EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

By the very fact of carrying out a comprehensive “Study on NATO Enlargement,” NATO has taken a major step forward in its deliberations and preparations on this subject. As such, the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO (CEERN), which was formed in 1992 to encourage such preparations, applauds the publication of the NATO Study.

The Eastern Europeans, pointing out that the Study is four years late, feel there is an urgent need to make concrete the prospect of their accession. While that is not quite the issue here, it provides additional reason to consider urgently what is the issue here: how to move forward from where the Study leaves off.

There is much to applaud in the specific provisions in the NATO Study. It goes a good part of the way to a solution in its plans on four key problems: (1) streamlining NATO decision-making so NATO can accommodate more members without loss of effectiveness, (2) keeping the criteria relevant and avoiding an undue projection eastward of all the burdens of adjustment, (3) protecting late accessions from vetoes that would make a mockery of NATO’s assurances that the door is not closed to any OSCE country, and (4) links with Russia. This is no small accomplishment for a first try, especially considering how little attention is paid to these problems in most discourse on NATO enlargement.

At the same time, this “part of the way” is not enough to make a success of enlargement in any of these four areas. To complete what the Study has begun, and to make it possible to move forward without more undue delays, further steps will be needed in each area: (1) more streamlining of decision-making, acknowledging the authority of the Council to act without consensus in the last resort, or for decisions about "coalitions of the willing;" (2) an interactive schedule of adjustments in East and West, with NATO membership coming not at the end but early enough to help the Easterners in making their adjustments; (3) a protocol admitting in principle all OSCE countries, and laying down simplified procedures for subsequent actual admission of these countries individually or severally; and (4) intra-Council and Council-Russia procedures that make possible timely mutual adaptation in dealings with Russia.

The significance of the very existence of the Study

The “Study on NATO Enlargement” is the first concrete study on the subject by NATO, and possibly the first by any official Western agency. As such, the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO (CEERN ) welcomes its very existence.

Ever since its formation in 1992, CEERN has been calling on official circles to begin concrete thinking and planning on how to carry out NATO enlargement and resolve the problems in it. Alone among the pro-NATO enlargement crowd, CEERN called in January 1994 not for NATO to lay down rigid new membership criteria but rather for NATO to do a comprehensive study on enlargement. Such a study, CEERN argued, was the logical next step after NATO adopted the Partnership for Peace and the general goal of enlargement. NATO decided in December 1994 to follow this path.

CEERN has always recognized that enlargement requires a complex of interactive adjustments, not just a laying down of rigid set of membership criteria and then automatic admission of some countries. Proponents of the latter approach did not try to work out the content of the matters that would have to be resolved in a protocol of NATO enlargement; they must have thought this a technical afterthought, when in fact it will define the substance and meaning of “NATO enlargement”. CEERN did prepare a draft protocol and released it at the end of 1994. Now NATO has completed a study which, while not yet providing the language of a draft protocol, elaborates a number of the points that would go into one.

There is nothing that concentrates the mind better on a proposal than trying to work out how it would actually be implemented. This is what CEERN did in the years 1992-1994, and it is what NATO itself has now begun to do.

It would be fair enough for critics to ask whether the preliminary serious official NATO study on this subject should not have been made years ago, in 1990 when the Eastern Europeans first asked to join NATO, or at the latest in 1991-2 when Russia also expressed friendly interest. Arguably there is little in the present NATO Study that could not have already been said then, and arguably tremendous historical opportunities have already been lost by the delay. The former Yugoslavs, who before the end of 1991 had reason to hope to be the first peoples to join the West, have a right to complain that it comes too late for them. The Central Europeans have a right to complain that NATO is still not proceeding to negotiate actual protocols of accession, or even model protocols, or even specifying when it will do so; and consequently, that the prospect of their membership has not yet become concrete enough to give their peoples the confidence – which they want, and which they need for democratic stabilization – that their destiny is with the West.

These questions are beyond the scope of the present comments. What counts here is that a serious study has just been made. What is needed here is to evaluate accurately – without illusions and without cynicism – what was done right in it, what needs corrected, and what remains to be done.

At this late date, there will be a temptation to view NATO’s release as the definitive final study. There are many passages in it that have a character of laying down a definitive line, as is usual when international documents are trying to place a definite stamp on whatever the member countries have been able to agree to. The fact remains that this is in many respects still a preliminary study. Secretary General Willy Claes has stated that it only addresses the question of "how” to expand, and another study must be commissioned to determine “who” and “when.” Even on the “how”, much of the answer is only preliminary. Its answers will inevitably be modified as well as supplemented when NATO takes up the questions of “who” and “when,” with all their implication. They will be further modified when NATO actually negotiates the protocols of accession and has to tackle the issues concretely. It will do no harm to acknowledge this. It will be necessary to do the equivalent of a follow-on study in the course of the further preparations and negotiations. It will not be necessary to delay things further for the follow-on study; it could proceed parallel with the actual implementation processes.

The preliminary Study answers some old questions and in the process raises new questions. Among the questions that it answers, some are answered well and definitively, some in outline or rough draft fashion. This should not surprise anyone: it could not have been otherwise in the first serious study on the subject by NATO. It cannot be expected that a first attempt would answer all questions adequately or even understand all of the questions. Resolving a complex of questions is an iterative process of proposing, criticizing, rethinking, proposing anew, following on with specific plans for concrete action, and correcting the general proposals to fit the needs that are found along the way to action. The following comments are intended to contribute to that process.