COLUMN: Think before expanding NATO

From Seth Lasser's, "For Mass Consumption," Fall '97 From Seth Lasser's, "For Mass Consumption," Fall '97 Festering in the back pages and op-ed sections of newspapers across the country for the past year has been talk over the possible expansion of NATO. Until the recent opening of hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, public discourse on the issue had been limited. Its importance is hard to overstate: what is at stake is the most significant change in U.S. security policy to be considered since the founding of NATO nearly 50 years ago. Opponents fear the expansion of the area the United States is sworn to defend, since NATO states are obligated to defend each other against any outside attack. There is no threat that requires a larger NATO, and Russia -- the only nation that could pose such a threat -- is likely to be further ostracized by any eastward expansion, they argue. An important consideration as to whether NATO should be expanded or not is how much it will cost the U.S. Ideally, the new members would pay their own way. Yet the price of this expansion is likely to be enormous, and the nations of Eastern Europe are not currently replete with excess cash. The Clinton administration has estimated the total cost in the next dozen years will be around $30 billion -- the Congressional Budget Office and private groups have estimated that the cost may be even higher. The problem is the states being considered as new members were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact -- the now defunct Cold War era Soviet Bloc alliance. As such, their military equipment is not compatible with, nor up to, western standards, making military coordination difficult. The Clinton administration insists the total cost to the U.S. will be $2 billion, many analysts believe we will end up footing the majority of the bill, for even the nations of Western Europe may not be able to contribute much. Before proceeding with the expansion of NATO, the Senate and president will be forced to decide just how much a larger NATO is worth. The deeper issue to be considered by policy makers is the elemental question of what purpose an expanded NATO would serve. Short of another bloody conflict in the Balkans, it is hard to imagine what threat the alliance is working to counter -- the downfall of the Soviet Union has left a Russia barely able to feed its ever-shrinking army. At her appearance before the Foreign Relations Committee, Albright argued the 48-year-old alliance was still necessary, not only to guard from possible external threats but to safeguard against conflict between and within European states. Such vague conceptions of the importance of the new NATO did little to convince the Senate that the plan was an appropriate course of action. A head count taken last week by senators in support of the plan found only 20 firm opponents. Though the bill needs a two-thirds majority to pass because it is a foreign treaty, this number is far less than the 34 nays it would take to vote it down. Yet after the hearings commenced, support appeared to waning -- in part a reaction to the Clinton administration's unsuccessful definition of the goals of an expanded NATO. There is a certain amount of validity to the idea that the peace between NATO nations has been due to the alliance; a way for the different states to channel their security concerns through diplomatic means. Turkey and Greece, two later additions to the alliance, nearly went to war last year over a 70-year-old border dispute. They were stopped by the insistence of other NATO countries that two members of the alliance simply could not go to war. In a similar way, the expansion of NATO would allow the Central and Eastern European nations that are included to be free from any threats they may pose to each other. The United States would inevitably become involved in any dispute that occurred in the borders of NATO anyway, so preventing such conflict is in our national interest. In the long term, the expansion of NATO is predicated on a fear of a Russian resurgence, complete with the renewal of that nation's grander territorial ambitions. The candidacy of Vladimir Zhirinovsky for president gave substance to these worries -- Zhirinovsky campaigned on a platform of rebuilding the Russian empire and thus regaining for it a place among the leaders of the globe. At the moment, however, Russia and NATO have signed an agreement that makes Russia a part of the general security framework of Europe. While Russia was not admitted to the alliance itself, it has seat on NATO's Permanent Joint Council, assuring it a vote in important NATO deliberations. For a possible expansion of NATO to work, Russia must not be made to feel ostracized any more than is necessary. The expansion of NATO will go through -- despite some misgivings, it is unlikely that enough senators can be convinced that it is not in our nation's interest. But before the votes are tallied, there must be a discussion as to how much we are willing to pay to accomplish this. More importantly, the administration must better articulate the reasons behind this dramatic course of action. A treaty with ramifications to our national security as consequential as these must not be adopted lightly.