Slovakia and Slovenia as Strategic Consolidation

The admission of Slovakia into NATO would actually remove a strategic
anomaly, one that was created with the admission of Poland, the Czech
Republic and Hungary. This left Slovakia as a geographical wedge
inserted between the other three states. If Slovakia also joins, this
wedge would be transformed into an integral component of a neat and
compact bloc of four.

The admission of Slovenia would remove yet another strategic anomaly.
Of course, many Americans confuse Slovenia with Slovakia (the two
countries not only have similar names but nearly identical flags),
and many others think that Slovenia is in the Balkans (it is,
however, geographically closer to the Alps and culturally closer to
Austria). However, Slovenia has made more progress in establishing a
liberal democracy, free markets and the rule of law than any other
country being considered for NATO membership. Its admission would
also provide a direct geographical connection and transit route
between Italy (and NATO's southern region) and Hungary, which at
present has no land frontier with any NATO country. Slovenia's
admission would thus make NATO's central region even more coherent.
(It would also mean that Switzerland and Austria, two non-NATO
states, would be completely surrounded by NATO members.)

The Balkan States as "Pseudo NATO"

The expansion of NATO to include the Balkan states, even if only the
relatively peaceful ones of Bulgaria and Romania, would not remove
anomalies but multiply them. The Balkan region might become an
American sphere of influence, but it would not be a real part of the
American Commonwealth of Nations.

For most of the period since the middle of the 19th century, most of the Balkan countries have been ensconced within a Russian sphere of influence. This has been especially true of peoples that were both Orthodox in religion and Slavic by ethnicity (i.e., Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia), but Romania (Orthodox but not Slavic) often has been in the Russian sphere, as well. Of course, NATO has had an Orthodox member, Greece, since 1952, but Russia could always interpret Greece as an anomaly, more of a Mediterranean county than a Balkan one. The admission of Bulgaria and Romania (Macedonia, with its present difficulties, is not a serious candidate) into NATO would put a definitive end to any semblance of a Russian sphere in the Balkans. It would also put in place yet another enduring Russian grievance against the West.

Fifty years ago, the admission of Greece and Turkey into NATO was supposed to contain the Soviet Union and to extend American influence into the Middle East. In practice, the most important consequence was to make the management of the perennial conflict between Greece and Turkey a perennial responsibility for NATO, and particularly for the United States. Similarly, the admission of the Balkan states into NATO might be justified as containing neighboring rogue states and, again, to extend American influence into the Middle East. In practice, the most important consequence will again be to make the management of the perennial conflicts between and within these states a perennial responsibility for NATO, and particularly for the United States.

The Balkan states have never achieved political stability in the same way as the other members of NATO, be they in western or central Europe. Indeed, they are hardly states at all in the European sense. They are the heirs to very different religious traditions (Eastern Orthodox or Islamic rather than Roman Catholic or Protestant) and to a very different imperial history (Ottoman rather than Habsburg), and their political cultures reflect both of these differences. If Greece and Turkey, taken together, have been difficult and troublesome members of NATO, Bulgaria and Romania could prove to be so as well.

America in the Baltic States: Interests, Ideals and Identity

THE ISSUE of the next round of NATO enlargement and of concomitant American military commitments may not produce a new Great Debate in Washington, but it will represent a new chapter in an old and ongoing debate over American foreign policy. This is the perennial great debate that is variously defined as being between interests and ideals, between realism and idealism, or between conservatism and liberalism (now joined, perhaps, by neo-conservatism, as well). A conflict between these two perspectives can arise over each of the countries that is being considered for admissions into NATO, but it will be especially intense in regard to the Baltic states.

From the realist (and conservative) perspective there are no U.S. national interests at stake in the Baltic states. These three small countries together add up to an area that is only 50 percent of Finland's (whose admission to NATO has never been seen as a U.S. national interest) and a population that is only 50 percent more. The United States has no significant strategic or economic interests in these countries, and certainly none that are anywhere near as weighty as the very substantial strategic risks and costs that would come with a U.S. military commitment to them. As Henry Kissinger, a realist advocate of the first round of NATO expansion, has put it: "[T]he border of Estonia is thirty miles from St. Petersburg. Advancing the NATO integrated command this close to key centers in Russia might mortgage the possibilities of relating Russia to the emerging world order as a constructive member." Put more baldly, when the Baltic states are weighed in regard to U.S. interests and when NATO is defined as a military alliance, the proposal to admit them into NATO seems simply reckless and irresponsible.

Conversely, from the idealist (and both the liberal and the neo-conservative) perspective, there are fundamental American values at stake in the Baltic states. Over a period of more than seven centuries and in at least four successive incarnations, these countries have represented the easternmost extension of Western civilization. They have long seen themselves, and have been seen by other Europeans, as the "East of the West." (Just as, ever since they were acquired by Peter the Great, they have been seen by the Russians as their "window on the West", the "West of the East.") Today, ten years after their heroic restoration of their national independence, the Baltics have been extraordinarily successful in establishing and embodying the American values of liberal democracy, the free market and the rule of law. If any countries ever deserved to become members of NATO by virtue of their achievements by American standards, these do. It would be fitting indeed if, after one decade of national independence, they a re welcomed into many decades of American protection. When the Baltic states are understood with regard to American values and when NATO is defined as a liberal-democratic and free-market community, the proposal to admit them into NATO seems to be one of those truths that we hold to be self-evident.

In reality, what is at stake in the Baltic states is not just American interests or American ideals. It is American identity, in particular the reinvention of American identity by American political, business and cultural elites to make it fit the new era of globalization. When America is by far the strongest power and the largest economy on the globe, these elites think that it no longer suffices for America to be located only on the North American continent and to be composed only of American citizens; that definition of America is obsolete. However, when America is far from being the only strong power and the only large economy, it is not yet possible for America to be located equally on every continent and to be composed equally of every people on the globe; that definition of America is premature. The definition of America that best fits the contemporary era--the era of globalization as an ongoing project, rather than the merely international era of the past or the imagined fully global era of the futur e--is one that includes Europe, the continent that is most advanced along the American way, as part of the new and expanded American identity. When American business elites define America as the free market and the open society, and American cultural elites define America as liberal democracy and the rule of law, then they are drawn to define Europe as being, in all important respects, America.

IN THE 20th century, America met and won three great challenges presented by the old international era--the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War. It did so because of its great military power and economic strength, to be sure, but more important were the sophistication and the determination with which these assets were deployed by successive generations of American statesmen. When either the sophistication or the determination lapsed, as with the Korean War and the Vietnam War, all of America's military and economic assets could not prevent a debacle or a defeat.

The extension of an American military commitment to the Baltic states, up to the very border of a sullen and resentful Russia that is armed with a sense of historical entitlement and 5,500 nuclear weapons, will present the United States with a strategic and diplomatic challenge of unprecedented complexity. At the same time, the integration of the Baltic states into the American commonwealth will represent the culmination of an American calling, of a 225-year project of spreading American values and re-creating Western civilization in the American image until it has at last reached its easternmost frontier, at the "East of the West." To bring both the challenge and the calling into a stable synthesis, to create a Baltic order distinguished by both peace and justice, will require of the American statesmen of the 21st century a level of sophistication and determination that would have amazed those of the 20th.

Essay Types: Essay