Con: Russia Will Reject Cold Peace

The Senate vote on NATO expansion will set the tone of U.S.-Russian relations for the next generation. If the Senate approves NATO membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, NATO will move right up to Russia’s border, seriously endangering the once-in-a-century opportunity for the United States to build a constructive relationship with that vast and important country. Russia is particularly sensitive about its province of Kaliningrad, which shares 432 kilometers of border with Poland.

If the Senate approves the first group of applicants, it can hardly deny membership to the next round of applicants, including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Those nations share an additional 734 kilometers of border with Russia. Thus, the United States will have responded to the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire with an in-your-face deployment of the NATO alliance right on Russia’s doorstep. Humiliating a former adversary is a dangerous thing for a great power to do, and we may pay dearly for our arrogance.

There is simply no need to expand NATO. Even the proponents admit that Russia poses no threat to its neighbors, nor could it for many years to come, even under the worst of circumstances.

Eastern and Central Europe do not need a military alliance, they need access to Western markets. Then why the push for NATO expansion? It got started in 1996 as an election-year ploy to pander to American voters who identify with the candidate nations. It has been carried forward on the argument that expanding NATO into Central and Eastern Europe promotes stability. Everyone is for stability. But how do we promote stability in Europe by promoting instability in Russia?

Our highest priority ought to be the reduction of Russia’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, which still constitutes a real and present threat to the United States. Resentment of NATO expansion prompted the Russian legislature to delay ratification of the START II treaty that would shrink Russian and U.S. arsenals by 3,500 strategic nuclear missiles each. The refusal to ratify that important treaty, despite pleas from Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, is a concrete example of the way NATO expansion strengthens the hands of the irresponsible elements at the expense of Russian reformers.

Further, NATO’s encampment right on Russia’s borders forces Moscow to rely more heavily on its large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons left over from Soviet days. Moscow has lately renounced a no-first-strike policy.

Given the decrepit state of its conventional forces, Russia has little choice but to make do. Unfortunately, tactical nuclear weapons can be used to make up for inadequate conventional forces. How does forcing Russia to turn to tactical nuclear weapons promote stability?

Clearly, the United States should go all out to help Russia dismantle its excess nuclear warheads and to bring all warhead materials under strict controls. NATO expansion thwarts that effort, too.

More broadly, NATO expansion poisons the well in U.S.-Russian relations. To contain Soviet communism, we fought two hot wars and a long cold war at an expense of perhaps $20 trillion. For 45 years, our citizens bore a heavy burden, including the risk of nuclear war. At last, we have an opportunity to build friendly relations with Russia. NATO expansion puts that priceless opportunity at peril, risking a resumption of a dangerous confrontation between the United States and Russia, two nations that ought to be friends.

Russian reformers who expected to be treated as friends and equals now find themselves cast beyond the pale as unworthy. Russian leaders from across the spectrum bitterly resent NATO expansion. Proponents of expansion who say the Russians will “have to get over it” reveal an arrogance and a shortsightedness that ill serve us. NATO expansion may prove to be the most damaging mistake in international relations since the humiliation of Germany after World War I, an act of hubris most historians count as the cause of World War II.