The New, Bigger NATO: Fears V. Facts

THE WORLD DID NOT come to an end in 1999. That it didn't was not a surprise to most of us, year 2000 being members more likely candidate for Apocalypse. Nevertheless, there were some who expected that year accepted new members from former Warsaw Pact, a contemporary equivalent of 10 plagues of Egypt would be visited on transatlantic military alliance. threats came fast and furious from Russian government officials and nationalist politicians. Former general and governor of Siberia Alexander Lebed warned of Russia's intention to create a military counterbalance to a that included Poland. A similar precedent was created in Poland in 1939, he said, implying that enlargement was equivalent of Hitler's invasion of Poland. The price of that precedent was 50 million lives. We won't get away with only 50 million lives today. Subtlety has never been a Russian forte. Gen. Lebed was just one of many Russian officials to bluster. buffoonish and insufferable Vladimir Zhirinovsky received a great deal of attention in early days of expansion debate until it was discovered in West that Russians considered him a joke. Zhirinovsky charmingly threatened to take back Baltic countries, blustering, They are standing in way of our seaports. President Boris Yeltsin, in days after fall of Soviet Union when he wa s courting Western support, had confirmed the sovereign right of each state to choose its own method for guaranteeing its security. However, once countries of former Warsaw Pact made clear that their preferred method was Russian changed his tune. In 1995, Yeltsin blamed Bosnia debacle on enlargement plans in blunt words: is first sign of what can happen. first sign. When approaches borders of Russian Federation, you can say there will be two military blocs. This is restoration of what we already had.... In that case, we will immediately establish constructive ties with all ex-Soviet republics and form a bloc. While Russian anger and frustration at seeing former vassal states voluntarily choose a former enemy alliance are understandable, it is harder to grasp motivations of those who repeated Russians' bluster here in West (although history teaches us that there will always be some who favor appeasement of bullying, sad lot that they are). One vociferous critic of enlargement was Michael Mandelbaum, a former Clinton advisor now at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. NATO expansion is Titanic of American foreign policy, and iceberg on which it will founder is Baltic membership, he said. Likewise George F. Kennan, famous architect of U.S. containment policy towards Soviet Union -- and, one would have thought, an unlikely source for such sentiments -- condemned enlargement as the most fateful error of American policy in entire post-cold war era. Jack Matlock, former U.S. ambassador to Soviet Union, told a Cato Institute conference in May 19 97, If this process is not stopped, we're going to see a that is no longer capable of pursuing purposes for which it was created because it will be preoccupied watching its own navel and its expanding waistline. fact is, however, that Russian government eventually did manage to reconcile itself to first post-Cold War round of enlargement. To some degree, it had been placated by NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1994, which gave Russia certain consultative rights vis-a-vis NATO. In any case, Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic, first three new members since admission of Spain in 1982, were inducted with due ceremony and without protest at fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington in 1999. Then Russia turned its attention to preventing a second round of enlargement and to undermining American plans to build a national missile defense. …