Abstract
This article discusses how obtaining membership in NATO has played a role in advancing Western values in former Warsaw Pact countries over the last 20 years. The author elaborates on why it was desirable for these post-Communist governments to attain NATO membership, and how the membership of these former Cold War enemies has since fundamentally expanded the strategy of the organisation. Analysis points to the conclusion that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the US compelled NATO to evolve again in its strategy and priorities, and once again triggered NATO expansion.
Throughout the past 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the international organisations Central and Eastern European states have most wanted to join (European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or appease (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, etc.) have played an important role in advancing democratic norms and fostering economic reforms in the region. The EU and NATO were able to influence domestic and foreign policies in the ‘new’ Europe because they enjoyed tremendous leverage over these states: the power to deny or support the realisation of their principal foreign policy objective, namely, full membership in these institutions.
Although NATO membership might not generate the long-term tangible benefits Eastern Europeans expect from EU accession, it has constituted a quintessential milestone of democratisation. In fact it has been argued that to the extent that a robust security arrangement ensuring stability is the precondition of democratic consolidation, pursuing full membership in the Atlantic Alliance has actually been a more fundamentally worthwhile objective than EU integration. Moreover, given the perception that an invitation from NATO was more easily attainable than one from the EU, some Eastern European states first focused their efforts on satisfying the less rigorous membership criteria of the Atlantic Alliance. The process of NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe has been similar to the expansion of the EU insofar as it has inevitably produced tensions between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, that is, those who gain membership and the associated military and legitimacy benefits and those who remain outside of alliance.
My focus in this article is the relationship between Eastern Europe and NATO. First I explain the reasons for the post-Communist governments' interest in acquiring NATO membership. Then I look at the actual process that led to NATO's enlargement. Finally, I examine the relevance of 9/11 to NATO expansion and the question of NATO's role in strengthening democracy in Eastern Europe.
Eastern Europe and the idea of NATO membership
The enlargement of NATO has been one of the most important events in post-Cold War international affairs. In less than a decade, countries that were ardent enemies of the alliance became its members. How and why did this come about?
The collapse of European Communism and the end of the Cold War brought dramatic changes to Eastern European security. Soon after the July 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the region found itself in a security limbo, as politicians, military elites and national security experts readily recognised. Quite simply, the armed forces of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were not capable of guaranteeing their security once Moscow withdrew its occupation forces. Initially this did not seem to be a major problem, as the new governments' priorities were democratisation and economic reform rather than enhancing their security. In fact, in the early 1990s a public debate in Czechoslovakia focused on the question of whether the country needed a military establishment at all, given the absence of obvious challenges to its security.
Three major developments, however, soon compelled formerly reluctant Eastern European leaders to turn their attention to security issues. The first was the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, a country bordering on three former Warsaw Pact members (Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania). Although the actual security threat posed to these states was modest, the war in Yugoslavia exposed both the limited military potential of these former Warsaw Pact members and their inability to defend themselves. The second momentous event forcing the region's elites to concern themselves with their security dilemmas was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the radical political fringe in Moscow that lamented the passing of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Finally, Eastern European leaders understood that even in the absence of ‘hard’ (conventional) security challenges, with the liberalisation of their states and the opening of their borders, they were now subject to many of the ‘soft’ security threats, such as international trafficking in refugees and contraband, long experienced by Western democracies.
By the early 1990s most of the region's governments had come to the conclusion that the only logical solution to their security dilemmas was full membership in NATO, which, not incidentally, would allow their democratisation process to advance without distraction and also endow them with a measure of domestic and international legitimacy. Once Eastern European states realised that there was no alternative to membership in NATO as a satisfactory long-term security guarantee, they began to lobby the alliance and its members—particularly the US—through diplomatic channels and the media.
Expansion and democratisation: the first round
The prospect of incorporating former Warsaw Pact members into NATO generated a spirited public discussion in member countries on both sides of the Atlantic and in the countries desiring to join. Scores of scholars, pundits and policymakers debated the benefits and drawbacks of expansion for NATO and the Eastern European states, the cost of enlargement and its probable impact on the alliance's relations with Russia. One of the few points on which both supporters and opponents of NATO's expansion agreed was that no Eastern European state should be admitted on purely military grounds. Proponents contended, however, that NATO's enlargement had to be a political rather than a military decision.
