Russia's arguments against NATO expansion are well known. Moscow warns that NATO enlargement would create new dividing lines in Europe. If NATO military structures were to approach Russian borders and its troops were to appear on the territories of new member-states, Russia would be forced to adjust to these challenges to its security. New tensions caused by enlargement would spoil the post-Cold War political climate in Europe, destroy mutual trust, revive old fears, and throw the relationship between Russia and the West back into the past.
Until recently there was a tendency in the West--mostly in the United States--to downplay the significance of these arguments. Many American observers assumed that Boris Yeltsin and his government voiced opposition to NATO expansion mainly for domestic political reasons and in reaction to pre-election pressures from Communists and nationalists in the Russian Duma. The logic was that if Yeltsin won the summer 1996 presidential elections he would be sufficiently relieved of these pressures and become more receptive to the logic of Western assurances.
This assumption was wrong. There was and is a wide consensus within the Russian political establishment that NATO expansion contradicts basic Russian national interests. The few dissenting voices in the Russian media and academic circles are marginal. Even Anatoly Chubais, a well-known adept of liberal economic reforms and currently Yeltsin's chief of staff, noted at his February 2 press conference in Davos that opposition to NATO expansion was the only point on which he agreed with Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Will Compensation Work?
