Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...geostrategy ignored events and concerns outside the life-and-death struggle between the West and Moscow. In the past it was Russia's strength that drove U.S. policy; today it is Boris Yeltsin's weakness. The primary reason offered by U.S. officials for keeping the East Europeans out of NATO is the fear of provoking Russia's nationalists at Yeltsin's expense. Yeltsin endorsed NATO expansion last August, but Russia's military, to which he is clearly beholden, forced a retreat. It is unclear whether Moscow's generals are seriously worried about Western encirclement or want to preserve the option...
...their part, the Central Europeans' primary motivation for NATO membership has little to do with the possibility of Russian troops swarming to reannex them. "It's not to defend against a Russian attack," explains former Polish Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz. "We see that as a virtual impossibility. The key reason we want to be in NATO is to secure our own democracies. We need to keep down in our country the very same kind of nationalists Yeltsin's contending with, the same kind that have destroyed Yugoslavia." It is this point, repeated by more than a dozen Cabinet-level officials...
...million in the country. Antall, who was considered a moderate, is not alone. Many Hungarians want to protect their expatriate brothers currently enduring discrimination in Serbia, Romania and Ukraine. "If our reaching out to the West doesn't produce results in three or four years with something like NATO membership -- or its clear prospect -- the nationalists will roar back," says Istvan Gyarmati, Hungary's Director of Security Policy. "They'll just say we moderates tried a policy that would tie us to the West and that it failed and that it's time to try something else." Then what? "Then...
Nationalism and ethnic conflict "have already led to two world wars in Europe," says Stephen Larrabee, a former National Security Council staff member now at the Rand Corp. "The time to act is now, and not with hollow promises." What Larrabee and others know is that NATO has always been more than a security alliance. "We understood this at the beginning," says Larrabee. "West Germany wasn't a stable democracy before it was allowed into NATO. Belonging to the alliance helped it become one. It's silly to insist that the Central Europeans must be functioning democrats before they...
Oddly, this rationale appears to have largely escaped notice by the Administration players most responsible for promulgating the partnership. When asked about the Central European argument that NATO membership is more important for internal stability than as a military shield against Russia, a senior Administration official responded, "It's pretty compelling stuff when you think about it. I guess we've just been too fixated on Russia to have given enough thought to this aspect...