NATO’s New Members Will Want Allies to Hold the Line

With Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic set to join NATO next month, a celebratory mood in these countries is tempered by their determination that the alliance not weaken its ability to defend members as it takes on new missions.

The three nations will join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on March 12 during a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo., the city where President Truman announced in 1949 the formation of the alliance to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Bloc.

Original plans had called for the three countries to join at an April 24-25 summit in Washington pegged to the alliance’s 50th anniversary. Early entry means they will have time as full NATO states to weigh in on decisions due to be ratified at the summit.

It also means, many in this region say, that Russian officials can attend the summit as guests without feeling forced to celebrate a NATO enlargement that they bitterly opposed.

“I don’t believe Russia would come to celebrate the enlargement of NATO. They will come to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of NATO,” explained Jaromir Novotny, deputy defense minister of the Czech Republic.

Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, speaking in Parliament on Wednesday before it overwhelmingly approved NATO membership, said joining the alliance allows the nation to “overcome the geopolitical curse laid on us since the 17th century.”

“Foreign armies marched through the Polish land from west to east and from east to west,” Buzek noted. “The divisions in Europe always weakened us. . . . Poland in NATO, safe and stable, rooted in the Western tradition but understanding the problems of the East, will be a country especially striving for the unity and well-being of Europe as a whole.”

In Budapest, former Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs said NATO membership “does not mean we are going to win wars--it means that we are going to avoid wars.”

Joining the alliance early, Novotny stressed, means the new members will be “full partners in preparation of the new strategic concept of NATO,” rather than simply agreeing to something that others decided.

The new members are concerned about NATO’s shifting strategic concepts--such as greater emphasis on peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the strife-torn Yugoslav province of Kosovo--because they fear any dilution of NATO’s guarantees for the collective defense of all members.

“The most important thing is to maintain the military character of the alliance and to maintain the meaning of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which talks about defending the territory of the alliance,” said Bronislaw Komorowski, chairman of the National Defense Committee of the lower house of Poland’s Parliament.

Defense of NATO countries from any attack should continue to be “automatic”--and should aim to repel any invader at the border, Komorowski said. Warsaw wants to be sure that NATO is committed to protect Poland’s eastern frontier, he stressed.

The three new members are also worried about Russia’s demands in ongoing negotiations in Vienna to revise the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Komorowski expressed fear that Moscow may win concessions favorable to it while imposing lower limits on the military strength of the new NATO members.

The Vienna talks are not officially tied to NATO enlargement. However, the Russians believe that the negotiations have at least de facto links because Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic are now adding their military weight to the West. The former Soviet Bloc states argue that while they have voluntarily reduced the size of their armies below levels allowed under the 1990 treaty, they should maintain the right to increase their forces back to the pact’s existing ceilings, Novotny said.

While Komorowski did not hide his concern about Russia’s continued military strength, most officials in this region go out of their way to stress that NATO’s expansion is not anti-Russia.

“I’d like to say clearly that we are not entering NATO in fear of anyone,” Buzek said in a typical comment downplaying any threat from Russia.

While governments of the new member states are trying hard not to antagonize Moscow, the vast majority of officials and ordinary citizens view Russia’s bitter objections to enlargement as a dead issue. “It’s done, it’s finished,” Novotny said. “They don’t like it, but they have accepted it.”