Owen Harries.

• Position: Response to William Odom, The National Interest, Spring 1995 - Expanding NATO: An Exchange Between Odom and His Critics

The good thing about arguing with General Odom is that one is never left uncertain as to where he stands on an issue. He spells out his positions clearly, without any hedging or obfuscation.

He is for expanding NATO. But he stresses that this should not be done without first dealing effectively with Bosnia. This, in turn, he maintains will involve keeping from 150,000 to 200,000 troops -- at least 50,000 of them American -- in the former Yugoslavia for at least a generation.

For one to find Odom's case persuasive, then, it is necessary to find acceptable -- and conceivable -- such a substantial, long-term commitment of American forces to this violent corner of the world, a region that no American leader has ever before considered one of vital concern to his country. And, as Odom honestly points out, it would be a commitment not merely to "peacekeeping," but to the more active and dangerous task of "peacemaking," which would almost certainly involve significant casualties over the years.

All this, of course, as well as the pledge to defend the borders of the new, Central European members of NATO that an extension of the Treaty would entail: a pledge of the utmost gravity, which, if honored, could cost tens of thousands of American lives -- and which...