of enlargement worry that it will further energize Russia’s ultranationalists, with dire consequences for U.S. hopes to liquidate the remnants of the Cold War. The United States, to take just one example, would hardly be a safer place if enlargement dooms chances for Russian parliamentary approval of the Start II nuclear weapons reduction treaty. Concerns about these and other issues are emerging in the U.S. Senate, where a two-thirds vote is needed for the revision of the NATO treaty that enlargement would require. If the Clinton administration has a good case to make, it had better start arguing it now.