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This paper, prepared by Filiz Cekic and Christopher Wrigley, was completed before the outbreak of the Serbian war. © March 1999 Contents Introduction | The Beginnings of NATO |
The Persistence of NATO |
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'We will do something terrible to you. We will take your enemy away'. This perceptive warning to the West was made by one of the senior aides to Mikhail Gorbachev. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the 'common threat' which provided the entire Cold War rationale of NATO, it might have been expected that the organisation would wither away. However, at the Madrid Summit of 8 July 1997 three of the Central-East European Countries (CEEC) – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – were invited to begin negotiations for NATO membership. They duly became full members on 12 March 1999, the sixteen current members having given their formal assent. It is intended that Slovenia and Romania will join them before long. Slovakia and Bulgaria are not considered to be ready for membership at present, but the long-term plan is clearly that all the former satellites in Central-East Europe should be incorporated into the Western alliance. It is not impossible, moreover, that former constituents of the USSR itself, the Baltic Republics and Ukraine, will eventually be included. The expansion has important implications for the arms trade, as will be seen later, but it also has wider significance for the security and political future of Britain and Europe. Yet, outside the military and foreign-policy elites there has been very little discussion of a development which is as momentous as it was unexpected. The House of Commons debate on the matter in April 1998 was broadly consensual, only the Labour MP Tam Dalyell declaring himself 'vehemently opposed', and the question was not put to a vote. It seems necessary therefore to try to set the decision in its political and historical context. Why does NATO continue to exist, let alone extend its membership and its responsibilities to the new democracies of the former Eastern Block? What interests do major Western powers have in preserving a military organisation which no longer has a common threat? Some clues to these riddles may be found in the origins of the alliance. |
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The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on 4 April 1949 by the United States, Canada and ten West European states. Article 5 represented a classic alliance commitment, whereby the parties agreed to assist one another in the case of an armed attack. The Organisation was built up later to make the commitment effective, and was made permanent in 1952. The initiative for the treaty had been taken by Ernest Bevin, Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, in 1948, following a series of less comprehensive Western defence arrangements. The objects, from the UK's point of view, were privately summarised by one of the architects as being 'to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in'. The last of these ends was really the means to the other two. Only the US could serve as counter to the present power of the Soviet Union and the more distant danger of German resurgence. After its victories in the Second World War the Soviet Union was obviously the strongest military power in Europe, especially as British and US forces were being rapidly demobilised; and certainly this was one of the considerations for the authors of the Treaty. However, it is now known that no Western leader perceived an immediate military threat to Western Europe, beyond the sphere that Stalin believed the wartime Yalta Agreement had conceded to him (Duffield, 1994). A more serious preoccupation, especially after the Prague coup of 1948, was the threat of internal revolution; in France and Italy there were powerful Communist movements, which might have been tempted to follow the Czech example. US economic as well as military power was invoked against this danger. For some years to come, only the US would be able to maintain the export surplus which was the only means to restructure the war-devastated economies of Western Europe, and so to buttress governments against popular discontent. 'Europe', it was claimed in February 1950, 'would have been Communistic if it had not been for the Marshall Plan' – the mechanism by which the surplus was funnelled into Europe. (Pijl, 1984, p.149). For its part, the interest of the United States in the stabilisation of Western Europe was primarily economic. In 1943 Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson had expressed the prevailing view, 'we cannot expect domestic prosperity under our system without a constantly expanding trade with other nations' (Pijl, p.9). The US government therefore took the initiative to construct an open world political economy. The Soviet sphere had to be excluded, but Western Europe, Japan and the Third World were all to be embraced. Along with the International Monetary Fund, the principal instrument of the post-war economic order was the Marshall Plan, which led Western Europe towards economic liberalisation and exchange convertibility, integrating both sides of the Atlantic and enabling US corporations to move capital on a large scale into Europe. Both for Western Europe and for the US NATO was originally the strategic complement of the Marshall Plan, locking the US into the defence of the European democracies and the West Europeans into the Atlantic economy. However, in the year or so following the signing of the Treaty two events in particular caused NATO to reassess Soviet intentions and to give the organisation a more definitely military character. These were the Soviet nuclear test in the late summer of 1949, much earlier than expected, and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, which signified Soviet influence in the Third World and the threat it posed to the periphery of the Western powers. The German threat was another concern for the victors of the Second World War (Duffield, 1994). However, the US fear was not that Germany would become a military danger but that it might gravitate into the orbit of the Soviet Union. As early as 1946, in a closed Senate discussion, the future US Secretary of State J.F.Dulles declared that 'Germany, if only its western half, would have to be fitted into the structure of Atlantic integration' (Pijl, p.145) – an aim which was finally achieved with its inclusion into NATO in 1955. German rearmament, unthinkable a few years earlier, was already deemed militarily expedient, and it was thought less likely to provoke unpleasant responses from Poland, Russia and France if it were carried out in the framework of the Alliance. Nevertheless there was marked disagreement over the tactics of dealing with Germany. The Americans and the British planned to influence Germany and the rest of western Europe through NATO, which envisaged the integration of both halves of the Atlantic economy on the US model. The French, who saw the increasing US influence in NATO and a rearmed Germany as threats to their independence, hoped to tie Germany down through economic means more suited to a European sphere-of-influence politics led by themselves. Hence the Schuman Plan of 1950, whereby 'Little Europe' (France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, the nucleus of the future European Community) would combine their iron, coal and steel industries. The Ruhr would then, in effect, be internationalised, thus destroying Germany's independent military capacity while giving France entry into the area's rich coal deposits. These two approaches would provide alternatives for European development for the next quarter of a century at least (LaFever, 1993). West German rearmament was accomplished by including Italy and the Federal Republic in the Brussels Treaty organisation, renamed Western European Union, which included the UK but not the US. But this concession to the European view was followed seven months later by West Germany's entry into NATO. |
