Sometime during the spring of this year, the Senate will approve the Clinton administration's policy of enlarging NATO, initially through the accession of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. It is expected to do so by a large majority after what is likely to be a lackluster debate in which the principal issue will concern the financial cost of expansion to the United States. As one who has supported limited NATO expansion from the beginning, I now believe that an initially good case has been turned into a policy that is pregnant with disaster.
A significant departure in the nation's foreign policy is about to be endorsed by the Congress. Opinion surveys report that the policy of NATO enlargement enjoys public support. They also indicate, however, that this support is based on a striking ignorance. A public whose inward focus is perhaps greater than at anytime since the 1930s is apparently unable even to identify the potential new members. For this condition, the administration is surely in large part responsible. It has made little effort to explain its policy, let alone to acknowledge candidly its possible costs and risks. In the absence of such effort, particularly on the part of the President, there is nothing that resembles the kind of broad consensus necessary to sustain a policy that presages a marked extension of American interest and power, and that may one day exact a considerable price.
