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Opposition to NATO Expansion [1]

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Date: 1997-06-13

On June 26, a group of 50 prominent foreign policy experts that included former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academicians, sent an open letter to President Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion. Stanley Resor, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association, spoke at the press conference announcing the letter, focusing on the arms control implications of expansion. Resor's remarks and the group's letter are printed below.

Remarks by Stan Resor:

A key, if not the key, U.S. interest in Russia is a rapid and substantial reduction in the tens of thousands of Russian strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and the hundreds of tons of nuclear material which are still deployed or stored throughout that nation some six years after the end of the Cold War.

Progress towards these goals will require comprehensive and sustained cooperation between the U.S. and Russia and a strengthening of mutual trust and confidence. The Clinton Administration's plan for NATO expansion has already undermined, and its implementation will raise further obstacles to, the establishment of the kind of relationship that is critical to success in arms control.

The START II Treaty, which would reduce Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 30003500 is awaiting ratification by the Russian Parliament. The parliament is dominated by members of communist and nationalist Parties who are hostile to President Yeltsin and suspicious of Western intentions. They have responded to NATO expansion by opposing ratification of START II.

These conservative Duma members see NATO expansion toward the Russian borders as coming at a time when Russian conventional forces are in deep trouble, badly in need of reform, poorly paid and demoralized. This is forcing Russia to consider placing greater reliance on nuclear weapons to assure its security and has raised the question of whether Russia should retain its most powerful, multi-warhead land-based missiles which START II is designed to eliminate.

At Helsinki, President Clinton sought to address some of the substantive problems Russia had raised with respect to START II by agreeing with President Yeltsin

—on a framework for START III which would limit both sides to 20002500 warheads each by December 2007; and —by extending by five years the deadline for reaching START II levels.

While a primary reason for lower levels and the extended deadline was to lower Russian costs, the five year extension also gives Russia time to evaluate the impact on its security of NATO expansion and U.S. theater missile defense deployments before it has to eliminate its multi-warhead ICBMs.

General Rokhlin, Chairman of the Russian Duma's Defense Committee, has expressed concern that ratifying START II substantially prior to completion of the terms of START III involves risk to Russia and reliance on U.S. good faith. In this context he has asserted that NATO expansion constituted reneging on assurances given to Gorbachev and Shevernadze at the time Russian consent was obtained to German reunification and to membership of a reunified Germany in NATO.

Helsinki also laid out an ambitious agenda of nuclear infrastructure transparency and potential tactical nuclear weapons constraints. NATO expansion will make it much more difficult to establish the atmosphere of trust required for Moscow to agree to additional transparency measures for its stockpile and to abandon its increasing reliance on nuclear weapons to balance NATO's approach to its borders.

To delink START II ratification from NATO expansion and to show that NATO does not intend to isolate Russia and in fact recognizes that it must be part of an effective European security system, the United States helped design and President Clinton signed The Russia-NATO Founding Act in Paris on May 27.

The Act contains within it the potential for alienating Russia as much as integrating it into a European security system. The Act does not address two aspects of expansion which cause the greatest concern to the Russians, namely the scope and pace of expansion. NATO's current plan is open ended. It clearly contemplates inclusion of the Baltic states. But Russia has made clear that inclusion in NATO of any members of the former Soviet Union is unacceptable. Both Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have already given conflicting interpretations of The Act.

It is already clear that NATO expansion has seriously delayed START II ratification and that, unless the process is suspended, it will continue to jeopardize major arms reduction treaties as well as other vital arms control goals which we have traditionally pursued.

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[1] Url: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/opposition-nato-expansion

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