Expansion Plan for NATO
Re your March 9 editorial, “Go Slow on Expanding NATO”:
The expansion of NATO cannot seriously be called “the most significant foreign policy issue to arise since the end of the Cold War.” Yugoslavia, the spread of nuclear weapons, engagement with China and a dozen other concerns surely come first. There is no credible fear that “an enlarged NATO could fuel tensions by deepening the political divisions and national jealousies among those who are in the alliance and those who are not.”
Do you think this will “fuel tensions” between Slovakia and Hungary, say? That is not a serious argument, especially given that NATO has left the door firmly open for later expansion, giving second-tier countries something to shoot for.
The same breed of doomsayers and discredited Sovietologists fretted that expanding NATO would provoke fascism or civil war or something unspeakable in Russia. Hasn’t happened. The only reason to delay ratification is that politicians, pundits and serious newspapers have been sleeping for the last four years, when the idea was first firmly proposed.
MATT WELCH
Long Beach
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