East European insecurity
After the disarray over Bosnia, the national security crowd in Washington seems to be seized with the question of how to save NATO. They should instead be asking how to ease the insecurity in Eastern Europe and Russia.
To do so, they need to be clear about the wellsprings of that insecurity. The newly freed nations need political and economic reassurance, not military alliance, and a helping hand to bring them into the community of democratic nations.
The worry is that America is not up to the job, especially now that the Republicans have taken control of Congress. Some in the Grand Old Party, like Sen. Jesse Helms, seem to regard any help to transform Eastern Europe and Russia a waste of time and money. The hope is that leaders of broader vision like Senators Robert Dole and Richard Lugar will sense the opportunity and sustain the effort.
Offering NATO membership and security guarantees to Poles, Czechs and Hungarians is tangential to meeting their felt needs. It is also sure to alienate those who are excluded, especially Russia, where a nationalist reaction could topple Boris Yeltsin and the reformers thereby increasing Eastern Europe's insecurity. Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev underscored that point last Thursday by holding up the start of his country's cooperation under NATO's Partnership for Peace.
Left intact, it can provide military insurance in case things go wrong in Russia. It can also help promote change by reaching out to ex-Warsaw Pact armies, including Russia's, promoting democratic control of the military and facilitating military conversion to peaceful pursuits. Yet NATO alone cannot meet Eastern Europe's needs. Other institutions can -- if they are strengthened.
Universities, foundations and other non-governmental organizations need to sustain support for democracy and the free institutions that nurture it. Private-public partnerships can encourage everything from stocking libraries and housing military retirees to funding scientific research by former bomb-builders.
The European Union has yet to lay out a strategy for bringing the East into a European-wide market. It can move a lot more quickly than it has to lower agricultural and other trade barriers. It also can construct road and rail corridors to link the East and West and invest in projects to reverse environmental degradation. Washington also needs to be involved.
The Helsinki accords give the 53-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) in Europe a leading role in preventing ethnic conflict and protecting human rights.
The CSCE can also provide political legitimacy to efforts at peacekeeping in the region. Yet Washington has looked upon the CSCE as a rival to NATO and tried to constrain it.
The thickening web of ties with the West can help reassure anxious Eastern Europeans, including Russia, that they will not be left out if they want in.
At the same time, the West would be right to insist that the political and economic standards it sets for cooperation are met by countries seeking assistance and closer ties.
The new Republican majority has a chance to help transform the East. But it will not succeed if it focuses on expanding NATO and does not try to meet the East's political and economic needs -- ease its ethnic frictions.
-- The New York Times