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Cato Policy Report, September/October 1997

NATO Enlargement Risks Explored at Seminar

Senator Hutchison: It's not a done deal

On June 25th the Cato Institute hosted a conference to discuss what is perhaps the most significant foreign policy issue of the post-Cold War era: NATO expansion. Titled "NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality," the event attracted an overflow crowd of nearly 250 people to the Institute's F. A. Hayek Auditorium.

Delivering the luncheon address at the day-long conference was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). She suggested that, in contrast to what many in the media have reported, NATO expansion will face opposition in Congress.

Currently, 12 countries are being considered for inclusion in the alliance--3 in the "first round" of expansion and 9 in the "second round." The first-round countries are Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary; the second-round countries are Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Jonathan Dean, adviser on international security issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the second round of expansion poses the most serious problems because Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all border Russia. If those countries are admitted, Russia may feel threatened. And if that happens, Russia may look to the East for an alliance with China, warned Stanley Kober, research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Kober urged the crowd to fundamentally reconsider the continued existence of NATO. He argued that the alliance was never intended to be permanent; it was formed to meet a goal that has already been achieved: protecting member countries from the Soviet Union.

Fred Iklé of the Center for Strategic and International Studies echoed Kober's concerns about how expansion will affect Russia. "If Russia feels threatened from the West, then it may enter into a 21st-century version of the Stalin-Hitler pact--namely, a Russian-Chinese pact."

Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, questioned the Clinton administration's vision for NATO. "What the administration sees is a hybrid--part collective security arrangement, part traditional alliance. Those two things, by their very nature, are in conflict. A collective security arrangement is supposed to be as inclusive as possible, while a traditional alliance, by definition, must be limited and have an enemy." William Hyland, former editor of Foreign Affairs, argued that NATO expansion would be a frivolous gesture because, if admitted, the new members could not be credibly defended. "If the defense of its new members is to be seriously contemplated," argued Hyland, "expansion of NATO will require the creation of a massive reserve force. Currently, however, the military establishments of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany are shrinking, a trend not likely to be reversed."

Alan Tonelson, senior fellow at the U.S. Business and Industrial Council Educational Foundation, stated that "NATO expansion rests on the notion that Eastern and Central Europe are of great significance to the security of the United States. In fact, that is not the case. Central and Eastern Europe have always played a secondary role in American foreign policy, and with good reason."

The papers presented at the conference will be published as a book early next year.

This article originally appeared in the September/October 1997 edition of Cato Policy Report.