U.S. Gives NATO's 3 Newest Members Official Welcome

By TYLER MARSHALL

March 13, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. —

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Harry S. Truman’s hometown Friday to formally welcome Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the NATO fold in an emotional ceremony laden with history and controversy.

Albright--herself a Czech immigrant--could barely contain her excitement as she signed a paper formally acknowledging receipt of the documents of accession presented by her Czech, Hungarian and Polish counterparts.

“To quote an old Central European expression, hallelujah,” she said.

The accession of the three former Communist countries marked the first post-Cold War expansion of Washington’s oldest military pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And although it was a victory for President Clinton, who personally promoted the much-disputed initiative, history’s verdict remains out on what is likely to become the foreign policy cornerstone of his presidency.

Critics of enlargement have argued that NATO is a dangerous Cold War relic that only makes an insecure Russia feel more threatened and should sooner be disbanded than expanded. Amid the debate about the wisdom and necessity of bringing in new members, momentum for further expansion has slowed perceptibly.

In Moscow, Russian officials continued to object to the enlargement.

“We consider the expansion of NATO a dangerous, historic mistake that can entail grave circumstances,” said Gen. Leonid G. Ivashov of the Russian Defense Ministry’s international cooperation directorate. “The expansion of the North Atlantic alliance will lead to a considerable increase in NATO’s military potential.”

There were no such sentiments visible at Friday’s ceremony, held against the backdrop of the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum--a site chosen both to honor the U.S. president who presided over the birth of NATO and to bring home to Middle America the importance of the U.S.-European relationship.

In both their body language and their public remarks, the three European foreign ministers, Jan Kavan of the Czech Republic, Janos Martonyi of Hungary and Bronislaw Geremek of Poland, gave the impression of having accomplished an impossible dream.

Although subdued by the formality of the blue-suited occasion, the mood was reminiscent of the euphoria that gripped the streets of those same countries a decade ago as freedom from Soviet control first dawned.

Using different words, each European in turn talked of “coming home” to a community of democracies and shared human values, and of the conviction that their tragic histories of oppression are now finally at an end.

“Poland is no longer alone. Today it returns where it belongs--to the free world,” declared Geremek, who as a leading Polish dissident in the 1980s helped engineer the rise of Communist Europe’s first sustained resistance movement, the Solidarity trade union. “Being a dissident, I had dreams, but I could never dream that at the end of the 20th century, I would represent Poland at its entry to NATO.”

Martonyi said the ceremony signified Hungary’s “manifest destiny to return to its natural habitat,” while Kavan described it as a watershed for his nation too.

“The Czech traumas of this century have now been relegated forever to history,” Kavan told the diplomats and other dignitaries gathered in the Truman library.

Albright’s comments merely reinforced her guests’ convictions that NATO membership constitutes the ultimate guarantee of their security.

“Never again will your fate be tossed around like poker chips on a bargaining table,” she said in a speech after the signing. “The promise of ‘Nothing about you without you’ is now formalized. You are truly allies. You are truly home.”

Speaking to reporters after the ceremony, she said the event “marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.”

Referring to next month’s 50th anniversary summit of member nations in Washington, she made the case for overhauling the alliance to keep it relevant, despite the end of the Cold War and the Communist threat NATO was created to resist.

In addition to cooperating to extinguish brush-fire wars outside their own borders, such as those in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, alliance leaders are expected to agree on a strategy that would give NATO new duties, including combating international terrorism and the danger of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of rogue states.

“Clearly, NATO’s job is different now than when we faced a single monolithic adversary across a single heavily armed frontier, but NATO’s purpose is enduring,” Albright said. “It has not changed. It remains to prevent war and safeguard freedom.”

In Texarkana, Ark., where he was spending the weekend, Clinton hailed the accession of the three countries, saying their membership will “make NATO stronger” and “help us realize our common vision of a Europe that is for the first time undivided, democratic and at peace.”

Officials of the newly expanded alliance are slated to meet in Washington on April 23.

Clinton administration officials stress that, above all, NATO remains a vehicle for the collective defense of its now-19 members and that an attack on one is an attack on all. As such, the alliance--and the nuclear umbrella it offers members--remains the single strongest anchor of U.S. power in Europe as well as a force of stability in the region.

Despite the lofty rhetoric and cloud nine euphoria, major questions still hang over Clinton’s vision--both the step taken here and the administration’s policy that NATO’s door must remain open to further enlargement.

The unexpected difficulty of absorbing the first three new members--easily the most advanced of the post-Soviet states--has raised warning flags, exacerbating existing concerns that adding still more members to an organization that operates by consensus could end up paralyzing NATO.

There is also apprehension about the impact that a further enlargement would have on relations with Russia--which sees NATO as needlessly dividing Europe.

“The issue is not just whether the Czechs, Hungarians and Poles join NATO,” the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, wrote this week in The Times. “The problem is more serious: the rejection of the strategy for a new,common European system agreed to by myself and all the Western leaders when we ended the Cold War. I feel betrayed by the West.”

The enlargement even brought criticism from former Russian Deputy Premier Boris Y. Nemtsov, considered one of the staunchest advocates of a market economy.

In Moscow, Nemtsov criticized the move, saying it will help unite Communists and other opponents of democracy in coming elections.

“The United States, which is the locomotive of the expansion, willingly or unwillingly helps the Communists and fascists come to power in Russia,” Nemtsov said. “NATO expansion is a blow at Russia. Western statements that NATO does not threaten anyone are hypocritical.”

Against this backdrop, no new invitations are expected to be issued at the Washington summit, and no one can say when the next invitations might go out.

“They can’t stop or gracefully move forward,” noted Michael Mandelbaum, a Washington-based foreign affairs specialist. “Now they are trying to find a way to kick the can down the road.”

Still, Albright left little doubt that she intends NATO to grow.

“NATO enlargement is not an event. It is a process,” she said. “Steadily and systematically, we will continue erasing--without replacing--the line drawn in Europe by Stalin’s bloody boot.”

Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Moscow contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NATO’s Evolution

The Communist threat posed by Soviet inroads into Eastern Europe prompted a dozen countries to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on April 4, 1949, agreeing to work together to provide mutual protection of borders in the event of attack.

1949

United States

Canada

Denmark

Iceland

Italy

Norway

Portugal

Belgium

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Britain