Conference: NATO Enlargement: The National Debates over Ratification 7 Oct. '97

British Views on NATO Enlargement by Jane M. O. SHARP

This paper begins with an overview of the range of British views on the pros and cons of NATO enlargement. It then explores British views on a number of issues within the enlargement debate, namely: the decision to limit the first intake to only three states; how to reassure those states who aspire to membership but were left out of the first tranche; the relationship of NATO enlargement to the enlargement of the European (EU); the role of the Western European Union (WEU); and the issue of what enlargement will cost and how that cost should be shared. The paper concludes with a British view of the US debate. British Views On Enlargement There will be no ratification debate on NATO enlargement in the British (or Canadian) parliament comparable to the debate anticipated in the U.S. Senate. In Britain the executive in the form of the cabinet ratifies treaties not the whole legislature, except for EU legislation which is laid before the whole parliament. The normal practice is to leave texts of treaties signed by the British head of state on view in the House of Commons library for three weeks: if no one objects (and MPs rarely do), the treaty is presumed ratified. This does not mean there is no debate in Britain on NATO enlargement, or that some Britons with strong views might not try to influence ratification debates in other NATO legislatures. Rather, it means only that the debate is not likely to affect British ratification of enlargement once the cabinet has made its decision. (1) Unlike the influential House and Senate committees on defense and foreign affairs in the United States, British parliamentary committees are made up entirely of back benchers with little clout. MPs could have some influence on what portion of the British defence budget will be allotted to improving NATO infrastructure to bring the military capability of new members up to alliance standards, but the British parliament has nothing like the power of the U.S. Congress to influence government decisions or government spending. (2) Any analysis of British views on NATO enlargement must begin with the observation that all political parties in Britain have been enthusiastic backers of NATO since its inception under a Labour government in 1949. This is in marked contrast to British membership in the European Communities (now the European Union) which came late (1973) and is usually viewed as awkward and maverick. In NATO, however, Britain is well respected by the other allies, not least because she has always been a major contributor not only in budgetary terms, but also in terms of men and material as well as in leadership of major commands. British officers have also made major contributions to the formulation of NATO tactics and doctrine. Unlike France, Britain contributes a wide range of conventional and special forces to NATO's integrated command structure, which allow it to play a leading role in the multilateral defence of the continent. Within NATO, Britain's relations with the United States fluctuate. British influence declined somewhat in the late 1980s as the Bonn-Washington axis flourished in the run-up to German unification, but rose during the Gulf War in 1991. Relations then soured badly in 1992-1995, when the United States and Britain differed fundamentally on how to cope with the crises in former Yugoslavia. (3) With the Intervention Force (IFOR) and the Stabilization Force (SFOR) operations in Bosnia, however, Britain's stock rose again as she made the most important European contribution, and a British general commanded IFOR ground forces under the overall command of Admiral Leighton Smith. (4) Once the Labour Party had ousted the Conservative government of John Major in May 1997, British forces were also more willing than any others in NATO to arrest war criminals in Bosnia. (5) When in the opposition, the Labour Party shadow cabinet was always careful not to offend the United States, despite the under-current of anti-Americanism on back benches and in the grass roots of the party. When in government, the Labour Party has traditionally been more Atlanticist than the Tories. More-over, the personal chemistry between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton is several degrees warmer than it was between John Major and Clinton. Whether this will amount to a revival of the much touted special relationship is doubtful, however, because as the new British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has observed, Britain is of value to the United States primarily when she is playing a leading role in Europe. So unless the new Labour government moves quickly to improve rela-tions with Bonn and Paris, compared to those which existed under 18 years of Tory rule, Britain will remain a very junior partner of the United States. (6) Official Views On Enlargement The importance of NATO to Britain is primarily because it takes care of her fundamental security need, namely, alliance with the United States to prevent the domination of Europe by either Germany or Russia. In this sense British interests concur with those of central Europeans who face far more acutely the sense of being sandwiched between the two European giants. For British policymakers, views about opening up NATO to new members thus depend on perceptions of how enlargement will affect the alliance and Britain's role in it. Lord Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, said in the 1940s that the three main advantages of NATO for western Europe were that "it kept the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down." This would not be a politically correct rendering today, but for Britain it remains essential to keep the United States engaged in Europe to balance the potential power and influence of Russia. With respect to Germany, while no one in Tony Blair's government would speak of keeping Germany down, it is considered vital (in Bonn as well as in London) to keep Germany tied to the western democracies and to the institutions of the western security community; both NATO and the EU. If Germany believes it important to bring Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO, that is reason enough for Britain. For if NATO were to deny membership to the central Europeans, then eventually either Germany or Russia would fill the role of hegemonic protector, thereby returning Europe back to the uncertainties of the 1930s. Britain has not been in the vanguard of those pressing for NATO enlargement, preferring to let Germany and the United States drive the effort. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has for some years acted as if enlargement into Poland was a forgone conclusion. As early as March 1995, for example, the MoD arranged to lease Polish military training grounds for British armoured forces. (7) During the first Clinton Administration, Europeans often complained about U.S. dithering over Bosnia and other foreign policy issues. In London, in late 1993, MoD officials complained that it was impossible to discern U.S. policy on NATO enlargement. Two members of Clinton's cabinet seemed to favor enlargement (Vice President Albert Gore and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake) and two seemed against (Defence Secretary William Perry and Secretary of State Warren Christopher). Not until the spring of 1994, when Richard Holbrooke returned to Washington from his term as U.S. ambassador to Bonn, did US policy in favor of enlargement become clear, and was embraced by John Major's government as alliance policy. The British ambassador to Washington, John Kerr, outlined the British view at an international conference in January 1997. (8) He emphasised that, as stated in the preamble to the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO is fundamentally about shared values: adherence to the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. Enlargement is thus important primarily to right the wrongs of Yalta, and the time to enlarge is now because no one knows how long the window of opportunity for central Europe to join the western democracies will remain open. Kerr stressed that NATO is also a military alliance and could not risk having second class members. Article V guarantees must apply equally to all and-while the western demo-cracies have a responsibility to help Russia democratize and modernize-Russia must not be given any kind of veto power that would interfere with NATO security guarantees to new member states. Kerr also warned against the allure of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) because transatlantic cohesion is the key to NATO's security. Kerr saw future threats to the alliance as tous azimuts, but coming more from turbulence in the south than aggression in the east. Kerr warned of the dangers to NATO cohesion of transatlantic disagreements and deplored two American tendencies: to tell the EU countries they must take in central Europeans to compensate for exclusion from NATO; and to seek bilateral fixes with Russia at Europe's expense.

