ACCESSION NUMBER:309333
FILE ID:POL302
DATE:10/27/93
TITLE:EXPERTS EXAMINE MERITS, PROBLEMS OF EXPANDING NATO (10/27/93)
TEXT:*93102702.POL
EXPERTS EXAMINE MERITS, PROBLEMS OF EXPANDING NATO

1Maynes, Simon weigh admission of new members)  (570)
By Paul Malamud
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- What is the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) -- and what should American policy toward NATO be, now that the
Soviet threat has subsided?

Two experts pondered those questions and whether to integrate former Soviet
Union states into NATO at a policy forum October 26 in Washington.

William Maynes, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, told an audience at a
seminar hosted by the Cato Institute  that a lot of his contacts are
convinced "Russia will never be allowed in."

Asking rhetorically whether the East Europeans are "ready for membership,"
Maynes said that, in his view, the answer is "a clear no."  As reasons, he
cited the Polish elections that brought communists back into power and the
possibility of the same thing happening elsewhere in central Europe.

If NATO admits these states, he said, Ukraine and the Baltic nations will
become concerned "about being left out."  In addition, Maynes noted that
the current Russian leadership is "the most pro-Western leadership Russia
has ever had," and he said this is hardly "the moment to turn our back on
them" by admitting their neighbors to NATO but not them.

"Partnership with Russia," Maynes asserted, is the main Clinton
administration foreign policy achievement to date and must not be allowed
to fail.  Moreover, he said, Russia is no longer a military threat to
Eastern Europe.

What the East Europeans need more than NATO membership, Maynes said, is
"inclusion in the continent's key Western economic institutions."  The
economic exclusion of these newly-independent states, he warned, is "a very
serious problem" and the question of NATO membership for them is a
diversion from "the real goal."

If there is a decision to extend NATO as a security organization to East
Europe, he said, it must include Russia whether that nation adopts
"American-style democracy or not."  In the pre-Soviet past, Maynes pointed
out, Russia had rarely been a strategic threat to the United States.  The
Russian government, he noted, supported the American Revolution, supported
the North during the U.S. Civil War, and willingly sold Alaska to the
United States.

Maynes warned that if Russia is excluded from an expanded NATO the West will
"draw another curtain down the center of Europe," and if an expanded NATO
seems to target Russia strategically the Russian reaction will be
"extremely hostile."

On the other hand, he said, if Russia is well-integrated into Western
security organizations it could lead to "evolving cooperation."

Jeffrey Simon, a senior fellow at National Defense University, called the
reunified Germany a "new continental power" with an uncharted future.
Thus, he said Eastern Europe is currently "insecure" sandwiched between a
resurgent Germany and an unstable Russia.

Simon said that a NATO offshoot, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council
(NACC), will be the "key instrument" if membership in Western institutions
is expanded to Eastern European states.  Using NACC as an  instrument to
integrate Eastern Europe into the West he added, is a better political
maneuver than expanding NATO itself -- and leaving out Russia and Ukraine.

NACC, he said, can become a "holding pen" as its members evolve "political
and military cooperation."  Simon said that the armed forces of many of the
central European states are already being re-structured to integrate them
1otentially into NATO.

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