15.1barany nato peaceful advance

NATO’S PEACEFUL ADVANCEZoltan Barany

Over the last decade and a half, international organizations have playeda vital role in fostering economic and democratic development in East-ern Europe. Notable among these have been the World Bank, theInternational Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Security andCooperation in Europe. By far the most influential, however, have beenthe European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO). For since the end of the Cold War, it has been a consistent andprincipal foreign-policy objective of the region’s states to join the twoorganizations, a prospect that has given the EU and NATO tremendousleverage over these states’ domestic and foreign policies.

While NATO membership may not promise the kinds of tangible, long-term economic benefits that EU membership does, NATO accession is nev-ertheless a democratic milestone for the countries of Eastern Europe. Indeed,insofar as democratic consolidation depends on the stability afforded byrobust security arrangements, full membership in the Atlantic Alliance isactually, from the perspective of democracy, a more important objectivethan EU integration.1 And because a number of East European states per-ceived (accurately) that an invitation from NATO would be more readilyforthcoming than one from the EU, they focused their early postcommunistefforts on satisfying NATO’s less rigorous membership criteria.

NATO enlargement has been one of the most important events inpost–Cold War international affairs. In less than a decade, countriesthat were ardent and strategically crucial enemies of the Alliance be-came its newest members. How and why did this happen?

The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War brought

Zoltan Barany is Frank C. Erwin, Jr., Centennial Professor of Govern-ment at the University of Texas, Austin. He is author of The Future ofNATO Expansion (2003) and The East European Gypsies: Regime Change,Marginality, and Ethnopolitics (2002). His essay, “Bulgaria’s Royal Elec-tions,” appeared in the April 2002 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 1 January 2004

Europe Moves Eastward

Li Zhou

Journal of Democracy64

dramatic changes to East European security. Soon after the March 1991dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe found itself in a securitylimbo, as politicians, military elites, and national-security expertswidely recognized at the time. Moscow’s forces were gone, but the Pol-ish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian militaries were simply not capable ofguaranteeing their own national security. Initially, this did not seem tobe much of a problem, as the new governments’ priorities lay in democ-ratization and economic reform rather than the improvement of theirsecurity environment. In fact, there was a major public debate in Czecho-slovakia during the early 1990s on whether the country any longerneeded a military establishment at all.

Three developments, however, soon compelled Eastern Europe’s lead-ers to turn their attention to security matters. The first was the violentbreakup of Yugoslavia, a country bordering on three former WarsawPact member states (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania). Although theactual threat posed to these states was modest—even taking into ac-count the Hungarian government’s clandestine delivery of surplusinfantry weapons to Croatia in 1991—the war in Yugoslavia clearlyexposed their poor defensive capabilities. For example, during the war,Croatian and Serbian aircraft frequently violated Hungarian airspace.In one incident, a Yugoslav National Army fighter jet—representingthe Serbian side—accidentally dropped a bomb on a Hungarian village,causing no casualties and only minor damage. From the subsequentpublic inquiry, it became clear to Hungarians that their skies were nowvirtually unprotected.

Second, Eastern Europe’s leaders had come to understand that theyhad more to fear than conventional, or “hard,” security threats. Liberal-ization and open borders subjected the region to many new “soft” securitythreats, as well—ones long known to Western democracies, such asinternational trafficking in refugees and contraband.

The third, and most momentous, development prompting the region’selites to pay more attention to their security situation was the all-outcollapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This was accompanied by theemergence of political parties of all hues, but predominant among thesewas the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, whose ultrana-tionalist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, promised to reinstate the SovietEmpire and to redraw the map of Eastern Europe in Russia’s interests.

After the Warsaw Pact, What?

Although the states of Eastern Europe did establish a number of newregional security organizations, including the Visegrad Four and theCentral European Initiative, none of these had any substantive military-security profiles—in part due to fears that any regional military alliancemight end up too closely resembling the old Warsaw Pact. By the early

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1990s, most of the region’s governments had concluded that the onlysolution to their security problems was full membership in NATO—which, not incidentally, would allow democratization to advance in theircountries without distraction and also endow their leadership with greaterlegitimacy, both at home and abroad. Once the states of Eastern Europerealized that there was no alternative to NATO accession, they under-took to lobby the Alliance and its members—particularly the UnitedStates—through diplomatic channels and the media.

