Whither NATO at 50?

Three new members join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization today, appropriately in ceremonies in Independence, Mo., the hometown of President Harry S. Truman under whom NATO was launched a half-century ago. But even as the entry of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland expands the alliance to 19 states, questions about its purposes and its future loom large.

On Thursday, the House rejected a nonbinding resolution opposing the use of U.S. troops in any NATO mission to keep peace in Kosovo between the governing Serbs and the independence-minded ethnic Albanian majority. The Senate will take up a similar resolution next week. Last year, Congress eagerly endorsed NATO’s expansion to include other European nations. But scant enthusiasm exists now for committing U.S. forces to a Balkan operation that is widely seen as peripheral to American interests.

In our view, Congress is right to be skeptical. NATO’s European members should be able to manage Kosovo by themselves, with, at most, some U.S. logistical help. Intervening in Kosovo has been foolishly promoted as a test of NATO’s resolve and credibility. But an ancient conflict in which militants on both sides reject compromise and shun peace is not the place for NATO to try to prove its validity.

NATO was created to promote regional collective security at a time when the Soviet Union was perceived as an imminent military threat to Western Europe and a global threat to American interests and values. But with the end of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the rationale for founding the alliance is gone. NATO nonetheless soldiers on, for reasons undiplomatic to discuss too publicly.

Partly NATO remains because of fears of a revived Russian threat, partly because many Europeans worry that without NATO, Germany would soon be the continent’s dominant military force. Most of all, it’s because Europeans have grown comfortably dependent on U.S. protection and leadership, even though some resent both.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, speaks for many of his conservative colleagues when he says NATO is really about continuing to contain Russia. The absence of American agreement on NATO’s core purposes is reflected in European decisions. NATO is run on the basis of consensus. And there clearly is no post-Cold War consensus about what it should aim to accomplish, where it should operate and what risks it is prepared to accept.

Next month, NATO marks its 50th anniversary. It has achieved its purpose of keeping Western Europe free. But as it looks ahead, the alliance can only wonder where it is going.