Strobe Talbott on NATO: An Answer

BY: Robert B. Zoellick
The Washington Post, January 5, 1994

Poland’s Foreign Minister Andrzej Olechowski visited Washington last month to make his
country’s case for NATO membership. This former finance minister, one of the architects of
Poland’s economic transformation, thought he was coming to the nation that stood by Solidarity
in its darkest days, dealt carefully with Poland’s anxieties during German unification and led a G-7
effort with the IMF to ease the crush of debt on Poland’s reformers. Instead, he faced a resolute
Strobe Talbott, whose Russian policy informs Poles and other Eastern Europeans that they are
once again the lands between the great powers.

In his own determined way, Ambassador Talbott is one of few high foreign policy officials who
has charted a course in his area of interest and fought to stick with it. The problem is that there
has been no strong counterbalancing force making the case for a European policy separate from
our Russian calculations. I hope President Clinton’s coming trip will broaden his perspective about
America’s interest.

The president could start by giving content to the administration’s Partnership for Peace
proposal. As the Central and Eastern Europeans have recognized, this 1993 initiative does not
appear to offer anything beyond NATO’s 1991 decision to bring the former Warsaw Pact nations
into the new North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The NACC design also included specialized
features to draw these nations close to NATO.

We should now propose substantive criteria that, if met, would enable at least the Poles, Czechs
and Hungarians to qualify for NATO membership over the course of about three to six years. If
they meet the standards, we should aim to bring these democracies into NATO at about the same
time they enter the European Union. The criteria should cover items like acceptance of borders,
peaceful resolution of disputes, equal treatment for minorities, fair elections permitting a
democratic transfer of power, civilian control over the military, cooperative security policies
toward neighbors, anti-proliferation policies that are enforced, a serious defense commitment and
a record of productive work with various NATO subgroups.

There are four benefits to this approach. First, the criteria strengthen the hands of democratic
reformers within these nations — reformers who still have to confront right- and left-wing zealots
and all sorts of resentments in between — by relating a security payoff to sound policies. Our
concentration on Russia should not blind us to our interest in the success of other post-communist
democracies. The Russian priority has already made it impossible for Eastern European reformers
to get modest increments of aid.

Second, the pursuit of these policies by the NATO candidates will lead to better ties with their
neighbors, strengthening peace and stability in a region that we have seen can precipitate plenty of
bloodshed and horror without regard to Russia.

Third, these criteria can help us deal with other U.S. security objectives — including stemming
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The export and arms policies of these nations
are important to us.

Fourth, the criteria and the timetable give us a reasonable response to those who fear that
NATO’s extension will fuel Russian revanchism. We are not rushing. We are encouraging the
strengthening of stable democracies with sensible security policies next to Russia and Ukraine, a
development that should be in everyone’s interest.

These benefits need to take into account events in Russia. So let’s do so — with a hardheaded
analysis. As Russian reformers have told me, the success of the Russian democracy will depend on
events in Russia — inflation, growth, unemployment, crime, prospects for the future — not on
whether we offer a road map for NATO membership over time.

Of course, other Russians, like intelligence chief Yevgeny Primakov, warn NATO to stay put.
But this is the same man who tried to undercut Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze
when the United States and the Soviet Union joined together against Saddam Hussein’s invasion
of Kuwait. (Shevardnadze, by the way, whose perspective on Russian foreign policy is less
indulgent than Washington’s, reportedly believes NATO would be prudent to take in the new
democracies.)

Russians who object to a reasonable extension of NATO over time, based on sound criteria, are
never going to be won over. And we should not shrink from our own interests and those of our
non-Russian friends if some Russians try to transform their weakness into a threat.

I recognize that Russia’s military may have increasing leverage in internal affairs and that some
officers might still see the United States and NATO as hostile. We should meet their suspicions
head-on by substantially increasing our military contacts and proposing cooperative ventures with
NATO forces. If billions of dollars of Western aid, a rich network of military-to-military ties and
efforts to build partnerships ranging from space exploration to libraries still leave some generals
paranoid, then I am even more sympathetic to the Eastern European point of view.

After all, it is useful to consider how the different approaches might play out. If Russia turns
authoritarian or endures a long period of political and economic uncertainty, some Russians are
likely to want to assert spheres of influence over the lands of the former Russian or Soviet
empires. Then NATO might fear that a move to accept new Eastern members would be perceived
as a direct provocation. Without Western bulwarks, factions may arise within the Central and
Eastern European nations, as they have in the past, to counter or accommodate the negative
forces in their larger neighbors. Sadly, this response could actually trigger aggression.

Ambiguous Western reactions to instability and insecurity will make matters worse. Signaling
our uncertainty and lack of commitment will fuel the actions of Russian extremists, not put them
to rest. In fact, this could turn out to be a window of opportunity during which we should point
out the rules for future NATO membership, the reasoning and a sensible timetable. It is the role of
U.S. leadership to frame security expectations for all parties in the region, not just to accept as
our reality the complaints of one group of Russians.

If the United States pulls NATO back from the major security challenges in Europe, if we
accept the view of unfriendly Russians that NATO is a Cold War instrument, then we have begun
to write the epitaph for the most successful alliance of democracies in world history. We had
better consider carefully the full implications of letting this Russian policy overwhelm our
European policy, because the results are likely to be bad for a Russia in transition as well as for
Europe and America.

As Ambassador Talbott knows, when the Cold War wound down, the United States worked
hard not to undermine the Soviet reformers. But America never lost sight of its various interests —
in freeing Central and Eastern Europe, cutting nuclear and conventional forces, reversing Iraq’s
aggression, pursuing peace in Central America and the isolation of Cuba, and in unifying Germany
in NATO.

Some powerful Soviets resisted each of these. Indeed, in writing about how America pressed
the Soviet Union to accept German unification (in his jointly authored “At the Highest Levels”)
Strobe Talbott muttered the mild reproach that the United States was “primarily concerned …
about staying on the good side of a vital ally. They failed to give full consideration to the
potentially disruptive consequences [for Gorbachev] of quick unification.”

We are now witnessing a policy that places our anxieties about threats to a Russian leader ahead
of our commitment to the alliance and to the democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Ironically, we are failing to stand up to the very Russians who assert the threat. That is a mistake.

The writer served as undersecretary of state and deputy chief of staff at the White House during
the Bush administration.