Cheryllyn Humphreys is a researcher at the European Parliament. Below she looks at NATO expansionism and its implications for Europe’s future.

In July the UK will sign an agreement to commit its armies and nuclear arsenals to defend Czech, Hungarians and Poles against the possible menace of a border dispute with Russia. It looks as though the other NATO members will sign too.Our Governments didn’t ask their citizens if we wanted to commit further public spending to military expansion: they didn’t remind us that for every person who dies in war, 37 die from curable diseases or hunger. They didn’t even explain in what way the new post cold-war, democratic, market driven Russia is so much more of a threat than the ‘old nasty, communist’ Soviet Union as to demand that we expand our war zone and focus our guns even more closely on the old bear.

Building for peace or preparing for war?

The official ‘experts’ have failed to point out that the world is more likely to suffer from old and badly managed Russian power stations, crying out to be safely decommissioned, or from the proliferation of old nuclear arms which rot in their graves having already been discarded in the name of peace.
Did NATO analysts wonder how the Russian people would feel when encircled by armies that identify them as a threat: armies who declare their hostility by their very presence? Will the Russians thank us for forcing them to choose between building for peace, or once again preparing for war? Are the analysts surprised that in February, the Russian generals responded to the enlargement question by demanding that Mr Yeltsin retarget missiles at NATO capitals?
The truth is that NATO, and largely its American controllers, have a huge toy and no excuse to play with it. NATO was established as a collective defence mechanism: the musketeers together - one for all - against the danger of the Soviet Union. Once the wall came down, there was no longer any justification for its existence.
But in order to maintain 10 army divisions (plus five divisions of national guard), 12 aircraft carriers, 346 ships, 13 active air wings (plus seven reserves) and 18 ballistic missile submarines etc., which is part of the current US strength, you need a definite role for those forces to fulfil. Their military capacity is greater than anything which can be mustered by any other world alliance even after the arms reduction which has taken place in both America and Russia.

Who to fight?

The massive inventories of weaponry of which both countries can boast mask the reality of a tighter upgraded U.S. capability, able to carry out hands off, distance warfare, and, by comparison, an ageing Russian war-machine operated by underpaid and discontented personnel. The bilateral detargeting agreement they signed means that neither has further need of its former nuclear arsenal.

Who else can they fight?

In reality, most warfare is now carried out through trade deals. Attacks on markets are launched in the battle to impose capitalist values and Western culture. If major powers are going to fight, it has to be a bloodless war - as Bosnia was for the Americans: the long-distance, no-risk bombing by NATO. The hand to hand fighting which changed the Serbian attitude was carried out by the Croats, albeit armed with US guns.
However, the value of the US technology to other NATO members should not be underestimated. It certainly couldnþt be replicated within the constraints of national budgets. Another great military advantage the US has is the ability to make quick decisions and act on them. As yet the EU, with its clumsy consultative procedures, has shown itself unable to reach agreement on foreign policy crises. That may change if a Common Foreign Security Policy agreement is passed at the Intergovernmental Conference.
Protection from what, and at what cost?
Until then, NATO’s most powerful partner has all the equipment and ability to lead the pack. In this case, to encircle the Russian alliance, to protect the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs as well as the inner security ring; but from what? From the possibility that the Russians are bluffing! What will this achieve, and at what cost?
The cost is unknown. NATO has promised it will not place nuclear or even conventional forces on Czech, Polish or Hungarian soil, so as to ease the concerns of the CIS. This will mean placing a circle of conventional rapid reaction troops (the most expensive option) along the line which will be drawn like a boundary wall around the ‘enemy zone’: not the point where the Red Army halted in 1945, but the 1938 line.
Madeline Albright is of Czech origin: her proposals for an ‘Albright’ defence, shining sharp as a sword through the mists of appeasement will cost a fortune, but of what size no-one knows because no one has yet done the sums. Or if they have they are not admitting it.
What has been admitted by the American Congress, is that the US can’t afford it, and doesn’t want to have to pay for it. They funded one Marshall Plan, and feel it is time someone else footed the bill. The candidate states can’t afford it either. They are looking to membership of NATO - and of the European Union - as part of the promotion from a kind of local league football to premier division. They can only fund improvements from their success, not in anticipation of it.
At the moment, the building of a defence wall against the CIS is not the highest of their priorities. They might prefer to focus on upgrading public services and standards of technology, of rebuilding modern, competitive factories able to compete with America’s Pacific neighbours as well as its Atlantic partners; of creating jobs and education to take their countries into the future _ rather than looking permanently at the past.

Partnership for whose peace?

Their priorities may change: if the CIS becomes sufficiently uneasy at the sight of all this military activity on their doorstep, they may feel forced to do something to balance the odds. The more unstable Russia feels, the more possible it is that Czech, Poland and Hungary may have some need of defence. That in turn would, of course, provide all the justification the NATO (and Russian) hawks could wish for.
Mr Clinton wishes to avoid such a scenario even while preparing for it, and so has offered Russia a Partnership for Peace. Russia is not the only enemy. There are fears of Arab fundamentalism, of anarchy, and of the general insecurity which comes when you don’t know who your enemies are.
Ms Albright is a little less sympathetic to the CIS. Russia cannot be allowed to dictate the terms of any European settlement - especially one being proposed so enthusiastically by the Americans. However, Russia can participate in NATO. Not join, but join in planning, join in training, even join in NATO out-of-area operations such as Bosnia. The lack of logic is outstanding: NATO mistrusts the Russian intention of staying on the right side of its borders, but is prepared to train their soldiers to cross them more effectively!
The debate now should be, not whether NATO should be enlarged, or who should be invited to join the club, but what, if any, role NATO can have if we are to build towards a world which can share the peace which most of Western Europe has enjoyed for the past fifty years.

Spring 1997