Shaping the defence of the future

Date: 03/07/1997

NEXT week's NATO summit in Madrid is likely to be remembered as the western world's most significant political event of 1997.

The invitation to the first ex-Warsaw Pact countries to join their old arch-foe, following a special agreement with Russia, really does appear to be the start of the “new era” proclaimed by US ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter recently.

If the Americans get their way - and it is hard to imagine they will not - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland will be full members of the alliance within two years, half a century after it was born out of the Cold War.

With that in the bag, there can be no doubt that the bipolar politics of the latter half of the 20th century will be well and truly over.

The big question now is what new divisions and tensions the 21st century will bring, and how NATO should address them.

Over two days at Madrid next week, the leaders of Europe and North America need to set in motion forces that will guarantee the security of liberal economics for another 50 years.

The first and biggest question facing Madrid is how to define what the alliance stands for in the new millennium.

“The new NATO is not just about providing collective defence to its members. It will be at the heart of building a better and safer Europe across the board,” said Javier Solana, the alliance's secretary-general, recently.

In the popular imagination, that probably means guarding against the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and an increasingly powerful China.

To the people of eastern Europe, it also means supporting their new democracies and forming a bastion against a resurgence of Russian imperialism. President Boris Yeltsin's refusal to attend the Madrid summit will be a reminder of Moscow's enduring obstinacy.

In practice, NATO's raison d'être is more likely to be to act as a regional policeman, ensuring a degree of stability in troublesome areas and preventing conflicts before they happen.

With that in mind, the alliance could already be sowing the seeds of its post-Cold War failure.

The US decision to limit expansion to the three top contenders only may be remembered as Madrid's greatest mistake, especially if heads of state do not offer those whom they reject a suitable sop.

Even if Romania and Slovenia were to squeeze in - which seems unlikely, but not impossible as NATO's southern European members continue to demand their early entry - that would still leave seven applicant governments feeling profoundly disappointed, and could raise tension in the Balkans that the region could well do without.

Furthermore, despite knowing for months that their chances were almost non-existent, the Baltic states are likely to kick up a huge storm about being sacrificed to Russian sensitivities.

By way of a consolation prize, they will be offered an enhanced Partnership for Peace programme, known as the PFP-Plus. “Whereas before, our partners had a Chinese menu with 40 dishes, now they will have 80,” said a NATO spokesman.

That will include a seat in the new Euro-Atlantic Council in which the PFP members will be able to discuss and vote on joint operations and peacekeeping missions, and a permanent position in NATO's command structure.

“It is no longer a question of the one-way traffic of ideas and expertise,” said Solana recently.

Diplomats suggest that this could be used as a useful arena for aspiring members to prove their capabilities, while less enthusiastic nations such as Switzerland could take more of a back seat.

Whether the Baltics will settle for this is unclear. They have been pushing strongly for some time for an even more 'enhanced' Baltic arrangement which could still be agreed, although proponents of the PFP-Plus formula worry that its impact might be diluted as a result.

Similarly, the Balkan applicants may not feel that the new deal sufficiently addresses the special needs of their region, which has proved as turbulent at the end of the century as it was at the beginning.

Even if those on the receiving end do accept their fate, kicking off a new era by offending some of Europe's newest democracies is not the most auspicious of beginnings.

There is a growing feeling that the only way to avoid this is to promise a second round of enlargement, with dates, which could also include new applicants such as Austria.

Even though that country's ruling coalition is split down the middle over the issue, there is a sense in Vienna that membership is inevitable.

The down side of setting a timetable for a second-phase enlargement is that leaders would be committing themselves to a next step before they even knew what the first one meant in practice.

In response to calls from the European Parliament for some firm promises now, Solana said: “I do not think we will be quite so precise after the first wave we cannot lay down a fixed timetable,” adding: “Above all, we will have to assess the first enlargement.”

Interestingly, Poland has recently offered its services as a 'bridge' to NATO applicants who do not make it this time round.

According to the US wire Defense News, the country's chief of staff Lieutenant General Henryz Szumski is already talking of closer military ties with Ukraine, Lithuania and (to a lesser extent) Slovakia, defining Poland as a guarantor of regional stability.

In the final analysis, however, the question of how many nations should be invited into the alliance comes down to cost rather than strategy, if recent US statements are to be believed.

Washington has said that NATO enlargement to take in just three new nations would cost between 20 and 30 billion ecu, although the US would only have to shoulder around 2 billion ecu of the total.

That would effectively blast a hole through the alliance's policy of zero growth in spending - which has been feasible until now because of scaling down after the Cold War - as well as making a considerable dent in the finances of new members that may need to be subsidised.

The US figure, the only widely publicised estimate so far of the cost of expansion, has yet to be confirmed by the NATO secretariat, which is waiting to see which countries are invited to join before providing its own costings.

The money is needed to cover NATO's internal budget (which is under 2 billion ecu at present), upgrading the new applicants' facilities and armaments, and equipping an extra four divisions of around 8-10,000 men each for military support.

The alliance's headquarters in Brussels is also in severe need of repair, with many of the buildings literally crumbling from wear and tear, and room will be have to found for parking spaces, meeting rooms and new diplomatic missions to NATO.

It is, in fact, one of the great ironies of Madrid that the world's most powerful military force may be unable to bring in more new members simply because of a lack of space in Brussels.

Another less-debated concern is that the applicant countries themselves may have second thoughts once the price of membership is known.

Countries still struggling with the basic costs of democratic administration may well balk at the prospect of spending millions, if not billions, on military support which appears somewhat superfluous in the post-Cold War era.

Recent Eurobarometer statistics suggested that while ordinary Poles and Romanians would vote in a referendum to join the alliance, the Hungarians and Czechs are still split, with many undecided.

In fact, the inevitable public debates which will follow the invitations to join could even lead to the bizarre spectacle of the US begging them to sign up, egged on by profit-hungry arms companies.

Although these concerns are somewhat premature, it is already apparent that NATO's expansion is a far more complex issue than the simple question of which countries will be invited.

Despite 50 years of peace, the question of how to maintain the security of Europe is still a dilemma with few definite answers.