Chapter 4

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR U.S. AND NATO POLICY

SECURITY ALIGNMENTS

NATO has been the leading, most active, and successful security organization in Europe for the nearly half century of its existence, playing a role, if not the key role, in ensuring security in the North Atlantic area. It is the foundation for the Trans- Atlantic link between North America and Europe. Member states devote more attention and resources to NATO than to any other international, security-related institution. Members engage in daily consultations by permanent representatives to NATO institutions, regular meetings of foreign ministers, infrequent Summit meetings of heads of government and state, commitment of financial resources to support NATO activities, and, for most members, regular meetings of defense ministers and chiefs of military staffs, commitment of military forces, and participation in the integrated military command structure.

While giving primacy to NATO, the United States and NATO allies should actively encourage and promote the growing, interactive, and cooperative web of European-related security organizations. The United States and NATO should press ahead with or encourage security-related programs to engage and reach out to states in Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, as well as in Western Europe, in the following areas:

• OSCE: contributing to the expanded activity and institutionalization of the 53-member OSCE;

• NACC: further development and implementation of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council work plan, focused primarily on political and economic cooperation among the 38 members of NACC;

• PFP: careful and intensive development, support, and implementation of the Partnership for Peace program, focused on defense and military cooperation between the 41 members of PFP;

• EU and WEU: encouragement and support for development of a European Security and Defense Identity, a European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy, an enhanced Western European Union with a Common Defence Policy; this should be done in a way that strengthens European integration and the European pillar of the Trans-Atlantic relationship, while maintaining open relations with North America and a strong NATO;

• NATO Expansion: study, consultations, and decisions on NATO expansion, leading to invitations to selected countries in CEE to accede to the North Atlantic Treaty and become members of NATO along with the present 16 members;

• NATO Relations with Russia and with Ukraine: study, consultations, and decisions on development of relationships between NATO and, respectively, Russia and Ukraine that will be a basis for openness, confidence, and cooperation.

NATO EXPANSION

NATO, in its ongoing study, should carefully address all the issues involved in possible expansion of membership. On the basis of analysis made to date, the following approach is recommended:

• Move forward to expand. NATO should move forward with extending membership to selected states in Central and Eastern Europe.

• Proceed with utmost care. The expansion process must be handled with the utmost of care. If handled carefully, NATO expansion will enhance security in Europe and help maintain NATO as a vibrant and vital institution.

• Do not try to develop and specify new criteria. NATO should not attempt to go beyond guidelines that already exist to develop and specify a set of explicit criteria on which to base decisions on whether or not to invite states to join NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty provides the essential criteria. This was the basis for the previous accession cases involving Greece and Turkey, Germany, and Spain, and NATO needs to be careful about appearing to develop a double standard, with different or tougher requirements for new democracies of the East. NATO has already suggested more specific criteria in statements on PFP issued at the January 1994 NATO summit. To issue new criteria could give the appearance of moving the goal line further away from those seeking membership.

  Efforts to develop detailed criteria beyond what already exists could lead to several problems, including prolonged and perhaps even counterproductive debate in NATO, creating expectations by many states of being invited to join NATO so long as they can make a good case of having met the criteria, tying the hands of NATO allies, stimulating heated legalistic arguments over whether a state has met the criteria and should be invited to join, and, perhaps, even raising challenges as to past or present practices and qualifications of existing member states of NATO. In the final analysis, decisions on inviting new members should be made through judgments and consultations by NATO members, taking into account a broad range of considerations.

• Address candidate countries individually. NATO should address expansion on an individual country-by- country basis. Each prospective candidate should be looked at separately, although the implications for the region or subregion and for other countries should be part of the examination. Protocols for accession should be based on individual countries, although NATO might develop and process more than one protocol at a time. Addressing individual countries would give NATO the greatest flexibility. Compared to an approach that considered a whole group of states, an individual approach would also probably reduce concern, criticism, or adverse reaction from states not being invited to join.

• Be very selective. NATO must be very selective in expanding membership, given the political, economic, and military situation in the various candidate countries and the problems for NATO of expanding membership.

• Invite at least one country to join NATO soon. Allies should work toward inviting, in the next year or two, at least one country to join NATO, on the assumption that at the time of decision there will be at least one country NATO will view at the time as qualified. The first country should be the one that NATO deems most qualified and prepared and whose admission would be highly in NATO's interest. At present, all factors considered, the author would recommend the Czech Republic. Admitting at least one state as a new member in the near future would demonstrate NATO's vitality and its strength and determination in making and implementing decisions on expansion. Admission of one country, as opposed to several or a large group of countries, would likely be viewed with less concern by states not invited to join.

• Do not close the door on possible associations with NATO short of full membership. While NATO foreign ministers appear to have made a decision on a process by which a qualified state would move from PFP directly to full NATO membership, there may be good reasons for not ruling out completely other forms of association with NATO beyond PFP but short of full membership. The EU has a process of negotiating associate agreements as a step toward possible eventual full membership status, and the WEU has several categories of association short of full membership observers, associate partners, and associate members with all states in these categories able to participate with full members at about half of the WEU Council meetings. A more flexible approach would provide opportunities to bring selected states into even closer association with NATO than PFP yet not provide full security guarantees and rights that full NATO membership would provide.

• Develop unique relationships between NATO and Russia and NATO and Ukraine. NATO should examine carefully and soon what type of unique relationship it might propose to Russia, going beyond PFP. It should also examine a unique relationship with Ukraine, recognizing its size and importance as a new independent state.

  NATO consultations should provide the basis for a dialogue or negotiation separately with Russia and with Ukraine. NATO deliberations should, individually, take into account, among other things, the size and strength of these two states, their geographic locations in Eurasia, the size of their military forces, unique issues related to nuclear weapons, and counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

  NATO could look at unique forms of formal relationships and special arrangements for consultations, communications, and cooperative programs. A treaty or other formal agreement between NATO and each of these two states might be considered. Any treaty or agreement between NATO and Russia should not have as its focus an official Russian-NATO security guarantee for Central and Eastern Europe, as Russian President Yeltsin has proposed.Note 1 Such a guarantee or provision could be seen as an effort to establish a Russian- NATO condominium over Central and Eastern Europe.

  Nor should any such treaty or agreement deny deployment of forces of other NATO members into the territory of prospective NATO members from Central and Eastern Europe, as Henry Kissinger has proposed. While NATO might not envision any such deployment in the immediate future, such a provision would again imply a condominium and legally inhibit deterrent or defensive deployments to meet any possible threatening situations in the future. Zbigniew Brzezinski has suggested that expansion need not involve deploying NATO forces on the territory of new CEE members of NATO but that periodic joint exercises, planning, and positioning of equipment would suffice to give substance to NATO guarantees.note 2

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