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The themes and problems characteristic of NATO's early years did not disappear with the collapse of the USSR, which has had contrary effects on the great powers. On the one hand, it has removed the constraints upon the reassertion of rivalry among the Western states. On the other it has opened up a new territory for the expression of these rivalries in the now dismembered Eastern block and the southern parts of the former Soviet Union. There are two main dimensions of competition that are relevant to the question of NATO expansion: Europe's dislike of US world hegemony and tensions between the European powers themselves. With the end of the Cold War Germany emerged as the most important country in Europe. Its increasing domination of the EU, and its assertiveness over the Yugoslav crisis, accompanied by German reunification and the withdrawal of Soviet power from eastern Europe, confirmed latent British and French fears of German resurgence. If the European Union were extended to the CEECs, which were economically dependent on Germany, the emerging Deutschmark zone would dominate the continent. And what if Germany were to acquire nuclear weapons and follow a pro-Russian policy in the future? The Soviet Union might be defunct, but in 1990 and for some years thereafter Russia, with its continuing military capacity and its proximity to Europe, still appeared formidable. In the aftermath of the Cold War some countries, especially France and Germany, began to speak about a European Defence Identity or a European Security Organisation – a revival of the ideas that had led to the formation of the Western European Union. However, the Gulf and Bosnian crises and their management by the US made European powers aware of American military and technological superiority. West European states could organise humanitarian assistance, but high-grade 'power projection' – a concept designed for the management of 'disengaged' conflicts (Cornish, 1997) – would have to be borrowed from the US. In sum, the old formula still held sway: NATO was needed to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in (Mershemeir, 1992). As before, the US was willing, indeed anxious, to be kept in. It too still feared both Russian and German influence in Europe, which could endanger its long-term interests. Its need for an open world market required it to exercise a hegemonial role. Further, US leaders believed that they could keep their influence in Europe only if they retained the ability to project power into central Europe – the space between Germany and Russia – and after some hesitation they decided that the best way to do this was to incorporate the region into the structure of NATO. The survival and expansion of that organisation thus signified the return of power politics to Europe after the brief euphoria that followed the destruction of the Wall. |
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A number of attempts have been made to provide a valid explanation for NATO's post-cold-war role and its eastward expansion. One is that there is no alternative framework for European security. Other frameworks have, however, been proposed only to be rejected. The first response of NATO to the end of the Cold War was a declaration at the end of its London Conference in July 1990, after the dissolution of the Eastern block but before the break-up of the Soviet Union. It acknowledged that it would have to adapt to these changes. Politically there was stress on promoting 'stability', 'well-being' and 'cooperation among the allies.' Militarily, the Combined Joint Task Force was brought into the limelight, as a means of preventing the organisation from withering away and making it seem relevant to the new security needs of its members. Apocalyptic confrontation between the super-powers was to be replaced by the policing of the new, unstable configuration of central and east Europe by means of rapid crisis response by highly trained multi-national forces backed by pre-established political terms of reference, standardised procedures, regular exercises and in-place infrastructures. The declaration also welcomed the development of a 'European identity' in the security domain, but within NATO. A rather different emphasis was given to this idea in a statement issued by Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand in December 1990. They suggested that the WEU should evolve into a European Defence capability that could be folded into the European Community in 5-6 years time. The response from Washington was sharp: a letter was sent to all West European capitals warning against the development of a WEU caucus within NATO. A Pentagon defence planning document drawn up in 1992 and leaked to the New York Times indicated the priorities for the US in the post-Soviet world. The aim was to ensure that no rival for world leadership could emerge in western Europe, Asia or the former USSR. The US government meant to achieve the goal of preventing Japan or Germany from pursuing a course of arms build-up, especially the acquisition of nuclear weapons, by integrating them into a US-dominated system of security that would take account of their interests as well. The influence of Britain was exerted in the same direction. The UK was a founder-member of WEU, but saw it simply as an opportunity to shape the debate over West European security architecture. Its main concern was to ensure that Europe did not drift too far –geographically or conceptually – from the Atlantic. It had no room for the merger of WEU with the European Union that was preferred by Germany. Its final contribution was laid out in a Foreign Office paper of March 1996: 'any European cooperation [in defence] should be a matter for governments; there should be no role for the European Community, the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice. The object should be to complement, rather than rival, NATO, which was the bedrock of European security. (Cornish, 1997, p.43). The positions of France and Germany were ambiguous. The relations between France and NATO have been uncertain and occasionally strained since Charles de Gaulle withdrew from the military structure of the Alliance in order to pursue self-sufficiency and an independent foreign policy. With the end of the Cold War French elites saw an opportunity to construct 'a serious defence identity'. At the same time they were worried that a united Germany might want 'operational sovereignty', and sought new ways of applying constraint. There was, however, a contradiction between their preferred strategy for containing German power and the active role they proposed for the EC. They wanted an 'organic link' between the WEU and the EC and a European force distinct from that of NATO and capable of being used 'out of area' without NATO consent. (Keohane, 1994, pp.135-39). France has its own concerns and zones of interest outside Europe, especially in North Africa, and it tried to establish a 'southern dimension' to both NATO and EU strategy. Germany's inactivity during the Gulf crisis risked, in the French view, a paralysis of European policy, though it also reassured them about its neighbour's possible ambitions. A year later, however, Germany's active part in the break-up of Yugoslavia revived their fears. At that time the Community seemed to them to be very ineffective. As a result there were remarkable changes in France's approach to NATO, culminating in December 1995 in Herve de Charette's announcement of full participation in the Military Committee. Germany has shaped its security and defence policy around a set of conflicting ideological and practical imperatives. First, it positioned itself at the centre of European economic and political union; and in contrast to the British view Kohl saw this union in terms of foreign and military policy. Secondly, it maintained the close relationship with France that has persisted since the signing of the Elysee Treaty in 1963. Thirdly, it sought to maintain US commitment to European security. Each of these imperatives has pulled it in a different direction. In the autumn of 1991 the Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher proposed increased powers for the European Parliament and steps that would make WEU more like a defence agency of the EC. At the same time, though the USSR did not pose a serious threat to Germany's borders, the large Soviet arsenal and the risk of nuclear proliferation seemed potentially dangerous, and German leaders stressed that they did not feel comfortable with the sole protection of the French and British deterrents. The NATO umbrella was still seen as essential. At the same time again, Germany did not want the Soviet Union or Russia to be politically and economically isolated. Yet whenever it pressed for multilateral aid to the USSR and the new East European democracies it encountered resistance from the US, Britain and Japan. It also sought a strengthening of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, later OSCE) as a pan-European forum so that the Soviet Union could play a greater part in resolving common problems (Morgan, 1992, p.106). In this too, as we shall see, it was frustrated. In 1991, in the midst of these debates the Yugoslav crisis erupted. The EC offered its services as a broker, but at the beginning of July a crack appeared. The German government asked the community to consider accepting the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, whereas other EC members wanted at that time to maintain the integrity of Yugoslavia. By early August European efforts to mediate the conflict had failed. The French raised the possibility of using the WEU, but this was rejected by the Soviets. Brussels turned to the CSCE for support and peacekeeping auspices. But within a few short days of the December 1991 Maastricht summit Bonn announced that it would formally recognise Slovenia and Croatia. This set the scene for the secession of Bosnia from the Yugoslav Federation, and there ensued three years of siege and slaughter, ineffectually presided over by British, French and other UN contingents. It was this debacle that above all ensured the permanence of NATO. Its supporters were able to argue that 'Europe' – whether the EU, the WEU or the CSCE – had failed either to prevent the break-up of Yugoslavia or to manage the consequences, and that 'the one institution that ultimately did something about it was NATO' (Eyal, 1997). Back in October 1990 the NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner (formerly the German Defence Minister) had asserted that 'the European Community cannot replace NATO. It will take a long time before it can really establish a defence structure. And even then, are you really sure that the Europeans could, with their own forces alone, balance Soviet power?' (Keohane, p.345). There is in fact little doubt that 300 million wealthy, technically advanced West Europeans could have balanced Soviet power if they had chosen to do so, and even less doubt that they could face down any threat posed by a ruined Russia. Reliance on US protection, however, was and is a cheaper option. Even more important is the deep-seated belief, derived from two great wars, that Europe cannot manage its own affairs without help from beyond the Atlantic. It is in fact acknowledged that Russia is not a danger, and that even if a militant and aggressive government were to emerge there, it would be at least ten years before it could pose a military threat. As the Yugoslav crisis showed, the real dangers to European peace are internal. It was to deal with such threats that the Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) was set up and later developed into an Organisation (OSCE). This body differed from NATO, WEU and the European Community in that it included the Soviet Union, which turned to it for reassurance. It had been accepted by the US in return for Soviet acquiescence in a unified Germany. At the time of the collapse of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation in 1991 the Soviet Foreign Minister stressed the importance of new structures more appropriate than NATO for the post-Cold-War era. 'The institutions we are talking about are the products of one part of Europe, and one part of Europe believes in them, but for Europe to be united all those living on the continent, all countries and leaders, must be suffused with all-European ideas' (Keohane, p.91). It was through the CSCE that the Soviet leaders hoped to manage their withdrawal from Eastern Europe. The institution was supported even by conservatives such as Defence Minister Yazov as the best forum for cooperation in Europe. In fact it was the only institution in which the former Soviet Union could possibly have a say in the definition of rules and procedures. Without if, Russia will have no legitimate institutional role in post-Cold War Europe. One of the proposals made by Genscher in 1991 was that the objectives of the Alliance should be redefined so that it could establish formal consultative links with the Soviet Union's former satellites. This was combined with the idea of strengthening the CSCE as a pan-European forum in which the Soviet Union could play an increasing part. The first part of his plan came to fruition but not the second. In January 1994 the US initiated the Partnership for Peace, which offered the CEECs a kind of associate membership of NATO. On the other hand, nothing effective was done to develop the CSCE. Although NATO leaders seemed to accept this body as an institution to help to promote European security and political and economic liberalisation, they did not really believe that it could perform these tasks. They used it to bring the east European countries into their system without provoking the USSR, but then constantly undermined it so as to highlight NATO as the only organisation capable of providing European security. Despite the increase in membership, CSCE lacked a permanent headquarters until 1991. At the November 1990 Paris summit it was decided that it should be provided with permanent organs such as a Council of Ministers and a committee of senior officials. At the April 1991 meeting in Madrid 34 member countries decided to establish a 245-seat assembly and to provide it with a permanent secretariat based in Prague. But these organs were never supplied with adequate staff or money (Keohane, pp.347-48). The 1993 operating budget for the OSCE was $17m compared with NATO's annual budget of $900m (Reucker, 1997). It was easy to show that there are serious weaknesses in OSCE (Zelikow, 1996; Eyal, 1997; Sperling and Kirshner, 1997). It lacks military force, and it is a collective body operating on the principle of unanimity, whereas NATO, controlled by the US, is more capable of decisive action. But the answers to these complaints are simple. If the OSCE lacks muscle, it could be provided with some. If its procedures are cumbrous, they could be reformed. The lesson of the Yugoslav fiasco was not that Europe is inherently incapable, but that its decision-making procedures need to be drastically improved. The reality is that the US was opposed to norm-based collective security concepts which would endanger the single-power dominance it enjoys in NATO (Gowan, p.11). To have strengthened OSCE would have been to reduce US power in European affairs. Above all, OSCE included Russia, and the West was moving towards two crucial decisions, which were confirmed at the Madrid summit of May 1997 and the subsequent meeting in Berlin: the preservation of US leadership within NATO – and consequently in European high politics – and the exclusion of Russia from the key mechanisms of decision-making about the future of central and eastern Europe. Already in the Berlin communique of 3 June 1996 three objectives had been adopted: 'to ensure the Alliance's military effectiveness'; 'to preserve the transatlantic link'; and 'to develop the European Security and Defense Identity'. This meeting was a turning-point, resolving the top-level debate among the key member countries – the US, France, Britain and Germany – over the role of NATO in post-Cold War Europe. Being now confident that it had scotched any idea of a separate, purely European system, the US was reconciled to a compromise which would allow closer cooperation among its West European allies. |
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A second line of justification has been the claim that in the immediate aftermath of 1989 the dominant US view was not in favour of expanding NATO, and that it changed its mind because of pressure from the CEECs themselves (Williams, 1996, Cox 1995). When Partnership for Peace was launched in January 1994, the argument runs, it was intended as a substitute for NATO expansion, not a preparation for it; but the East Europeans refused to be fobbed off. This view is hardly consistent with the actual policies of NATO and the US. In the first place, Partnership for Peace was a long step towards NATO expansion. It established permanent liaison officers, invited Eastern participation in NATO exercises, called for joint peace-keeping operations. In retrospect, the early months of 1994 have been seen as the point of no return, after which expansion was inevitable (Eyal, 1997). Since then the determination of the US to use NATO to maintain its authority in Europe has been very clear, especially in the Bosnian conflict. When Germany pressed EC states into recognising Slovenia and Croatia, the US, which was initially opposed to this move, felt threatened, in that it had been pushed away from a major European conflict. It responded by launching a campaign in 1992 for an independent Bosnia, despite West European warnings that this would cause a war. The Bosnian war became the basis for the reassertion of NATO and US dominance. President Clinton told Congress in November 1995 that 'if we do not do our part in a NATO mission, we would weaken the Alliance and jeopardise American leadership in Europe'; and the Defense Secretary William Perry argued that, whereas US 'vital interests' were not in themselves threatened in Bosnia, US involvement 'affects the vital national security interest of the US by maintaining the strength and credibility of NATO' (Time, 27.11.95). In the second place, the organisation that the CEECs were initially eager to join was not NATO but the European Community. They were concerned, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia, about German hegemony in the region and, despite increasing trade with Germany, feared the prospect of replacing their former dependence on the Soviet Union with another. For these reasons they preferred to deal with Germany within the Community. At that time, both Polish and Czech leaders sought to keep the USSR involved in European affairs and supported Gorbachev's idea of a Europe without blocks. The CSCE seemed the only organisation able to achieve this. When they first assumed office, the Czech leaders Havel and Dienstbier called for the dissolution of both NATO and WTO. It was only after meeting George Bush during their visit to Washington in February 1990 that they began to show more appreciation for NATO. Even more recently, popular support for NATO has been less than overwhelming. A Hungarian referendum said 'Yes' to NATO by 85 per cent, but turn-out, at 49 per cent, was so low as to make its legitimacy questionable. And that, according to the pressure group Alba Kor, was despite heroic efforts by the arms manufacturers, with special programmes about NATO on TV and specially designed CD-ROMs delivered to every library in the country. The latest level of support in the Czech Republic, according to opinion polls, is 59 per cent in 1998, compared with just 50 per cent in 1997. The most important country for the long-term political and military objectives of the North Atlantic Alliance is Poland. If Poland were not to be included, it is unlikely that expansion would take place at all. According to the US Department of Commerce it is, with Turkey, one of the 'big emerging markets' in Europe (Gordon, 1996), and its location between Russia and Germany makes it a key country for the long-term position of the US government in Eurasia (Gowan, 1997, p.10). Popular support for NATO in Poland is claimed to be up to 80 per cent, but it is heavily qualified. In July 1996 the CBOS research institute found that 58 per cent of Poles believed that membership should be delayed until the country's economy could bear the likely cost. In April 1996, only 49 per cent said they would approve membership if foreign troops were to be stationed in Poland, and only 12 per cent if nuclear weapons were to be based there. In this context it is important to note a crucial difference between the 1990s and the 1940s. The US no longer has an export surplus, but on the contrary runs a large deficit on its trade with the rest of the world. It therefore cannot use economic incentives to support its political and military aims. There has been no new Marshall Plan to run parallel with NATO expansion. Instead, the CEECs have ended up in the hands of the IMF and the World Bank. |
