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NATO's enlargement dilemma - Big Bang or whimper?
( 2001-05-08 11:13 ) (7 )

The first shots in a potentially divisive diplomatic battle over NATO enlargement will be fired this week when 10 candidate countries meet in Slovakia to press their case for early membership.

At stake is whether US President George W. Bush and his European NATO allies will risk a crisis with Russia by including one or more of the Baltic states in the next wave of alliance expansion, to be decided at a Prague NATO summit late next year.

The issue will be an early test of Bush's leadership of the transatlantic community and of his ties with a prickly Russia.

It also reflects an underlying tension between the process of NATO expansion, led by the United States with the declared aim of a "Europe whole and free", and the European Union's parallel drive to build a "united Europe".

Officially the two processes are described as complementary, but privately US and European officials acknowledge some rivalry over who will call the shots in 21st century Europe.

Bringing Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, which were Soviet republics until 1991, into NATO would take the Western military alliance right up to Russia's border for the first time.

President Vladimir Putin warned NATO last year against advancing that far eastward, saying: "If a country like Russia feels threatened, that would destabilise the situation in Europe and the whole world."

Bush has avoided mentioning the Baltics explicitly. But he wrote to a Lithuanian American leader last August when he was running for the White House: "I believe that the enlargement of NATO to include other nations with democratic values, pluralist political systems and free market economies should continue.

"Russia must never be given a veto over enlargement."

So are NATO and Russia on a collision course, or will west European allies persuade Bush that the time is not yet ripe to expand into the Baltics or the Balkans?

VILNIUS TEN OR CENTRAL EUROPEAN TWO

Nine candidates - Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - issued a joint declaration in Vilnius last year urging the Western alliance to admit them together in a single "Big Bang".

Although Croatia does not yet officially have candidate status, it joined the group, dubbed the Vilnius Ten.

Frederick Kempe, editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, wrote in an article advocating a bold NATO enlargement that it was the West's "unfinished moral and historic responsibility".

However, many diplomats believe a wary NATO, keen to avoid a clash with Moscow, is more likely to go for a whimper than a bang - perhaps only offering immediate membership negotiations to Slovenia and Slovakia.

Since NATO operates by consensus, all 19 allies must agree on each new member.

No one is staking out public positions yet, but diplomats say key west European allies France, Germany and Britain oppose putting any Baltic state in the next wave, arguing that NATO and Russia should take longer to build confidence first.

Some Europeans would rather NATO took a complete breather from enlargement, arguing that the alliance, which takes decisions by consensus, is still digesting the entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999.

Those three countries, facing heavy financial costs to prepare for EU accession, have been slower to modernise their armed forces than NATO had expected, prompting criticism from alliance headquarters.

NO "ZERO OPTION"

NATO officials say they expect Bush to rule out any "zero option" on enlargement when he makes his first visit to Brussels on June 13 to meet allied leaders.

The president is unlikely to spell out his own preferences at this stage, but he must notify Congress 12 months before the next NATO summit which countries the United States will support. That means Washington must make its mind up by late November.

Seventeen US senators, ranging from Republican Jesse Helms on the right to Democrat Hillary Clinton on the left, wrote to Bush last month urging him to pursue enlargement in US interests. They specified no candidates for the next wave.

Some NATO experts believe the Bush administration will be cautious, partly because of misgivings about NATO's ability to remain effective in decision-making and military action with up to 29 members.

Russia objected fiercely to NATO's decision to admit Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, in a first wave of enlargement.

It was placated by being given its own special relationship with the alliance that survived a severe cooling when Russia angrily opposed NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo, but is still fragile.

"Could the NATO-Russia relationship survive another round of enlargement if it included the Baltics?" a NATO official asked.

France and some other European allies argued for Slovenia and Romania to be included in the first wave, but Washington vetoed any more than three at a Madrid summit.

Those members may well argue that NATO should take in Romania and Bulgaria this time, despite their weakness, because stabilising the Balkans is more urgent than extending the alliance's protective wing to a stable Baltic region.

OPEN DOOR

When the 19 NATO allies held their last summit in Washington in the midst of the Kosovo campaign, they pledged to keep the door open, established a Membership Action Plan to help prepare aspirants and agreed to review the process at the next summit.

Each candidate was given a carefully calibrated pat on the back, but none was offered a guarantee of membership.

The action plan, providing for NATO benchmarking and individual reviews with each candidate, will provide some objective data on political and economic reform and the state of each country's armed forces to underpin the decision.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair led Bulgaria and Macedonia to believe they were on the threshold of NATO when they provided vital staging bases for allied forces in the Kosovo war. Experts say their armed forces are a long way from NATO standards.

Inconveniently for opponents of enlargement to the Baltics, Lithuania is doing rather well at meeting the criteria.

But everyone agrees the Prague decision will be geostrategic and political, not technical.

Supporters of rapid enlargement argue that Moscow knows it cannot stop NATO expansion and will swallow it provided Bush shows firm leadership and treats Russia as a strategic partner.

Opponents say there is no security threat to the Baltics and thus no hurry to bring them in. They contend that the West could exacerbate Russian nationalism, wreck chances of a constructive partnership with Putin and drive Moscow into a spoiler's role if it forces the issue now.

POSSIBLE COMPROMISES

One possible compromise would be to pledge that all of the candidate countries will be admitted to NATO over the next few years, possibly by the end of the decade, but only to open negotiations with the first two next year.

Some diplomats say the United States may eventually favour including a single Baltic state - Lithuania - in the next wave. That would satisfy ethnic lobbies at home, make the point that Russia has no veto but avoid the complication of taking in states with big Russian minorities.

One problem with that idea is that it would make the Russian district of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea a Russian enclave inside NATO territory.

Moscow denied reports earlier this year that it had moved tactical nuclear weapons to the impoverished territory, which was part of German East Prussia as Koenigsberg until 1945.

Many European and some American diplomats argue it would make more sense for the Baltic states to join the EU, receiving so-called "soft security" guarantees, before they join NATO.

Russia does not oppose their EU bids and would have time to adjust to their being part of a Western bloc before they eventually came under NATO's wing, the argument goes.

It does not appeal to the Baltic states, who would see it as acceptance of a de facto Russian sphere of influence.

"To grant Moscow effectively a veto over Baltic membership - the only serious reason not to include them in the next expansion - would be short-sighted, hypocritical and reinforce anachronistic Russian ideas about spheres of influence," Kempe wrote.