Debate over expanding NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—here, foreign ministers sit with the North Atlantic Council on 16 December 1997—has drawn scant media attention because so many current and former U.S. leaders endorse the plan. But losing sight of the high cost—including the risk of alienating a still-nuclear-armed Russia—could be a strategic blunder of historic proportions.
The issue of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's future survival is far from resolved, though it appears that the alliance has been given a new lease on life. Nevertheless, trouble lies ahead—in large measure because enlargement of this military alliance has been sold on both sides of the ocean as a "feel-good," no-risk, no-cost venture. Throughout the triumphal "debate," President Bill Clinton and members of his administration offered little serious analysis, and they were unwilling to concede that NATO expansion could bring with it any negative consequences.
During the last year of debate, the administration refused to address adequately the most serious issues, calling our relations with the Russians "excellent" and eventually producing a NATO cost estimate for the three-country expansion that even Washington advocates said "didn't pass the laugh test."1 Given our solemn commitment to defend member countries under Article Five of the Washington Treaty, it was all the more shameful that both the administration and the Senate allowed themselves to oversimplify the issue, distort the facts, twist historical analogies, and sit still for far too many one-sided Senate testimonies. All was overlooked so that the ratification vote could be rushed through in time for the three new members to be present for the 50th anniversary of the founding of NATO this spring.
If ever anything indicated that NATO is now about politics and not about military commitments, this is it.
Unfortunately, NATO expansion has no post-Cold War strategic rationale; in fact, it undermines our ability to address the biggest challenge of the post-Cold War era, one similar to the quandary facing the Allies after World War II—finding a rightful and constructive way to integrate a "defeated" great power.
Despite all the words to the contrary from the Clinton administration, already this ill-conceived and poorly timed initiative has begun to disrupt international relations, bringing with it the collapse of the U.S.-Russian "partnership," diminished cooperation in nuclear weapons reductions, and greater instability in Eastern Europe. The proposed expansion also has magnified fissures in the alliance and called into question our ability to manage our increasing military commitments at a time of tightened budget constraints.
Former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and others have warned that the expansion of NATO could create the very danger it is intended to prevent. And the people of the United States, lulled into thinking that there will be no downside, could be unprepared for what is to come.
A Strategic Blunder
No one can imagine a scenario today in which Germany might attack one of its neighbors. The transformation of the German state and its foreign-policy posture demonstrates the post-World War II wisdom of integrating Germany into Western institutions in such a way that it had no need or desire to re-nationalize its foreign and military policies.
In contrast, no such concerted effort ever materialized on behalf of the new Russia. By century's end, Russia will find itself facing a military alliance that includes its enemy in both World War I and World War II, its Cold War adversary, and soon some, and possibly all, of its former allies. While ignoring Russian protests, the U.S. administration has even made promises to support NATO membership for the Baltic republics.
When historians look back decades from now, they will, no doubt, be struck by this and wonder why we learned so little from the history of the 20th century. World War I made outcasts of Germany and Russia, sowed the seeds for another war with Germany, and brought about a siege mentality in Russia, which it used to justify decades of bloody repression. British anti-imperialist Prime Minister David Lloyd George understood that Russia's isolation posed a threat during World War I and in the future. Of Russia's treatment at the Versailles peace talks, he said later, "world peace was unattainable as long as that immense country was left outside of the Covenant of Nations."
If the new members are to live up to the administration's formula, their defense spending must increase significantly. During Senate hearings, Secretary Albright made the point that, "Czech defense spending will rise by 17% next year—about the equivalent of a one-year $40 billion increase in America's defense budget."15
But meeting those financial requirements could prove more difficult now than at any recent time. Poland and the Czech Republic still are struggling to recover from extensive flooding during the summer of 1997 that inflicted damage estimated at $6 to $8 billion. Financial analysts have estimated that the cost of the floods could represent 4% of the combined gross domestic product of both nations. To address the problem, Poland has engaged in borrowing to offset these costs, though the concern is that expanding budget deficits could fan inflationary pressures.
