False dawn
What implications do NATO's recent expansion plans have on an invasion of Iraq? Not many, writes James Corbett in London
Prague summit over, Eastern Europe woke last week, to find that seven of its states -- Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- had clambered into bed with the NATO alliance. Waking up as a part of a new European order the invitees were left to ponder what role they had to play in this reconstituted organisation.
From 2004 the new alliance will boast 26 members and extend through Central and Eastern Europe, skirting the Balkans with the inclusion of Slovenia, and to the north will encompass the three Baltic states, sandwiching off the Russian enclave of Kalingrad. With the inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania it will extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea.
NATO's offer of membership to seven Eastern European countries was viewed by local media as a historic step. For some the move finally eradicated the legacy of the Second World War, for others it was a sign of their long-awaited arrival in the West. "This is the end of division," read a headline in Bulgaria's Duma, while Standart News quoted historian Bozhidar Dimitrov as saying: "World War II ended yesterday." The same paper reported the results of a poll showing 61.4 per cent of Bulgarians support NATO membership with only 22 per cent against. A similar tone was struck by other invitees. "Yesterday... the end of World War II became tangible," said the main Latvian daily Diena, while Lithuania's Kauno Diena said the invitation "rectifies historical injustices and marks the final end of the Cold War".
Amongst this chorus of self-congratulation, few serious questions were being posed as to what role the invitees had to play in the newly reconstituted alliance. Rumours immediately started to abound as to who would be doing what, with one eye firmly on a war on Iraq. Hungary, a member since 1999, was said to be training members of an Iraqi state guard; Romania was going to give the US use of its airfields; Bulgaria was to act as a listening post to assist American intelligence gathering. None of this is likely to happen, as any attack on Iraq will be American- and not NATO-led. Moreover, the new members will not formally join the alliance until 2004 and even then, technological and personnel training gaps with better established members could take a decade to close.
The extension of membership has also led to questions being asked of NATO's future role and purpose. Not only will it dominate the map of Europe, with its associate agreements and strategic partnerships, it also extends into Asia fringing the Chinese border. This is far removed from a North Atlantic alliance. Furthermore, with the end of the Cold War and the deposition of Slobodan Milosevic, its 1990s villain of choice, the aims of NATO seem to have become confused.
For most of its first 40 years NATO was the sort of club countries clamoured to join. The 12 nations which signed the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April, 1949 -- the United States, Canada and ten European powers -- were joined by Greece and Turkey in 1952, by West Germany in 1955 and by Spain in 1982. Back then, with the Soviet Union peering into Western Europe, NATO had a strategic defence role to play. With an attack on one of its members equitable to one on the alliance as a whole, Western Europe could sit easily under the umbrella of collective security.
In 1999, the first three ex-communist countries to gain admission -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- saw their flags hoisted at NATO's Brussels headquarters. Such popularity attested to the alliance's success, yet diluted the ability of its integrated military structure to defend any part of its members' territory and to co-ordinate the use of force by many nations. NATO forces can only be sent into battle if all of its members agree, and they have historically shown a reluctance to think and act as one. Even with just three new members, searching questions were being asked about NATO's validity or necessity as Europe moved into the 21st century, and also its ability to react. With the 11 September attacks and the subsequent unilateralism of the US combined with NATO's further watering down, such debate has become ever more pertinent.
In many ways the further expansion of NATO is about curtailing its new members' ability to act for themselves, rather than finding useful roles in the alliance for them. The demoralised, underfunded and conscript-heavy armed forces of say, Romania or Latvia, have little in common with the hi-tech professional apparatus of NATO's better established members, and would be of questionable benefit should they -- which they won't -- join an invasion of Iraq.
Despite the dubious military benefits offered by the new members, their fledging membership would preclude any future alliance with a resurgent Russia and all but end the possibility of a Milosevic or Lukashenko emerging as a regional trouble-maker. The idea is more to encourage the growth of democracy and market economies in the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe and to lock these in with NATO membership. The expansion of NATO came just a month after the European Commission -- the EU's governing body -- had formally announced its most ambitious and challenging expansion plan ever.
With a blueprint that was as bold as it was potentially problematic, the European Commission promised to reunite a continent divided by war and ideology throughout the 20th century. Ten countries, mainly former Soviet-bloc states were told that they should be ready to join the EU in 2004, with a further two -- Bulgaria and Romania -- pencilled in for membership in 2007. Between them, the two moves bring Eastern Europe into Europe's economic and military mainstream. The aims are clear: to close the expanding gap between Europe's haves and have nots and with it the danger of a slighted power acting as a source of regional instability.
It also prevents the possibility of arms sales to rogue states. Although outdated by Western standards, the former Soviet-bloc states still boast a cache of weapons dating back to the Cold War, including nuclear capability, and maintain large armaments industries. Last month Washington accused Ukraine of selling an advanced radar system to Iraq in breach of UN sanctions, a claim President Leonid Kuchma denied, but was subsequently proven. The likelihood of a repetition of such events from the invitees -- or for that matter those countries still seeking a ticket into the NATO or EU clubs -- is now highly unlikely.
