Reckless Rush on NATO

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott predicts that the resolution to add three members to NATO will pass this week with 70 or more votes, though the Mississippi Republican concedes “there’s not a lot of enthusiasm in here” for expansion. That indifference can be seen in the perfunctory debate leading up to the vote. The necessary two-thirds of the Senate appears ready to make NATO bigger for no better reason than that it seems a good thing to do. A decision of basic and enduring strategic importance is not getting the rigorous analytical questioning it cries out for.

Supporters of bringing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the 16-member alliance have pressed their case with slogans rather than arguments. President Clinton promises that expansion will make NATO stronger, allow European democracy and prosperity to flourish, and “bring Europe together in security, not keep it apart in instability.” But examine these soothing assurances and their lack of substance is immediately apparent.

There is no hint here or anywhere else of what mission would be played by a stronger NATO, the alliance formed nearly half a century ago to curb the expansionism of a now-defunct Soviet Union. Nor is any reason given why a military coalition should be considered the best or even a useful vehicle for spreading prosperity and democracy in Europe. Certainly an expanded European Union would seem to offer greater opportunities for economic advancement, while democracy would be better nourished in the context of existing multilateral European political and parliamentary forums. And how does moving NATO’s border eastward, so that it abuts Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in Lithuania, help unite the continent and reduce instability? Might not the opposite result?

The Senate is rushing to amend the NATO treaty without even an approximate sense of what it could cost; some credible estimates run to $125 billion. It is about to extend U.S. security guarantees and the forces to back them to three countries, with probably more to follow; Clinton has already told Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that they could be next. But to meet what threat, and with what effect on this country’s reduced military capabilities?

Is NATO expansion an irredeemably bad idea? No. But it remains an idea for which no convincing case has yet been made. And that makes the action the Senate is about to take a cause for concern, not celebration.