Beyond Peace (15 page)

In adopting such a global mission, each NATO member must recognize that in the absence of the Soviet threat it must be more internationalist, not less. The Persian Gulf is a prime example of a region where the NATO nations have a common interest. Except for Britain, Europe is far more dependent on
Gulf oil than is the United States. Threats loom on other fronts as well. To Europe's south, the African population is estimated to triple by 2020, which will further strain the continent's tenuous stability. The Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent all have volatile mixes of poverty, explosive demographics, and political instability. Incomes in Western Europe are forty times what they are to the south. The regions on Europe's periphery also contain all the major nuclear proliferators, except North Korea and South Asia.

None of these new threats is easy to define. Nor are they susceptible to the deterrence strategies NATO pursued during the Cold War. Deterring aggression by old Bolsheviks was one thing; Saddam Hussein in Iraq, radical fundamentalists in Iran, or passionate ethnic warlords in the Caucasus pose new threats requiring new thinking, especially when such rogue forces are armed with nuclear weapons. These threats may not be deterrable, but U.S.-European cooperation in nonproliferation, antimissile defense, and contingency plans for conventional preemption should be at the top of the agenda for both Europeans and Americans.

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In out-of-area operations, NATO should capitalize on the vast experience and expertise of its major European members. France has an unparalleled understanding of how to operate in Africa, where it played a critical role in managing regional conflicts and blunting the thrusts of Soviet clients. Cuban forces in Angola would have conquered mineral-rich areas of Zaire, and Libya would have created a significant new sphere of influence, had it not been for French intervention. If ethnic and tribal conflicts spread across Africa in the future, only France will have the political instruments and skill to try to control the violence.

Britain also has capabilities and expertise that NATO would be foolish not to employ in out-of-area problems. Though smaller than during its imperial era, Britain's armed forces still have a significant global reach. Its counterterrorist
forces are the best in the world and a key asset for the new kinds of challenges the West will face. As we seek to stabilize the Persian Gulf region, Britain's intimate knowledge of the intricacies of its politics will be vitally important.

It would be politically impossible in many circumstances for the United States to act unilaterally. In the Persian Gulf War, the fact that not only the United States but also Britain and France were sending major combat forces to Saudi Arabia was essential to building the worldwide coalition that defeated Iraq's war machine. The forces of our allies were important militarily. They were indispensable politically.

The capabilities of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, and other European allies are complementary. The United States has unique capabilities in intelligence, space communications, logistics, and high technology that can tremendously enhance the abilities of its allies to project military power and political influence to deal with out-of-area issues. But the United States alone would be significantly limited if it could not use forward bases in Europe or bases controlled by our European allies outside of Europe. NATO's capabilities as an alliance can be vastly greater than the sum of its parts.

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With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe has become an orphan—no longer supported by Russia to the east and not yet accepted by the West. President Lech Walesa expressed his disillusionment in highly emotional terms when I met with him in Warsaw in February 1993. “Poland gave the West a great gift—military and political victory in the Cold War,” he said. “The West will not take this gift, and you can't force anyone to take a present they don't want.”

The idea among some foreign policy observers that Eastern Europe should serve as a buffer between East and West has no support whatever among the leaders of either Eastern or Western Europe. When I mentioned the concept to President François Mitterrand last year, he was incredulous. “Where did such an
odd idea come from?” he said. “Eastern Europe has always been part of Europe, except for the period Europe was divided by the Cold War.”

We should unequivocally and actively support the goal of full integration of the new democracies in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary into NATO. Concern that their joining NATO would be perceived as anti-Russia are unfounded. As President Václav Havel has observed, “Democratic forces in Russia understand that NATO is not Russia's enemy but its partner. The expansion of NATO would not be a hostile move but would bring closer to Russia a region of democracy and prosperity.”

The success of the Russian reactionaries in the December 12 elections may be a blessing in disguise, to the extent that they advance the prospects of the Central European nations for full NATO membership. The United States can reasonably tell the Russian leadership that placing Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary in a category separate from that of Soviet successor states, should be interpreted not as a hostile gesture but as a minimal precaution in the event that neoimperialists come to power in Moscow.

The United States and our NATO allies are faced with two major security challenges in Europe. The first is to maintain the close strategic partnership between the United States and Europe; the second is to prevent the resurgence of Russian imperialism. The Partnership for Peace adopted at the NATO summit in January 1994 addresses the second of these challenges. Its formula for a gradual enhancement of ties between NATO and Russia is satisfactory; less so is the formula for security ties between NATO and the other Warsaw Pact countries. Its advocates' excessive sensitivity about provoking nationalist elements in Russia caused them to neglect the legitimate security concerns of the former Warsaw Pact nations.

Unfortunately, the Partnership for Peace does not adequately address the first challenge—the need to maintain strong
security links between the United States and Europe. NATO, the principal strand connecting the two sides of the Atlantic, is in search of a new mission. There is a serious danger that proceeding at full speed with the Partnership for Peace with Russia before determining NATO's new character may irreparably damage the cohesion of the alliance. Like arms control in the 1970s, which was intended to serve national security interests but eventually became almost an end in itself, the Partnership for Peace has the potential to become NATO's principal preoccupation for years to come. This process could well make NATO too amorphous to be effective in addressing the numerous challenges of the post–Cold War world.

It would be fundamentally unsound to put everyone and everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific—countries with completely different histories, traditions, levels of economic development, commitments to democracy, and security requirements—under the Partnership for Peace umbrella. One United Nations is enough.