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The agreed official justification of enlargement appears to be focussed on the following proposition: NATO is no longer about defending the territory of Europe against the 'Russian threat' but about promoting certain values such as democracy and the free market – these being taken to be two sides of the same coin. The criteria for new membership mainly concern democratic and economic reforms. Slovakia, for instance, which was intended to be among the first wave, is judged to have slipped backwards on both counts and so to be currently ineligible. Robin Cook told the House of Commons on 17 July 1998 that ' the strength of the Alliance derives from our respect for democracy and human rights, individual liberty and the rule of law.' It is not altogether clear what a military alliance has to do with such values – and Cook added that 'the future role of NATO must be to defend the vital interests of NATO members.' The idea of NATO as a standard-bearer of democracy and human rights is made incredible by the presence among its members of Turkey, which is engaged in a war against its Kurdish minority and makes widespread use of torture. |
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The most obvious consequence of NATO's advance towards the east is that Russia will become isolated, insecure and hostile. Many Russians feel today that the agreements negotiated by Gorbachev have been betrayed. Despite assurances by Helmut Kohl and the US Secretary of State James Baker during the 1989 events that NATO would not be expanded, a new military line is being drawn across Europe (Guardian, 15.2.97) As we have seen, all Russian attempts to find a place in the new European order have been rebuffed or sidelined. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph (20.5.97) the ambassador to Britain, Anatoli Adamishin, described the decision as a 'historic blunder'. 'I am not worried about the military aspect of enlargement. NATO will not be strengthened, possibly just the reverse. But politically, Russia will be isolated again.' Supporters of expansion argue that Russia has nothing to fear, since NATO is based on the principle of defence. It does not seek to weaken any external state. The Russians, however, may be forgiven for being sceptical. With the inclusion of Poland, NATO forces will outnumber Russia's by a factor of four, and the expansion into Poland is a massive assertion of military power on Russia's borders. US intelligence has warned that Russia may be driven to rely more on nuclear weapons; and since 1993 it has dropped the No First Use strategy that it had maintained throughout the Cold War. On the other side , NATO's protestation that it has 'no intention, reason or plan' to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new member states falls short of a guarantee that it will never do so. Full membership status requires that new members are expected to accept NATO's nuclear deterrence policy, as stated at the meeting of Ministers on 10 December 1996. The Czech government has proposed to alter the constitution of the country to allow nuclear weapons to be based on its soil (Morning Star, 2.9.96). Nor is there any guarantee that the advance will stop short at the border of the former Soviet Union. In a confidential letter to the US President, leaked to the Russian press, Boris Yeltsin has warned that extending NATO to the Baltic states would be 'absolutely unacceptable.' Yet the US is said to have 'made a commitment' to these states (F/Times, 10.3.99). Ukraine the largest and most populous country between Germany and Russia, is an even more sensitive issue. Ukrainian independence is one of the most important consequences of the ending of the Cold War, and the West has made great efforts to stabilise the new state, which is now the third largest recipient of US aid. Ukraine is the main buffer between Russia and central Europe, and if it were to join NATO today the result would be a big conflict with Moscow. US policy towards the country is therefore a subtle one. However, it has been strengthening its relationship through Partnership for Peace, joint exercises in the Black Sea, military cooperation, help with its energy problems and mediation with Poland. Initially opposed to NATO expansion into Poland, the government of Ukraine had come to support it by the end of 1996, and President Kuchma has indicated that Ukraine itself may in the distant future seek to become a NATO member (Gowan, 1997, p.35). Here is a contradiction to which Lord Healey and others have drawn attention. The countries to which NATO protection is being extended do not need it, while those who might need protection are not being offered it at present and may never be. Within the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Republic was extended further to the east than history or culture would warrant, and the new state has preserved these borders. As a result, not only has Russia lost important resources, but 22 per cent of Ukraine's population is ethnically Russian. There are also large Russian minorities in the Baltic states. A revived and nationalistic Russia may not acquiesce in these arrangements, especially if it could claim that Russians were being oppressed. Would NATO then come to the rescue, at the risk of what could become a nuclear war? Some believe that even the present round of enlargement is based on bluff. Expansion will commit the US and other members of the alliance to fight, if need be, for Prague and Budapest as they are now committed to defending Berlin and Paris. That obligation is laid out in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty signed in 1949. However, it is doubtful how far they are sincere. Several years ago the then British Foreign Secretary said that he thought any US President or British Prime Minister would be 'most reluctant to send their boys to die for Warsaw or Bratislava'. They can get away with such a commitment because there is no likelihood of having to redeem it. Their peoples, however, would be even less willing to die for Kiev or Tallinn; but it is these cities, not Warsaw or Prague, that could conceivably come under attack . Western ambitions extend even further eastward into Eurasia, to the oil-rich countries of the Caspian Sea region, including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The presidents of all three countries have travelled separately to Washington and their governments have signed agreements aimed at drawing as much as $60 billion dollars into the region. Most of these deals were with US companies, but British Gas and Italy's AGIP have also been involved. One of the consequences may be the diversion of Caspian oil away from Black Sea ports, to the great detriment of the Russian economy. In June 1996 Iran, which would also be a loser, issued a joint statement with Russia promising cooperation with regional states to 'prevent the presence of US power in the Caspian region' (International Herald Tribune, 10.5.97). Another country with ambitions in this region is Turkey, which uses cultural and historical ties to promote its influence. The statement by the Russian Duma that NATO enlargement is 'the biggest threat to Russia since the Second World War' may have been an exaggeration; but there is no doubting the