The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

June 5, 1995 The Nation. 795or in life, if one could ever start from a point of innocence.”To which I suppose the only answer is to say-Go! Plunge everdeeper, commit more crimes to erase those already commit-ted, and repeat with Macbeth, “I am in blood/Stepped in sofar that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tediousas go o’er”’WHY RUSSIA OPPOSES EXPANSIONNATO Stay AwayFrom My DoorMATTHEW EVANGELISTARussia today is a fragmented society, with politicsan angry mix of fascism, nationalism, communism,socialism and liberalism. But all partles areas one when it comes to the North Atlantic TreatyOrganization: They staunchly oppose Its expansion into EasternEurope. Although Boris Yeltsin paid lip service to NATO’sso-called Partnership for Peace during President Clinton’s recentvisit to Moscow, he still firmly rejects using the agreementas a vehicle for expanding NATO.Russia’s anxiety over NATO’s encroachment on its borderis profound, and the Clinton Administration seems unwillmgto face the fact. As the President formulated it at a NATOsummit in January 1994, “It’s not a question of whetherNATO will take on new members, but when and how.” Thisapproach ignores the widespread opposition to NATO expansionwithin Russia-not only from the Yeltsin government butfrom its harshest critics, ranging from the extreme nationalistVladimir Zhirinovsky to the liberal economic reformerGrigory Yavlinsky.During the Gorbachev years, both Andre1 Kokoshln andAleksei Arbatov played key roles as supporters of the kindsof military reforms that helped end the cold war. Kokoshlnis now the highest-ranking civilian in the Defense Ministry;Arbatov is an opposition member of Parliament and a harshcritic of current military pollcy. Yet both agree that NATO expansionis a bad idea.Still, NATO’s major players-particularly Britain, Germanyand the United States-see expanslon as a relatively easy andstraightforward foreign pol~cy decision, especially comparedwith the hard choices they have faced in Bosnia, Somalla andHaiti. Moreover, the NATO bureaucracy, robbed of its rationaleto defend against the Soviet threat, needs sornethmg newto do, and integrating the states of the former Warsaw Pactinto the NATO system seems to fit the bill. The top candldatesinclude the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and probablySlovakia. Their leaders-most vocally Vaclav Havel and LechWalesa-have insisted that only membership in the NATO al-liance will insure their countries’ economic and political security.Havel has gone so far as to say that his country IS readyMatthew Evangelrsta IS a visrtrng sciolar at Harvard’s Centerfor Science and International A ffarrs.to fulfill all requirements of NATO membership, includingthe stationing of nuclear weapons on its territory.Moscow’s warmngs about what it will do If expansion comesshould be taken seriously. Russia has threatened not to ratifythe START I1 treaty aimed at substantially reducing strategicnuclear weapons there and in the United States. It has alsothreatened to abrogate the 1990 treaty reducing conventionalforces in Europe (C.F.E.), a pact that was central to ending theEast-West military rivalry on the Continent. Western politiciansstubbornly refuse to face such consequences of theproposed NATO expansion. During a visit to Poland in mid-April, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Secretary, declaredthat “there IS no link between Russia’s meeting its obliga-tions under the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and decisionsabout expanding NAT0””ignoring the fact that bothYeltsin and his opponents in the Duma have repeatedly insistedon such a link.In the end, supporters of Russian democracy are likely tobe hurt most by any NATO march eastward, since their mslstenceon the West’s generally benlgn intentions will meet withwidespread skepticism. In consequence, they will find it dif-ficult to resist the pol~cy prescriptions of the hard-hers, suchas accelerating efforts to integrate the former Soviet republicsinto a Moscow-dominated defense alliance. More worrisomeis the likelihood that the reactlonarles may also use thespecter of an external threat from NATO to curb democraticfreedoms, producing the increased repression that many ofthem already advocate. Such a development is not likely tocome without violence, an upheaval that could expand toneighboring states and perhaps threaten security the of thousandsof nuclear weapons within Russia.Some argue that rejecting the NATO expansion would showtoo much deference to Russia’s militarists, that it would glve