The Non-Governmental Debate In general British public opinion is uncon-cerned about NATO enlargement, but opinions vary widely among the defense and foreign affairs cognoscenti just as they do in the United States. Among the sceptics, at one end of the spectrum are Cold Warriors who worry that enlargement will weaken alliance cohesion and undermine NATO's original task of collective defence. At the other are those on the left who worry that taking in central European states formerly under Soviet control will give Russia a dangerous sense of encirclement that could strengthen xenophobic nationalists in the Duma and the military. The former do not want NATO to change. (9) The latter do not recognise how much NATO has already adapted to the post-Cold War world. (10) Many on the left consider NATO still too aggressive and support the Russian idea to make NATO subordinate to the pan-European Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). (11) As in the United States, some unre-constructed Cold Warriors favor enlargement because they want to unsettle the Russians and to sell expensive offensive military equip-ment to Russia's former satellites in central and eastern Europe. Those who favor enlarge-ment as a way of exporting the benefits of the western security community eastwards believe, however, that prospects of NATO and EU membership should not impoverish central Europe: they deplore the hard sell of the defense industries on both sides of the Atlantic and seek to protect the new allies from unnnecessary expense. (12) The IMF is of like mind and, in September 1997, persuaded Romania to cancel an ill-advised order for US helicopters. (13) The EU also requires its members to keep their budget deficit below 3% of GNP which discourages heavy spending on defense. Most British proponents of NATO enlargement are centrists who believe that NATO and EU membership should provide inspiration to the former Communist states of central Europe to work towards market economies and pluralistic democracies. This is already beginning to happen. For example, in Poland in March 1997 the government sacked a general who would not accept civilian control of the military. The need to become attractive partners to the western democracies also had a salutory effect on improving relations between Hungary and Romania as well as between Romania and Ukraine. The reform process in Russia is disappointing by comparison, especially Boris Yeltsin's Soviet-style, anti-democratic, and belligerent behavior, notably his bombing of the Russian parliament in 1993; the bombing of Chechnya begun in December 1994 just three days after Yeltsin signed up to a new OSCE code of conduct; and his cavalier disregard for Russian arms control obligations. As Grigoryry Yavlinsky (head of the Yabloko party in Russia) argues, Western support for Yeltsin the man as distinct from support for the process of reform alienates the average Russian. (14) Many British supporters of enlarge-ment also agree with Yaabloko in opposing economic aid to the Russian government (as opposed to small scale Russian enterprises) until the Kremlin has ended the flight of capital by Russia's newly rich mafiosi. (15) Within the British diplomatic corps, two former ambassadors to Moscow, Sir Roderic Braithwaite and Sir Brian Fall, are more concerned that enlargement might upset Yeltsin and dangerously wound the Russian bear, already severely humiliated by the loss of the Warsaw Pact, as well as the Soviet Union and more recently, the war against Chechnya. (16) However, Braithwaite chastises the Russians for making wholly unreasonable claims about the damaging effects of NATO enlargement on their political and economic reforms, and for their disgraceful acusations that Estonians and Latvians are conducting a policy of genocide against Russian minorities. Braithwaite also believes the package that Clinton offered Yeltsin in Helsinki was sensible, and that Russia must learn to respect the rights of small countries as well as big ones. Other British diplomats who served in Moscow favor bringing new members into NATO. These include Sir Brian Cartledge and Sir Frank Roberts. Roberts was at the Yalta Conference in 1945 and was George Kennan's counterpart in the British embassy in Moscow when Kennan served under U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. Roberts claims his thinking about Russia was not much different from Kennan's in the 1940s, but is now very different on NATO enlargement: "NATO," he recently said, "has to take this great opportunity to provide stability in Eastern Europe, just as it produced stability in western Europe 50 years ago" (17) Many academics and journalists who study or cover Russia also tend to worry about NATO enlargement. For example, Margot Light at the London School of Economics, Neil Malcolm at the University of Wolverhampton, Archie Brown and Alex Pravda at St Anthony's College in Oxford, are all concerned that enlargement will strengthen the Russian nationalists. (18) John Lloyd, who served as Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times in the early 1990s, shares that concern. (19) Michael MccGwire, a long time apologist for Russia's great power aspirations, has written a polemic against NATO enlarge-ment that manges to avoid any mention of Russian actions in Chechnya. (20) Other Russian experts, however, like Peter Frank at the University of Essex, favor enlargement on the grounds that Russia must not be allowed to continue any kind of control over the former captive nations. Unlike Americans, the British share with Russia the experience of losing an empire. British students of Russia thus tend to be less sympathetic to Russia's current discomfort than American liberals, and less starry eyed about the potential for reform. Rather than pandering to Russia's sense of itself as a great power, many in Britain believe the west would help Russia more by educating her leaders to think of themselves as managing a post- imperial medium rank power rather than recreating the Soviet empire. Downsizing her great power expectations would make Russia a less threatening neighbor and a more cooperative partner. In his recent study of the Russian empire, Geoffrey Hoskins, Professor of History at the University of London, notes that unlike such other former imperial powers as France and Britain, who rarely confused themselves with their colonies, Russia's whole identity is bound up with lording it over others in an imperial role. Because Russians have a weak sense of nationhood, in the positive sense of creating and sustaining a sense of community, they find it hard to give up the idea of reconquering lost territories. (21) Across the political spectrum, Russians still tend to think of their country as encompassing all the territory of the former Soviet Union. This explains both why NATO enlargement is so unpalatable to Russian leaders and so essential for formerly Russian-dominated states in central Europe, most especially the three Baltic states. Academics and journalists who focus more on central Europe tend to worry about a new Yalta that would condem central Europe to a permanent Russian sphere of influence, than about exacerbating the Russian sense of humiliation. (22) These include Jonathan Eyal, at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and Timothy Garton Ash, at St Anthony's College, Oxford. Neal Ascherson, who has written widely on central Europe and the Black Sea region, and is now a columnist at the Independent on Sunday, has been especially critical of the moral blackmail that Russia's so-called liberals engage in, for example, threatening that NATO enlargement will enrage Russia's xenophobic nationalists. (23) Another scholar who worries about a new Yalta is Mary Kaldor at the University of Sussex and co-chair of the Helsinki Citzens Assembly (HCA). The HCA continues the work Kaldor began in the 1980s with Charter 77, an organisation formed by dissidents like Vaclav Havel and Alexander Vondra in Czechoslovakia, Adam Michnik and Konstanty Gebert in Poland, and Georgy Konrad in Hungary. The purpose of Charter 77 was to exploit the human rights principles agreed by the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to delegitimise the Soviet controlled governments of Eastern Europe. Those on the left in Britain who favor NATO enlargement generally also favor the gradual transition of NATO from an organisa-tion solely interested in the collective defence of its members to one increasingly concerned with collective security for Europe as a whole. This transition is well underway. Indeed, apart from maintaining a deterrent capability during the Cold War, the only military operations NATO has conducted, qua NATO, since 1949 have been air strikes in support of the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia in 1992-1995 and its own peacekeeping operations (IFOR and SFOR) in Bosnia since January 1996.

Specifics Issues Proponents of NATO enlargement do not claim that taking in new members will be trouble free. The NATO summit in Madrid, on 7-8 July 1997, resolved differences about who should be in the first tranche of new members, but differences remain about the extent to which the door remains open for those who are left out; about how to reassure those not in the first round and for those unlikely ever to be members; about the extent to which NATO and EU enlargement should run in tandem and how the Western European Union (WEU) fits into the future European security framework; as well as about enlarge-ment costs and how those costs will be shared. Who should be in the first tranche? NATO did not published a specific list of criteria for membership, but let it be known that an enlarged alliance must preserve an effective integrated military structure, and so would not take in states that could not quickly meet NATO standards of equipment and training. NATO launched its Partnership for Peace (PfP) in late 1993 both to prepare aspiring states for alliance membership and for cooperation in combined joint task forces (such as the IFOR and SFOR operations eventually deployed in Bosnia). After three years. PfP showed that some states were obviously more ready for membership than others in terms of military capability and inter-operability. Political criteria were also important. NATO allies must be stable democracies, which ruled out Slovakia, once considered a likely early candidate. New allies must also be well on the road to a market economy, which ruled out Bulgaria. Allies must also respect human rights which, for most northern NATO members, ruled out Romania. Most important of all, new allies must have sorted out any border or minority disputes amicably, which ruled out all the former Yugoslav states except perhaps Slovenia. At the NATO ministerial meeting in Sintra, Portugal in late May, 1997, the 16 were not yet in full agreement about which states would be invited to join at the NATO summit in Madrid in July. The United States favored only three states in the first round: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright emphasised that limiting the first new intake to three would help get the enlargement decision through a Congress, already worried about extra costs. At the time, the only other allies that supported such a limit on the initial intake appeared to be Norway, Iceland and Denmark: Britain supported early entry also for Slovenia, and Germany supported the applications of both Slovenia and Romania in addition to the three states favored by Washington, as did Canada, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg. Spain, and the Netherlands seemed undecided beyond the three on whom everyone agreed. (24) Statements in Washington in early June by George Robertson, Minister of Defence in the new Labor government, confirmed that Britain favored full membership for Poland, the Czech Reublic and Hungary, with some sympathy also for allowing Slovenia in (as Italy urged) but less for Romania (as pressed by France). Robertson said that while absorbing Slovenia "would not disturb" NATO excessively, Romanian "might be too much to swallow." (25) In early May there was speculation in the MoD that Russia might prefer a first tranche of five new NATO members than of three, as that might satisfy the proponents of enlargement long enough to give Moscow time to mount an effective campaign against any further new members, and especially to block NATO membership for the Baltic states. Taking in only three in the first round on the other hand would suggest to Russia an open-ended process with one or two new members each year. Senior officials in the FCO during the Tory years, articulated a preference for a single enlargement consistent with a Russian damage-limiting exercise, but the current Labour leadership is more likely to support the open door policy adopted by both Bonn and Washington. This would be consistent with the gradual transformation of NATO from an organisation devoted narrowly to collective defence into an organisation geared more for collective security. Until that transformation is complete, however, the new government seems to agree with the old in that there should be no second class NATO members. As Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in Sintra, NATO must not admit any new members whose security cannot be guaranteed by the other allies, or whose own military cannot be brought up quickly to NATO standards. (26) In earlier British discussions about new NATO members, Hungary was considered a doubtful first tranche entrant because there was no land bridge to other NATO countries. British support for Slovenia was primarily to provide such a bridge. With respect to Romania, most British policy makers judged that neither the state of its military forces nor its human rights record were up to western standards. Some suggested that significant improvements in tolerance for minority rights since the last election justified taking Romania into NATO soon, but only isolated voices supported membership in the first round. (27) France pressed Romania's case, ostensibly to strengthen the southern flank of NATO. But as British officials pointed out at the Madrid summit in July, French support for Romania was more rhetorical than practical. Even though Britain did not support NATO membership for Romania at the Madrid summit, it has a far more impressive bilateral defense arrangement with Romania than France does, and offers far more practical support in terms of upgrading Romania's military capability. (28) Hungary lobbied for Romania, on the grounds that to take in Hungary and leave Romania out might under-mine recent improvements in Hungarian- Romanian relations. For the north Americans and the northern Europeans, however, to take in Romania and leave out the three Baltic states that met NATO criteria much better was difficult to justify. (29) As is known, in the end the U.S. view prevailed, and only Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were invited to join the alliance. All five states that were left out were given equal encouragement for the next round because the northern group insisted that the three Baltic states be mentioned along with Romania and Slovenia as having made substantial progress towards meeting NATO standards. Objective criteria did not count as much as having a powerful sponsor among the major NATO powers. German support for Poland is what made the difference between the Poland and the Baltic states, not which of them best met NATO criteria. Denmark's strong support for early membership for the Baltic states was not enough to overcome the fact that President Clinton and Chancellor Kohl had assured Yeltsin that the Balts will not enter NATO in the first round. Though it must be noted that after the Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Helsinki in late March, German defense minister, Volke Ruhe, espressed support for NATO membership for the Baltic states. This helped to counter the widespread impression in Baltic capitols that both the US and Germany were willing to sacrifice Baltic interests to placate the Russian bear.

What About Those Left Out? Russia Unlike the United States, when govern-ments change in Britain senior civil servants remain in post so there are few abrupt changes in policy, especially not in foreign and defence policy. This has its disadvantages, but one major advantage is a long institutional memory. That Russian foreign minister Evgeny Primakov opposed NATO enlargement came as no surprise in London: clearly, Primakov has not undergone any major transformation since he served in the Soviet government of Leonid Brezhnev and explained to the West why it was necessary for the Soviet army to invade Afghanistan. Primakov may be more of a known quantity than Andrei Kozyrev was during the early Yeltsin years, but in London he is seen very much in the mold of the ancien regime, wedded to Soviet values and deeply anti-western. (30) British Foreign and Defence ministry officials take a similarly hard nosed attitude to Russia's tactic of what Edwina Moreton of The Economist calls the "pre-emptive sulk." British officials feel they have been through this all before with Mikkhail Gorbachev's sulks about German unification and the result will likely be the same. They recall in 1990 the initial Soviet position was no German unifica-tion under any circumstances, then unification would be acceptable as long as a united Germany remained outside NATO, then eventually Gorbachev acquiesced in a united Germany inside NATO. Despite the coolness between John Major and Bill Clinton, British and American officials worked closely together in the early 1990s to put together a package that would make NATO enlargement more palatable to the Kremlin. In early March 1995, Russia issued seven conditions under which NATO enlargement would be acceptable. (31) Six of these were easy to meet: no forward based nuclear weapons, no forward based troops from the NATO 16, no new members before the Russian elections in late 1995, no permanent exclusion of Russia from NATO, revision of the CFE Treaty to meet the new post-Cold War circumstances, and no NATO exercises on former Soviet controlled territory without prior consultation (required by the CSCE/OSCE CSBM regime in any case). (32) Only the seventh condition was unacceptable, namely that new allies must remain outside the integrated military command (like France). After Primakov replaced Kozyrev, another condition was added: that there be no new NATO infrastructure on former Warsaw Pact territory. NATO sought to meet Primakov's concerns by making the building or improve-ment of any infrastructure on the territory of new allies as transparent as possible. To this end, NATO tabled a Transparency Measure on Infrastructure at the Vienna Forum for Security Cooperation on 16 April 1997. (33) The package which Clinton took to his meeting with Yeltsin in Helsinki in March 1997 included closer ties between Russia and the G-7 industrial countries, repeated earlier reassurances that NATO had no plans to forward base either nuclear weapons or troops in the new member states, and confirmed earlier offers to renegotiate the CFE Treaty. Clinton also proposed a new relationship between NATO and Russia, in the form of the Founding Act which was later signed in Paris on 27 May. NATO's proposals to adapt the CFE Treaty were first offered to Russia in Moscow by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in early February 1997. The package included NATO's offer to move from group to national ceilings and to make substantial cuts in its Treaty Limited Equipment (TLE) as it took in new members. This implied that the military capability of an enlarged NATO-at least in the five categories of heavy equipment limited by CFE-would not present any greater challenge to Russia and the CIS states than did the NATO of 16. The other important condition Russia laid down in 1995 was not to be permanently excluded from NATO. In the short term, taking Russia into NATO is difficult to imagine, but most British policy makers believe that should Russia ever meet the criteria for membership in NATO in terms of a pluralistic democracy, respect for the rule of law and strict civilian control over the military, the door should remain open to her also. Germany's defense minister Volke Ruhe stated unambiguously that Russia could never be a NATO member, and some strategists in Britain concurred if only on the grounds that NATO could not guarantee Russian security in the event of a Chinese attack. The official British position, however, is to keep the door open. By "never saying never" British policy makers believe that NATO is in a stronger position to allow in other new members who meet the admittedly difficult to nail down criteria. Some British economists, optimistic about long term prospects for the Russian economy, suggest an explicit policy of bringing Russia in soon on the grounds that we should treat Russia now as we treated Germany after the second world war not as we did in 1918. (35) This is consistent with the opponents of enlargement who fear that excluding Russia will produce a Versailles complex in the Kremlin similar to that suffered by Weimar Germany and with with similarly disastrous results. (36) Russian membership in NATO is currently opposed, however, by those in Britain who believe it a mistake to give Russia any encouragement to create a sphere of Russian influence in the heart of the continent. (37) Ukraine British policy makers believe it important to maintain Ukraine as an indep-endent state, but would not go so far as to suggest full NATO membership for fear of provoking a negative Russian reaction. They believe the best model for NATO policy towards Ukraine is western policy towards Finland during the Cold War: i.e. support for independence without upsetting Russia. Britain thus supports the NATO-Ukraine partnership charter established on July 9 1997 at the Madrid summit, in which NATO pledges support for Ukrainian sovereignty and frontiers. President Leonid Kuchma acknow-ledged the importance of the charter to Ukraine especially in the aftermath of recent Russian warnings against NATO accepting any former Soviet republics as members. (38) Britain also supports an expanded PfP program for Ukraine as well as generous economic aid and technical assistance to make Ukraine less dependent on Russian energy supplies and to clean up Ukraine's nuclear power plants. These concilitary efforts paid off early in 1997 when Ukraine withdrew its former opposition to NATO enlargement, now no longer seen as threatening. (39) In the package of proposals to adapt CFE, Britain also urged the inclusion of Ukraine in a zone (that also included the Visegrad states) where Treaty Limited Equip-ment (TLE) should be frozen, thereby not only precluding numerical increases in NATO equipment in the new NATO countries, but also precluding deployment of Russian equip-ment in Ukraine. This was an important precaution because Russia had pressured smaller former Soviet republics (e.g. Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova) into accepting its excess equipment as a way of evading CFE limits in the Flank Zone. The Baltic States Despite meeting NATO criteria as well as the three who were invited at the Madrid summit in July, the Balts suffer the geographical burden of shared borders with Russia and the historical burden of Soviet occupation during the Cold War. (40) This left substantial Russian minorities in the Baltic states which makes membership of NATO especially difficult for Russia to accept. An additional geostrategic problem is that taking in Lithuania (as well as Poland) would effectively enclose the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad inside NATO territory, much as West Berlin was surrounded by Warsaw Pact territory during the Cold War. In the last days of the first Clinton Administration, Secretary of Defence William Perry bluntly told the Balts they would not be in the first tranche of new members. Since then, however, officials in the second Clinton Administration have assured all three Baltic states that the door remains open. At the Helsinki Summit in March 1997, and again at the subsequent signing of the Foundation Act in late May, Clinton insisted that NATO was open to all independent European states, including the three Baltic states. Clinton reminded Yeltsin that the rights of all states to join the alliance of their choice are enshrined in numerous CSCE and OSCE documents as well as in the Founding Act itself. For his part, however, Yeltsin told the Duma that he would cease to acquiesce in NATO enlargement if the Baltics were allowed to join the alliance. In the meantime Britain and the Nordic states are bolstering the confidence of the Balts by offering different kinds of military assistance and training via PfP, especially the training of a Baltic peacekeeping battalion (BALTAP) which serves with SFOR in Bosnia. British military advisers have also urged the Balts to consider rejoining the CFE regime from which the US and the Soviet Union excluded them in October 1991. At that time Lynn Hansen, the US CFE negotiator, believed excluding the Balts facilitated ratification of CFE by the Soviet Union, whose military complained that Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had given away too much to NATO. Nevertheless excluding Balts from the CFE regime was not in their interest, as was amply demonstrated in 1995-1996 when the US acquiesced to Russian violations of CFE at the expense of Baltic interests. (41) All three Baltic states have signed EU Association Agreements and are on track for full membership in the EU, though not all at the same pace. In June 1997, some British economists suggested that at least one of the Baltic states, Estonia, should be given a leg up into the EU not least to demonstrate that western doors are genuinely open to all the Balts. (42) Other EU members agreed, and in late July Estonia was the only Baltic state to qualify for the next tranche of EU membership along with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. Singling out Estonia was not well received in Latvia and Lithuania, however. Egged on by north American advisers (for the most part ignorant of EU structures and procedures) the Lithuanian prime minister Gediminas Vagnorius complained that the EU Commission had excluded Lithuania for ideological reasons, namely that the "EU still regards us as within the Russian sphere of influence." (43) In the annual Alastair Buchan lecture at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London in March 1996, then-recently retired British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd suggested that the the neutral Nordic countries might offer some kind of soft security guarantees to the Baltic states in lieu of NATO membership, on the grounds that the neutrals had had something a free ride throughout the Cold War. This suggestion did not go down at all well in Sweden or Finland. Nevertheless, maintaining close relations with their Nordic EU neighbors is not a bad interim security model for the Baltic states, at least as long as Finland and Sweden remain outside NATO. The States of Former Yugoslavia The new British government was sympathetic to early entry into NATO for Slovenia, but not so supportive as to counter the strong U.S. desire to limit the first NATO intake to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. There is no sympathy in London, however, for any other Balkan state to join either NATO or the EU in the near term, especially as it is widely recognised that relaxing western standards by taking undemocratic Slovakia, Croatia and Russia into the Council of Europe was a mistake. Though far from meeting the criteria for NATO membership, the states of Former Yugoslavia (FYU) nevertheless benefited from a number of NATO programs in the aftermath of the Dayton- Paris peace agreement signed in December 1995. In Bosnia NATO deployed an IFOR for calendar year 1996, followed by a SFOR scheduled to remain until June 1998. In the debate about what should follow SFOR, some have suggested that if the NATO mandate is not renewed, and the Europeans cannot put a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) together, the best hope for stability in the FYU states would be a special Partnership for Peace (PfP) program that would provide a "virtual" NATO presence. (44) As well as separating the warring parties, stabilizing the inter-entity border line (IEBL) and supervising the exchange of prisoners, IFOR and SFOR also helped to monitor the arms control arrangements that stemmed from the Dayton agreement: the confidence and security building measures agreed in January 1996 and the sub regional arms control agreement (for Croatia, Serbia as well as Bosnia) agreed in June. This latter, modelled on the CFE Treaty signed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact in November 1990 could eventually bring the FYU states into a pan European CFE regime. (45)

Parallel Dual Enlargements? A common misunderstanding in the United States (encouraged by Russian opponents to enlargement) is that opening up NATO to central Europeans is a way of making Americans pay for west European parsimony in not taking central Europeans into the EU, which would generate peace, prosperity and stability without upsetting Russia. Central Europeans themselves, however, do not see NATO and the EU as alternatives, but as the two main pillars of the western security community of which they want to be a part. All the central European applicants to NATO have already signed association agreements with the EU and are on track for membership. American sceptics point out that Turkey has been in that status since 1963 so the entry process is obviously too lengthy. Turkey is a special case, however, because of its dubious human rights record. More relevant for the central Europeans is to remember than even advanced democracies and market economies like Sweden took five years, after initial acceptance in principle, to make the necessary adjustments to qualify for membership. Nevertheless, there is a debate within the EU about how quickly to absorb new members. Many northern Europeans are increasingly impatient with the navel- gazing in the European Commission on issues like the European Monetary Union (EMU), and the foot-dragging on enlarge-ment among Mediterranean countries who fear that new members from the east will reduce their current generous subsidies. All British political parties (except the extreme Europhobes in the now defunct Referendum Party) are more enthusiastic about EU enlargement than their continental partners, because they believe that widening rather than deepening will make the EU less supranational and more intergovernmental. Finland and Sweden, two of the EU's newest members, are of like mind. In Germany, Christoph Bertram has urged some form of partial membership for central Europeans who do not yet meet all the criteria, but are obviously well on the way to that goal. Bertram wants flexibility to allow membership in some parts of the EU structure and not others, and the possibility of long transition periods. (46) In the same vein, the Danish government urged a special fast track for the Baltic states. Britain tends to agree with the Danish position, but also stresses that internal changes must be made to the EU before even Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic can join, notably adjust-ments if not outright abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Britons across the political spectrum have long wanted to scrap the CAP as they resent paying heavy subsidies to inefficient farmers on the continent, especially in France and Germany. Both French and German politicians resist changes to the CAP, however, which belies their claims of welcoming the central Europeans into the EU. (47)

WEU Enlargement: Substitute for NATO Enlargement? The Western European Union (WEU) dates from the anti-German Brussels Treaty of 1948. When the Federal Republic of Germany joined in 1954, the WEU was the agency that controlled the rearmament of Germany and Italy and was thus unpopular in both Bonn and Rome. Until 1973, when Britain joined the EC, WEU served as an important link for British ministers with their continental partners. For the next decade WEU was virtually moribund, but in the mid-1980s, France and Britain revived WEU in response to the eccentricities of the Reagan administration. In order to make the WEU a more suitable vehicle for a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) France proposed, and the others agreed, to rid the organisation of its anti-German overtones by cancelling the provisions restricting German armament. The Clinton administration, unlike its Republican predecessors, embraced the idea of an ESDI at the NATO summit meeting in January 1994 in the hopes of sharing some of NATO's defense burden with the Europeans. Consistent with a greater European role, in June 1996, NATO approved the concept of combined joint task forces both to allow non-NATO countries to participate in NATO missions (like IFOR and SFOR in Bosnia), and to permit the use of US-owned NATO assets in WEU-led operations in which US forces would not participate. British Governments, however, have never liked the ESDI concept nor accepted French ideas for a purely European defence. At the Amsterdam summit of EU leaders in July 1997, the new Labour government followed the same policy of the previous Tory government by their insistence that the WEU can only be the European pillar of NATO and (despite the language of the Maastricht Treaty establishing the EU) should not become the defense arm of the EU. Britain thus continues to oppose all suggestions (from Jonathan Dean, Paul Nitze, Jack Matlock and others in the United States) that WEU enlargement might serve as a substitute for NATO enlargement. (48) When NATO was preparing its Study on Enlargement, released in September 1995, Britain insisted on language that would preclude full WEU membership for EU countries that were not also NATO members. Although both Sweden and Finland are active participants in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, they both oppose a defence arm for the EU for fear of compromising their traditional neutrality. (49) A related reason to keep the EU separate from western defence forces is that EU enlargement so far has not appeared to upset the Russians, but might if the EU developed a defence identity. Assessing and Sharing the Financial Costs Opponents of enlargement tend to exaggerate, and proponents to minimise, the likely costs of enlargement. The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), which openly supports and lobbies for the Russian position against enlargement, put the British contribution towards enlarge-ment costs at 200 million pounds per annum, a figure immediately denied by NATO sources in Brussels who said the costs were still being worked out. (50) Proponents who want to make enlargement more palatable to Russia obviously keep the cost estimates on the low side, especially after Russia expressed concern about NATO infrastructure appearing on the territory of new allies. When Primakov visited London in the spring of 1997, then foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind pointed out the very low percentage (0.3%) of its budget that NATO spent on infrastructure and assured Primakov it was not likely to increase much to cover new members. (51) In the United States, the Congres-sional Budget Office (CBO), Rand and the Department of Defense have presented three different cost estimates. (52) In reviewing all three for the Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO) endorsed the DOD figure (the lowest estimate, which assumes no serious threat to NATO without several years warning ) of $27-35 billion over 13 years of which Canada and the Europeans would contribute $12.5-15.5 billion and the United States 14.5-29.5 billion. The British share of the European costs has been estimated at $3.2-4.02. At this writing, there are still no official NATO estimates. (53) None of the current 16 NATO allies are planning to raise their defense budgets to pay for enlargement. (54) Insofar as any of them contribute to the upgrading of central European infrastructure or force improve-ments it will have to be from a reordering of budget priorities. German officials usually claim that enlargement need not cost anything extra, and are very firm that in any case Germany has no spare funds given the recent drain on its budget caused by German unification and coping with several hundred thousand refuugees from former Yugoslavia. France, despite pressing for extra entrants at the Madrid summit in July, also asserted that she would not contribute to enlargement costs. In Britain, the Labour government made no such pronouncement, but the new Labour Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is unlikely to sanction any increases in the defence budget. The three central European countries already invited to join NATO have, however, increased their own defense budgets. The governments of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic justify the extra spending on the grounds that they must upgrade their military structures in any case and it will cost less to modernise inside NATO than as independent neutral countries. Both proponents and opponents of enlargement in Britain fear that U.S. defence contractors may pressure the new allies to buy sophisticated equipment beyond their needs. Europeans are alarmed by the Clinton administration's hard sell of advanced military equipment to Latin America after a 20 year ban on sellling U.S. weapons to that region, and want to protect their European partners from a similar onslaught. Several British experts even suggest that the central Europeans could continue to buy their defence equipment from Russia, especially as Germany seems well satisfied with the Russian equipment it inherited from its five eastern Lander. (55) British Views on the U.S. Debate British proponents of enlargement are nervous about the US debate for a number of reasons. The most worrying aspect is whether President Clinton will put in the necessary effort with the Congress especially when, at the same time, he will have to make the case to extend the mandate of NATO forces in Bosnia. One effect of pressing both issues at once is that Congress is likely to insist on Europe carrying a greater share of the NATO burden, both in Bosnia and in covering any costs incurred by enlargement. A striking difference in the debates on both sides of the Atlantic is the greater emphasis that US opponents to enlarge-ment place on the risks that Russia may respond by refusing to ratify, or to violate, nuclear arms control agreements. Europeans of course share American concern about the importance of nuclear arms control and alarm about the poor Russian stewardship of their nuclear assets, but do not make the close connection with NATO enlargement. If the United States wants to encourage more responsible Russian nuclear policies, it should offer incentives by reducing its own nuclear arsenal, not by sacrificing the security of central Europeans by denying them NATO membership. The most alarming aspect of the US debate for Europeans is the prospect that isolationists might prevail in the Congress, as they did in the 1920s when they refused to ratify the League of Nations. Even Europeans who are sceptical of the benefits of taking on new NATO allies believe that U.S. rejection of enlargement would be the worst of all possible worlds for NATO. It would leave the alliance in profound disarray, destroy European confidence in the United States, and undermine the democratization process in central and eastern Europe. The consequences would be dire not only for the future of Atlantic security, but for all aspects of transatlantic political and economic relations. (56) The letter sent to President Clinton in late June by 50 American opponents of enlargement, spearheaded by Susan Eisenhower, who is married to a former Soviet official, seems to most Europeans the height of irrespon-sibility. (57) Proponents and sceptics of enlargement agree on the need to avoid further humiliation of Russia, but not at the expense of the fundamental right of Europeans to join the alliance of their choice. End Notes Tom Dodd, NATO Enlargement, Research Paper 97/51, House of Commons, May 8, 1997. A House of Commons Select Committe Report in 1995 recommended a "make haste slowly" approach to enlargement. When the United States ceased to cooperate with other NATO allies on implementing the arms embargo in late 1994, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd complained that Anglo-American relations were at their worst point since the Suez crisis in 1956. See Philip Stevens and George Graham, "UK fears NATO split over Bosnia," The Financial Times, November 19, 1994. As one US official at NATO HeadQuarters in Brussels observed, Britain is the only NATO European country with experience of both senior NATO command and force projection capability. In Operation Tango, British Special Air Forces (SAS) arrested Milan Kovacevic