Clinton Sends Congress Plan to Expand NATO

President Clinton on Wednesday signed and sent to the Senate documents setting out the terms for enlarging NATO, confident that the hallmark foreign policy initiative of his presidency will probably win easy ratification.

Adding Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “a major stride forward for America, for the alliance and for the stability and unity of all of Europe,” Clinton told a gathering of several hundred that included the foreign ministers of the three candidate countries.

He added that the proposed NATO expansion will help fulfill “a big part of our dream that we can, in the 21st century, create for the first time in all history a Europe that is free, at peace and undivided.”

The fate of Clinton’s push to extend NATO membership to the three former Communist bloc nations initially seemed in doubt. Advocates praised it as a step toward erasing Europe’s outdated Cold War divide. But foes blasted the initiative as unnecessary--precisely because the Cold War is over, and argued that it worked against U.S. interests, given that it had antagonized Russia.

The eventual cost of the expansion also remains a major question mark.

But a careful, constant nurturing of the Senate by the Clinton administration on the issue, which included appointment of a special assistant to the president and the secretary of State’s efforts to focus on it, has helped to diminish opposition.

“They’ve been more effective than you’d expect from this administration,” conceded Scott Cohen, a former staff director at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has worked against ratification.

Informal head counts of the 100-member Senate by opponents and advocates indicate that as of now, only 15 to 20 members would vote against the proposal. Blocking ratification requires 34 “no” votes.

As debate nears, there are signs that foes may be conceding defeat on admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and instead will focus on getting the Senate to order a pause of at least a few years before applications of others among the 12 nations seeking membership, such as Romania and Slovenia, are weighed.

“Although the train has already left the station, it would be sensible to put on the brakes to assess the implications of enlarging a defensive alliance in a post-Cold War world where there’s no significant threat,” said Alistair Millar, an analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a think tank with offices in Washington and London.

Advocates reject any such pause, saying it would merely create a new divide in Europe and lock the U.S. in advance into a position that it might later regret. “It’s historically arrogant to presume you know what’s going to happen five years ahead,” said a senior administration official.

Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are to start later this month, with a floor vote expected sometime in April.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presided at Wednesday’s ceremony and noted that if the Senate agrees to the admission of the three former Soviet bloc nations, “NATO will for the first time step across the line it was created to defend and overcome.”

The occasion clearly was a poignant moment for Albright, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic. She introduced the foreign ministers of the three candidate countries as “dear friends.”