More than three years after the supposed end of the Cold War, the President of the United States went to Europe to see what sort of arrangement might be palatable to our old Western European allies and our presumptive new Central and Eastern European comrades: Would they accept the U.S. taking the lead in assuming somewhat more of an obligation now or quite a bit more of a commitment later? 

The case for minding our own business seems always to be out of bounds. No "experts" ask, for example, how it is in our national interest to expand our troop responsibilities into the encircling traps behind the old Iron Curtain on behalf of NATO. Nor does anybody explain to the American people why a military alliance should pledge that soldiers from the suburbs of Chicago or South-Central Los Angeles might be called on to give their lives over the quarrels of Tajikistan. 

It is nonetheless understandable why Central-Eastern Europeans, from their own vantage point, might grasp for security guarantees. Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, recalled that twice before in this century, "all of Europe paid a tragic price for the narrow-mindedness and lack of imagination of its democracies. In 1938, the Munich Agreement sanctioned the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the World War II summit at Yalta effectively guaranteed control of Eastern Europe to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin." 

Yet those treacherous agreements, justifiably denounced by history, resulted in tragedy because they represented security guarantees that would not, or could not, be kept. "Yalta !I" was how many from the Central-Eastern European community were referring to the latest diplomatic transactions. However, yet another promise by this President, who is already cutting deep into the muscle of the U.S. military, can only result in illusory expectations. 

But then that was what Bill Clinton's trip to Europe was really about -- illusions. His three main "successes," we were led to understand, were: obtaining an agreement to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and thus make a "broader Europe" (albeit slowly); bear-hugging with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and supporting his reforms; and persuading Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk to once again pledge to dismantle the nuclear weapons in the Ukraine. 

As is so often the case, there is quite a gulf between reality and the fabricated accomplishments. 

Moving NATO East

A "Partnership for Peace" was sold to members of the former Eastern bloc in lieu of outright membership in NATO. Among members of the "Visegrad Group" (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia), Poland's President Lech Walesa was the most vociferous in opposition to the "half-way house" scheme, warning that unless those countries were included in NATO outright there would be a reemergence of the Soviet bloc and communism. (In Poland, the "ex" communists have already taken control of the government through parliamentary elections.) 

At the same time, with the spectre of Russian "ultranationalism" being raised as a result of the surprising (though not overwhelming) electoral success of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, there were cries that moving NATO east would be perceived as a threat to Moscow. To keep the "fascists" at bay, some argued, NATO should go slowly to ease Russia's fears. In other words, don't provoke the nationalists. In effect, this argument was used by those in the Clinton Administration who want to be "partners" with Russia. To do otherwise, they argued, would be to create a cordon sanitaire between Russia and the West and to isolate Moscow. 

Opponents of Russo-centrism in this rather controlled debate counter-argued that this appeasement gave Moscow a veto over NATO and Western policy. Underlying this is the false supposition that in dealing with Russia the U.S. must confront or capitulate. 

It is true, however, that the newly published military policy of Russia places the "near-abroad" within, at the very least, Moscow's sphere of influence and that the Russian military leaders who adhere to this policy do not view the independent members of the former Soviet Union as independent. Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-WY) said that the "Partnership for Peace" approach encourages Moscow in this view. "By supporting Russian demands regarding the expansion of NATO and its approach to the near-abroad," contended Wallop, "the West is again praying at the altar of that 'tin god,' stability. A Cold War definition of stability almost led us to prop up a collapsing Soviet empire two years ago. Again today, we seem willing to allow this misunderstood concept to stand in the way of healthy evolution in the European system of states."

Partnership for Peace

Having been burned by go-fast approaches to merging U.S. troops into a United Nations New World Army, proponents of NATO are understandably enthused by the prospect that the same objectives could be met under its authority. After all, large numbers of American troops have served under NATO for decades, and Americans are not nearly as skeptical about U.S. involvement in NATO as they are about placing U.S. troops formally under UN command. 

