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NATO Expansion: More Muscle for U.S. To Flex

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  • NATO Expansion: More Muscle for U.S. To Flex

    THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
    02 April 2004

    NATO Expansion: More Muscle for U.S. To Flex

    Summary

    On March 29, NATO took in seven new member states. The
    enlargement ensures that the NATO of the future will work as a
    reliable arm of U.S. policy.

    Analysis

    At a 1999 summit in Washington, D.C., the North Atlantic Treaty
    Organization welcomed its first new members of the post-Cold War
    era: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The expansion was
    broadly hailed in Europe and the United States as a bridge-
    building effort to seal the Cold War rift. Moscow did not agree,
    and the expansion condemned Russian-Western relations to the deep
    freeze for three years.

    Once the brouhaha of the summit died away, however, there were
    some uncomfortable questions that NATO's supporters had to deal
    with. The alliance was formed to defend Europe from the Soviet
    Union; what would it do, now that the Soviet threat no longer
    existed? The answer from the new members was simple: Soviet =
    Russian. The answer from the Russians was equally simple: Disband
    NATO. Others felt that NATO should evolve into a political talk-
    shop, a peacekeeping force, a military adjunct to the European
    Union or some other nebulous confidence-building organization.

    Five years later -- 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell -- it is
    a different world and a different NATO. On March 29, the alliance
    admitted the three remaining former Soviet satellites (Bulgaria,
    Romania and Slovakia) and three former Soviet republics (Estonia,
    Latvia and Lithuania), as well as a piece of the former
    Yugoslavia (Slovenia).
    But the expansion did more than add 50 million people and
    rationalize NATO's eastern border.

    For the most part, the confusion of 1999 is gone; with the 2004
    expansion, NATO knows exactly what it is -- even if some members
    are not happy with the outcome. NATO is an instrument for Western
    (read: U.S.) influence globally. The alliance now has troops
    operating in long-term missions in Afghanistan, and soon will
    have troops in Iraq. Because the United States remains the pre-
    eminent power in the alliance -- and in the world -- it is
    Washington that calls the shots.

    Core NATO members such as France and Germany certainly disagree
    with this turn of events, but have lacked the influence to stop
    it. That has become -- and will continue to be -- the case
    because of the admittance of NATO's newest members. All of the
    fresh blood can be safely grouped into the "new Europe" that U.S.
    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so charmingly coined in the
    lead-up to the Iraq war. These states all share historical
    experience in betrayal by France and domination by Germany and
    Russia. It is only natural that such states would search further
    abroad for allies to help guarantee their security. In the 1999
    Kosovo war, the United States was able to use NATO to generate a
    veneer of international respectability for actions that it could
    not get the United Nations to sanction. From Estonia to Bulgaria,
    the United States now has 10 new -- or newish -- states within
    NATO that Washington can count on for support when such a state
    of affairs surfaces in the future. The 2003 Iraq war is a prime
    example; Bulgaria practically led the charge at the United
    Nations for Washington.

    Russia might not be thrilled with this development, but it is
    certainly glad NATO's eyes are casting about the planet and are
    not riveted solely on the East. Further smoothing Russian-NATO
    relations is the fact that -- although U.S. influence over the
    alliance is stronger than ever -- NATO forces in Europe are
    weaker than ever and are only expected to be further downsized.
    Germany, long the European bugaboo, has cut its military forces
    to the point that it has next-to-zero power projection capacity,
    while the United States is openly discussing pulling troops out
    of bases across Europe (much to the Berlin's chagrin, we might
    add).

    NATO's home front is not merely secure, it is not even a front
    anymore. The only spot on the European continent that requires
    forces is the Balkans, and even this is child's play compared to
    the tasks of NATO's past. Places such as Kosovo will be a
    headache for at least a generation, but such brushfires do not
    threaten NATO's core -- or even new -- members. That has changed
    the very nature of NATO from a defensive (or offensive, depending
    on your politics) military alliance to a tool of global
    influence.

    NATO's Neighbors

    On the surface, Russia's strategic situation is miserable. All
    its former satellites -- plus three of its former republics --
    are in an alliance with a nuclear first-strike policy that was
    formed to counter the Red Army. Its only reliable allies are an
    incompetently led Belarus and militarily insignificant Armenia.
    Russian military spending is well up from its late 1990s lows,
    but failed nuclear exercises earlier this year and the 2000 Kursk
    submarine sinking are real reminders that even the once-feared
    Soviet nuclear arsenal is only a shadow of its former self. The
    question at the top levels of the Russian government is how to
    manage the military decline; they are not yet to the point of
    asking how they can reverse it.

    In this regard, NATO's 2004 expansion is a symptom of a much
    deeper issue: Russia's endemic decline. Putin spent the bulk of
    his first term simply asserting control over the levers of power.
    Now, with a tame Duma and a relatively loyal government at his
    beck and call, Putin is focusing Russia's energies on halting
    (and hopefully reversing) Russia's not-so-slow-motion collapse.
    Attempting such a Herculean task will take nothing less than 200
    percent of the Russian government's time and attention, assuming
    everything goes perfectly -- and in Russia things rarely proceed
    perfectly.

