By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 5 1998 (IPS)

despite the decision last week by U.S. Senate to admit Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) thetrte is still concern here that NATO expansion may backfire against national security interests.

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” George Kennan, the architect of Washington’s successful containment policy against the Soviet Union, told a New York Times columnist. “There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else,” he said, adding that Russia will eventually react “quite adversely” to NATO’s eastward push.

With Senate ratification behind them, analysts say the next test will be whether and how quickly other prospective NATO members may be recruited into the alliance.

Last week’s 80-19 vote – substantially more than the two-thirds vote require by the U.S. constitution – actually exceeded the margin predicted by the administration of President Bill Clinton.

It capped a carefully planned lobbying effort, launched nearly one year ago when the 49-year-old military alliance formally invited the three Central European states into the fold at a meeting in Madrid.

That effort was fuelled by substantial contributions by the U.S. arms industry, support from politically potent Eastern European ethnic communities in the United States, and the absence of a serious public debate. Opinion polls through the past year showed about 60 percent backing for including the three nations, although that percentage dropped to around 50 percent in the final two weeks before the vote.

The sudden plunge in expansion’s popularity was credited in part by last-minute blitz by a loose coalition right- and left-wing groups which sponsored “electronic town meetings” on radio talks shows in key cities and ran full-page newspaper ads with the arresting headline, “Hey. Let’s Scare the Russians!”

Critics of expanding NATO, who spanned the ideological spectrum and included other establishment figures besides Kennan, put forward three major arguments: expansion would antagonise Russia and weaken pro-Western forces there; it would divert new members from pursuing economic reform; and it would stretch U.S. military commitments beyond current capacities and the willingness of the American public to take military action.

In addition to Kennan, mainstream critics included the chief arms control advisers of former presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, former CIA chief Adm. Stansfield Turner, former defence secretary Robert McNamara, and two former US ambassadors to Moscow.

The argument against needlessly antagonising a non-Communist Russia was pressed by both left- and right-wingers, including columnist Pat Buchanan.

As right-wing Missouri Senator and presidential aspirant John Ashcroft put it, “We’ve got to be careful, having won the Cold War against the Russians, not to turn them from Europe and an orientation to the West.” He and other stressed that Moscow’s cooperation was needed in balancing China in Asia, containing Iraq, and tamping down conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. But the administration, despite the presence in the pro-expansion campaign of such prominent Russophobes as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, depicted these concerns as “old-think” for a “new Europe.”

“If we want Russia to complete its transformation into a modern European power, the last thing we should do is to act as if Central Europe is still a Russian sphere of influence,” warned Secretary of State Madeleine Albright just before the vote.

In desperate need of continued western financial support, the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin effectively strengthened the administration’s hand when he signed the Russia- NATO Founding Act last May. That document establishes a joint council to manage relations and promote cooperation between Russia and NATO.

The Senate vote follows ratification by Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Germany, leaving the parliaments of the 11 other members to vote. It is expected that the three will formally join at NATO’s 50th anniversary celebrations here next April.

The administration says it wants to expand the NATO further, however. Two other Central European states – Romania and Slovenia – are considered next in line, although Bulgaria and Slovakia are also seen as possible candidates.

The most controversial candidates, however, are the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – which were annexed by the former Soviet Union during World War Two. Despite vehement opposition from Moscow, the administration insists it wants these three countries in the alliance.

It appears, however, that the Senate may be more inclined to balk at expansion beyond Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. While the chamber rejected more than a dozen amendments to the ratification bill by large margins, the vote on one that would have delayed by at least three years the consideration of any new applications for membership by less than the two-to-one majority required for ratification. Senate leaders, including those which led the floor debate on behalf of the administration, interpreted the vote as a signal for the administration to move cautiously.

Some political observers believe, the administration may have painted itself into a corner, especially when it comes to the Baltic states, whose admission to NATO is also opposed by most of its West European allies.

Michael Mandelbaum, a former Clinton adviser who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, warns that Washington will then have to decide whether to force its will on the Europeans, which could itself rupture NATO; offer unilateral security guarantees to countries which could probably be defended only with nuclear weapons; or renege on its current plans.

“NATO expansion is the Titanic of American foreign policy, and the iceberg on which it is doomed to founder is Baltic membership,” according to Mandelbaum.

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