Russian fear of encirclement, nor the opposition of all political parties and the entire spectrum of the political elite. The result could be a rearmament of the region, reversing the progress made by the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. For this kind of reason many of those who conducted and defended British military and diplomatic policy during the Cold War, including Lord Healey, the former Permanent Secretary of Defence Sir Frank Cooper, his deputy Sir Arthur Hockaday, Professor Michael Howard, Field Marshals Lords Carver and Bramall and General Sir Hugh Beach, have argued against expansion, which would antagonise Russia for no good reason and with no compensating advantage. Likewise the veteran US diplomat George Kennan, one of the principal architects of the original NATO, has warned that its enlargement would be 'the most fateful error of American policy in the whole post-Cold War era' (International Herald Tribune, 26.5.97). And a recent US academic study contrasted the successful magnanimity towards Japan and Germany after 1945 with the possibly disastrous lack of generosity shown by the victors of the Cold War (Gaddis, 1998). Hard-line proponents of expansion retort that Russian reactions are unimportant; they may not like the onward march of NATO, but there is nothing they can do about it. This seems a very short-term view. Despite the difficulties that it faces today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic-political crisis, Russia is not simply a third-world economy that can be ignored or subordinated to Western interests. It has vast energy and mineral resources and it would not be difficult for it to achieve healthy economic growth in the longer term. Some even argue that Russian capitalism could be a bigger threat to the US than Soviet socialism ever was (Gowan, 1997, p.12). An antagonistic Russia could also become a focus for all kinds of oppositional forces in Europe. There is another, even more serious danger in current Western policy. As academic critics have put it, 'the best case future includes a hostile and isolated Russia, (but) much more plausible is a much worse outcome – an emergent alliance of Russia and China' (Russet and Stam, 1998). This is already happening. China is buying 72 SU-27 fighters and setting up a production line. SU-30s may follow. Two advanced cruise-missile warships have also been purchased, with which China hopes to assert its claims to the Spratly Islands and mount guard over the Taiwan straits. In April 1997 Yeltsin and Jiang called for a multi-polar world. More recently the two countries, having resolved long-standing border disputes, announced what they call a 'strategic relationship'. Though they stress that this is not an alliance, nor directed against any third party, they are said to 'share concerns over US dominance of global affairs' (Jane's Defence Weekly, 2.12.98). Kissinger's achievement in splitting the Communist bloc was, of course, the beginning of victory in the Cold War. It would be ironic if that victory were to be thrown away by the thoughtless arrogance of his successors. Some strategists believe that Russia itself may eventually be admitted to NATO – presumably after passing the democracy and free-market tests. But if there are dangers in its exclusion, there are still more alarming possibilities in its inclusion, which would signify the almost unlimited extension of NATO power. The Guardian's Washington correspondent, Martin Walker has remarked, 'NATO was always the defence club of the prosperous transatlantic democratic world. If Russia falls into its embrace, the alliance is on track to become (and don't think that the Chinese and the Islamic world have not noticed), not only a security system that reaches from Los Angeles to Vladivostok, but something more ambitious still: the white race in arms' (Guardian, 27.10.98). Though he does not use the concept of race, the influential US intellectual Samuel P. Huntington pointed the way to this ambition when he argued in The Clash of Civilisations (1992) that the fundamental source of conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic but cultural, and that the great task of the future would be to defend Western (i.e. Christian and post-Christian) civilisation against the non-Western world. His thesis found a ready audience in NATO and among the Western military in the absence of any other coherent explanation for NATO's survival at that time. A similar attempt was made by Willy Claes, then NATO Secretary-General, who suggested that 'Muslim fundamentalism is now as big a threat to the Alliance as Communism once was'. (Cornish, 1997). His comment was quickly withdrawn; but his successor Javier Solana has spoken of 'stabilising a region which stretches to Russia and Iran, and to North Africa.' (Guardian, 27.10.98). The powerful think-tank the RAND Corporation has urged that NATO should focus 'on non-traditional operations in other regions of the world' (Jane's Defence Weekly, 28.1.98), and Madeleine Albright has recently proposed that NATO should 'deal with any global crisis if it had implications for the defence of common interests', bypassing the Security Council if necessary (Daily Telegraph, 9.12.98). There are clear signs that a regional defence system created 50 years ago to deal with a particular threat now aspires to be something close to a world government. It is good to see that the British and other European governments are resisting 'unlimited commitment' (ibid.) It is fairly clear that the British Government has gone along with NATO enlargement so far without any great enthusiasm. It is surely time for it to say: thus far and no further. |
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Estimates of the likely cost of NATO expansion have been widely divergent, ranging from $1.5bn to $125bn. Obviously these figures relate to different things. $1.5bn is NATO's estimate of its own additional infrastructural expenses. It is thought by many to be unduly modest, but the vastly larger calculation presented by the Congressional Budget Office is based on the assumption that new entrants would have to bring their armament up to full NATO standard. This would probably put the whole project out of consideration, since neither the countries concerned nor the taxpayers of the US or Western Europe would be willing to pay such sums. NATO apologists have therefore been at pains to stress that there is no such requirement. They want the armed forces of their new allies to be efficient, able to contribute to crisis-management in collaboration with the forces of existing members, but do not see them as taking a major role in a major war, It is indeed argued that regardless of NATO membership the CEECs would want to spend money on modernising their forces, and even that membership would result in their spending less, since alliance is cheaper than self-reliance. The argument seems to have logical force, but it ignores the political realities. There are conflicting pressures on the governments of the CEECs. On the one hand the leaders of their armed forces clamour for more money to modernise their equipment after years of neglect. They are abetted by their arms industries and, of course, by the salesmen of Western companies. On the other hand their finance ministries and many of their