The Next NATO.

• Author: Kurth, James

Building an American Commonwealth of Nations

EXACTLY FIFTY years ago, Washington was the scene of what was then called the Great Debate. The issue in 1951 was the conversion of the rather spare North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 into a genuine American military commitment: an integrated military organization under an American supreme commander and the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in Europe. Thirty-one years before that, Washington was the scene of an even more famous Great Debate; the issues in 1920 were U.S. membership in the League of Nations and a permanent U.S. security guarantee to Britain and France.

This June, President Bush proposed in a major address in Warsaw that "Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between" be admitted to NATO, with invitations for some to be issued at the NATO summit to be held in Prague in November 2002. Although the President did not mention specific countries, it was taken for granted that he had the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in mind. Other nations that have applied to become members of NATO and that are being given positive consideration are Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. [1]

The admission of these countries into NATO would entail an extension and transformation of U.S. military commitments as serious as those at issue in 1951 and in 1920. But there is little sign thus far of any Great Debate, just as there was no such debate--except in some highly cloistered intellectual circles--during the mid- to late-1990s over the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. This lack of public political interest is all the more curious given that great powers traditionally have considered their alliance obligations and military commitments to be at the heart of their foreign policies, and that both the First and Second World Wars began because particular great powers were in fact honoring such commitments. NATO is supposed to be a military alliance, but there has been almost no public discussion about the implications of NATO enlargement for its military strategy. And although there has been much talk about not drawing a new line that would divide Europe like the old Yalta agreement did, the whole point of a military alliance is to create an alignment--that is, to draw a line. Obviously, the line that will be drawn by round II of NATO enlargement will be one between Europe and Russia. Russia has consistently argued that it should be defined as part of Europe, and it has even proposed that it be admitted into NATO. Conversely, the United States has referred to almost every other country in Europe as a prospective member of NATO, but it has consistently refused to include Russia among them. The line, then, is bound to remain.

The U.S. refusal to consider NATO membership for Russia is not based upon a Russian military threat to NATO's prospective new members, however. In the minds of the U.S. foreign policy leadership, NATO enlargement is not really about the expansion of a military alliance but about something else. [2] Its real purpose is to consolidate Europe into a coherent and integral part of the American vision and version of world order; it is to make of Europe a solid base and loyal partner in the worldwide struggle now developing over the grand American project of globalization. But because NATO nevertheless remains a military alliance--Article V guarantee and all--its enlargement will have serious military and strategic consequences.

Globalization is US

FOR THE PAST decade, the grand project of the United States in world affairs has been globalization. Indeed, globalization has been so central to the United States, and the United States has been so central to world affairs, that it has given its name to the new era that has succeeded the Cold War; more than anything else, the contemporary period has been defined as the era of globalization. Globalization itself has been defined by American leaders as the spread of free markets, open borders, liberal democracy and the rule of law--in short, an essentially high-tech Wilsonian world in which the main elements of democratic peace theory are assumed to be valid. [3] The Clinton Administration was particularly consistent in promoting globalization and each of these elements. The Bush Administration has been less explicit about doing so, but its business wing is pressing for free markets and open borders, while its neo-conservative wing is pressing for liberal democracy and the rule of law, at least as they interp ret it.

Most accounts of globalization have assumed that the phenomenon is indeed global in its scope, or that it will soon become so. This assumption is mistaken, and the awareness that globalization is not global, and probably never will be, will itself soon become widespread.

After a decade of experience with globalization, we can see a greatly variegated map of the globe, and the reality that it presents is not a linear and smooth progression, but a lumpy and jagged construction. It is a pattern of uneven development, uneven acceptance and uneven resistance. When even the U.S. State Department--one of the most enthusiastic promoters of globalization--identifies 27 countries (including such major ones as Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria and Colombia) that Americans should avoid entirely because of war, crime, anti-American hostility or simply chaos, it is clear that globalization's ambit is hardly complete.

Indeed, vast areas of the globe are less integrated into the global economy and a world order than they were fifty years ago. This is the case with most of Africa, most of Southwest Asia, an increasing part of Southeast Asia, and an increasing part of the Andean region of South America. These four regions add up to a vast realm where globalization has already failed and where it is highly unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future. There has been much talk about "the African renaissance", "the Islamic resurgence", and "Plan Colombia", but no one has offered a credible plan or even hope for turning these regions into stable parts of the global economy and world order. On the contrary, they have created their own perverse, underworld version of the global economy consisting of a very widespread traffic in narcotics, diamonds, weapons and human beings--all run by global criminal or terrorist organizations.

Furthermore, major powers, in particular China and Russia, have declared that they oppose the American version of globalization. China is probably the biggest single winner from the globalization of the past decade, and Russia may well be the biggest single loser, but they can agree on one thing: they are not going to be globalized in the American way. There are also those "rogue states" (or "states of concern"), especially Iraq and Iran but also Afghanistan and North Korea, which persist in trying to thwart the American project.

The regions where the American way of globalization is succeeding are actually rather few, and together they add up to much less than half the area of the globe and much less than half its population. These regions include almost all of Europe, much of Latin America, some of the countries on the periphery of East Asia, and of course Australia and New Zealand. As it happens, these four regions largely correspond to the U.S. system of alliances as it existed fifty years ago (NATO, the OAS, a series of bilateral treaties with Asian countries, and ANZUS). The extent of "globalization" in 2001 is not that different from the extent of the "Free World" in 1951.

There is one big difference, of course, and that involves what was then Eastern Europe--the communist Europe--and what is now once again central Europe along with eastern Europe--a liberal democratic and free-market Europe. [4] This is also the region where the recent round of NATO expansion occurred and where the second round of expansion is proposed. It is this difference that links the American way of globalization with the American proposals for NATO enlargement.

Globalization and America's Europe

IT IS NATURAL that the United States should want to expand and secure its new trade and investment relations with central and eastern Europe. More fundamentally, however, it seeks to consolidate all of Europe--western, central and eastern--into a...