NATO CLAIMS: HOW FAR DO THEY GO?
(Rossiiskaya Gazeta, January 4. In full.)
I. Maksimychev, D.Sc. (Political Science), Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences

The results of the December session of the NATO Council defy any calm interpretation. This is because it is impossible to ignore the fact that at the will of the ruling bodies of the alliance, at the Madrid summit on July 8-9, 1997 they will not only confirm the bloc's intention to expand eastward, but will name the final candidates for the first wave who will become full members of the North Atlantic alliance not later than 1999.

The world public is gradually learning the details of the strategic military concept which has been put at the core of the above decision.

Forecasting the course of events for this year, the influential London journal The Economist has laid down with unconcealed delight the main details of the plan of the NATO brain trust which is working to perpetuate the West's present dominance in the world. The plan essentially consists of three tasks. Firstly, it is the consolidation of NATO's linkage to US policy, so that the bloc would continue to serve as a foundation of Pax Americana. Secondly, it is the exit of NATO beyond the boundaries of its traditional "zone of responsibility" and the conversion of the alliance into a powerful intervention force with a view to maintaining the kind of order that suits the West (and especially the US) in a vast geostrategic environment including the territory of Europe, the Middle and Near East and a considerable part of Africa. And thirdly, it is the prevention of "excessive build-up of the strength" of anyone outside NATO, which also implies active resistance to the consolidation in any form of the positions of Russia which is meant to be perpetually kept in the position of the loser in the Cold War.

In the concept outlined by The Economist there are no traces or grounds for sentimental deliberations on the subject that "NATO is not so much a military alliance as a community of moral values". Or, that "the expansion of NATO is aimed at consolidating peace and democracy in Europe".

How different indeed is the picture of world organization by NATO designs, which once again relies on implacably egotistical force, from the democratic ideals of the overturn of 1990 and 1991 which seemed to have opened the way to a fundamentally new world order based on fair regard for everyone's interests and on law and justice. It appears that in the post-confrontation world, too, the postulate that, as before, equality for the weak is impossible will get the upper hand.

The mobilization of the US political circles against "the impending Chinese threat", which is already under way, gives one a clear idea of what storms await the mono-polar world in a near future. The planned "ousting" of Russia out of Europe belongs to phenomena of the same order. To a certain extent this is a consequence of the Russian policy of the initial period when, for its own concessions, Moscow did not demand any reciprocal moves or compensations. If anyone willingly puts oneself in a loser's position, all those around readily adopt the posture of victors, and reversing this situation is impossibly difficult.

And yet it would be wrong to believe that the strategy-makers of Pax Americana are already close to their goal or that the process of NATO reorganization would go all the way along the tracks laid by them. The world did change between 1990 and 1991, and restoring the Cold War configuration is not really that easy. One should not underestimate the fact that the leaders of many NATO countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Norway and Greece make the expansion of NATO fully conditional on the recognition of the need of preventing any damage to their relations with Russia. The obvious contradiction between these two objectives has an essentially constructive function which forces the bloc to make a choice between the two parts of the binominal. This is where the initiators of new European splits run the risk of ending up in a tricky position. Even Canada which is normally viewed as a junior partner of the US made a statement in December, voiced by its foreign minister, that it was imperative "to change the situation where the alliance constitutes a system of outposts from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, which are targeted against Russia.... Any new demarcation lines in Europe will not serve the security interests in the zone of the alliance".

Very recently, the European Union the idea of whose expansion to the East is welcomed by all Europeans without exception has passed a sensible resolution postponing the admission of new members until the moment when its structural reorganization will be completed. Something similar could be recommended for NATO, too, which is in a process of internal changes as well.

The popular Montreal newspaper La Presse published an article in the middle of December under the headline "NATO Is Treading a Wrong Path", in which it formulated the thesis that "what is needed is not the adaptation of the relations with Russia to NATO expansion, but the adaptation of NATO to the present state of relations with Russia". One can hardly disagree with the arguments used by the authors of that article. It is only this approach to the European realities that can dispel the clouds gathering over our continent.