As the President prepared for his trip to Europe, the Administration emphasized that the Partnership for Peace program was better now than drawing some new division of Europe. "What I hope we can do is to develop a policy toward Europe as a whole," Mr. Clinton told reporters, "a policy which supports political and economic and strategic integration, not one which draws different dividing lines in Europe." The pitch continued: "It gives us the opportunity to push for a strong partnership while avoiding a divided Europe. We want to reach out to Central and Eastern Europe, through partnership, and emphasize that this concept is a way of inviting people into what could well lead to membership in NATO." 

But when he got to Moscow the President's emphasis changed. Among other things, Mr. Clinton invited Moscow into the Partnership for Peace too (despite the fact that former Soviet bloc nations say they want protection from Russia). Begrudgingly, at the NATO summit, the Visegrad nations agreed to fall under the umbrella of a "partnership" that doesn't offer them the safeguards they see with NATO. 

While there is no doubt that the unwillingness to offend Moscow has a great deal to do with the thinking of this Administration, that is not the only driving factor. The big picture includes obtaining a larger NATO -- itself a way station on the road to world government. For insight into current marching orders, consider the September/October 1993 issue of the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs. An important piece by senior RAND analysts calls for NATO to deal with crises formerly considered "out of area" and to bring in Moscow's former satellites. 

Membership in NATO, like membership in the European Community (now the European Union), say RAND analysts Ronald Asmus, Richard Kugler, and Stephen Larrabee, "can come in phases and should be made conditional. The criteria for membership need to be spelled out clearly in advance and should include commitment to democratic rule, civil-military reform, renunciation of all territorial claims, respect for the rights of minorities, and willingness to participate in the full range of future NATO activities from peacekeeping to collective defense. By conditioning membership on these criteria, NATO can help solidify a zone of stability in Central Europe without undue risk of embroiling NATO's existing members in new ethnic or intra-regional conflicts." While the latter conclusion seems like whistling past the graveyard, the RAND trio also puts forth the notion that defense cooperation with Eastern European countries be extended, with the idea of "eventual integration," but at first  without "explicit security guarantees."

Built on a Lie

When NATO was founded in 1949, many questions were raised about the obligations Washington was assuming. Senator Bourne Hickenlooper (R-IA), for example, inquired during NATO hearings if the U.S. would "be expected to send substantial numbers of troops [to Europe] as a more or less permanent contribution to the development of [Western Europe's] capacity to resist?" Secretary of State Dean Acheson responded: "The answer to that question is a clear and 'absolute 'No!'" As Colonel Harry Summers, now a columnist, has noted, Acheson lied. 

By the mid-1980s there were 336,000 U.S. troops in NATO countries; the cost of European-based forces and U.S.-based forces pledged to reinforce NATO amounted to some 58 percent of the U.S. military budget. President Clinton, in a foreign policy address on the eve of the NATO summit, stated that he was committed to "keeping roughly 100,000 Americans troops stationed in Europe." It would appear, remarked Summers drily, "that the commitment remains both 'substantial' and 'more or less permanent.'" 

How to draw in new participants? Mr. Clinton noted that two years ago, under the Bush Administration, a "new era" was begun by creating the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, which includes "all of the states of the former Soviet bloc, as well as the 16 of NATO. Now it is time to move beyond that dialogue and create an operating partnership. That is why I have proposed that we create the Partnership for Peace." This partnership, he said, "opens the door to cooperation with all of NATO's former adversaries...." 

Indeed, by the time the summit was concluded, a decision had been made to revamp NATO's military structure, setting up the creation of a Combined Joint Task Force, for quicker support for "peacekeeping" missions and so that a country might opt out of certain conflicts or provide functions other than ground troops -- including air support, logistics, or satellite intelligence. 

Guess who this revamped structure is aimed at! If the U.S. public balks at sending in ground forces in selected conflagrations (e.g., Bosnia-Hercegovina), there will be other ways for the U.S. to participate in those conflicts. This approach also helped appease France, not a full member of NATO militarily, which now can boast of being more autonomous but with the U.S. still in reserve and picking up a big share of the tab. 

Permanently stationing American troops on European soil will not encourage Western Europe to defend itself. Yet now Americans are not only supposed to subsidize Western Europe's military efforts, but take on a growing commitment to pay for the defense of Central and Eastern Europe as well. (Of course, the military aspect is but one part. The U.S. supposedly left the former Soviet bloc countries to the mercies of Russian imperialism; are we now really to fight for these countries against Russian imperialism? Rather, the unstated thrust behind an expanded NATO is to tie us all into regional, then world, rule.)