Central European nations that were an integral part of Western civilization for centuries, whose occupation by Adolf Hitler led to World War II, whose brutal subjugation by Stalin triggered the Cold War, and that in 1989 were the first nations to overthrow their communist governments are entitled to expect treatment different from that given to Soviet successor states. These proud nations should not now be consigned to a diplomatic “halfway house” and compelled to prove they are worthy to be accepted as members of the European alliance, whose values they share.

Told by administration officials that the Partnership for Peace is the only game in town, the Central Europeans have decided to join. Their reluctant acceptance, however, should not blind us to the need to find a formula that would make those nations feel both secure and proud to be a part of the New Europe.

Full NATO membership for these countries should be announced
as a definite goal. The timetable for full membership should depend on a number of factors, including the nature of the threat from Russia and the utility of NATO security guarantees in facing that threat. The West has to find the appropriate balance between taking reasonable precautions against the return of Russian imperialism and making that return a self-fulfilling prophecy as a result of hasty, provocative actions while relatively democratic and nonaggressive forces are still in control in Moscow.

Moscow will inevitably and understandably complain about any arrangements that move NATO closer to its borders, especially if they include measures to make it easier for Central European nations to join. Some Russians may resent any suggestion that NATO retains even a small element of its founding mission as an anti-Moscow alliance. Such concerns deserve to be addressed and should not be permitted to disrupt our relations with Moscow or our commitment to its former satellites. The Russian government should be assured that no nonindigenous forces will be stationed in any Central European nation unless it faces the threat of aggression. It should also be offered the same security benefits NATO's new members will receive under the Partnership for Peace plan.

The administration should develop a formula that would protect NATO's cohesion, be fair to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and address Russia's legitimate security concerns. It would recognize that the first priority must be the establishment of NATO's new role. Only after that is done can the decision be made on full implementation of the Partnership for Peace, which entails so much potential for changing the very nature of the alliance. Such a formula should accept that Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary are in a special category and are entitled to full-scale NATO membership, but it should simultaneously make it clear that their inclusion in NATO will take place in the context of the evolving European economic and security environment. NATO
should also make certain that every nation, including Russia, understands that the pace of Central Europe's integration into NATO may be accelerated if the Russian threat once again becomes a reality. This understanding would encourage more responsible conduct on Moscow's part.

Those who oppose admission to NATO of the nations of Eastern Europe for fear of Russian nationalism are indulging in excesses of caution that threaten to increase rather than lessen instability in Europe. During the Cold War, critics of the U.S. policy of containment frequently asserted that we had to prove to Soviet leaders that we were for peace. The Soviet leaders knew we were for peace then, just as most Russians know we are for peace today. NATO was never a threat to an aggressive Soviet Union during the Cold War. It is ludicrous to suggest that an expanded NATO that includes democratic Central European nations would be a threat to a peaceful democratic Russia. Zbig-niew Brzezinski is forceful on the point. “That the expansion of the zone of democratic Europe's security would bring the West closer to Russia is no cause for an apology,” he wrote. “It is with a stable and secure Europe that an eventually truly democratic Russia should wish to link itself.”

Regardless of what NATO does, Russian demagogues will exploit for political gain the Russian people's economic distress and frustration over the loss of the Soviet empire. Our policy should be aimed not at the margins of Russian political life but at the mainstream, and the Russian mainstream knows that NATO, whether supplemented by the nations of Eastern Europe or not, represents no threat to Russia. “No reasonable observer,” as Henry Kissinger has written, “can imagine that Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Slovakia could ever mount a military threat against Russia either singly or in combination.” Still, careful steps must be taken to ensure that efforts to strengthen and expand NATO are not misconstrued by some Russian leaders as threats to their nation's security. We can increase Russia's comfort level by consulting closely with its military
every step of the way, and also by stressing to the Kremlin leaders that the principal reason for expanding NATO is to improve conditions for the development of democracy and free enterprise in Russia, which does not want instability along its borders any more than we do.

It is also essential that the United States continue to play a leadership role in NATO, since an alliance led by the United States is bound to be far less alarming to the Russians than one in which Germany played a more decisive role.

Some who argue against admission to NATO of the nations of Eastern Europe do so not because they fear such a move would further provoke nationalism in Russia but because they believe these nations do not yet come up to our standards politically or economically. This attitude, although typical of some analysts' perfectionist approach to foreign policy, is dangerously flawed. There should be no question about the sincerity of the leaders of nations such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic when they say that they want to transform their countries into free-market democracies. They suffered too long under statist tyranny to return to it voluntarily. Once they are brought under the protection of NATO's umbrella, and thereby freed of the necessity of providing entirely for their own security, their economies and democracies will develop much more quickly—just as those in West Germany and Japan did when the United States and its allies assumed responsibility for their security after World War II.

Soviet successor nations are in a different category. The administration should be supported in its policy of offering Russia, Ukraine, and other newly independent states a variety of forms of security cooperation, ranging from joint maneuvers to access to NATO military schools. But there is no need to connect this cooperation to NATO membership, any more than there was in the case of American-Japanese security arrangements.

The last thing the United States should do is to allow the Partnership for Peace to create the impression in Tokyo, or for
that matter in Beijing, of a U.S.-Russian condominium. Russia is too big and too important a power to be added to the NATO alliance without a fundamental reassessment of security in Japan, China, and other nations as well. This is obviously not what the architects of the Partnership for Peace have in mind. But statesmanship is about anticipating the unintentional consequences of well-intended actions.