The Expansion
of NATO Could Lead Us
Back to the Cold War
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- The most dangerous frontier of the post Second
World War world was the Iron Curtain, the ideological
barrier which at the command of Soviet Russia fell in 1945
from Lubeck Bay on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. It
was given its name by Winston Churchill and as Jan Morris
has observed, "it separated not just states, or people or
territories, or histories, but ideas"
The apex, the epitome and the most public shame of the Iron
Curtain was the Berlin Wall. When that was breached in 1989
we knew that European communism was dead, liberty was
restored and military confrontation that came close to
nearly incinerating half the planet was over. Or did we?
We had not counted on President Bill Clinton's decision 9
years later to expand the military alliance Nato, whose sole
raison d'etre was this Iron Curtain, right up to the western
frontiers of the old Soviet Union, taking in the former
Soviet allies, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
This is arguably the most shortsighted, dangerous and
counter- productive act since Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev introduced nuclear missiles into Cuba. It smacks
of the same hubris that led Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright to say during last month's Iraq crisis, "It is
because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We
stand tall. We see further into the future".
Left to their own devices, West European leaders would
never have thought up the expansion of Nato. It was foisted
upon them by Mr. Clinton. Still, they have a mouth if they
choose to wag their tongues. They don't. Not a word of
criticism has surfaced from European Union leaders.
Moreover, European media has given the matter only
cursory attention and the voters are somnolently unaware of
what is afoot. Surprisingly, this is also true in eastern
Europe. In the Czech Republic the leader of the pro-Nato
campaign, in a futile attempt to drum up public interest,
gave out 100 fresh carp last Christmas to the first 100
people who showed up in Prague's main square wearing pro-
Nato buttons.
If only there was the same somnolence in Russia then
perhaps Mr. Clinton's gamble with history would be alright.
But in Russia there is a deep and profound outrage. "Who
lost Russia?" is a question that the next generation will
sweat over, just as the pre-World War II generation sweated
over a resurgent Germany under Hitler. As John Maynard
Keynes had argued, the Versailles peace treaty imposed after
Germany was defeated in the First World War was designed not
to heal the scars but to keep open the wounds. Bitterness
and vindictiveness became ingrained in the German psyche.
Russia if not defeated in a military campaign knows it
was decisively beaten in the Cold War. Part of its polity
became resentful and potentially revengeful. Another part
felt liberated and open to all that the West had to proffer.
The trouble is that the West has offered so little, missing
two great historic openings, one economic and one military.
Russia's great reform government led by prime minister
Yegor Gaidar was appointed by President Boris Yeltsin in
mid-November 1991. This was a crucial moment--leadership had
been bestowed on a tiny group of young radical economists
committed to building a western-orientated capitalist
country. If the West had seized the moment it would have
done what it had then recently done for Poland--write off
the debt and create a huge stabilization fund. Instead it
sent in the debt collectors. President George Bush
dispatched David Mulford, the Treasury undersecretary to
Moscow with only one item on his agenda, the Soviet debt.
The window of great opportunity was ignored.
The second profound mistake was to allow Senator Jesse
Helms to effectively torpedo ratification of the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty that is meant to reduce the number of
long-range nuclear weapons from 6,000 to 2,500. By holding
up ratification at a crucial time in 1995 Helms allowed his
obscurantist counterparts in the Russian parliament a chance
to assault it in Moscow. The momentum to rid the two nuclear
superpowers of their massive armouries has been totally
undermined. Russia's command and control systems are visibly
deteriorating, as are the rockets themselves. The risks of
an accidental launch are ratcheted up by the week.
And now comes the expansion of Nato likely, unless there
is an unexpected great debate, to be approved by the U.S.
Senate later this month. As a group of mainly conservative
experts, including Brent Scowcroft, President Bush's
National Security Advisor, wrote in the New York Times a
couple of months ago, "antagonism is sure to grow if the
alliance extends ever closer to Russia...We will have
misplaced our priorities during a critical window of
opportunity to gain Russian cooperation in controlling
nuclear arsenals and preventing proliferation."
For what? For American hubris? Mr. Clinton had better
come up with a better reason. It seems he has none and
history will surely judge him for having missed the
twentieth century's most promising chance of a great
peace
March 11, 1998, LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172; fax
+44 374 590493;
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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