Critical Evaluations

Americans are a "generous people," comments columnist Doug Bandow. He notes that we spent "more than $3.5 trillion and sacrificed more than 100,000 lives during the Cold War to contain the Soviet Union. But Europe is now playing us for suckers. In the same speech [last spring] in which he announced Germany's planned military cutbacks, Helmut Kohl called for retention of 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe. Such a deal: Get the Yankees to risk life and wealth so that you can reduce your military budget." 

Kohl is a big supporter of One Europe, which is a step toward One World. Former NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns admitted the game plan in 1980 when he said: "The slowly but steadily advancing unity of Europe is the most promising guarantee of our ideals of world government." 

Commentator Patrick Buchanan has pointed with alarm to the possibility of locking ourselves "forever into every future European war by extending NATO commitments to the 17 European nations our foreign policy elites now claim it is in our vital national interest to defend." If the U.S., continued Buchanan, "extends NATO guarantees to Eastern Europe the United States will be committed to go to war in perpetuity to freeze in place a balance of power everyone knows cannot long endure. That is a prescription for war." 

Another analyst who is clear-eyed about NATO's globaloney snags is columnist Samuel Francis, who has portrayed an expanded alliance as a magnet that could pull the U.S. into "every ethnic, religious, ideological and national conflict on the continent, none of which involves any 'Western' (let alone U.S.) interests." Francis compares the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement for the "integration" of this continent to "the Maastricht treaty for the 'integration' of Western Europe, so we could also use the military punch of NATO to pull the East into the gradually swelling global network. What the architects of global salvation are doing is quietly creating the loops in that net, and eventually there will come a day when they are fitted together to form one big universal leviathan."

Russia-America Axis?

The rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky has been cited both by those who want to bring East-Central Europe into NATO at once (so as to counter Zhirinovsky's threat), as well as by those who say we should wait a bit (so as not to antagonize his forces). 

Moreover, the ubiquitous Zhirinovsky, as noted by the Wall Street Journal, "may not be a bad foil for the Yeltsinites." Boris Yeltsin's adviser Andranik Migranyan has admitted just that, contending that the ultranationalist danger means that Yeltsin must be backed regardless. "The choice is between the enlightened authoritarianism of Yeltsin," said Migranyan in U.S. News & Word Report, "and the pure totalitarianism of Zhirinovsky and the communists." 

Indeed, there is growing evidence that Zhirinovsky's career has been, at the very least, promoted by the KGB and the Communist Party. St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, for instance, has told Literaturnaya Gazeta that the party run by Zhirinovsky (the Liberal Democrats) was set up by Mikhail Gorbachev and the KGB as the "first alternative party [to the Communist Party], making sure it will be controllable." 

While in Moscow, President Clinton informed Yeltsin that he is willing to be his "unofficial spokesman" to Europe. In a news conference, Yeltsin told reporters that "Russian-American relations have reached a point where they have become a mature, strategic, global partnership." Partnership? The U.S. economy is some 630 percent greater than that of Russia. This "partner" ranks number 39 in trade with the U.S.; has a defense budget only one-twelfth that of NATO; is undergoing an inflation rate of 20 percent per month; and (according to Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev) reserves the right to intervene in the independent countries of the former Soviet empire. 

What of Russia's ambitions? Last November Russia's Security Council approved the entire region of the former USSR as "one unified defense space." It was Yeltsin's military, moreover, that last summer held maneuvers in the Baltics and forced Georgia back into its orb of influence. All of this makes one wonder about the advisability of embracing such a "partner" in a global condominium. The Economist of London, however, noted in its January 8th issue that "many Americans [among the elitists, that is] are attracted to the idea of a Russia-America axis as the centre of a new world order, and are prepared to buy Russia's cooperation by giving it a free hand in the former Soviet Union."

Pep Rally for Reform

A "strategic partnership" is just what Yeltsin said he wanted from Bill Clinton. Indeed, the two leaders made an almost farcical show of agreeing to retarget missiles -- currently aimed at each other's countries -- at the oceans; yet the targeting of these missiles is unverifiable, and in any event the missiles could be retargeted within minutes. 

In Moscow, the President gave Yeltsin unstinting support and praised his reforms, most of which are pipedreams for the future. During Mr. Clinton's stay in Moscow, the lower house of the new Duma elected a career communist as its speaker. Moreover, National Security Adviser Tony Lake (CFR) was covering other bases. During a party at the U.S. ambassador's residence, Lake hung around with the leader of what is supposedly the reformed Communist Party. The Reds, you see, have not gone away. 

Yeltsin, himself a longtime communist, was said to have warmed to Mr. Clinton. "I must say," commented the Russian president, "that we're in the thick of the Russian-American joint revolution." Even French liberals picked up on the different tone apparent with Clinton and Yeltsin in Moscow, in particular the sloughing off of concern over potential usurpation of the lands of the "near-abroad." Said Le Monde: "Either the United States doesn't use the same language in Moscow and Prague, or Russians and Americans don't have the same concept of the Partnership for Peace." 

Despite all the good press arranged by the White House, as soon as Mr. Clinton left things fell apart in Russia for those associated with market reform in the new cabinet. Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar left his post, and Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov announced his resignation. In addition, different kinds of "reforms" were announced: The Russian Security Council, as reported by Time magazine, "approved funding for a nuclear-powered submarine, a heavy-missile transporter and a new generation of Sukhoi fighter planes. The program, the Moscow press reported, 'will save many defense factories from extinction.'"

Twisting Ukraine's Arms

Moscow, which holds Ukraine hostage to fuel, teamed up with Washington to get Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk to agree to carry out denuclearization provisions of accords previously agreed upon (but which the Ukrainian parliament does not like). Kravchuk, another "former communist" turned nationalist, may again have parliamentary problems in turning over to Russia Ukraine's sole leverage, nuclear weapons. Only a few months ago Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev referred to Ukraine as "a mythical state," so understandably Kiev will not be keen on giving up its arsenal. Adding to the mix, after Mr. Clinton's return, news leaked of a new classified U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that foresees that economic crises in Ukraine may partition the country, with its Russian minority opting to return to Moscow's control. 

To help cement the agreement with Ukraine, the Clinton Administration resorted to what amounted to blackmail. U.S. officials then parted themselves for keeping the price tag down. As part of the agreement, the U.S. agreed to form a quasi-public corporation to buy $12 billion worth of warheads, supposedly to be dismantled from four of the former Soviet republics; U.S. taxpayers, it is contended, will not be tapped since the nuclear material will then be resold for power plants. 

President Clinton said Ukraine would get compensation for the uranium in the nuclear warheads, loans from the international community, more trade, and even more foreign aid. It does take a bit of largesse to get a country to agree not to act in its own interest. But Ukraine is suffering badly from, among other things, an inflation rate of 100 percent per month. 

Other pact details are being kept secret. As New York Times columnist William Safire wrote: "The worrisome part of the agreement is the hint that some private 'security guarantee' was given Ukraine, perhaps by Mr. Clinton. If hostilities break out between these two glowering neighbors, the American President cannot then surprise us with anything like 'Oh, I forgot to tell you -- if Moscow nukes Kiev, I promised massive retaliation.'" 

But even though Kravchuk was given a deal he perhaps could not refuse, Ukrainians better not bank on the word of the man who pledged, among other broken promises, a middle-class tax cut. As noted by Markian Bilinsky, executive director of Kiev's Pylyp Orlyk Institute, Kravchuk found himself between "the rock of a potential Russian fuel embargo and the hard place of enormous American pressure over the withholding of desperately needed international economic assistance .... Ukrainians are learning through bitter experience that the first rule of post-Cold War international relations continues to be to kick a fellow only when he's down." 

Before the ink had dried on the glowing Clinton post-summit press releases, much of what he had taken credit for should have been seen as so much detritus. Ultimate Ukrainian denuclearization compliance remains in doubt, Russia's vaunted reforms are evaporating, and the NATO half-a-loaf package satisfies few -- certainly few who support U.S. autonomy. Unfortunately, what did keep rolling was the commitment to inveigle the U.S. more thoroughly and to suck other nations more deeply into a condominium where independence exists in name only.

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