At this time, elite support for NATO membership was unambiguousand overwhelming throughout the region, with the exceptions of Bul-garia and Slovakia, where governments firmly committed to Euro-Atlanticintegration would not come to power until 1997 and 1998, respectively.As to public enthusiasm in the region for NATO accession, three gener-alizations may be made. First, the popularity of Alliance membershipcorrelated positively with geographical proximity to Russia (histori-cally and still perceived as a threat), and negatively with stateperformance in both democratization and economic reform. Accordingly,as numerous public opinion polls revealed, Estonians, Latvians,Lithuanians, Poles (all sharing borders with Russia), and Romanians(whose democratic progress had been slow) were keener on joining NATOthan were Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Slovenes.2 Second, publicsupport for NATO membership dropped in every candidate country dur-ing the Alliance’s 1999 air war against Slobodan Miloševiæ’sYugoslavia. And third, wherever state campaigns were conducted tobolster popular support for NATO accession (as in Hungary, Slovakia,and Slovenia), the campaigns tended to succeed.

Propitiously, the East European states’ recognition of the necessityof joining the Alliance roughly coincided with an identity crisis inNATO itself, caused by uncertainties about its post–Cold War raisonï^etre. The gradual inclusion of newly independent East European statesoffered NATO a plausible, if partial, way of responding, but it alsodelayed a genuine resolution of the Alliance’s existential quandary. Atits 1990 London summit, NATO took the first step in this new directionby inviting Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, andthe Soviet Union to establish regular diplomatic liaisons with NATO.Subsequently, important steps were taken with the founding of the NorthAtlantic Cooperation Council the following year and the inaugurationin 1994 of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, which created aninstitutional framework for further interaction and cooperation betweenNATO and aspiring members.

The prospect of actually incorporating former Warsaw Pact statesinto NATO generated a spirited public discussion in member states onboth sides of the Atlantic. Scores of scholars, pundits, and policy mak-ers debated the benefits and drawbacks for both NATO and the EastEuropean states, the cost of enlargement, and its probable impact on the


Alliance’s relations with Russia. One of the few points on which bothsupporters and opponents of enlargement agreed was that, in purelymilitary terms, no East European state could be admitted. Proponentscontended, however, that NATO’s decision had to be made on politicalrather than military grounds.

One of the key arguments of enlargement supporters was that NATOexpansion would spread and strengthen democracy in Eastern Europe.U.S. president Bill Clinton claimed that NATO could “do for Europe’sEast what it did for Europe’s West: prevent a return to local rivalries,strengthen democracy against future threats,” and create the conditionsfor prosperity.3 Not to enlarge NATO, the reasoning went, would betantamount to encouraging the division of Europe between a self-confi-dent and secure West and an unstable and insecure East. All the same,those backing NATO membership for Eastern Europe could not quitejustify “why a cold-war military alliance, rather than the EuropeanUnion, [was] the best way to secure those aims.”4

Enlargement as Reward

The champions of enlargement portrayed Alliance membership as areward for consolidating democracies and establishing market econo-mies. Opponents maintained, however, that democracy had to be its ownreward. In any event, they added, if the Alliance was truly interested inprotecting democracy, then it should have extended membership to stateswhere democracy was not yet consolidated (such as Albania, Romania,Russia, or Ukraine) and not to those (such as Poland, the Czech Repub-lic, or Hungary) where it was. Opponents also noted that the primary aimof NATO was never to maintain free-market democracies. Greece, Portu-gal, and Turkey had hardly been consolidated democracies when theyjoined. Furthermore, there was no solid evidence that NATO had a deci-sive influence on its members’ progress toward democracy: Witness thecolonels’ regime in Greece and Turkey’s lackluster democratic develop-ment. NATO was interested in these countries not as models of democracybut as strategically important real estate.

