NATO PLUS THREE

By Bruce W. Nelan

After every great war the victors search for a way to safeguard their gains. In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was intended to disarm Germany and keep it weak. Following World War II, the Allies tried at Yalta and Potsdam to shape a reordered Europe but ended up splitting it between East and West. Now another world struggle, the long, bitter cold war, has ended, and the architects of security are back at their drawing boards. They are trying to seal peace and stability into Europe's future and, although they don't say so very loudly, hedge against the rise of a vengeful Russia. In Madrid this week, a summit meeting of the 16 nations of NATO is starting to enlarge and reshape what is now usually described as the most successful alliance in history. The question is whether it will continue to be.

For an enterprise intended to preserve international amity, the expansion of NATO has produced a discomforting amount of friction and ill will. Even this week's summit could turn into a "food fight," as an American official puts it, because the U.S. has ruled that only three new countries will be admitted to NATO in the first round, though others are to come in later. The welcome mat is out for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. But France, Italy, Canada and other members of the alliance were pushing the candidacies of Romania and Slovenia, and in some conference rooms charges of "American arrogance" echoed. The U.S. will prevail, of course, because such decisions must be unanimous.

As soon as the summiteers issue their invitations and wind up the ceremonies, President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen will board their Air Force planes and bustle across Europe to congratulate the fortunate three and soothe and reassure the anxious applicants that have been left out. Some of those, especially the Romanians, are extremely upset, though they say they will be glad to greet the President and hear his better-luck-next-time message.

At a glance, adding former Warsaw Pact allies of the Soviet Union to the ranks of the triumphant NATO alliance seems a good idea. After all, the argument went, these were the captive nations, now freed, and they deserve the advantages of membership, including the guarantee that an attack on any member will be considered an attack on all of them.

But in fact no one knows how the expansion will affect Europe or the alliance, how much it will cost or how many years or decades the growth spurt, and the conflicts that come with it, will last. Meanwhile, each time new members are taken in, new dividing lines will be drawn across the Continent. Russia, one of the two states that can blow up the world, will be on the other side of those lines.

While he is still in Europe, Clinton will find telegenic and symbolic sites to begin his next task: persuading the U.S. Senate to ratify the NATO treaty to include the new members. All the other national parliaments involved will have to ratify it too, but the Senate is the key. If it falters, some of the Europeans could drift away. And while the White House expects to win the two-thirds vote it needs in the Senate, it no longer believes rounding up 67 votes will be a simple matter.

One of the many odd things about the plan to expand NATO has been the absence of debate, either in public or among the politicians who will have to judge the policy right or wrong for their countries. The discussion has only begun, and Administration officials say they are amazed at how the foreign policy elite in the U.S. has coalesced in opposition to expansion. Skepticism is showing up in Congress as well, where 20 Senators sent Clinton a letter asking a string of questions about the wisdom of letting the East Europeans into the NATO club. They were joined by a group of 50 other notables--retired Senators, military officers, ambassadors and arms-control experts--who signed another letter asking the President to halt before making "a policy error of historic proportions."

After the enlargement decision was made, many capitals thought the first group admitted should be big enough to be impressive. They wanted to add Romania and Slovenia to the three everyone agreed on. Clinton said no. He may be worried about presenting the Senate with a bigger bill than they will want to pay, or he may be concerned about the "Slovenia? Where's that?" factor. French President Jacques Chirac was particularly eager to see Romania gain entry. In a tete-a-tete with Clinton at the Denver economic summit two weeks ago, Chirac made a strong plea for both Romania and Slovenia, but Clinton simply repeated his position that three was enough. "That's the maddening thing about dealing with the Americans," says a French official. "You can discuss things, but only up to a certain point. Then the U.S. says no, and it's no."

In their letter the 20 Senators said they were not supporting or opposing the proposal to expand NATO, but they advised Clinton that a lot of "contentious" matters would have to be debated when they take up the issue. "I don't think there's organized opposition," says Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas who circulated the letter, "but I do think there's a growing group of questioners."

They want to know what military threat NATO expansion is designed to counter, how it will strengthen stability in Europe, and whether U.S. lives will have to be risked to deal with "border, ethnic, nationalist and religious disputes" in Central Europe. "I'm not convinced we should be part of an alliance that says the U.S. should go to war to protect a couple little countries most Americans haven't heard of," says Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy.

Why, the Senators ask, should the new democracies be forced to spend more money for tanks and fighters when they should be improving their roads and water supplies? Most of all, they want to know how much it will cost to bring former Warsaw Pact armies up to NATO standards and whether the European members, present and future, can be counted on to pay their share. "What are we getting ourselves into in terms of costs?" asks Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin.

No one knows the answer to that. The lowest estimate comes from the Administration, which figures that the cost of the first three new members will be about $35 billion over 13 years, with the U.S. share amounting to $200 million a year. Of course, if other new members are admitted during those years--as the U.S. assumes--the price will go up. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office puts the cost at some $61 billion, and the Rand Corp. says $42 billion. Whatever the real cost, it is high enough to have caused U.S. weapons makers to join the lobbying for expansion.

Despite the Clinton Administration's expansive claims for the plan--that it increases everyone's security, reinforces democracy, makes Russia a partner with the West--there are many more questions and apparent contradictions. The biggest threat to the world's security is the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and one of the items atop America's agenda is the reduction of strategic nuclear missiles. But, says Jack Matlock, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, moving NATO to the east "is going to make it much more difficult to negotiate the reduction of these nuclear weapons."

The main threats to the security of nations in Central and Eastern Europe are economic: the pain and stress of transforming their economies and politics after communism. And yet the first major initiative from the West is membership in a military alliance. What they really need is membership in the European Union. That is not happening because the Europeans think offering NATO membership is easier and cheaper for them. After the nonprogress at last month's E.U. summit in Amsterdam, it is clear that its expansion will be smaller and slower than the Americans, and the new applicants, had hoped.

If the first stage of expansion is disruptive, it can only get worse in the future. "This venture," says one of its American designers, "will succeed or fail over whether the process can be kept open for all deserving countries, including the Baltics." Yes, he says, the admission of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania--which might need security reassurance more than Poland does right now--is "doable, but not immediately." It will happen over the next five to 10 years, he predicts. That is not the way it looks from Moscow. "The Baltic republics are strictly off the table," says Dmitri Trenin, a defense expert at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "That door is closed. If NATO tries to open it, even a little bit, there will be trouble."

Washington insists it is undeterred. "The Russians say they are not prepared to live with any of the former Soviet republics inside NATO," notes an Administration official. "Russia will have to get over that." If Russia does not get over it, though, the result could be precisely the European instability that the expansion of NATO was intended to lock away in the trophy case of history.

--Reported by Jay Branegan/Brussels, Thomas Sancton/Paris, Andrew Meier/Moscow and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by JAY BRANEGAN/BRUSSELS, THOMAS SANCTON/PARIS, ANDREW MEIER/MOSCOW AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON