Tinkering with Europe

The Clinton administration is barreling toward an eastward expansion of NATO by the end of the decade, without adequate discussion with the American people and Congress. Though the issue seems remote and abstract to many citizens, and tends to come larded with the highfalutin terminology of the foreign- policy priesthood, it is exceedingly important. NATO expansion would involve a crucial political and military realignment of Europe, the continent still most directly linked to the national security of the United States. The consequences are likely to be great and unpredictable.

Propelled by American leadership, NATO this week essentially committed itself to expansion. President Clinton and leaders of the other NATO members will meet next July in Madrid, Spain to issue an invitation to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, plus possibly one or two other Central European countries. But that is now a formality. The White House hopes enlargement can be consummated by 1999, the 50th anniversary of the alliance.

NATO expansion, among other things, would commit American conventional and nuclear forces to the defense of newly independent European nations and require the costly modernization of their armed services. It would also move the alliance's boundaries considerably closer to Russia, a step sure to strengthen nationalists and communists in an insecure country still traumatized by two German invasions this century.

Fortunately, as part of an international treaty, none of this can happen without the approval of a two-thirds majority in the Senate, as well as the endorsement of the parliaments of the alliance's 15 European members. There is still time for Americans and their representatives in Congress to consider the implications of NATO expansion and to slow the stampede until the potential consequences can be more carefully assessed and the need for enlargement more clearly demonstrated.

The administration has dressed up its plans with rhetoric about consolidating democracy and free markets in the lands of the former Soviet empire, but it has yet to make a good case why a Cold-War military alliance, rather than the European Union, is the best way to secure those aims.

The more credible case for expansion rests on more practical principles, namely maintaining a strong American leadership role in Europe and preserving an alliance that could defend against an aggressive and militarily resurgent Russia in the future. The Russian threat, still painfully familiar in Eastern Europe, is the visceral and understandable reason countries like Poland and Hungary seek sanctuary in NATO.

But planning the future of Europe with the blueprints from the Cold War is a mistake. With a shattered, impoverished military and faltering economy, Russia presents no military threat to its neighbors now and will not for years to come. The prospect of NATO expansion, if anything, is likely to push Moscow toward precisely the kind of rearmament the West fears. Diverting money and resources back to defense is just what the Russian economy does not need as it struggles to shake off decades of deadening communist management.

By anchoring NATO expansion on the needs of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as important as those countries are, the administration has obscured the most important issue for European peace and prosperity. That issue is the consolidation of reform in Russia. The timing, shape and even need for NATO expansion should be determined by how much it helps or hinders Russia's reform. Washington has not given nearly enough attention to that question.

Responsible Russian leaders, anxious to avoid the potentially destructive domestic consequences of NATO expansion, are now talking less about trying to block enlargement than modifying it in ways that do not upset the political and economic balance in Russia. Yevgeny Primakov, the Russian foreign minister, told his NATO counterparts this week that Moscow, for starters, wants guarantees that NATO nuclear forces will not be stationed in Eastern Europe and assurance that Russia will have a working partnership with the alliance.

These overtures, which the administration welcomed, will require careful study and hard negotiation. They are just the kinds of issues Americans should be weighing in the months ahead. The debate should not be driven by artificial deadlines and a manufactured sense of urgency. Tinkering with the balance of power on a continent that has been the site of so much conflict and violence should be done with great caution and a strong sense of humility.

-- The New York Times