Among the states aspiring to NATO membership in the mid-1990s, the most support was garnered by those with consolidated democracies and relatively well-functioning market economies. Of these, Poland was clearly the favourite owing to its leading role in the demolition of one-party rule and its radical political and especially economic reforms. The Czech Republic received somewhat less backing on account of its particularly weak military, as well as its limited enthusiasm for membership and the related military expenditures. Hungary proved a rather less popular choice because it did not share a border with the other two or any other NATO member and because of Budapest's often tense relations with those neighbours which had large Hungarian ethnic minorities.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (and Slovenia) were the only consolidated democracies in post-Communist Europe when NATO invited them to join the alliance at its 1997 Madrid Summit. Their success in democratisation was clearly the most important factor in their favour, a fact that was not lost on the states that remained outside NATO. As alliance leaders made clear in both Madrid and at the 1999 Washington Summit, NATO's doors remained open for new members as long as they fulfilled accession criteria, the most important of which were the establishment of a consolidated democracy and democratic civilian control over the armed forces.
NATO expansion, round two
After the Washington Summit NATO leaders maintained that the alliance's expansionist agenda had to be extended and that expansion ought to become yet another mission in its repertoire. The nine aspiring states (Albania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) became participants of the Membership Action Plan (MAP) programme which was conceived to assist candidates in their preparations for membership, assessing their progress in satisfying membership criteria through annual reviews. At the alliance's November 2002 Prague Summit all MAP members but two—Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which in most respects were far behind the others in fulfilling membership criteria—were invited to join the organisation at its next summit in 2004. The second round of NATO's expansion presented a number of contentious issues but the debate preceding the invitation of new candidates was much more muted than that before the first round (for an analysis of the arguments, see [1]).
Many of those who opposed the second round of enlargement were not against further expansion per se, but were against the inclusion of new members that were unqualified in a number of areas, especially those pertaining to military readiness, defence spending and equipment. They contended that the alliance should learn from the lessons of the first round, the beneficiaries of which had profound and long-term military deficiencies. The integration of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into NATO had been more difficult than expected. All three states needed continuous NATO prodding to increase their defence expenditures and implement long-overdue defence reforms. The modernisation of equipment, reduction of manpower and improvement of training to NATO standards were still a long way off and in many cases little progress had been made.
The mixed record of the first round of enlargement may have been on NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson's mind when he warned that accession to the Alliance could not be regarded as ‘a political award’ and added that expansion would take place when both NATO and the candidates were ready for it. Robertson noted that ‘NATO wants [those] countries not only to consume, but also to generate security’, insinuating that the first three states had been free riders (cited in [2]). Notwithstanding Robertson's admonitions, critics of further enlargement charged that few politicians in both Eastern Europe and in the Alliance were truly concerned with the military issues of expansion. Rather, NATO had seemingly become a ‘political honour society’ that granted membership to all consolidated democracies regardless of their capacity to make military-security contributions to the alliance.
The issue of the EU and its expansion was mentioned with reference to the second and subsequent enlargement process of NATO with much greater frequency than during the first enlargement. In fact, by the late 1990s an incremental connection had developed between NATO and EU enlargement. The US, trying to preserve as much room for decision as possible, was anxious to avoid linkage related to the pace of the two enlargement processes. At the same time, Washington wanted to ensure that EU enlargement took place and that membership between the two organisations overlapped to the greatest possible extent ([3], 54-56). Many analysts in aspirant countries had come to believe that accession to NATO would strengthen their chances of joining the EU, the prize they were really after. They were well aware that the NATO enlargement decision was much more subjective and was tied to infinitely fewer technical requirements than was the EU's decision. As former German Defence Minister Volker Rühe said, ‘You can join the Atlantic Alliance with old tanks, but joining the EU with old farm tractors causes problems’ (cited in [4], 21).
Further, Eastern European politicians reckoned that passing muster with NATO would serve them well in their negotiations with the EU. EU membership had more tangible rewards for them than belonging to NATO because, unlike NATO, the EU was deeply involved in fostering democracy, enhancing market reforms and supporting a plethora of projects in these countries. Moreover, the EU possessed an intricate web of political institutions (European Commission, European Council, European Parliament, European Court of Justice, etc.) that promoted conflict resolution in the region. Not unexpectedly, the governments and populations of those countries whose chances for rapid EU integration seemed at the time more remote (e.g., Bulgaria or Romania) displayed far more enthusiasm for NATO than those which enjoyed a realistic shot at EU membership in the foreseeable future (Slovakia and Slovenia). The Baltic countries, of course, were in a different category altogether because, regardless of their military preparation for NATO membership, they faced a far more tangible security threat from the east and their applications were supported by a compelling historical argument.