in Prijedor on 10 July 1997, and they shot Simo Drljaca who resisted arrest. This argument is developed further in Jane M.O. Sharp, editor, About Turn, Forward March With Europe: New Directions for (British) Defence and Security Policy (London, 1996). Reuters, "Army units to train in Poland", Financial Times, 29 September 1995. Author's notes of Ambassador Kerr's lunchtime speech at the US-Crest conference on NATO enlargement, Washington D.C.. January 13 1997. See Michael Howard's letter on "NATO expansion," International Herald Tribune, 15 January 1997, which voices fears that NATO will expand without taking the necessary military measures to guarantee the security of new members, as was the case with British guarantees to Poland in the 1930s. For a British Foreign Office view of how NATO has changed see Roland Smith, "Changing NATO," NATO Review, May-June 1997, pp. 7-11. Elizabeth Young, "NATO marches east into a great blunder," The Independent, 11 February 1997 Jordana D. Friedman, "NATO not a job plan," International Herald Tribune, July 8 1997. Jane Perlez, "IMF is urging Romania shelves copter deal," New York Times, 13 September 1997. Grigory Yavlinsky, "Shortsighted," New York Times Magazine, 8 June 1997. Lilla Shevstova, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow made this argument at Hampshire College on 11 June 1997. Roderic Braithwaite, "Dangers of current moves toward NATO enlargement," letter to The Times, dated 12 February, 1997. Roderic Braithwaite, "Bringing Russia In," Prospect, June 1997, pp.34-3 Christopher Bellamy, "Building a cage around the Russian bear," Independent, 13 March 1997. Margot Light, "Expanding insecurity," War Report, June-July 1997, p. 22: Neil Malcolm, "Doing business with the foremer Soviet Union," in J. Sharp ed., About Turn, op. cit. John Lloyd, Anatomy of Russia (London, 1997). See also his "Dangerous sulk of the wounded bear," The Observer, 2 February 1997. M. McGwire, NATO Expansion and European Security (London, January 1997). Geoffrey Hoskins, People and Empire, (Cam-bridge, 1997). On the dangers of a new Yalta, see "Eye to eye," The Economist, 15 March 1997, p. 18. Jane M.O.Sharp, "Reassuring central Europe" in About Turn, op cit. Jonathan Eyal, "Bigger means more secure," The Guardian 19 February, 1997; Neal Ascherson, Independent on Sunday, 23 March 1997. Steven, Lee Myers, "US now at odds with NATO allies on new members," New York Times, 30 May 1997. Other reports have slightly different head counts. See Peter Wise, "NATO divisions emerge over new member states," Financial Times, 30 May 1997; and Reuters, "US, other members differ on number of NATO admissions," Boston Globe, 30 May 1997. Robertson cited by Bruce Clarke, "UK will press Ruhe on Fighter," Financial Times, 4 June 1997. Cook cited by Peter Wise in Financial Times, 30 May 1997. Jonathan Eyal, "Bigger means more secure," Guardian, 19 February 1997. Christopher Bellamy and Elizabeth Nash, "NATO emmbraces Eastern partners in biggest step for half a century," The Independent, July 9, 1997. "Five into NATO won't go," The Economist. 5 April 1997. Author interviews MoD and FCO Charles Goldsmith, "Russia indicates terms to accept larger NATO," Wall Street Journal (Europe), March 13 1995. In December 1996, NATO Defense Ministers issued a statement that NATO has "no intention, no plans and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new allies." In December 1996 NATO Defense Ministers issued a statement that NATO has no intention, no plans and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new allies. Institute for Defense and Disarmement, The Arms Control Reporter 1997, pp. 402-B 357-358. The text of the Founding Act signed in Paris on May 27 1997 is reeprinted in The Arms Control Reporter (1997), pp.402.D.119-127. The Basic Elements for Adaptation of the CFE Treaty, agreed on 27 February, are reprinted in The Arms Control Reporter, pp,407.D. pp.105-107. Sarah Walkling, "NATO presents limited proposal for adaptation of CFE Treaty," Arms Control Today, March 1997. Richard Layard, "Russia in NATO as a long term prospect," letter to the editor, Financial Times, 25 February 1997 MccGwire, op. cit., p. 62. Jonathan Eyal, "No NATO seat for Russia or Japan," Financial Times, 4 March 1997. Kuchma cited by John Vinocur, "NATO embraces Ukraine as Partner," International Herald Tribune, July 10 1997. Joseph Fitchett, "Nato expansion wins Ukrainian endorsement," International Herald Tribune, 26 February 1997. Neither Britain nor the United States recognized the three Baltic states as Soviet republics. Jane M.O. Sharp "CFE and the Baltic Rim States," in Baltic Year Book (1997). Estonia is making a particularly strong case for early entry into the EU. See John Thornhill, "Estonia yearns to return to European fold," Financial Times, 5 June 1997. Vagnorius is cited by Greg McIvor, "Lithuania's PM hits at Brussels over entry talk," Financial Times, 10 September 1997. Charles Barry, in Sharp, editor, Implementing Dayton (Cambridge Studies in International Security, forthcoming). Jane M.O.Sharp, Brasseys 1997 Defence Year Book. Christoph Bertram, "An EU strategy for accession," Challenge Europe (January 1997), p. 2.. Michael Smith, "Bonn attacks unnecessary CAP reforms," Financial Times, September 9 1997; see also Lionel Barber, "Europe'd Myopia," Financial Times, September 117 1997. R.T.Davis, "Should NATO grow?" New York Review of Books, 21 September 1995. That Swedish and Finnish intelligence and security services have long since given up any pretence of neutrality between east and west is not widely realised by public opinion in these countries. David Fairhall, "Very enlarged NATO bill", Guardian, 12 March 1997. Ian Black, "NATO expansion talks make slow progress as reluctant Russia digs in its heels," Guardian, 1 March 1997. All three estimates assumed four new NATO allies, and estimated costs to the whole alliance through 2010: CBO: $125 billion; RAND: $ 42 billion; White House: $28-34 billion. Richard Kugler, "Will enlargement succeed?", paper presented at the First Canadian Symposium on NATO, Montreal, 26-27 March 1997. General Accounting Office, "NATO Enlarge-ment: cost estimates developed to date are notional," Report to Congressional Requesters, August 1997, GAO/NSIAD-97-209. Philip Gordon, "Will anyone pay to enlarge NATO- and if so, who?" International Herald Tribune, 30 April 1997. Julian Cooper made this suggestion at the strategic defence review seminar organised by the British Ministry of Defence in Coventry on July 11 1997. On German satisfaction with its Mig 29s, see, Joseph Fitchett, "Aboard MIG-29, a glimpse into the other side," International Herald Tribune, August 22 1997. Ian Davidson, "A protest too late," Financial Times, July 9,1997 The June 26 1997 letter to President Clinton opposing NATO enlargement is reprinted in The Arms Control Reporter, 1997.