politicians seek to resist rearmament or to keep it within bounds, pointing out that there is no military threat and that the money should go to tax reduction and/or social expenditure. In this debate the prospect of NATO membership is a powerful weapon in the hands of the militarists. Thus the Defence Minister of Romania, protesting in January 1999 against what he considered an inadequate budget, claimed that it would make it impossible for the country to join NATO (JDW, 13.1.99). And the military analyst Jonathan Eyal, an enthusiast for expansion, admits (or claims) that 'defence ministries in central Europe, hitherto the Cinderellas of the political establishment, will acquire new political leverage' (Eyal, 1997). The idea that the NATO umbrella is a substitute for national military expenditure finds little support from the case of Greece, which finds it necessary to devote more of its national income, 4.6 per cent in 1997, to the military than any other country in Europe, apart from the states of former Yugoslavia. Greece's only possible enemy is fellow NATO member Turkey, whose proportionate expenditure is nearly as high. Clearly neither country finds alliance a complete substitute for self-defence. Between 1985 and 1997 the proportion of gross domestic product that was absorbed by the military fell from 8.1 per cent to 2.3 per cent in Poland, from 7.2 to 1.4 per cent in Hungary, from 4.5 to 2.3 per cent in Romania and from 14 to 3.4 per cent in Bulgaria. These savings were among the most spectacular benefits derived from the ending of the Cold War, and go far towards explaining the respectable economic growth that most of the CEECs have achieved in recent years. But now military expenditure is set to rise again. Poland is committed to spending 3 per cent more in real terms for each of the next five years. Admittedly, optimistic forecasts of economic growth allow them to claim that defence would actually be taking a smaller proportion of national income. On the other hand, the figures take no account of planned expenditure on military aircraft, for which see below. Hungary and the Czech Republic phrase their commitment differently: each promises to raise the military share of GDP by one per cent in each of the next five years – a rate of progress which NATO finds disappointing. It seems a great pity that the still poor countries of central and eastern Europe should escape the burdens of one military alliance only to start assuming the burdens of another. |
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One consequence of expansion could obviously be a great boost to Western arms industries. Most of the CEECs' military equipment, locally made or supplied by the Soviet Union, is old and incompatible with that of their new allies. If they are to play a full part in collective defence – the usual function of an alliance – they will need to acquire a large amount of new or upgraded armaments and of the wizardry that makes modern weapons work. Though most of the new or prospective entrants have very significant arms industries of their own, they too are antiquated and run down and will need massive injections of capital and technology before they can make a real contribution to rearmament programmes. Either way, Western arms companies stand to gain; and it is not surprising that they should have been lobbying hard both in their own countries and with the prospective members. A Brussels conference early in 1998 to promote arms sales to the new entrants was attended by people from British Aerospace and Lockheed Martin as well as ambassadors, generals and senior officials (Arms Trade News, December 1997/January 1998). The chairman of the US pressure group, the Committee to Expand NATO, is also chairman of Lockheed. It has indeed been claimed that the whole project is "industry-driven" (Kokkinoides and Cooper, 1998). The size of the market depends on the outcome of the political debate sketched in the previous section. At one time it was put as high as £22bn. Then, as financial realities took hold, and NATO itself advised restraint, the initial enthusiasm of the CEEC military planners and the arms companies was sharply toned down, and some of the latter began to put more stress on the civilian market. Latterly, however, optimism has returned, though the gains are expected to take time to appear. Lockheed sees the region as 'a very significant market place of the future'. The veteran British arms salesman Sir Charles Masefield, however, claims that 'expansion is generating much more rapid requirements than anyone thought' (F/Times, 10.3.99). UK arms firms alone now expect orders for up to £1.4bn (Engineer,12.2.99). Poland, in particular, 'a star among emerging markets', is expected to take modernisation decisions within the next six months, which will generate orders for multi-role combat fighters, NATO-standard self-propelled guns, transport aircraft and new corvettes. The contradictions are well illustrated in the constantly changing plans for the procurement of those most precious possessions of the modern militarist: multi-role combat aircraft. When NATO expansion was being discussed in the mid-1990s there was talk of imminent orders for hundreds of planes worth as much as $19bn. In April 1997 the Polish government confirmed that it would issue invitations to tender for 250 new fighters by the end of the year, the favoured candidates being the Gripen, the F-16 and the F-18 (Jane's Defence Weekly, 23.4.97). Later in the year the project had been scaled down to 130-160 planes, with purchase spread over 15 years. Hungary was then talking of a $1.2bn order for replacement of its ageing Soviet fighters, and early in 1998 the Czech Republic was expected to place orders worth $1.6bn, while Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria were mulling over the respective merits of F-16s, F-18s, Gripens and Mirages. But by May 1998 the salesmen's hopes were down to between 100 and 200 planes for all new entrants, and not one had actually been asked for. By that time the Polish government was considering a radical solution: to buy up to 36 light fighters such as the Hawk 200 and 16 second-hand F-16s, perhaps also 54 Hawk 100s. With some upgrading of its more modern ex-Soviet planes, this would suffice until 2010, when the Polish Air Force could equip itself with new-generation combat aircraft such as the US Joint Strike Fighter. Soon afterwards, however, the purchase of new planes was dropped altogether, except as a distant prospect; and the government was debating between two short-term options; to follow the Czechs in leasing US planes, which were being offered on easy terms in the hope of later lucrative contracts, or to upgrade its MiG 29s. Meanwhile, dismayed by the cost, the Hungarian government had postponed its fighter project until 2003 – after the next election. At the time of NATO entry the prospect of filling the skies of central and eastern Europe with modern combat aircraft was still only a gleam in the eyes of Western makers; none of the new entrants had made a firm commitment to buy a single plane. Poland, however, will almost certainly do very soon, and the aerospace companies, which have been circling central and eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War, have by no means lost hope of spectacular gains.
