William Odom responds.

• Author: Odom, William E.
• Position: Response to articles by Stephen Sestanovich, Ted Galen Carpenter and Owen Harries in this issue, p. 102 and 103 - Expanding NATO: An Exchange Between Odom and His Critics

My critics reactions confirm that I got their views mostly right but that they got my views somewhat wrong.

If Sestanovich is as concerned with "cost" as I am, why has he not considered the cost of not expanding NATO? A Western-anchored Germany within a democratic Central Europe is more important to U.S. interests than a cooperative Russia. I advocate trying to obtain both, but if forced to choose, I do not share Sestanovich's priority.

On history lessons, a few "liberal" Russian scholars agree with me about NATO expansion making democracy more likely in Russia. That Zhirinovsky and General Grachev agree with Sestanovich in opposing NATO expansion, curiously, does not puzzle him.

In the spirit of his intellectual antecedent, the 1920s isolationist Senator Borah (R-Idaho), Carpenter is no more cogent about why his new isolationism makes sense in an interdependent economic world of ever-newer military technologies with intercontinental reach. This is particularly true when he describes a Europe as dangerous as the one I foresee without U.S. involvement. He seems gleeful that Europe...