Furthermore, now that Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary have been identified officially by the European Union as candidates for accession to that economic system, Polish economist and envoy to the European Union talks Jacek Sariusz-Wolski has confessed that Poland has a "very long list" of things to do to qualify. At 6% growth, he calculates that it would take Poland 20 years to catch up to where Greece is, the poorest country in the European Union.16 So it was no surprise in February when a tiny squib appeared in the newspaper declaring that Poland has admitted it will be able only partially to meet its agreed-upon financial obligation to NATO, "refusing to specify which tasks Poland would be unable to fulfill."17
If Poland and the other two new members cannot pay their share of the new costs, who will? Just after the Madrid Summit, where the three new countries received invitations to join NATO, our allies—France, Britain, and Germany—declared that they would not be raising their contribution for expansion "one centime." Indeed, the British declared that, since the Cold War was over, they expected a reduction in their share. Recognizing this, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger predicted that the United States [is] likely to [pay] 90% or 95%" of the costs of NATO expansion.18
Throughout the debate, the Clinton administration has passed off the Congressional Budget Office estimate of approximately $125 billion over 15 years, bragging that the Pentagon's new NATO cost estimate has dropped from $35 billion over 13 years to $1.5 billion over 10 years (while still projecting that the United States will pay only 6% of the costs). Independent experts, however, say that the United States already has spent $1.2 billion in loans and grants to these new member countries, even before their accession. More realistically, says William Hartung of the World Policy Institute, given the extensive loan and export guarantee programs (which are never counted), and given the fact that the United States will be paying the lion's share of the costs, the figure will be closer to $250 billion over the course of the decade.19
Whether or not the actual figure is closer to the Congressional Budget Office estimate or some other is immaterial. How will we raise the money at a time when Congress will not even pay for its obligations to the United Nations and when the U.S. military is under severe budget-cutting pressure of its own? With personnel reductions and an increase of foreign commitments, many already say that the United States, even without new NATO commitments, has a serious "readiness problem" that is only getting worse. Since 1990, according to the Congressional Research Service, U.S. armed forces have been deployed in 36 foreign missions, compared with 22 between the years 1980 and 1989. "And there have been fewer troops and dollars to carry out these missions," Richard J. Newman wrote in a recent special report for U.S. News and World Report. "Since 1989, administrations of both parties have cut the armed forces by one-third and the defense budget by 30 percent, after inflation. . . . In the past, military leaders have used readiness 'scares' to plead for more money for favored weapons or other programs. These days most Pentagon officials understand that total defense budget will not rise. . . ."20
Effects on the Alliance
The crisis in Iraq has demonstrated how difficult it is to find common ground among our allies, even when some believe that we are facing a threat. It is hard to image how the expansion of NATO, as a regional security organization, will remain cohesive in an era when there is no external enemy, and budget cuts are the order of the day.
Aside from burden-sharing squabbles, divisions in the alliance can only get worse as NATO confronts the possibility of bringing in new members in the future. Despite the U.S.-Baltic Charter, which was signed in Washington in January, it is widely acknowledged privately that accession of the Baltic Republics will present problems. The Europeans recognize, as many Americans do, that the Baltics can be defended only through a nuclear guarantee. Says former Secretary Schlesinger: "We will not have the capability of a conventional defense. That puts us back into a difficult situation of the sort that we were extricated from by the collapse of the Soviet Union."21
The Clinton administration is well aware of the grave doubts here and abroad with respect to their inclusion, especially as Moscow has said it will react in the strongest of terms. Yet the United States extended promises to help secure their membership anyway, and expectations have risen accordingly. So much for a peaceful and undivided Europe.
But the longest-term damage is the effect expansion has had on our relations with Russia. Nearly all the major problems facing the post-Cold War world cannot be solved without Russian cooperation, something we can no longer take for granted. Says Duma member Arbatov: "The system of understandings, principles, and agreements with the United States that established the foundation for the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a 'strategic partnership' during the mid-80s to mid-90s are all presently put in doubt in Moscow and will not be considered politically binding if any future opportunity or particular interests come into collision with that system."22
Divergent interests in Iraq proved to be one such example. Russians of all political philosophies supported Foreign Minister Evgeny Primakov's efforts to find a peaceful diplomatic solution to the crisis, an effort in essence at odds with the U.S. administration. Reformers and communists alike worried about unilateral tendencies of the United States, seeing the U.S.-led expansion of NATO and Washington's readiness, almost overanxiousness, to use force against Iraq, as indicators of this country's desire to dominate. They also saw it as the refusal of the United States to take the security concerns of others into account. "If Iraq is bombed," one high-ranking Duma member said recently, "START II and any other nuclear reductions will be dead."
But perhaps one of Russia's greatest concerns during the Middle East crisis was the fear that U.S. unilateral action against Iraq would undermine the United Nations, the only powerful international decision-making organization in which Moscow not only has a voice, but a veto as well—something of increasing value, as NATO moves eastward and Russians have fewer ways to express themselves internationally.
Given current developments, tensions in U.S.-Russian relations will not go away. Owen Harries, of The National Interest, writes that it is because NATO expansion "represents an unprecedented projection of American power into a sensitive region hitherto beyond its reach—[creating] a veritable geopolitical revolution."23
In the final analysis, the security of Eastern and Central Europe depends on economic growth and good relations between Russia and the West. So, from a strategic standpoint, NATO expansion solves nothing. Rather, it leaves the most important question of all unanswered: With the choice of NATO expansion, rather than a full-fledged effort to integrate Russia, have we condemned the next generation to deal with an alienated, nuclear-armed, nationalist Russia, which has few stakes in the West? If such is the case, today's Western leaders will have made a blunder of historic proportions.
Ms. Eisenhower is Chairman of the Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. She has written extensively on post-Soviet Europe and Central Asia and is the biographer of her grandmother—Mrs. Ike: Memories and Reflections on the Life of Mamie Eisenhower—author of (New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1995) and coeditor, with Roald Z. Sagdeev, of (Washington, D.C.: Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 1995).
1. Cost estimates to bring four countries into NATO ranged from approximately $25 billion to $130 billion over about a decade. The administration said just before the ratification hearings that, since there were only going to be three countries, and since they have subsequently discovered that the infrastructure is better in those countries than previously thought, the cost estimate is now $1.5 billion over ten years. back to article
2. John Lewis Gaddis, "What History Teaches About Grand Strategy," National Defense University Symposium, "Strategy and the Formulation of National Security Policy," Washington, D.C., 7 October 1997. back to article
3. Susan Eisenhower, "The Perils of Victory," NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality, Washington: The Cato Institute, 1998 [forthcoming]). back to article
4. Confirmation of the "betrayal" and the use of the word "swindled" was expressed by Mikhail Gorbachev to the author in a conversation/interview in Moscow, 14 February 1998. back to article
5. This open letter was organized by the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. back to article
6. James Morrison, "Embassy Row," The Washington Times, 24 February 1998. back to article
7. To the author, 11 February 1998. back to article
8. Alexi Arbatov, "NATO Expansion: Russia's Perceptions and Responses in Defence Strategies and Arms Control Policies," Statement at the W. Alton Jones Foundation Conference, Paris, 13 July 1997. back to article
9. Bill Gertz, "Russia to Slash Ground Forces, Rely on Nukes," The Washington Times, 17 October 1997, p. A1. back to article
10. In his speech to the National Defense University. back to article
11. Stanley Kober, "James Madison vs. Madeleine Albright: The Debate over Collective Security," (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 1998 [forthcoming]), p. 259. back to article
12. Jane Perlez, "Slovak Leader Fans a Region's Old Ethnic Flames," The New York Times, 12 October 1997. back to article
13. In conversation with author. back to article
14. According the ACDA's World Military Expenditures, military expenditures amount to 2.4% of GNP and 5.6% of CGE in NATO Europe, while the Czech Republic, even before joining the NATO alliance, spends 2.8% of GNP and 6.9% of CGE on its military. At the same time, Poland spends 2.3% of GNP and 5.4% of CGE on its military, and Hungary spends about 1.5% of GNP and 4.6% of CGE on its military. back to article
15. Senate Appropriations Committee, 22 October 1997. back to article
16. Jane Perlez, "Europe Invites 5 Ex-Communist Nations to Join . . . If," The New York Times, 17 July 1997, p. A6. back to article
17. Associated Press, "Budget Will Hinder Poland in NATO," 25 February 1998. back to article
18. Hearing on the National Defense Panel Report, U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), Chairman, Armed Services Committee, 29 January 1988. back to article
19. Press release, "Welfare for Weapons Dealers 1998: the Hidden Cost of NATO Expansion," 5 March 1998. back to article
20. Richard J. Newman, "Can Peacekeepers Make War," U.S. News and World Report, 19 January 1998. back to article
21. James Schlesinger, Senate testimony, 29 January 1988. back to article
22. Arbatov to the W. Alton Jones Foundation. back to article
23. Owen Harries, "The Errors of Expansive Realism," NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 1998 [forthcoming]). back to article