Moreover, NATO’s enlargement was widely predicted to encourageantidemocratic political forces in Moscow, which would squarely con-tradict the Western objective of strengthening democratic elements onthe Russian political scene. As the liberal reformer Anatoly Chubaisnoted in 1997, NATO expansion was the only issue on which he agreedwith Communist Party leader Gennady Zhuganov and the nationalistmaverick Zhirinovsky.5

Many observers suggested that the EU’s expansion would make NATOenlargement unnecessary. Although EU membership was not going tobe a realistic short-term prospect for some of the region’s states, it wasthe EU, not NATO, that was in a position to foster democratic consoli-

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dation and market reform and to promote long-term stability and pros-perity—just as it had in Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

Of the states aspiring to NATO membership in the mid-1990s, thosewith consolidated democracies and relatively well-functioning marketeconomies garnered the most support. Poland was clearly the favoriteamong them, owing to its leading role in the demolition of one-partyrule, and its radical political and economic reforms. The Czech Republic(having split from Slovakia in 1993’s “Velvet Divorce”) won somewhatless backing on account of its weak military and limited public enthusi-asm for membership and for stepped-up military expenditures. Hungaryproved a less popular choice still, because it did not share a border withthe other two or with any other NATO member, and because of Budapest’soften tense relations with neighboring states harboring large Hungarianethnic minorities.

The U.S. State Department was against the inclusion of Romania andSlovenia, arguing that, if these two countries were included, then mem-bership for the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—wouldhave to be addressed, and such a step would risk antagonizing Russia. Inany case, Romania and Slovenia had several strikes against them. Roma-nia did not elect a government committed to substantive political andeconomic reform until late 1996, and even then was far from consolidat-ing democracy or establishing a functioning market economy. Slovenia,by contrast, was a consolidated democracy with the region’s most pros-perous economy, but its status as a former Yugoslav republic raisedquestions in many minds, albeit out of ignorance. Ironically, Ljubljanawas penalized precisely because it had openly distanced itself from thecrises in the former Yugoslavia. Slovakia was more or less automaticallydisqualified, because it remained under the quasi-authoritarian rule ofVladimír Meèiar until 1998.

Slovenia aside, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic werepostcommunist Europe’s only consolidated democracies when NATOinvited them to join the Alliance at its 1997 Madrid summit. Theirsuccess in democratizing was clearly the most important factor in theirfavor, and this was not lost on the states that remained outside NATO.Public support for membership was overwhelming in Poland (accordingto some surveys, between 79 and 88 percent).6 In Hungary, public sup-port never reached 50 percent prior to 1994, primarily owing to thepopular desire for neutrality, concern about the cost of membership,and skepticism about the severity of the security threats that the coun-try faced. An elaborate government-run media campaign, however, hadraised that figure to 61 percent by the time of the 1997 Madrid summit.7

Czechs appeared even less excited about NATO membership, for simi-lar reasons. As Alliance leaders made clear both in Madrid and at the1999 Washington summit, NATO’s doors remained open for new mem-bers as long as they fulfilled the accession criteria, the most important


of which were consolidating democracy and establishing democraticcivilian control over the armed forces.

The Debate Enters a New Round

After the Washington summit, NATO leaders affirmed that furtherexpansion should become part of the Alliance’s mission. The nine as-piring states (Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia,Slovenia, and the three Baltic republics) became participants in theMembership Action Plan (MAP), which was intended to assist candi-dates in their preparations for membership and to assess their progressthrough annual reviews. At the Alliance’s November 2002 Prague sum-mit, all MAP members but two—Albania and Macedonia, which in mostrespects were far behind the others in fulfilling Alliance criteria—wereinvited to join the organization at its next summit in 2004.

The second round of NATO expansion presented a number of conten-tious issues, yet debate leading up to the invitation of the new candidateswas much more muted than it had been before the first round. Many ofthose who opposed the second round of enlargement were not againstfurther expansion per se, but had qualms about bringing in new coun-tries that were unqualified in certain areas, especially military spending,equipment, and readiness. The opponents contended that the Allianceshould learn the lessons of the first round, which had brought in newmembers that still had profound and long-term military deficiencies.

