If neither democracy, stability, morality nor security is a good reason to expand NATO, then why proceed with it? The proponents have an answer: credibility. The process of expansion, they say, has gone too far to stop because stopping would have devastating consequences for America's standing and leadership in the world.
Since there can be no going back to abandon long-standing promises because a Russian tantrum would bust the alliance . . . ”NATO goes a-wooing”, The Economist, January 25, 1997, p. 15. In fact, going forward with expansion is more likely to ``bust the alliance'' than stopping it. (See below, Section IV). For that reason, a decision to stop would be greeted by current NATO members with a collective sigh of relief.
The Clinton administration's political strategy for securing the two-thirds vote in the Senate necessary to expand NATO is apparently to issue invitations to the prospective new members in July, then assert that, no matter how high the costs involved, the failure to approve expansion would have dreadful, earth-shattering results. While the other arguments in favor of expansion are hollow, this one is merely outdated. It made sense during the Cold War, when the United States and its allies confronted a hostile, militant, heavily armed adversary around the world. Communism was a global movement, whose branches were connected through its world headquarters in Moscow. From this feature of Cold War international politics arose the fear that a Western defeat, retreat, or show of irresolution in one place would invite pressure, even aggression, elsewhere. Such was the logic behind the American decision in June 1950 to fight in Korea, a place of no intrinsic importance to the United States but where a defeat could, American policymakers feared, have adverse effects in places that were important. It was the reason for standing firm in West Berlin, which, because it was located inside East Germany, could not be successfully defended against a determined Communist assault. It was also the reason for fighting in Vietnam and for the decision of the Nixon administration, upon inheriting responsibility for the war in 1969, to continue rather than abandon it even though the American public had turned against it and the chances of prevailing was slight. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, ``We should not be shy in saying that NATO expansion will help a democratic Russia and hurt an imperialistic Russia.'' Quoted in George Melloan, ``Russia's Neighbors Worry About `Yalta II,' '' The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 1997,
p. A23.
It is not only Russians with impeccable democratic credentials who say this. According to General Alexander Lebed, briefly President Yeltsin's national security advisor and considered a leading candidate for the Russian presidency in the future, writing in the newspaper Izvestia in March 1997, ``If the sense of loss and humiliation that comes with defeat is allowed to fester in the Russian mentality, it may lead to an inferiority complex that can only be overcome by gaining new victories, preferably over old rivals. That is also a big mistake. Unfortunately, the political and military expansion of NATO to the East makes it probable that both of these mistakes will be committed''. Translation distributed by the LA Times Syndicate, March 17, 1997.
Nor is such an analysis confined to Russians. Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard, perhaps the most distinguished historian of the Russian revolution and, on the basis both of his scholarship and service in the Reagan administration, hardly someone who is unaware of or insensitive to historical Russian patterns of imperialism, has written: ``First and foremost among Western initiatives likely to provoke a violent reaction and to intensify chauvinism is the proposed expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe. This action, intended to enhance the sense of security of the Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs, will produce the contrary effect among the Russians''. Pipes, ``Russian Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective'', Harvard International Review, XIX:1, Winter, 1996-7, p. 57.
Even assuming, however, that the pro-containment arguments were valid, the particular expansion that is being planned is ill-conceived, for it does not extend membership far enough to the east. Even if it is inevitable that Russia will pose a threat to its neighbors, it will not threaten the countries slated for NATO membership. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are no longer Russia's neighbors. None has a real border with Russia. The countries that do share borders with Russia and thus would be threatened--Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine--are not being invited to join the Alliance. In this sense the Clinton administration's policy on NATO expansion is perfectly nonsensical: those who--under the only set of
assumptions under which expansion makes sense--need ATO won't get it; and those who get it don't need it.
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