10 October 1997
(NATO: Foreign Relations Committee continues hearings) (1170) By Ralph Dannheisser USIA Congressional Correspondent Washington -- A key U.S. Senate committee has heard the proposed expansion of NATO membership described as everything from central to the strategic relationship between the United States and Europe to a costly, risky, and unnecessary step. The divergent views were expressed at the second of six hearings on the subject held October 9 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Leading off the hearing, Senator William Roth (Republican of Delaware) declared enlargement "not only necessary and important to the Alliance, but to the United States as well. "Will enlargement be easy? Few things this important are ever easy. Will it be worth it? Absolutely," Roth told the committee. He testified in his capacity as chairman of the Senate NATO Observer Group and president of the North Atlantic Assembly. Current discussion about expansion of the 16-member NATO alliance centers on swift addition of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Roth insisted that "admission of these three democracies will enable the Alliance to better fulfill its core mission of collective defense, as these nations will add another 300,000 troops to NATO." Further, he said, it promises "the surest means of doing for Central and Eastern Europe what American leadership, through the Alliance, has done so well for Western Europe." And Roth termed the costs of enlargement "insignificant compared to the costs of remaining static." Following Roth at the witness table, Zbigniew Brzezinski, counselor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, senior fellow and director for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies with the American Enterprise Institute, built on his arguments for expansion. Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, deemed expansion "central to the step-by-step construction of a secure international system in which the EuroAtlantic alliance plays the major role in ensuring that a peaceful and democratic Europe is America's principal partner." Brzezinski said NATO expansion is "not principally about the Russian threat," conceding that "currently it does not exist." Nor, he said, is it "primarily a moral crusade, meant to undo the injustice the Central European peoples suffered during the half-century-long Soviet oppression." "For me," he said, "the central stake...is the long-term historic and strategic relationship between America and Europe. NATO expansion is central to the vitality of the American-European connection, to the scope of a democratic and secure Europe, and to the ability of America and Europe to work together in promoting international security." Kirkpatrick -- U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration -- added that the case for admitting Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary "is not only strong, it is essentially the same as the case for organizing NATO in 1949 -- to provide a security shield behind which the free institutions of these more geographically vulnerable European democracies can strike deep roots and thrive, to deter aggression and discourage conflict." The three countries "will 'fit' in NATO" without "qualitative changes in its purposes, culture or mode of operation," she said. As to costs, Kirkpatrick argued that "the United States spends each year in the former Yugoslavia several times the cost of enlarging NATO. How much more economical in money and lives it would have been to deter that conflict," she added. The pro-enlargement arguments were sharply challenged by Jonathan Dean, senior arms control advisor to the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Michael Mandelbaum, director of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Dean deemed NATO, in its present form and with its present membership, "useful and important." But, he said, enlargement would be "costly, risky and, above all, unnecessary." He questioned the State Department estimate of a $30,000 million cost attached to admission of the first group of new members -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. But even if that estimate is accepted, he said, "the United States is likely to have to pay the largest part of that amount" despite administration contentions to the contrary. Statements by major European leaders make it clear that they "will not pay the shares allocated to them in these estimates," he said. "For their part, the Eastern European candidate countries are faced by a costly and unneeded remilitarization precisely at a time when they have to focus their resources on economic and social reconstruction," he said. Dean, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks in the 1970s, projected the total cost of NATO enlargement at $90,000 million to $150,000 million by the time all candidates are considered, and predicted that the United States would be stuck with at least half of that bill. In all, there could ultimately be as many as 16 candidates for inclusion, doubling the current NATO membership, he told the panel. And if Romania and Bulgaria, among others, follow the first three into membership, the step would "probably require stationing large NATO forces there," including U.S. troops. Further, he said, NATO enlargement coupled with activities of the Clinton administration and U.S. oil companies in the Central Asian republics would fill the minds of Russian policymakers with concerns that "reinforce the image of hostile encirclement that has already played such a negative role in Russian history." "Do we really want to deliberately add a decade of trying to cope with this issue to the tasks of Russian governments already tottering under the burden of economic and social reforms -- in a country that still has 20,000 nuclear weapons? It defies common sense to believe that applying more and more pressures like this to a weak political structure can have positive results," Dean reasoned. Both he and Mandelbaum advocated, instead, enlargement of the European Union -- again starting with membership for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Mandelbaum insisted that "we get no benefits whatever from NATO expansion," adding that "The only coherent reason for expanding NATO is to contain Russia" -- a step that he dismissed as premature, at best. And trans-Atlantic arguments over footing the cost of the expansion would weaken the Alliance more than expansion could possibly strengthen it, he contended. The most vocal supporter of the expansion plan on the committee was Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, who is the panel's senior minority member. Noting that he had often consulted -- and agreed with -- both Dean and Mandelbaum in the past, Biden told them "I think you are so damn wrong here!...You're assuming a dynamic situation in Eastern Europe and a static situation in Russia." But he acknowledged that, if the pair was right as to conflict over the potential costs, expansion was doomed. "If Europe...has not gotten the message that they will pay 50 percent" and if the new members are unwilling to assume 35 percent of the costs, "Nothing will happen (in terms of Senate approval). I promise you that," Biden declared.