Big Issues Confront NATO At Madrid Summit

From CNN White House Correspondent John King

PALMA DE MAJORCA, Spain (July 6, AllPolitics) -- President Bill Clinton this week is in Spain, where he and other Western leaders will confront some big questions concerning NATO and the military future of Europe.

They are scheduled to attend a two-day NATO summit, which opens Tuesday. The reason: to start enlarging the 16-nation defense alliance and to discuss reorganizing the alliance's military structure to take into account the new challenges of the post-Cold War period.

These changes can be traced to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, events that forever altered America's role in Europe and the world.

NATO is ready to expand as three former Soviet bloc countries -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- are slated for admission to the military alliance.

"Enlarging NATO will plainly help to secure the gains of democracy in Europe," Clinton said. "NATO can do for Europe what it did for Europe's West after World War II."

But critics say the potential human cost is too high. "If the United States is ever called upon to fight deep in east central Europe against the Red Army or the Russian armies, this country will be divided far more deeply than it was during Vietnam," former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said. Buchanan is a co-host on CNN's "Crossfire."

The end of the Cold War was supposed to mean a peace dividend for U.S. taxpayers. But expanding NATO won't be cheap.

The White House says the price tag for the United States is about $2 billion over the next 10 years. But others suggest the U.S. share to help get new armies up to NATO standards will be $10 billion.

"To the extent that we can prevent future Bosnias, this would be a very wise, sound investment," U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said.

And what about the Russians, NATO's traditional foe? President Boris Yeltsin reluctantly went along only after it became obvious he couldn't stop NATO expansion.

He now faces political heat at home in Moscow. "A major change in the security architecture of Europe was been made without Russian consent," Professor Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University said.

"The danger is that this will turn Russia against the entire post-Cold War settlement with the new countries, with democratization, with demilitarization," Mandelbaum said.

Clinton has a different point of view. "Enlarging NATO will erase the artificial line in Europe drawn by Stalin at the end of World War II, and NATO will now help Europe come together in security, not be kept apart by instability."

The U.S. Senate needs to ratify any changes to the NATO treaty, as do the assemblies of 15 other NATO members. That will hardly be the only debate flowing from the Madrid NATO summit.

France and other allies are upset the U.S. drew the line at three new members. And some have a more fundamental question about NATO's relevance in the post-Cold War world.