Poland, 2 Others Marshal Forces to Join NATO

The official battle plan is 100 pages thick and cloaked in secrecy. Its target are heads of states, legislators and ordinary people in the United States and Europe. It envisions a two-year offensive at a cost of millions of dollars--more than $1 million in the next three months alone.

“Every detail has been planned,” said Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Robert Mroziewicz, commander of the assault. “We know exactly how to proceed. There has never been anything like it before.”

Poles have picked the fight of a lifetime, and this contest will be waged with words, not bullets.

In the coming weeks, Poland will launch a no-holds-barred campaign for admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the territories of the alliance’s 16 member countries.

Target No. 1: The United States, from New York to Los Angeles and every mile in between.

“The main idea is to win public opinion, the media and the American senators,” Mroziewicz said. “If we win the Americans, I can’t imagine anyone else going against us.”

Each NATO nation’s legislature must give its approval to a new membership.

Poland, along with neighbors Hungary and the Czech Republic, are likely to get invitations to join NATO at a July summit of members in Madrid. But none of the three Central European countries--among 11 former Eastern Bloc applicants--dares leave its destiny to chance.

With the momentous decision approaching, years of behind-the-scenes lobbying is giving way to an urgent public onslaught. Seminars, cocktail parties, films, academic conferences, luncheons, exhibitions, special events and Internet sites are all in the works.

The Poles, who plan more than 150 events in the United States, will host their biggest international splash May 3, the 206th anniversary of the Polish Constitution, which was the second such written document in the world (after the United States, ingratiating Poles are eager to note).

Every notable, from former President Lech Walesa, a staunch anti-Communist activist, to current President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former Communist Cabinet minister, has been enlisted for the common cause.

“My thesis is that if today someone does not really promote extending NATO, it is someone who wants confrontation in the future,” Walesa said.

Even the vocabulary of the blitz has been carefully scripted: Poles around the world have been alerted not to speak of NATO “expansion” but to use the more neutral sounding “enlargement.” They have also been primed with a handy, eight-page “catalog of arguments” that anticipates the most prickly points of NATO expansion skeptics.

Other aspiring NATO members have devised similar, if more modest, strategies of persuasion.

“We believe it is important that we present our case--ourselves--and not leave it to the American government,” said Gabor Szentivanyi of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, which has set aside $750,000 this year for its NATO public relations drive. “We enjoy the support of all the national capitals and Brussels, but we also understand it isn’t enough to work only with governments.”

The Hungarian push began last month, when Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs visited Capitol Hill, speaking to more than a dozen U.S. senators and Congress members, meeting with 20 journalists and giving an extended interview to CNN. This month, Szentivanyi said, a “NATO enlargement road show” will tour the U.S. for two weeks, with government officials and military experts telling the Hungarian story to a nationwide audience.

“We want people to know that we already contribute to the joint defense of the alliance,” Szentivanyi said. “We allowed [NATO aircraft], for example, to use Hungarian airspace from the beginning of the crisis in Yugoslavia. It was not without risks.”

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The promotional bonanzas are based on a simple premise: Even if they are offered membership and successfully negotiate treaties with NATO, admission for the Central Europeans will come only after ratification by the U.S. Senate and 15 other member legislatures.

The long road ahead, even under the best of circumstances, may be ridden with potholes and drag well into 1999.

“Getting an offer to join is one thing, but convincing the parliaments that vote on ratification is something different, especially for applicant countries where there is low support for NATO membership,” said Jiri Pehe, director of research at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, the Czech capital.

The issue of lagging popular support in the aspiring member countries is a touchy one for the public relations strategists.

Though there is broad political consensus on NATO entry, proposals to hold nationwide votes on admission have been rejected or put off by the governments in each of the likely new member countries. Only Slovakia, which is believed to have little chance of receiving an invitation in July, has scheduled a referendum on NATO.

More than three-quarters of Poles support NATO membership, according to public opinion surveys, but only half of Hungarians and one-third of Czechs profess a similar enthusiasm for such a move.

While experts say the poor showing is due more to public ignorance than to antipathy, some politicians fear that a referendum could backfire by giving critics in the United States and elsewhere an issue to exploit. It could also turn messy if the Russians--the biggest opponents of NATO expansion--try to influence the results.

“In general, a referendum is a bad idea because it would lead to a lot of demagogic arguments and would make nothing clearer,” Pehe said. “But with support so low, it is really the only way to have a political or social debate about the subject.”

Yet for now, the countries of Central Europe have opted to concentrate on winning over voters abroad, putting off the problem of their own populace for later.

According to a six-page strategy paper prepared by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an effective campaign will have the added benefit of promoting general Polish interests by raising awareness of the country known as the birthplace of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement of the 1980s.

Not incidentally, Mroziewicz, a former Solidarity activist, said it is also designed to counter an aggressive effort by the Russians aimed at undermining U.S. support for a bigger NATO.

“You are going to see the two sides lobbying against each other to win American public opinion,” he said. “We do not exclude the possibility of surprises . . . until the very moment of final approval.”