NATO expansion: the view for Central Europe

Christian Century, June 4, 1997 by Jakub S. Trojan, Alan Geyer

Unstable, sometimes chaotic spring weather, when one hour is shower or snowfall, the other sunshine, is the right backdrop for a European discussion on NATO enlargement. For this is precisely what the Central European countries in particular have been confronted with: the instability of their security, the perilous, unpredictable contingency they have had to face for a long historical period before the communists seized power in the late 1940s and after they lost dominance over that area in the late '80s.

Historical memory (an indispensable means to understand the fears and hopes of nations deeper than a momentary political calculation offers!) does not allow Poland to forget its triple partition in which czarist Russia played an eminent role, nor the lethal menace generated by both German and Soviet plots against Poland during World War II and its aftermath. Nor will people in the Czech Republic remain indifferent to the lesson they had to learn from the Munich treaty and the instability imposed on them through the disastrous appeasement policy of the Western allies in the late 1930s.

Every discussion on NATO enlargement has inevitably to draw attention to the vital concerns of these and other nations in Central Europe. There is a vacuum here, and not just in military terms. Who would wish to have this area become the locus of demonic powers, a place the apocalyptic riders are likely to invade again? On the basis of this historical experience, the issue of security in terms of a stable international cooperative system of guarantees is a priority here.

Only an internationally guaranteed stability will make the democratic development of these countries irreversible. And only a democratic system thriving in these countries is likely to have a positive impact on the more distant regions of Eastern Europe that seem to be even less stable, partly due to the lack of democratic traditions. This makes the enlargement of the security zone eastward not a threat but rather a demonstration of what would make the democratic transformation of the societies there eventually feasible. The crucial point is to help the population there recognize that NATO is a factor of stability rather than of menace.

Along this line, insofar as I know, the democrats in Russia are arguing against the ultranationalists and communists. Consequently, the NATO enlargement would strengthen the democratic forces in Russia in the long run.

I do not see any other security system that has worked more efficiently over the last decades than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It proved to be nonagressive, and sufficiently protective for all its members. Integration into this organization makes the military expenditure of the respective countries less demanding than relying exclusively on its own military force.

For the countries of Central Europe the presence of the U.S. within this organization is encouraging. U.S. involvement in the gulf war and its leading role in responding to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia evidenced this beyond any doubt. Under the umbrella of NATO the crucial points of the European scene are under effective control. Can the same be said about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe? Reviewing what this organization has achieved since the end of the cold war, I do not see any evidence for it. It would take an enormous risk and the patience of a long-distance runner to revitalize this body. (Its emphasis on the so-called "third basket" of its agenda--human rights--did contribute to the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.)

In saying all this, I do not in the least deny the necessity of working out a special status for Russia's role as a superpower in European and global affairs. This cannot be achieved unless Russia's role is respected and its security requirements understood. Under these conditions, a peaceful cooperation of all nations in Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, is achievable. What else does Mikhail Gorbachev's metaphor of "a common European house" mean? Yet it is far from being reality. It is in the making. In embarking on NATO enlargement we are laying the grounds of the house. With democracy spreading into all European countries, the erection of the house becomes visible.

Alan Geyer replies:

Jakub Trojan's invocation of the bitter memories of this century's Central European victims, especially Poland and his native Czechoslovakia, provides an understandable and authentic opening for his discussion of the merits of NATO expansion. However, the question Trojan does not address is the radically different political and security context of contemporary Europe--radically different, that is, from Munich 1938, Poland 1939, and the Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.

The NATO candidate countries, among whom present NATO governments must pick to the exclusion of others, include not only Central Europe but the Balkans, the Baltics, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and even Central Asia. No longer constrained by Soviet power, these areas are rife with current and incipient wars, border disputes and internal ethnic conflicts. Contrary to Trojan's positive grade for NATO's record and his confidence in NATO's effective control over the "crucial points of the European scene," I would argue that NATO's post-cold-war record in meeting the peace and security needs of Europe has been tragically inadequate. The inability of NATO to intervene in a timely way as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate led to Europe's worst violence since World War II. NATO lacked the diplomatic and peacekeeping instruments, as well as the political will, to prevent the horrors of the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia.