3. Phasing of new memberships. No vetoes over subsequent accessions.

a. Achievements in the Study

The most direct way that admission of a few new members in Central Europe could lead to drawing rigid new lines in Europe is a constitutional one: new members, like old members, are attributed by the North Atlantic Treaty a power of veto on any other country joining subsequently. This is, in fact, the only subject on which the North Atlantic Treaty gives a right of veto to each member country.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of the seemingly technical question of how to prevent blockages of later accessions. This will have strategic importance as well as diplomatic and domestic political ramifications.

The NATO Study has grappled with this problem seriously. It has come up with steps which would ameliorate the problem and which point in the right directions for supplementary steps.

Here is what the Study has come up with:

“Countries could be invited to join sequentially or several countries could be simultaneously invited to join, bearing in mind that all Allies will decide by consensus on each invitation, i.e. new Allies must join consensus for subsequent invitations... Simultaneous accessions would avoid the possibility of veto by new members on others joining at the same time; any decision on simultaneous accession should take into account relations among the prospective new members concerned and the impact on other states... Concerns have already been expressed ... that a new member might ‘close the door’ behind it to new admissions in the future of other countries... Such a situation must be avoided... We will invite prospective new members to confirm that they understand and accept this and act in good faith accordingly. The Alliance may require, if appropriate, specific political commitments in the course of accession negotiations.” (Chapter 2 paragraph 30)

The main devices proposed, then, are: (1) simultaneous accessions for some groups of countries, and (2) a de facto renunciation of the right of veto of early entrants over potential later entrants. These two devices would together cover the entire terrain of the potential entrants. They are necessary and useful steps. The question is whether they are sufficient to resolve the question and prevent arbitrary vetoes of late accessions.

b. Shortcomings

Under device (1), simultaneous accessions really would make it logically impossible for there to arise any problem of joining while vetoing the others’ membership among the specified group of countries. This certainly solves the problem within that group, but not in relation to all other OSCE countries unless the entire OSCE area is let in as a group.

Under device (2), which deals with all the other cases, the danger of blocking is only partially softened by the device of asking prospective members to confirm that they will act in good faith and not block later entrants. Once countries are members of NATO and have their rights under the Treaty, they will be free to proceed to act in bad faith and block subsequent entries, whether overtly or through delaying tactics and attachment of excessive preconditions to new entries. Moreover, the new members will undergo changes of government with new elections, and the new governments and parliaments may in good faith hold strongly to a view contrary to the pledges made during the accession discussions. Even the device of asking for specific political commitments during the accession negotiations would be far from sufficient to guarantee against such an outcome, unless these commitments were actually written into the protocols. Device (2) leads in the right direction – the direction of taking away the right of veto over new entrants – but does not yet get us there.

c. Further steps

The right to veto new entrants is enshrined in the North Atlantic Treaty. This Treaty authority will prevail over informal or even formal declarations of good intention. The only way to take this veto away is by amending the Treaty. That, fortunately, is not as difficult as it may sound. An amendment to the Treaty is made by every Protocol of Accession. Any new Protocol could simply include a renunciation of the new member’s right of veto over subsequent entrants. That, unlike a non-treaty political commitment, would be a reliable solution to the problem.

To be sure, this would be a modification in the Treaty. It would put new members in a second-class status on this one limited point. Such a status is something that the Study resolved not to create. It would be preferable to keep the formal rights of old and new members equal wherever possible. To this end, the renunciation of a veto over subsequent accessions ought in fairness to apply to old members as well as new ones. For the purpose intended by the Study, this is actually a necessity: for old members, too, could cast arbitrary vetoes or refuse ratification to late accessions.

The only genuinely reliable way of forestalling arbitrary vetoes and rigid new dividing lines is to admit all of the potential entrants in one batch. That is more than can be done, given the present state of unreadiness to admit many of these countries. What could be done would be for the NATO countries to adopt and ratify a generic protocol of accession which would admit all OSCE democracies in principle, and which would provide for the North Atlantic Council subsequently to decide by vote on the actual admission of countries one by one.

NOTE.

The Study notes the importance of keeping a close watch on the readiness of the governments to approve and the publics to ratify new protocols of accession, keeping in mind how damaging it would be if NATO were to invite a country to apply to join, and then proceed to turn its application down because some of the NATO members would not ratify it. The most effective way to minimize this danger is to give the potential accessions an advance collective approval-in-principle.

It may also prove easier to ratify such a generic protocol that admits all OSCE democracies in principle than to ratify a national protocol of accession separately. The generic protocol, unlike individual protocols, would cover a more coherent geopolitical space that would be unlikely to face large-scale attack from without. It would genuinely avoid drawing provocative new lines. As such, it would be much less likely to draw the existing NATO members into new wars.

The admission-in-principle of the entire group of countries would have a powerful effect on each one’s strategic identity and domestic political debate. It would provide conviction that accession into NATO is a live option and indeed a likely destiny of each country. It would validate the Westernizers and the political actors that have hoped for this destiny, and would pull the rug out from under the parties that have played upon despair of ever arriving at this destiny.

This would have a saluatary calming effect on the politics of every country in Eastern Europe. There is some despair about NATO in all of them; this would finally suffice to overcome the despair, and would do it with enough of a dramatic flair to reignite hope. It would have the greatest salutary effect in Russia, where the despair of ever being brought into the Western international order is greatest, and where the danger of the anti-Western reaction is accordingly also greatest.