In general, the integration of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hun-gary into NATO has been more difficult than expected. Since they wereinvited to join in 1997, and particularly since they became full-fledgedmembers two years later, these states had given few reasons for NATOleaders to applaud their admission. All three needed continual NATOprodding to increase their defense expenditures and to implement long-overdue defense reforms, notwithstanding their ardent promises to meetNATO guidelines prior to being invited. The modernization of equip-ment, reduction of manpower, and improvement of training to meetNATO standards are still a long way off in these countries, and in manycases little progress has yet been made. The three new members are notexpected to achieve “mature capability” before 2009—that is, not untila decade after joining the Alliance. While it is true that manylongstanding NATO members might also be classified as “free riders,”that hardly justifies taking on new ones.

The mixed record of the first round of enlargement may have been onNATO secretary-general George Robertson’s mind when in October 2000he addressed a conference of the aspiring countries’ defense ministersin Sofia. Robertson warned that accession to the Alliance could not beregarded as “a political award,” and added that expansion would takeplace when both NATO and the candidates were ready for it. He noted

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that “NATO wants [those] countries not only to consume, but also togenerate security,” insinuating that the first three new entrants were freeriders.8 In any case, there is a broad consensus among experts that theAlliance underestimated the problems of militarily transforming thethree new member states.

Notwithstanding Robertson’s admonitions, critics of further enlarge-ment charge that few politicians in either Eastern Europe or the existingNATO member countries are truly concerned with military issues. Rather,they maintain, the Alliance has seemingly become a “political honorsociety” that grants membership to consolidated democracies regardlessof their capacity to make military-security contributions. The currentcandidates for NATO membership are even less qualified than were thosein the first round: Romania and Bulgaria have weak economies; Romaniahas yet to consolidate its democracy; and the contribution of the Balticstates and Slovenia to NATO’s capabilities would be little more thansymbolic. Moreover, approximately 40 percent of Latvia’s population,30 percent of Estonia’s, and 7 percent of Lithuania’s are ethnic Russianswhose treatment has frequently prompted international criticism, the im-plications of which do not escape opponents of Baltic membership.

Old Tanks versus Old Tractors

The connection between EU and NATO enlargement was raised dur-ing and after NATO’s second round of expansion with much greaterfrequency than it had been during the first. In the late 1990s, the UnitedStates, trying to preserve as much decision-making room as possible,was anxious to downplay any link between the pace of the two enlarge-ment processes. At the same time, Washington wanted to ensure that EUenlargement took place and that membership in the two organizationsoverlapped to the greatest possible extent.9 Many analysts in aspirantcountries had come to believe that NATO accession would strengthentheir chances of joining the EU, recognizing that NATO’s enlargementdecision is both more subjective and tied to infinitely fewer technicalrequirements. As former German defense minister Volker Rühe remarked,“You can join the Atlantic Alliance with old tanks, but joining the EUwith old farm tractors causes problems.”10

Not unexpectedly, the governments and populations of those coun-tries with relatively remote chances for rapid EU integration have tendedto demonstrate more enthusiasm toward NATO than those that are set togain EU membership in 2004. According to one set of 2002 publicopinion polls, joining NATO was favored by 88 percent of Romaniansand 60 percent of Bulgarians, whereas only 41 to 52 percent of Slovaksand 39 percent of Slovenes felt that way.11 The populations of the Balticcountries, each of which was forcibly incorporated into and brutallysuppressed by the Soviet Union, overwhelmingly back Alliance mem-


bership. In early 2002, 68 percent of Estonians, 64 percent of Latvians,and 59 percent of Lithuanians supported accession.12

What arguments are being marshaled on behalf of the second roundof NATO enlargement? First, it is said, NATO leaders explicitly pledgedat the Madrid summit to keep the door open for any European country“ready and willing” to shoulder the obligations of membership, and theAlliance has a moral obligation to make good on that promise. Thosemaking this argument, however, often overlook the important qualifierthat new members must meet entrance requirements at the time of entry.Clearly, none of the seven states invited to join in Prague satisfy all ofNATO’s membership criteria.

