Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first NATO supreme veallied commander. Shortly after assuming that post, he wrote these words in February 1951:
"If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed."
One can only wonder at his reaction today if he learned that 46 years later, the United States was the dominant force in a plan not just to continue our powerful military presence there but to enlarge NATO's responsibilities and increase U.S. costs and risks in Europe. If his granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, is any guide to his reaction, he would not be pleased. She gathered an impressive group of 49 military, political and academic leaders who joined her in signing an open letter to President Clinton on June 26 that terms the plan to expand NATO "a policy error of historic proportions."
Why have so many knowledgeable and responsible authorities, in addition to the letter's signatories, raised powerful objections to NATO expansion? Diplomat-historian George F. Kennan perhaps said it most clearly when he wrote earlier this year in a newspaper commentary: "Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected . . . to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."
Aye, there's the rub. The long-term interests of the United States in Europe can best be served by actions that promote enduring peace in Europe through security arrangements that include Russia as a cooperative participant. The expansion of NATO, however, excludes Russia at the same time it moves NATO borders 300 miles eastward--the recent pact providing for regular NATO-Russia consultation notwithstanding.
President Clinton and his counselors deny that expansion threatens Russia. He told the graduating class at West Point in May that the objective was "to build and secure a New Europe, peaceful, democratic and undivided at last."
It is delusory, deliberately so, to argue that expanding NATO is a way to unite Europe. Certainly Henry Kissinger, a strong proponent of NATO expansion, was more candid and accurate when he wrote in The Times recently that "the new members are seeking to participate in NATO . . . not to erase dividing lines but to position themselves inside a guaranteed territory by shifting existing NATO boundaries 300 miles to the east." In stating that the real purpose of expansion is to create new dividing lines, he also provided a clear picture of Moscow's perception of a new NATO threat moved closer to its borders.