NATO's further expansion after 9/11
That the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001 changed the world quickly became a cliché. This momentous event, however, re-energised the process of continued NATO expansion which was at best stalling at the time because the alliance, and especially the US, had been pursuing enlargement half-heartedly. After 9/11 Washington, searching for dependable and dedicated allies, intensively pushed for a ‘big-bang expansion’. The US needed all potential allies, regardless of their previously much-criticised deficiencies. Compared to Russia's ‘genocidal war’ against its own citizens in Chechnya, which became, in post-9/11 Washington, ‘Moscow's domestic issue’, and the dictatorial regimes of Central Asia which were promoted to ‘strategic partners in the fight against evil’, the shortcomings of Romania, Bulgaria and the other NATO applicants must have seemed negligible. Sensing the opportunity to make up for their failures to satisfy NATO membership criteria, some NATO aspirants jumped at the chance to ingratiate themselves with Washington. Romania's case provides the best example.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks the Romanian government expressed its ‘heartfelt solidarity’ with the US on innumerable occasions and offered whatever help it could (including troops to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan). Washington's growing goodwill toward Bucharest was further cemented when, even in the face of direct EU disapproval, Romania became the first state to sign an agreement with the US on exempting US peacekeepers from prosecution under the International Criminal Court in August 2002. After Bucharest secured an invitation to NATO in November 2002, Romania volunteered to host US missile bases on its territory, and President Ion Iliescu decorated George Bush with Romania's highest state order. For his part, the US President declared that Romania ‘brings moral clarity to our NATO alliance’. 1 Thus in the course of little over a year Romania, the least attractive applicant for NATO membership, had become, in Bush's words, the ‘spearhead of the Alliance’.
Bush says Romania will bring moral clarity to the alliance', 25 November 2002, White House transcript; http://www.america.gov, retrieved on 4 August, 2009.
The improvement in US–Russian relations in the aftermath of 9/11 also allowed Washington to continue to push for the inclusion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with more determination. Moscow was not pleased about the prospect of parts of its former internal empire becoming NATO members, but the Kremlin calculated that the advantages of better relations with NATO and the US (e.g., enhanced stature in international forums, economic benefits and the quieting of American condemnation of the war in Chechnya) would outweigh the drawbacks. To be sure, Moscow had little to fear from the small Baltic countries that, at least in military-security terms, were hardly more qualified for NATO membership than the other candidates. In any event, to a large extent Russia had itself to blame for driving the Baltics into NATO's arms due to its inflexible stance on many policy issues and its continuing absurd claim that they had ‘voluntarily joined’ the USSR in 1941. Quite clearly, given their history with and geographic proximity to Russia, membership in the alliance was a critical pillar of the long-term stability of the Baltics and Poland. Moscow's more relaxed attitude vis-à-vis NATO expansion at this time could be explained by the Kremlin's realisation that with the inclusion of states like Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria, its old adversary was turning into precisely the kind of toothless lion Soviet-Russian elites had long been hoping for. The alliance's internal conflict over Washington's unilateralist foreign policy in general and the 2003 war against Iraq in particular underscored the likelihood of NATO's growing irrelevance and ineffectiveness.
At the April 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO invited Albania and Croatia to start accession talks. The two states became the alliance's 27th and 28th members a year later, at NATO's 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France. In Bucharest NATO's leaders also agreed that Georgia and Ukraine, already engaged in intensified dialogues with NATO, would eventually gain membership. In December 2008, Allied Foreign Ministers decided to enhance opportunities for assisting the two countries to meet membership requirements by making use of the framework of the existing NATO–Ukraine Commission and NATO–Georgia Commission—without prejudice to further decisions which might be taken about their applications to join the MAP. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, another NATO member-in-waiting, was assured in Strasbourg that it would also be invited to join the alliance once a solution to the issue of the country's name had been reached with Greece. Two further former Yugoslav republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, were invited to start intensified dialogues on their membership aspirations and related reforms with NATO.
NATO and democratisation in Eastern Europe
Has NATO encouraged democratisation in post-Communist countries? It would be useful to determine the extent to which prospective membership specifically in NATO has influenced policies in aspiring states. This is difficult to do, however, because NATO is seeking similar policy adjustments in these countries as are being sought by other international organisations, most importantly the EU. Nevertheless, especially since the first round of enlargement in 1997, NATO has become more keenly interested in military effectiveness, civil–military relations, defence expenditures and a host of other issues that other organisations are not concerned with. In these instances, therefore, a causal link between NATO and domestic policy change may be identified with some measure of confidence.
Civilian control over the armed forces is an important criterion of a fully democratic polity, and in all Eastern European states the prospect of NATO membership has undoubtedly promoted democracy in this regard. This required substantive changes in policies and institutional development as most of the region's states have encountered some difficulties in the shaping of their post-Communist civil–military relations. For instance, both in Slovakia (1998 national elections) and Romania (1998 local elections) ruling political elites attempted to influence the way members of the armed forces cast their ballots, while in the mid-1990s defence ministries in Slovakia and Slovenia publicly called into question presidential authority. None of these governments had to wait long for NATO's condemnation. The increasing transparency of defence budgets—one of the most important methods through which democratic civilian control is exercised—is in large part attributable to NATO's influence.
