In Letter, Experts Decry NATO Expansion

WASHINGTON â€”  In one of the first significant organized efforts by opponents of NATO enlargement, 46 former U.S. foreign affairs luminaries released a letter Thursday to President Clinton calling the expansion plan “a policy error of historic proportions.â€�

The letter urges Clinton to halt the process and pursue alternative measures to ensure peace and stability for Central and Eastern Europe. The signatories include former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and former Central Intelligence Agency Director Stansfield Turner.

“The purpose [of the letter] is to demonstrate that serious, thoughtful people have doubts about the wisdom of expanding NATO,� explained Susan Eisenhower, chairwoman of the Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank that organized the initiative. “It shows there is a large, bipartisan opposition to expansion.�

Enlarging the 16-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization will alter the security map of the Old World and is widely viewed as the most sweeping foreign policy initiative of the Clinton presidency.

A Clinton administration official played down the importance of the letter. “There are serious experts on both sides of this issue, and there will be a serious debate,� the official said. “We’re hearing a lot of support in Congress and from the heartland.�

The letter’s release comes less than two weeks before NATO leaders are to meet in Madrid to issue the first formal invitations to potential new members. While opponents of enlargement stand virtually no chance of halting the invitations, they hope to block eventual U.S. Senate ratification of enlargement, a move that would in effect kill the initiative.

Signers of the letter argue that because expansion is going forward despite Russian objections, it endangers U.S. efforts to cut Russia’s nuclear arsenal. That arms reduction, they say, is far more important to U.S. security. They also claim that enlargement would bring a new dividing line in Europe and trigger internal debates over the costs and mechanics of enlargement that at best would be distracting and at worst could rip the alliance apart.

“If this goes ahead, we’ll see a NATO unable to fulfill the needs we want from it,� said Jack F. Matlock Jr., one of two former U.S. ambassadors to Moscow who signed the letter. “It will be preoccupied watching its navel and its expanding waistline.�

As Matlock spoke, NATO seemed to be doing just that as an internal debate over the number of countries to be invited in Madrid grew unexpectedly messy and divisive. It also has been uncharacteristically public. France and Italy have campaigned for a five-nation expansion, while the United States, concerned about the cost of adding more countries, insists on inviting just three.

Two factors virtually ensure that the initial enlargement will be limited to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The alliance acts by consensus, so members will invite only those countries on which all agree. Also, as the alliance’s biggest power and the originator of the enlargement idea, the United States’ voice carries disproportionate weight. Because of this, the other two preferred candidates, Romania and Slovenia, will probably have to wait for another time.

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Still, the run-up to the July 8-9 meeting in Madrid has become awkward, in part because only five members--Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Britain and Portugal--have joined the United States in backing the plan to invite just three nations.

The German and Dutch governments are said to be so internally divided about the issue that they may go to Madrid with no firm positions. Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Greece, France and Italy support the five-nation enlargement. Turkey wants to invite not just those five, but also Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia.