Clinton Ties Wider NATO to Marshall Plan’s Vision

WASHINGTON — In the opening salvo of his campaign to persuade the American public to accept NATO expansion, President Clinton told a crowd gathered for Memorial Day observances that “extending the reach of security and prosperity” to some former Communist nations is a natural outgrowth of the Marshall Plan that saved Europe 50 years ago.

A few hours before his departure for Europe to commemorate the anniversary of the plan and sign an agreement with Russia on growth of the Western alliance, Clinton recalled the imagination and initiative of George C. Marshall, the World War II general and postwar secretary of State who devised the elaborate U.S. assistance program that strengthened Western Europe in its successful struggle against poverty and communism.

Noting that Marshall was buried just a few yards away, Clinton told the audience at Arlington National Cemetery that “now, at the end of the Cold War, when there appears to be no looming threat on the horizon, we must rise to Marshall’s challenge in our day.”

“We must create the institutions and the understandings that will advance the security and prosperity of the American people for the next 50 years,” Clinton said.

Recalling the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans in Europe in two world wars and the stationing of thousands of U.S. troops on European soil during the Cold War, the president said, “Today, our generation has been given a precious chance to redeem that sacrifice and service, to build an undivided, democratic European continent at peace for the very first time in history.”

During his European trip, the president went on, “I will challenge Europe’s people to work together with America to complete the work that Gen. Marshall began--extending the reach of security and prosperity to the new democracies in Europe that once were on the other side in the Cold War.”

Clinton spoke at the cemetery after he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns--unidentified American soldiers who died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Clinton apparently is hoping that a weeklong series of speeches--starting with Monday’s address, continuing through what promises to be a heavily televised European trip and ending with a stop at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.--will drive home the importance of NATO expansion to both the American public and members of Congress.

The administration had concentrated so hard on persuading Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to acquiesce--albeit reluctantly--to North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion that the White House did not focus until very recently on overcoming U.S. domestic reluctance. But several senators have expressed hesitation about supporting an expansion that would commit American soldiers to defend countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.

Clinton arrives in Paris today to sign the agreement with Yeltsin that sets up a Russia-NATO cooperative council. This will enable Moscow to have a voice--though, the White House insists, not a veto--on European issues involving an expanded NATO.

After that, he is scheduled to go to the Netherlands for celebrations in honor of the Marshall Plan anniversary. He will meet with Tony Blair, the new British prime minister, in London on Thursday, returning home that night. The West Point foreign policy address is to take place Saturday.

In addition to highlighting his NATO initiative, the president used the Arlington address to make the point--again invoking the memory of Marshall--that Americans must not shirk their responsibility in world affairs.

“At the end of World War II,” Clinton said, “Gen. Marshall could make” the case that “we fought a bloody war because we did not assume that responsibility at the end of World War I.”

Americans must ask themselves, the president said, “How can we make sure that we have a new century in which we do not repeat the mistakes of the last one?

“The only way that can happen,” he said, answering his own rhetorical question, “is if America refuses to walk away from the world and its present challenges.

“We must learn the lessons Gen. Marshall and his generation left us,” Clinton said. “Their sacrifice and their spirit call upon us to seize this moment.”

* YELTSIN ON NATO: The Russian president tones down anti-NATO rhetoric. A10