U.S. Supporters Tout NATO Expansion

Using the room where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was signed into being nearly half a century ago, advocates of enlarging that alliance claimed the support Tuesday of a bipartisan array of prominent U.S. political figures, including eight former secretaries of State, six former defense secretaries and two former vice presidents.

The backing came in the form of signatures on a statement lauding the planned NATO expansion as an issue “of historic importance.”

“Admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO will strengthen the alliance, reinforce new democracies, renew the American commitment to Europe and reaffirm American leadership,” the page-long statement declared. “To turn back now would be a tragic mistake.”

The document carried the signatures of about 130 individuals, all well known in the nation’s foreign policy establishment. It was presented by two Democrats--former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, who helped develop the enlargement initiative for the Clinton administration--and two Republicans, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

It marked the latest in a series of early efforts by both advocates and opponents of NATO enlargement to win public and congressional support in advance of a Senate ratification vote expected next spring.

“This is a bipartisan effort representing the mainstreams of both parties,” Lake told a news conference at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in downtown Washington, where President Harry S. Truman and leaders from Canada and 10 European nations signed the treaty creating the alliance in 1949.

The alliance, now 16 nations strong, formally offered membership to the three countries at a July meeting in Madrid. Terms of their accession must be ratified by the legislatures of all 16 member states.

Some opponents of NATO enlargement worry that it extends America’s nuclear guarantees when there is no compelling need to do so. Others claim that it unnecessarily angers Russia and diminishes the prospects that the Russian parliament will ratify an agreement aimed at reducing American and Russian nuclear arsenals.

On Tuesday, Holbrooke dismissed arguments that enlargement is anti-Russian. “The new NATO is not directed against them, and they know it,” he said.