A Popular Bad Idea

By Bruce W. Nelan

What has NATO done for us lately? Serbs are slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo while the alliance shrugs off American demands to get tough with Belgrade. When Albania collapsed into chaos and automatic gunfire last year, NATO managed to do precisely nothing. In Bosnia the European allies dithered for years until the U.S. insisted on bombing the Serbs. But in Washington last week, where the Senate voted to bring three new members into NATO, supporters attributed magical qualities to the alliance, including the power to make the whole Continent peaceful and prosperous. Bill Clinton said the inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland began the fulfillment of "the dream of a generation, a Europe that is united, democratic and secure."

Amid such soaring rhetoric, it was hard to recall just what NATO is: a military alliance. It is about the commitment and deployment of armed forces. The Clinton Administration has done its best to portray it as something else--a political association devoted to institution building. But the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles knew they were applying to an alliance created to oppose Russia, and that's why they wanted to get in. Bill Clinton may think there is a new NATO, but the Central Europeans admit privately that they are joining the old one.

Now that expansion is happening, what does it do? The first issue it raises is credibility. Advocates of NATO expansion agree that the Central and East European states face no military threat; so to them, the whole thing looks risk-free. But if in a few years Poland gets into a scrape with Ukraine, say, or Hungary with Romania, would the U.S. be willing to send American forces or nuclear weapons to defend the new allies? Such spats will never happen, say the proponents.

One inevitable result is a conventional arms race. The three new members are going to spend huge amounts on modernizing their militaries--a prospect that pleases U.S. weapons dealers and Congress. To get in on an expected arms-sales bonanza, the Senate last week voted down an amendment that would have capped U.S. subsidies for such weapons purchases. Hungary, for example, intends to spend almost $1 billion on new jet fighters. Can Poland be far behind? These countries don't need top-of-the-line warplanes and tanks, but the hardware is part of a plan to achieve "interoperability" with the Western allies. Ukraine, Russia and other states left outside NATO will be sure to react.

In the next stage of expansion, the candidates will include Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, three former Soviet republics that border Russia itself. Russian officials from Boris Yeltsin on down swear they absolutely, positively will not tolerate Baltic membership in the Atlantic alliance. This stage, two or three years from now, could mean a return to some form of East-West cold war. And since nuclear weapons are the only way NATO could defend the Baltic states against a threat from Russia, it could also mean a return to the terrible days when thermonuclear missile forces confronted each other across European borders. The dream of a generation could turn out to be a recurring nightmare, and the Senate voted for it, 80 to 19.