The potential for NATO membership has also had a more general positive effect on democratisation in Eastern Europe. For instance, even Vladimír Mečiar allowed in 1994 that the ‘price’ of NATO admission was respect for individual rights for ethnic minorities as well as improved relations with Slovakia's neighbours (though after his return to power in the fall of that year his view of NATO membership became increasingly ambivalent). One of the key attractions for the electorate of the opposition parties that unseated Mečiar in the 1998 Slovak elections was their commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration. Prior to the 2002 elections, President Schuster said that ‘everybody realises that if we want to get into NATO and the EU, this must be granted by certain personalities’, and people like Mečiar, the obstacle to Slovakia's European integration, must be ruled out. 2 Moreover, NATO officials repeatedly warned that Slovakia's NATO accession chances might well suffer if Mečiar and his party managed to stage a political comeback.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report II, 5:31 (14 February 2001).
Eastern European states aspiring to NATO membership signed so-called basic treaties with their neighbours even if they were traditional adversaries and even if there remained numerous unresolved issues between them (for instance, Slovakia–Hungary [1995], Romania–Hungary [1996] and Romania–Ukraine [1997]). As US Ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter noted, these treaties were signed not ‘because they liked each other’ but because the governments in question realised that their chances of NATO membership would improve if they signed the agreements (quoted in The Wall Street Journal, 2 January 1997). Since 1999, the alliance's MAP has been a practical tool that has served to constantly improve areas of special concern, including several—civilian control issues, ethnic-and gender-based discrimination within the armed forces, treatment of conscripts—that are intimately connected to democratisation. In other words, MAP has provided a new and useful framework through which Brussels has been able to motivate further reforms, encourage candidate states to focus their efforts and offer much-needed guidance in identifying priorities for the allocation of scarce resources.
On balance, the expansion of NATO has not spread democracy but has strengthened it by fostering democratic institutions and, in many cases, inducing positive policy changes. In general, NATO's influence on democratisation has been less impressive than that of the EU for three understandable reasons. First, the EU is a more desirable organisation from the perspective of post-Communist elites and populations. They would therefore be more inclined to make serious efforts to accommodate it. Second, as I noted above, the EU's membership criteria are more exacting than those of NATO and their fulfilment is taken much more seriously, thereby compelling more strenuous endeavours from aspiring members. Finally, unlike NATO, the EU is an all-encompassing institution that can motivate policy changes in a wide array of policy domains (from human rights legislation to agricultural policy).
The notion that international organisations affect domestic politics is an old axiom of international relations theory that is fully borne out by NATO's role in post-Communist Eastern Europe. The Atlantic Alliance has not transformed the region—like the EU already has and, no doubt, will do so ever more dramatically—but it has exercised a positive influence over it. If NATO continues to expand eastward, its democratising influence will be enhanced because the farther east it goes the more improbable the new NATO candidates' EU membership chances (and thus the EU's leverage over them) will be. At the same time, further enlargement may well place additional pressure on NATO's cohesiveness and ability to function as a military alliance.
A rapidly changing alliance
For the first 40 years of its history NATO had a clear enemy and an unambiguous mission. It was supposed to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its allies, deter aggression from the Warsaw Pact and, if an armed conflict were to break out, defeat its enemies. Although, to be sure, the alliance did undergo some changes during the Cold War, it remained fundamentally the same organisation.
In the last 20 years, however, NATO has become a very different alliance. Not only has its membership nearly doubled but all of the new entrants were its Cold War enemies. The expanded organisation has also become far more diverse in many respects, from levels of economic development to military capability. The alliance's missions have also changed, from a clear military-strategic objective to many different kinds of missions. For instance, in Afghanistan the mission is not only to defeat armed adversaries but also to help a backward economy develop and to rebuild a war-torn society. In the Horn of Africa the mission not only requires guarding sea lanes and apprehending pirates, but also dealing with insurance companies that want to reclaim ships captured by pirates, coordinating with the United Nations as well as international and national law enforcement agencies. Moreover, post-Cold War NATO does not have an obvious enemy, other than international terrorist groups. Its other adversaries are specific to its given missions, ranging from the Taliban to Somali pirates. Given that many of the emerging regional and global security challenges and political realities are new, NATO has had to continually rethink and adjust to what the most appropriate responses may be.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the pivotal, defining moments of the 20th century. Two decades later, it is easy to see that this event had a major impact on Europe's security architecture. Most importantly, it allowed peoples heretofore victimised by authoritarian rulers to protect themselves by joining a community of democracies united in one of history's most successful military alliances.