Much the same indecision has been visible over the acquisition of attack helicopters, the second most favoured weapons platform. As yet, nothing seems to have come of Polish and Slovenian plans to buy US Bell Super Cobras. A similar Romanian project was further advanced early in 1998: 96 machines were to be ordered, and Bell would buy the Romanian factory where they would be built. But the plan was shelved because of concerns voiced both by the Finance Ministry and by the IMF. However, the company and the government are seeking alternative ways of financing the deal, perhaps by producing the Cobras for re-export under a new name, the Dracula. More hopeful areas for arms salesmen are those which NATO strategists favour, especially air-defence systems – missiles and radar – and military communications. Hungary, for instance, has reportedly ordered $100m worth of missiles from the Anglo-French joint venture, Matra-BAe. Poland is discussing the purchase of Swedish Bofors surface-to-air missiles. In July 1997 Racal Electronics of the UK received an order worth £50m from Romania for radio equipment; and more recently the company has spoken of 'orders worth tens of millions of pounds streaming in' from central and east European countries. Significant in this context is the drive to bring central European command-and-control systems into line with Western Europe's. The Regional Airspace Initiative (RAI) was set in motion in 1994 under the Partnership for Peace programme. Twelve countries – Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with Austria as observer – are participating. All have received studies from the US government showing how to manage their airspace, both from an air traffic control perspective and with a view to 'air sovereignty', a term that covers a nation's ability to monitor, control and defend its airspace. While the RAI is primarily about civilian air safety, it also has a military aspect. This is still clearer in a parallel project, whereby the USAF's Electronic Systems Center would assist Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia to evaluate their command-and-control infrastructures. A contract was signed in May 1997 between the ESC and Lockheed Martin to deliver Air Sovereignty Operations Centers to Hungary and Poland. These moves have caused concern in Belarus, Ukraine and especially Russia, which fear that NATO expansion as now designed will bring US tactical air power that much closer to sensitive targets. For such a large potential market there is naturally intense international competition. The main battle-lines are drawn between Western Europe and the USA, but there are other bidders. Israel has tried to use its special expertise to offer the CEECs the cheaper option of upgrading old equipment, but its efforts have generally come up against the heavier political weight of the West. It is, for instance, having to share with Boeing a $600m contract for the upgrade of Poland's helicopters (Flight, 14-20.1.98), and its bid for the Czech Republic's helicopter missile requirement appears to have failed. In 1996 Slovenia reconsidered a plan to acquire Israeli radios after Malcolm Rifkind (then Defence Secretary) had bluntly told it to buy British or other European equipment if it wanted to join NATO (Guardian, 21.2.96). More importantly, Israel's hopes of selling the Kfir fighter plane to Slovenia have been dashed: as NATO aspirants the Slovenes would have to choose between Anglo-Swedish Gripens, French Mirages or US F-16s. (Jane's Defence Weekly, 26.3.98) Russia, too, has hopes of recovering part of its former East European market for its struggling arms makers, especially the aircraft industry, trying to persuade them to upgrade their MiGs in preference to lashing out on expensive Western products. But though some work is being done on Russian planes, it is not being done by Russian industry but by the German firm DASA, which has done the same kind of work on planes inherited from East Germany. Western bidders have the great advantage of being able to offer joint participation and offset deals, and thus the prospect of salvation for the local arms industries, which have lost up to 80 per cent of output and employment since 1990. Boeing, for instance, and Lockheed, respectively makers of the F-18 and the F-16 fighter, have both signed pre-offset deals in the hope of winning orders for their planes. Boeing has bought a stake in Aero Vodochody, the least unviable part of the once great Czech arms industry (Flight, 2-8.9.98). Both it and BAe are contemplating buying into the Polish aircraft company Mielec. Sometimes other branches of industry stand to gain. Thus the Swedish plane-maker SAAB is part of the Wallenberg industrial empire, and so is Electrolux, one of the biggest foreign investors in Hungary. To win a Gripen fighter-plane contract which could be worth £1.8 bn. Wallenberg has offered to take on another 16,000 Hungarians at its Electrolux factories (Observer, 16.11.97). East European orders may help European arms companies to rationalise to the point where they can take on US corporations; British Aerospace has taken a 35 per cent stake in SAAB on the strength of hopes for Gripen exports. So far, though, the European members of NATO are finding it hard to compete with the US companies, whose impressive arms-export promotion was geared up to support sales of US weaponry to East and Central Europe even before NATO's national parliaments had ratified the new membership. The Pentagon has been feverishly offering grants, subsidised loans and weapons give-aways in the hope of securing a major portion of the region's arms market. In addition to the $15bn in the Defense Export Guarantee Fund, it disposes of the Central European Defense Loan Fund, which by the end of 1997 had been authorised to make $644m in military loans to the CEECs. Numerous 'creative' financing devices have also been deployed, ranging from free transfers of surplus weaponry to free lease offers. Both US and European companies tempt the new and prospective entrants with the hope of reviving their once flourishing arms export trade. Its advantages are considerable: labour is cheap and the region has solid military designs, which can be modernised using technology from the West; to break into the lucrative Western markets, it makes sense to convert these designs to Western standards. In fact cross-border East-West cooperative programmes have been actively pursued since the end of the communist regime as a means of bringing the region's companies into multi-national projects. Sweden's Bofors, France's Thomson-CSF, South Africa's Kentron have been working with Polish companies since the early 1990s, while Slovakia has enlisted the help of Sabca from Belgium, G EC-Marconi from Britain and two French collaborators on a new model of the originally Soviet T-72 main battle tank, which has appeared in the arms fairs as T-72K and is a serious candidate for several non-European armies. Skoda Pilsen of Germany formed a consortium in 1993 with 12 other Czech companies to resume arms production for the domestic arms market and for export (Financial Times, 6.8.93, JDW, 24.09.94). In some cases at least the region's arms industry, like that of South Africa and others with 'niche' capacity, is clearly being used as a source of cheap components. Thus British Aerospace has told Poland's Mielec aircraft manufacturer that it is willing to consider purchasing parts for the Hawk trainer-fighter (Financial Times, 24.6.98). The offer is of course conditional on the sale of Hawks to the Polish Air Force, so BAe can look forward to a double gain. Likewise Bell Textron's bid for a big Polish helicopter project comes with the bait of entry into the business-jet market via its Cessna subsidiary (Jane's International Defence Review No.2, 1998.) So far, Racal Electronics, a second-line company whose civilian operations have been losing money, seems to be the only UK firm to gain significantly from the CEEC arms market. British Aerospace, however, is still energetically promoting its Hawk aircraft (which comes into competition with the much cheaper Czech L-159) and the Gripens of its Swedish partner. In the medium term it has hopes of the Eurofighter, and in the longer term it stands to gain from its 10 per cent share of the US Joint Strike Fighter, on the assumption that in 15 years time Poland at least will be rich enough to afford such a luxury. It also hopes that through offsets and participation deals it will secure entry into the local arms industries, which it will be able to use both as a source of cheap components and as a base for the export of its models to third countries. The House of Commons Defence Select Committee , while giving cautious approval to expansion, expressed the hope that NATO would restrain the companies from selling the new entrants weapons that they do not need. But the Chairman drily remarked that this was 'like telling lions not to go hunting'. |
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