Examines the impact of NATO expansion into Central-Eastern Europe.

The Kremlin has sought to establish an exclusive Russian sphere of influence in the nations lying between Russia and the EU, from Georgia in 2008 to Ukraine in 2014 and Belarus in 2020. It has extended its control by means of military intervention, territorial annexation, economic pressure and covert activities. Moscow seeks to justify this behavior by referring to an alleged threat from NATO and the Alliance’s eastward enlargement. In the rhetoric of the Kremlin, NATO expansion is the main source for Moscow’s stand-off with the West. This collection of essays and analyses by prominent politicians, diplomats, and scholars from the US, Russia, and Europe provides personal perspectives on the sources of the Russian-Western estrangement. They draw on historical experience, including the Russian-Western controversies that intensified with NATO's eastward expansion in the 1990s, and reflect on possible perspectives of reconcilitation within the renewed transatlantic relationship. The volume touches upon alleged and real security guarantees for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe as well as past and current deficits in the Western strategy for dealing with an increasingly hostile Russia. Thus, it contributes to the ongoing Western debate on which policies towards Russia can help to overcome the deep current divisions and to best meet Europe’s future challenges.

The decision to expand NATO eastward is a fateful venture that has received surprisingly little public attention. Advocates of enlargement insist that the step will foster cooperation, consolidate democracy, and promote stability throughout Europe. But the contributors to this volume conclude that an expanded NATO is a dubious, potentially disastrous idea. Instead of healing the wounds of the Cold War, it threatens to create a new division of Europe and undermine friendly relations with Russia. Even worse, it will establish expensive, dangerous, and probably unsustainable security obligations for the United States.

This work evaluates the pros and cons of NATO enlargement. It explains why NATO offered membership to three of its Cold War adversaries and makes recommendations about which countries, if any, should be offered membership in the future.

The decision to expand NATO eastward is a fateful venture that has received surprisingly little public attention. Advocates of enlargement insist that the step will foster cooperation, consolidate democracy, and promote stability throughout Europe. But the contributors to this volume conclude that an expanded NATO is a dubious, potentially disastrous idea. Instead of healing the wounds of the Cold War, it threatens to create a new division of Europe and undermine friendly relations with Russia. Even worse, it will establish expensive, dangerous, and probably unsustainable security obligations for the United States.

In April 1999, NATO members will celebrate in Washington the 50th anniversary of the Washington Treaty and the founding of NATO. At that time they will enroll three new members: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, decide upon NATO.s new strategic concept, and raise issues connected with the possibility of further enlargement. In the wake of the Paris and Madrid conferences of 1997 that consummated agreements with Russia and Ukraine on their relationships with NATO and resolved to admit the three aforementioned states as members, NATO is moving forward to reshape the European security agenda. But, as in other situations, we may ask .Quo Vadis NATO?. and even more sharply make the same inquiry of individual members and of Russia. In fact, it is quite clear that, despite the American claim that enlargement is merely projecting stability eastward, it actually constitutes a radical transformation of the European agenda and of both U.S. and European history. And, as such, NATO enlargement raises a host of issues for future consideration. But nobody can say for sure where enlargement will lead, or, more importantly, how it will be enforced, though hopes for and prognostications of the ultimate point of arrival abound. Nor can we resolve with any certainty the myriad issues involved in extending NATO both in terms of its organizational scope and its future missions. That extension, particularly in terms of territory or geographical scope is immense in its implications, but the final outcome or resolution of all those issues necessarily remains unclear. That uncertainty is not surprising. It is commonly the case that major restructurings of international politics are undertaken by statesmen and politicians who have only a partial notion at best of where they hope go. As Napoleon would have said, .on s'engage et puis on voit,. (One commits himself and then sees where he is). Precisely because the process of NATO enlargement is itself such a transformation and raises probably more issues and questions than it answers, the Strategic Studies Institute undertook a conference in Washington on January 26, 1998, to begin the process of seeing where the United States and where NATO are going. The following chapters are the fruits of that conference, but obviously they can only deal with some of the issues. Questions like the Baltic littoral's future, the nature of peace operations in the future, or the emerging situation in Bosnia and, more recently, in Kossovo, are not specifically included. But many other fundamental issues have been addressed. Simon Serfaty addresses the larger issue of where European security institutions in general, i.e., not just NATO, but the European Union and its hoped-for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) are going. Robert Dorff assesses trends in both American and European public opinion regarding issues raised by enlargement and possible future military contingencies. Stephen Blank probes the rival visions of America, Russia, and Europe concerning the future missions and roles of NATO and of these three sets of governments. Sherman Garnett and Rachel Lebenson analyze the complicated situation on Russia's Western frontier where Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine all interact in a complex way with Russia and the members of NATO. Rachel Bronson and Glen Howard track the little-discussed but increasingly important strategic interaction of NATO and the United States with the Transcaucasian and Central Asia states. General Edward Atkeson (U.S. Army Retired) discusses issues of burdensharing among allies and the military implications of the Partnership for Peace program within the expanded NATO. And General Frederick Kroesen (U.S. Army Retired) raises the important question of how NATO actually should go about building a true military coalition.

Having committed itself to gradual enlargement in 1994, NATO took the important step of admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic as members in 1999. But even though NATO's enlargement has received an enormous amount of public attention, NATO's transformation in the 1990s is probably the more important of the two steps NATO has taken. Created as an organization dedicated to the collective defense of its members, NATO transformed itself in the 1990s, expanding its mission to include conflict prevention and conflict management throughout Europe, including beyond the boundaries of the NATO treaty area. Both of these processes, enlargement and transformation, have been driven primarily by political imperatives-that is, not by a sense of direct threat, but by an environment-shaping agenda of democratization and integration. NATO's transformation and its enlargement process have profound military implications for the United States and its allies. This report presents a framework for thinking about the determinants of future enlargement, the specific defense challenges they pose, and the shaping policies that might help to address some of the challenges.

How and why did NATO, a Cold War military alliance created in 1949 to counter Stalin's USSR, become the cornerstone of new security order for post-Cold War Europe? Why, instead of retreating from Europe after communism's collapse, did the U.S. launch the greatest expansion of the American commitment to the old continent in decades? Written by a high-level insider, Opening NATO's Door provides a definitive account of the ideas, politics, and diplomacy that went into the historic decision to expand NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the still-classified archives of the U.S. Department of State, Ronald D. Asmus recounts how and why American policy makers, against formidable odds at home and abroad, expanded NATO as part of a broader strategy to overcome Europe's Cold War divide and to modernize the Alliance for a new era. Asmus was one of the earliest advocates and intellectual architects of NATO enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s and subsequently served as a top aide to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott, responsible for European security issues. He was involved in the key negotiations that led to NATO's decision to extend invitations to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and finally, the U.S. Senate's ratification of enlargement. Asmus documents how the Clinton Administration sought to develop a rationale for a new NATO that would bind the U.S. and Europe together as closely in the post-Cold War era as they had been during the fight against communism. For the Clinton Administration, NATO enlargement became the centerpiece of a broader agenda to modernize the U.S.-European strategic partnership for the future. That strategy reflected an American commitment to the spread of democracy and Western values, the importance attached to modernizing Washington's key alliances for an increasingly globalized world, and the fact that the Clinton Administration looked to Europe as America's natural partner in addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century. As the Alliance weighs its the future following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and prepares for a second round of enlargement, this book is required reading about the first post-Cold War effort to modernize NATO for a new era.

In this collection the leading authorities address the complexity of present day NATO, its inherent contradictions, and its current direction. The authors reflect on the significance of these issues for the alliance's future prospects, for Russia, and for European security generally. The Future of NATO looks at the conceptual and theoretical approaches that underlie the question of enlarging NATO's membership and the consequences of enlargement on international relations. It examines the policies of some of NATO's leading member states - including Canada, which has recently begun a two-year term on the security council - and deals with the issue of enlargement from the point of view of the East European candidates, focusing on Russia and its opposition to the current process. Contributors include Andràs Balogh (Loràn Eötvös University), Martin Bourgeois, Charles-Philippe David (UQAM), André P. Donneur (UQAM), David G. Haglund (Queen's), Philippe Hébert (Montréal), Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (Glendon College), Richard L. Kugler (RAND, National Defence University), David Law (Queen's), Paul Létourneau (Montréal), Jacques Lévesque (UQAM), Gale Mattox (U.S. Naval Academy), Marie-Claude Plantin (Lumière Lyon 2), Sergei Plekhanov (York), Jane M.O. Sharp (Kings College, London).