Seize the Moment (15 page)

All of these arguments are flawed. First, two world wars have proved that the United States ignores events in Europe at its own peril. Had we been engaged in Europe, rather than sulking in isolation after World War I, we could have tipped the balance of power against the aggressors, possibly deterring rather than fighting World War II. Despite the waning of the cold war, the United States has major political and economic interests in Europe. Our commitment to Europe is based not on philanthropy but on interests. The U.S. role in NATO is not only needed on its merits but also gives us significant indirect leverage in addressing such issues as the Persian Gulf crisis and trade disputes. Without a military presence in Europe, we will have no voice in Europe.

In a historical perspective, Europe has been an even less stable place than the Middle East. The rigid stability of a Europe divided into two cold war camps has been the exception for a continent buffeted by centuries of war and instability. With the end of the cold war, Europe will not descend into fratricidal war, but the possibility for conflict and armed clashes will persist and even increase. Yugoslavia's civil war is a case in point. It is astonishing that the return of open warfare in Europe has not set off alarm bells in every European capital. The intermingling of scores of ethnic groups and the myriad competing territorial claims throughout the continent create endless possibilities for conflict and particularly as the relationships among the newly independent Soviet republics are sorted out. We have a profound stake in preventing the return of armed conflict to Europe. If we abandon our major role in Europe, we will relegate ourselves to the position of supporting cast, effectively writing ourselves out of any significant part in Europe's new geopolitical script.

Second, though more self-reliant, Europeans still need a security relationship with the United States. The two major reasons for the creation of NATO forty-four years ago were to deter Soviet aggression and to provide a secure home for the Germans. Those reasons are still valid today. While the threat of aggression by the newly independent former Soviet republics is now minimal, the idea that four centuries of Russian and Soviet expansionist tradition will instantly evaporate might be comforting but cannot be counted upon. The former Soviet Union still has thousands of strategic nuclear warheads targeted on the United States, the most powerful conventional army in Europe, and a modern blue-water navy. Yeltsin has already made some welcome changes in Moscow's foreign policy. But Russia is a major world power,
and the Russians are a proud people. We should not automatically assume that a democratic Russia will be an international pussycat.

Europe needs a security structure. A NATO with a major U.S. leadership role has played an indispensable role not only in shielding Western Europe during the cold war but also as an example to the nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Today, no alternative security structure exists. Until a viable substitute evolves and proves itself, we would be making an irrevocable error in dismantling NATO or disengaging from NATO. In a period of massive instability in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we should be exploring ways to preserve NATO rather than looking for ways to eliminate it.

Some observers argue that a post-1992 superstate can unify the cacophony of European views and speak with one voice in addressing all these concerns. But that vision has become a pipe dream. Concrete national differences over policy, not petty parochial disputes over procedure, have kept Europeans divided. And they will continue to do so. In the Persian Gulf crisis, our European allies scattered like a flock of quail. A few, particularly Britain and France, fought side by side with our troops in the Kuwaiti deserts. But most, especially Germany, stuck their heads in the sand. In Yugoslavia's internal crisis, mediators from the European Community responded like Keystone Kops. During the initial phases of the crisis, European powers split over whether to support the Communist Serbian and central government or the democratic secessionist republics of Slovenia and Croatia. The community sent teams to act as ceasefire observers but did not marshal its massive political and economic leverage to demand a nonviolent resolution based on democratic self-determination. In its first major political play in the post-cold-war period, Europe fumbled the ball.

No single locus of decision-making exists among our European allies. Aristotle was profoundly perceptive when he wrote that government by the many or government by the few cannot act as efficiently as government by one. In foreign policy, a single point of executive authority is indispensable for decisive action. The premise of those who foresaw the emergence of a European superstate was that Germany would become its natural leader. But the Germans, hamstrung by pacifist tendencies during the Gulf crisis and preoccupied with the costs of unification, forfeited the role. In the meantime, the rest of Europe no longer views German leadership as the answer. Britain and France—who performed decisively in the Gulf—do not wish to defer to Berlin. And the rise of a unified Germany, which dwarfs all other European countries in size, has prompted fears that German leadership will inevitably mean German domination.

The question is not whether but how the United States should maintain its presence in Europe. If we seek to build a common transatlantic home, we must find ways to include those nations in Eastern Europe and among the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union who accept our democratic values. We must also define common purposes and missions with our traditional allies that will give direction to our partnership. While much will depend on the direction of change in the former Soviet republics, a common transatlantic home should be built on five pillars:

1
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NATO guarantees for Eastern Europe.
Soon after their liberation, the East European democracies began casting about for new security arrangements. At first, they sought to elevate the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) into a new all-European collective security arrangement. Then, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary discussed the formation of a trilateral partnership of their own. Later, all three began floating the idea of creating some
kind of “associate status” with the NATO alliance. While NATO has welcomed observers from the new democracies at its headquarters, no concrete security commitment has been expressed or implied. A common transatlantic home requires us to be more responsive to East European security needs.

Collective security through the CSCE is a nonstarter. It has thirty-five diverse members even before the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union are added to its ranks. Its rules requiring unanimity for action create insurmountable hurdles for collective defense. It would recreate the days of the League of Nations, when aggressors could veto collective actions designed to stop them. Moreover, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe is just that: a conference, a diplomatic process, not a real bricks-and-mortar institution. It cannot provide tangible security arrangements, such as the integrated military structure of NATO. Unless institutionalized and bolstered with well-trained and well-equipped forces, the CSCE can never contribute more than added confidence-building measures and a forum for discussion. In a major crisis, it will never be capable of doing more than adopting nonenforceable, wrist-slapping resolutions.

While we should encourage the creation of a trilateral security organization linking Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that alone such action suffices. It is tempting to assume that the defeat of communism will leave peace in its wake and allow all the nations of Europe to focus on economic development. With the profound political instability and dire economic situation in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the region could still become a geopolitical demolition derby. In any wrenching economic crisis, the potential exists for the rise of demagogues, who might play not only on the pain of the
transition to the free market but also on virulent nationalism. In Yugoslavia, Serbian Communists have traded on ultranationalism both to keep power and to launch a civil war. While current Russian leaders have combined their nationalism with democracy, we cannot exclude the possibility that others might later emerge who might vent its darker side. If concern still exists about Germany, which has had a democratic government for forty years, there will be even more reason for concern about Russia, which has had a democratic government for less than one year. To put the East Europeans up against Russia would be like fielding an Ivy League football team against the Washington Redskins.

As Europe's only time-tested security structure, NATO should seek to find ways to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe, particularly over the next decade when the uncertainty centering on instability within the former Soviet Union will run the highest. This does not mean that NATO members should immediately extend its full Article 5 commitment—“an armed attack on one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack on all of them”—to the new democracies. But it does mean that we should think in more subtle terms than an all-or-nothing guarantee. NATO, after all, functions at various levels, including political consultation, military cooperation, and participation in its integrated military command. Because they share our values and because the current vacuum creates an incentive for adventurism, the East European democracies must be brought into NATO's security sphere without granting them immediate full partnership.

In the short term, while Soviet troops complete their pull-out from Eastern Europe, NATO should foster political ties with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, the only former satellites that have become full-fledged democracies. The
United States and its Western European allies should unambiguously declare that NATO has a critical interest in the survival and security of these new democracies. With the collapse of Soviet communism, there is no reason to withhold such a commitment. While the June 1991 NATO statement of concern for Eastern Europe's security was an excellent beginning, we must go further, putting down a marker that no potential aggressor could ignore. By linking our commitment to democratic rule in East European countries, it will give added incentive to these nations to avoid a reversion to authoritarianism.

In the longer term, NATO should develop formal security links with the East European democracies. Our goal should be their full integration into NATO. In the interim we should take concrete steps in that direction. Historically, almost no previous alliance comes close to matching the level of cooperation inherent in NATO. Its integrated military command stands as the exception, not the rule. Much can therefore be done to build a security relationship with Eastern Europe without bestowing the full rights of NATO membership. For example, formal ties could be developed between NATO and a new trilateral pact between Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In a treaty, the two organizations could agree to respond to threats and attacks on the other, though leaving the choice of specific counteractions to each side's constitutional and alliance procedures. At the same time, cooperative programs could train the new East European officer corps at NATO institutions, as well as seek eventually to achieve a degree of interoperability in military equipment.

A whole range of possibilities exists to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe through measured NATO actions. There is no magic to any particular combination of policies. But we will never build a common transatlantic home if
NATO forces the East Europeans to live outside its protective walls.

2. U.S. activism in Eastern Europe.
Interests, not altruism, lead states to cooperate. We must recognize that in the coming decades the thrust of our policy in Europe should center on those states that most need the U.S. connection: the new democracies in Eastern Europe. The United States should make its new relationship with Eastern Europe as important as its traditional ties with Western Europe.

With the receding Soviet threat and advancing integration, Western Europe's need for close links with the United States will precipitously diminish. But the countries of Eastern Europe, struggling against enormous economic odds, have a great interest in fostering U.S. ties, especially to help them emerge from the shadow of Western European economic domination. Also, as the European Community grants associate-member status to the East Europeans, a close economic relationship could give the United States a potential back door into an increasingly protectionist post-1992 Europe. Although the Bush administration has sketched a credible blueprint for such a relationship, we need to expand its efforts.

We should urge broader implementation of the Polish “shock therapy” model. A clear bottom line has emerged from the experience of transforming command into market economies: faster is better. Trying to phase in the market or build a halfway house between the two systems produces more problems than it solves. Poland, which adopted key macroeconomic reforms almost overnight, experienced the jolt of 200 percent inflation and a 40 percent drop in real income. Even though the Poles still face a long and difficult road to recovery, the mainsprings of the market—free prices, fiscal- and monetary-policy restraint, and international currency
convertibility—have begun to turn the situation around. In Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union, where leaders temporized, a vicious cycle developed. Gradualism, far from easing the transition, created protracted agony. That, in turn, generated political pressure to retreat, thereby compounding economic problems and dislocations. Reform through half measures means all pain and no gain.

After helping achieve macroeconomic stability, we should focus not on big-ticket government-to-government aid but on jump-starting the system at the microeconomic level. Before the East Europeans can set the wheel of capitalism in motion, they have to reinvent it. Private property—the link between work and reward—is the key. While Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary have moved quickly, if haltingly, to develop programs to privatize state-owned enterprises, the United States should help on a parallel track by channeling funds into their private sectors, not only through direct investment, but also through infusions of capital by U.S.-sponsored “enterprise funds.” Already operating in Poland and Hungary, the funds train local bankers in sound lending practices and provide them with money for loans to entrepreneurs, which average about $15,000. Unlike the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—whose bureaucrats seem determined to reproduce clones of West European interventionist economic systems—the enterprise funds will foster competitive market-oriented economies at the grass-roots level.