    In the meantime, Moscow simply lacks the bandwidth to seriously
    address anything going on in its neighborhood, much less farther
    abroad. Attempts to counter what it considers unfriendly
    developments will be flimsy and fleeting. Witness the recent
    violence against Serbs in Kosovo: Russia sent a few harshly
    worded press releases and some humanitarian aid, and that was the
    end of it. The fact that the Baltics made it into NATO with so
    little Russian snarling -- or that Georgia transitioned to such
    an anti-Russian government so easily -- is testament to Moscow's
    distraction.

    It is also a harbinger of things to come as Russia's
    introspection creates opportunities for power groups far more
    aggressive than NATO:
    * Uzbekistan hopes to become a regional hegemon, and will
    capitalize on its indirect U.S. backing to extend its influence
    throughout eastern Central Asia, particularly vis-a-vis Russian
    allies Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
    * Militant Islamist groups will deepen their influence in the
    southern former Soviet Union, particularly in the Caucasus.
    * China will continue quietly encouraging its citizens to
    populate eastern Siberia while working to lash Kazakhstan,
    traditionally Russia's playground, to it economically.
    * India is planting flags in the energy-rich Caspian basin,
    particularly in Kazakhstan, while its intelligence services flow
    anywhere Kashmiri militants might travel.
    * Turkey is deepening its political, economic and military ties
    with Georgia and particularly with Azerbaijan where Turkish
    military forces often patrol the Azerbaijani skies.
    * Japan is looking to carve out the resources of Siberia for
    itself and is steadily expanding its economic interests in the
    Russian Far East.
    * The European Union is pressing its economic weight across the
    breadth of Russia's western periphery. As it brings the former
    Soviet satellites into its own membership, Russian interests will
    find them cut off from their old partners and markets.
    * The United States is making inroads whenever and wherever it
    can.

    The question is not whether Russian influence can be rolled back
    in the years ahead, or even where -- it is by how much.

    NATO's Future

    Diplomatically, the second post-Cold War expansion was not as
    loud an affair as the first. The 1999 expansion also occurred
    during the run-up to the Kosovo war. Within a two-month period
    Russia saw the three most militarily powerful of its former
    satellites join an opposing alliance with a nuclear first-strike
    policy, while its most loyal European ally suffered a bombing
    campaign, courtesy of that same alliance. Russia fought tooth and
    nail in diplomatic circles to prevent the expansion, and quite
    rightly felt betrayed. One of the deals made by the
    administration of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in the
    last days of the Cold War was that Moscow would allow Germany to
    reunite and remain completely in NATO, so long as the alliance
    did not expand eastward.

    Stratfor does not expect NATO's next enlargement, likely within
    the next five years, to be particularly troublesome. If Russia
    had a red line, it drew it at the Baltics -- three of its own
    former republics -- or Kaliningrad, a Russian Baltic enclave that
    NATO's new borders seal off from direct resupply. The next
    enlargement is likely to take in the Balkan states of Albania,
    Croatia, Macedonia and perhaps Bosnia. All fall behind NATO's new
    eastern "front line" and would not threaten Russia at all.

    The only expansion in the near future that might elicit a rise
    would be one that included Finland -- which considered submitting
    an application in the late 1990s -- but even this would not be as
    traumatic to the Russians as the now-official Baltic entries.
    There is even the possibility that Austria, another of Europe's
    traditional neutrals, might someday join NATO. Vienna is already
    more active in NATO exercises than are several full members. Any
    serious discussion of a second across-the-Russian-red-line
    expansion will be put off until well after 2010, although by that
    point Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine could shape up as
    possibilities.

    NATO certainly has challenges ahead of it. The strain and
    political arm-twisting that are likely to precede the expected
    Iraq deployment could well reopen wounds that only recently
    closed, and competing visions of what NATO should be will
    certainly hound it for years. Ironically, this divergence of
    perception is part of what will keep NATO powerful, present and
    relevant to U.S. policymakers.

    While several Western states -- and Stratfor -- no longer view
    NATO as a true military alliance, that view is not shared
    uniformly. It is a simple fact that many European countries feel
    threatened by the political or military strength of Germany or
    Russia. The age-old adage of NATO that it existed "to keep the
    Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down" was always
    far more than a clever turn of phrase. Many European states still
    see this as a core NATO raison d'etre. Such belief is not an
    issue of wealth -- Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway are just
    as pro-NATO and pro-American as Latvia, Hungary and Bulgaria --
    it is an issue of place. These countries, by virtue of their
    proximity to large neighbors with a past predilection for
    domination, want a counterbalance.

    So long as that is the case, a majority of NATO's membership will
    be enthusiastic about the alliance as an alliance. Even the
    dullest of U.S. administrations will be able to translate that
    energy into international influence in Europe -- and beyond.
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