Word: eastward
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...those watching from beyond Russia's borders, Zhirinovsky's improbable but disquieting suggestions of "new Hiroshimas" and "Chernobyls" were enough to force a swift rethink of strategy. Last week Germans modified their enthusiastic calls for an eastward expansion of NATO, pushing instead for a "gradual and controlled" opening in order to assuage Russia's paranoid generals. In Washington the dominant refrain was to urge the U.S. Administration both to reduce its personal identification with Yeltsin and to broaden its contacts within Russia. And Westerners everywhere read the returns as proof positive that Yeltsin's personal popularity did not translate into...
These are not academic questions. Bill Clinton has called a NATO summit to convene in Brussels next Jan. 10, to plan the organization's march eastward. The meeting, Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, will "formally open the door to an evolutionary process of NATO expansion." He had just returned from an eight- day trip to the old Warsaw Pact countries to "renew" NATO and polish a plan to enlist those former Soviet satellites that are making visible progress toward democracy. "The alliance must embrace innovation or risk irrelevance," he reported to Congress...
...possibly including parts of the former Soviet Union, including Russia itself. German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe enthusiastically lobbied the rest of the alliance to put expansion on the agenda for a NATO summit scheduled for January. "It is in our basic national interests to expand NATO and the E.C. eastward one step at a time," he said. "It doesn't take a genius to realize that...
...suddenly Yeltsin's green light turned red, and the logic of eastward expansion became less obvious. In a September letter to alliance leaders, Yeltsin warned that expansion would be destabilizing and should not go forward. He proposed instead that NATO and Russia jointly guarantee the security of the states in between -- a formula that sounded uncomfortably close to the situation of East-West polarity that existed in the bad old days. "That was clearly the result of the Russian generals' pressure," says Michael Dewar, deputy director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "They were furious, and Yeltsin...
There is a similar Western softening on NATO enlargement. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe calls it "premature," and liberals who formerly advocated expansion are having second thoughts. "I can only advise utmost caution when thinking about moving NATO eastward," says former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. "We should not exclude Russia." Among the few remaining advocates of early enlargement are the hapless Central European countries with better reasons than Russia to fear for their security. Yeltsin's flip-flop caused acute anxiety in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. "Poland's striving toward NATO is irreversible," said Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski...