The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement 12 pages, pdf  Download Back

The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement

Publisher: John Hillen, MIchael P. Noonan

Volume: 12 pages, pdf

Descripton: 

The debate in the United States over NATO enlargement ended on 30 April 1998 when the Senate voted 80-19 in favor of admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to the Alliance as full members. Whether for or against, many of the participants in and observers of the debate are just glad that it is over; after almost seven years, it had become an exercise more hackneyed than illuminating. Like it or not, NATO is moving East. 

A question pregnant in the extreme remains for those dealing with the strategic level of military affairs in Europe. Just what is it that we've enlarged and just what is this enlarged alliance to do? Strategists will find little guidance, for the component most missing from the high-level political debate over NATO enlargement was the geopolitical one. US administrations seem to have avoided geopolitical rationales during the years that NATO enlargement has been evolving. Geopolitics might have offended Russia (an exclusionary and encircling military alliance moving ever closer), left the Baltic nations in a hopeless gray zone (your geography is your destiny), and forced everyone to link closely the future of the Bosnia intervention with the future of NATO (out of area or out of business). As Michael Roskin recently pointed out in these pages, none of this was desirable when most American officials were selling NATO enlargement as a no-cost, feel-good, end-of-history shoehorn for democratic systems and market economies rather than hard and fast military affairs.The Secretary of State even described US policy as one "that should appeal to our hearts as well as our heads."