Second, it is said that incorporating Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia,and Slovenia into the Alliance will expand its deterrent potential andenhance its rapid-intervention capability in the Balkans and elsewherein the region. Moreover, such expansion will improve NATO’sgeostrategic position by linking Hungary with new members on its bor-ders (Slovakia, Romania, and Slovenia), as well as by linking Greeceand Turkey with the rest of the Alliance through Bulgaria.

Third, it is claimed that the first round of NATO enlargement at leasttemporarily institutionalized the divide between postcommunistEurope’s haves and have-nots. One could argue that, if expansion wereto be halted now, the resultant isolation of the Balkan and Baltic statesfrom Euro-Atlantic integration might pose a long-term threat to Euro-pean security, because they have the potential to foster the creation ofpolitical associations hostile to democracy and to reinforce nationalisttensions in the region. Of all the past and current NATO aspirants, it isthe three Baltic states that face the most realistic security challenges.Since 1991, Baltic-Russian relations have often been tense because ofMoscow’s inflexible stance on a range of policy issues, the treatment ofRussian minorities in the Baltic states, and Moscow’s brash and absurdpublic insistence that these states had “voluntarily joined” the USSR in1941. Bulgaria and Romania, still far removed from EU membership,13

are in a different situation altogether. For their governments, NATOaccession signifies not only the solution to their security dilemmas butalso a much-needed endorsement of their Western orientation and, justas important, a measure of domestic legitimacy.

The Impact of 9/11

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon inSeptember 2001 had profound effects on the course of NATO expansion.Previously, NATO, and especially the United States, were pursuing en-largement only halfheartedly. But after 9/11, Washington, searching fordependable and dedicated allies, began intensely pushing for a “big-bangexpansion.”

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Before 9/11, only two countries, Slovenia and Slovakia, had reason-ably good prospects of winning invitations from the Alliance at its 2002summit, and even these two had weaknesses that tempered NATO’s ea-gerness to integrate them quickly. First, although elite support for NATOmembership in Ljubljana and Bratislava was solid, popular backingmostly lingered below 50 percent. Second, given the first three entrants’military shortcomings, NATO had become acutely concerned about theability of newly invited states to satisfy its defense-related criteria. YetSlovakia and especially Slovenia were handicapped by staggering defi-ciencies in their armed forces. In late 2001, Slovak defense ministerJozef Stank admitted that to reform the Slovak army along NATO guide-lines would take till 2015 at the earliest.14 And in October 2001, a Dutchstudy revealed that the Slovene army did not have “a single unit pre-pared for international operations.”15 Third, the possible return to powerof Vladimír Meèiar and his populist Movement for a Democratic Slovakia(HZDS) in Slovakia’s September 2002 national elections posed a poten-tially significant barrier to democratic consolidation. (Although theHZDS garnered a greater share of the vote than any other single party—19.5 percent—four center-right parties together gained a narrow two-seatmajority in the legislature, allowing the formation of another coalitiongovernment without HZDS.) Fourth, many former communist officersremained in positions of high authority in the military and security do-mains in the new candidate countries (except in the Baltics).

If Slovakia and Slovenia were in the “promising” bracket, what ofthe two Balkan states? Until 9/11, few experts would have bet on speedyNATO accession by Bulgaria or Romania. Indeed, Romania appeared tobe the region’s undisputed basket case. The governments under EmilConstantinescu’s presidency (1996–2000) were as corrupt and incom-petent as those under his predecessor Ion Iliescu, if not more so. Thecountry’s unreformed economy continued its nosedive (per-capita GNPfell from $1,562 in 1995 to $1,515 in 1999). And in the December 2000presidential runoff, in which Iliescu defeated the viciously xenophobicCorneliu Vadim Tudor by a margin of two-to-one, a leading Romaniannewspaper said that voters were being forced to choose between AIDSand cancer, while the influential German daily Die Welt called it “an-other giant step in the wrong direction.”16

Since Premier Adrian Nastase’s government took office in December2000, members of Romania’s infamous communist-era secret police,the Securitate, have continued to enjoy privileged positions despiteNATO’s repeated expressions of concern. As a number of internationalorganizations, including the European Parliament, have pointed out,the Romanian judiciary remains heavily subject to political pressures.Romanian elites continue to deny the mass murder of Roma and Jewsthat took place in their country during World War II, and appear not toworry much about the de facto rehabilitation of Romania’s wartime


leader, Marshal Ion Antonescu. High-ranking members of the armedforces have attended events extolling the marshal’s virtues. In a recentcase, the current chief of the general staff, General Mihai Popescu, sentthe organizers of an Antonescu commemoration a letter expressing his“regrets” that he could not attend due to family obligations.17

Bulgaria has not encountered major problems of democratic consoli-dation, but until the belated introduction of reforms in 1997, its economycould only be described as disastrous.18 Like Romania, Bulgaria hasbeen plagued by massive corruption that reaches into the highest ech-elons of political power. And while Romania did the most it could toreform its armed forces on a shoestring budget, the Bulgarian militarylags behind all others in the region. Moreover, longstanding conflictsbetween uniformed personnel and civilian bureaucrats in Sofia’s minis-try of defense have continued to diminish the chances of substantivereform of the armed forces. Former prime minister Ivan Kostov used tojoke that his country’s contribution to peace in the Balkans was that itcould not threaten any of its neighbors. As one Bulgarian commentatorsummed up the situation, “God help us if life decides to test our na-tional security system!”19

And yet, 9/11 has changed everything. In its aftermath, the UnitedStates needed all potential allies, regardless of their deficiencies. Com-pared to the situation in Russia (locked in a war against its own citizensin Chechnya) and to what was going on in the sultanistic regimes ofCentral Asia, the shortcomings of Romania, Bulgaria, and the otherNATO applicants must have seemed negligible. At the same time, someaspirants, sensing the opportunity to make up for their failure to meetAlliance membership criteria, jumped at the chance to ingratiate them-selves with Washington.

From Wallflower to “Spearhead”

Romania’s case is the most instructive. In the wake of the attacks, theRomanian government repeatedly expressed its “heartfelt solidarity”with the United States and offered whatever help it could (includingtroops to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan). In August 2002,Washington’s growing goodwill toward Bucharest was further cementedwhen, in the face of direct EU disapproval, Romania became the firststate (and the only one among the seven invited to join NATO) to signan agreement with the United States exempting U.S. peacekeepers fromprosecution under the International Criminal Court. After Bucharestsecured an invitation to NATO in November 2002, Romania volun-teered to host U.S. missile bases on its territory and Iliescu decoratedGeorge W. Bush with Romania’s highest state order. For his part, theU.S. president declared that Romania “brings moral clarity to our NATOalliance.”20 So, in the course of little over a year, Romania, the least

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attractive applicant for NATO membership, had become, in Bush’s words,the “spearhead of the Alliance.”

The improvement of U.S.-Russian relations following 9/11 also al-lowed Washington to push with yet more determination for the inclusionin the Alliance of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow was not pleasedat the prospect of these elements of its former empire becoming NATOmembers, but the Kremlin calculated that the advantages of better rela-tions with NATO and the United States—among which would be anenhanced stature in international forums, economic benefits, and thequieting of U.S. condemnation of the war in Chechnya—would out-weigh the drawbacks. To be sure, Moscow had little to fear from thesmall Baltic states, which were hardly more qualified for NATO mem-bership than the other candidates, at least in military-security terms.

Russia’s more relaxed attitude toward NATO expansion may comefrom an emerging realization that what the enlargement process signalsis precisely the Alliance’s transformation from a Cold War military pactinto a mainly political partnership. Indeed, NATO’s internal conflict(spawned by Washington’s unilateralist foreign policy in general andthe 2003 war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in particular) and the in-creasing support within NATO for continued expansion (to includeGeorgia, Ukraine, and even Central Asian states) presage the Alliance’slikely demise as an effective military organization. Since the end of theCold War, in any event, U.S. domination of NATO has only increased,which is not surprising given that Washington’s annual military expen-ditures (about $290 billion in 2002) are more than twice the combinedspending of its European allies (about $120 billion).

In sum, one consequence of the “big-bang expansion” in Prague thatfollowed 9/11 was the dilution of NATO membership standards. Al-though the military preparations of Poland, Hungary, and the CzechRepublic were inadequate, these countries were consolidated democra-cies with relatively robust economies at the time of the first round ofAlliance enlargement. In the second round, most of the seven inviteesare less qualified in virtually every respect, and if NATO moves furthereast, this dilution of NATO standards is almost certain to continue.With the decision to invite unqualified states, the Alliance has lostmuch of its leverage over them, because it has neither an enforcementmechanism nor any sanctions at its disposal to compel members to carryout their responsibilities. Nor has the Alliance opted to modify its char-ter to cope with this institutional flaw.

Several reasons explain Washington’s post-9/11 push for a large-scale expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. One is that EastEuropeans seem more convinced than West Europeans that a U.S. mili-tary presence is Europe’s fundamental guarantee of stability and security,as well as an important promoter of democratization. Likewise, EastEuropeans tend to be less cynical about U.S. motivations. The United


States has received proportionately more support from its new East Eu-ropean allies in its military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq than ithas from NATO members of long standing. Nearly all the governmentsof Eastern Europe have sent specialized units of one sort or another tojoin the fight against terrorism, while Poland has deployed an entiredivision in northern Iraq.

In a more elemental sense, though, it seems that East Europeans re-tain an enduring sense of gratitude to the United States for the part itplayed in defeating tyranny’s threat to Europe, whereas among WestEuropeans this sense has largely disappeared. In Eastern Europe, NATOis still perceived in a sentimental vein as the alliance that triumphedover the evil that descended upon the region in the aftermath of WorldWar II. In contrast, while the EU may foster the region’s long-term eco-nomic development, it is widely viewed as a bureaucratic andtechnocratic institution concerned mainly with regulatory matters.

NATO and East European Democratization

Has NATO encouraged democratization in postcommunist EasternEurope? The answer to this oft-debated question should be a resound-ing “yes,” for three reasons. First, securing national sovereignty andsecurity establishes the fundamental basis that makes it possible fordemocratic transition and consolidation to proceed. East Europeansfound themselves in a highly uncertain security environment followingthe end of their countries’ state-socialist regimes. They had no securityalternative to the Alliance.

Second, the prospect of NATO membership has created generallypositive incentives for democratization in the region. For example, akey attraction to Slovak voters of the coalition that unseated Meèiar inthe 1998 elections was its commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration.Prior to the 2002 elections, President Rudolf Schuster remarked, “Ev-erybody realizes that if we want to get into NATO and the EU, this mustbe granted by certain personalities”—in other words, people such asMeèiar, the obstacle to Slovakia’s integration into Europe, would haveto be voted out of power.21 Another example is the signing of basictreaties between East European governments aspiring to NATO mem-bership and their neighbors. The main reason why the aspiring countriesconcluded these pacts with traditional adversaries (such as Slovakiawith Hungary in 1995, Romania with Hungary in 1996, and Romaniawith Ukraine in 1997) was the signatories’ realization that it wouldsubstantially improve their chances of being admitted to the Alliance.

Third and finally, NATO has promoted democratization in a numberof specific policy areas. To be sure, NATO’s policy influence is seldomeasy to gauge precisely, because in many respects it has sought policyadjustments similar to those urged by other international organizations—

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especially the EU. Nevertheless, NATO focuses on military effective-ness, civil-military relations, defense expenditures, and a host of issuesthat other organizations have not concerned themselves with. Foremostamong these is civilian control over the armed forces. Such control isessential to the success of a democratic polity, and in this regard it isbeyond question that the demands of NATO membership have had astrongly prodemocratic effect in Eastern Europe.

Both in Slovakia (during its 1998 national elections) and in Roma-nia (during its 1998 local elections), ruling political elites attempted toinfluence the votes of military personnel. Neither government had towait long for NATO’s condemnation. The increasing transparency ofdefense budgets—one of the most important means by which civiliancontrol is exercised—is also largely attributable to NATO’s influence.Since 1999, the Alliance’s Membership Action Program has providedan effective new framework through which NATO has been able to mo-tivate further reforms (dealing with such issues as ethnic discriminationin the military and the treatment of conscripts) and to offer guidance forthe identification of priorities in allocating scarce resources. In theseand many other instances, the causal links between incentives createdby NATO and domestic policy changes are clear.

By providing the security essential for successful democratization aswell as inducing positive changes in specific policy areas, NATO may havemade an even more essential contribution than the EU to Eastern Europe’sdemocratic transformation. And if NATO continues to expand further east,it is even more likely to surpass the EU in its impact on democratization.For it then will be expanding to countries where the prospect of EU en-largement—and hence the EU’s leverage—will be quite small. At the sametime, however, by engaging in such politically driven enlargement, NATOmay also risk its demise as a cohesive and functional military alliance.

NOTES

1. See Jacques Rupnik, “Eastern Europe: The International Context,” Journal ofDemocracy 11 (April 2000): 115–29. For a theoretical analysis of the broadercontext, see Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2002).

2. See Tatiana Kostadinova, “East European Public Support for NATO Mem-bership: Fears and Aspirations,” Journal of Peace Research 37 (March 2000):235–49; and Zoltan Barany, The Future of NATO Expansion (New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 2003), 224–25.

3. Remarks by President Clinton at Fisher Theater in Detroit, Michigan, 22October 1996 (Federal News Service).

4. “Tinkering with Europe,” New York Times, 12 December 1996.

5. Alexei K. Pushkov, “Don’t Isolate Us: A Russian View of NATO Enlarge-ment,” National Interest 47 (Spring 1997): 58.


6. William D. Hartung and Richard F. Kaufman, “NATO Expands East,” inMartha Honey and Tom Barry, eds., Global Focus: U.S. Foreign Policy at the Turnof the Millennium (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 205.

7. Zoltan Barany, “Hungary: An Outpost on the Troubled Periphery,” in An-drew A. Michta, ed., America’s New Allies: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republicin NATO (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 87.

8. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline, Part II (henceforth: RFE/RL II),16 October 2000.

9. Martin A. Smith, “The NATO Factor: A Spanner in the Works of EU andWEU Enlargement?” in Karen Henderson, ed., Back to Europe: Central and East-ern Europe and the European Union (London: University College of LondonPress, 1999), 54–56.

10. Cited in Lev Voronkov, “The Challenges of NATO Enlargement,” BalkanForum 5 (June 1997): 21.

11. Respectively: BTA (Sofia), 2 October 2002; Romanian Radio cited in RFE/RL II, 10 October 2002; RFE/RL II, 18 October 2002; RFE/RL II, 3 June 2002.

12. Grañina Miniotait, “The Baltic States: In Search of Security and Identity,”in Charles Krupnick, ed., Almost NATO: Partners and Players in Central andEastern European Security (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 288.

13. Recent figures indicate that Bulgaria would take 60 years and Romania 80years to catch up to the EU’s GDP average if they were to grow by an annual 3.8percent and the EU by only 2 percent (RFE/RL II, 17 June 2003).

14. “Army Reshape to Last Until 2015,” Slovak Spectator 7 (1–7 October2001) .

15. Margriet Drent, et al., “Organising National Defences for NATO Member-ship: The Unexamined Dimension of Aspirants’ Readiness for Entry,” HarmoniePaper 15 (Centre of European Security Studies, University of Groningen, October2001), 57.

16. Respectively: Cited in “Gulp,” Economist, 16 December 2000, 57; and inJiøí Šedivý, “The Puzzle of NATO Enlargement,” Contemporary Security Policy 22(August 2001): 15.

17. Mediafax (Bucharest), 3 June 2001.

18. See Zoltan Barany, “Bulgaria’s Royal Elections,” Journal of Democracy 13(April 2002): 141–55.

19. Both cited by John D. Bell, “Bulgaria’s Search for Security,” in John D.Bell, ed., Bulgaria in Transition (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998), 309.

20. RFE/RL II, 25 November 2002.

21. RFE/RL II, 14 February 2001.

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