THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 30, 1994 TAG: 9409300562
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
With the Cold War a fading memory, what's the point of NATO? According to Robbin Laird, a defense consultant, it ought to be thought of as an insurance policy.
``The goal is to avoid something bad happening five years from now,'' he says, ``but it's hard to get governments to spend for that.''
Laird was one member of an international cast that gathered at Old Dominion University on Thursday for ``NATO at 45,'' a conference sponsored by the school's graduate program in international studies. Four panels headed by Professor Simon Serfaty discussed where NATO goes from here.
Participants included ODU professors, defense and foreign policy experts from think tanks in Washington, Moscow and Bulgaria; naval officers assigned to NATO's North American headquarters in Norfolk; as well as bureaucrats from NATO, the Pentagon and the defense ministries of Britain and France.
Few doubted the survival of a military alliance originally devised to contain an expansionist Soviet Union and to defeat it if necessary. But times have changed, and the mission of NATO in the future is being debated.
Both Stephen Hadley, an assistant secretary of defense under President Bush, and Bruce Mann of Britain's Ministry of Defense argued that some things remain the same. NATO's core mission, to assure the security of its members from aggression, still stands.
That means guarding against the possibility of a resurgent Russia. But it may also entail protecting against regional conflicts if they threaten to spill over the borders of NATO members, trying to mount a defense against missiles directed at NATO members by rogue states and, perhaps, peacekeeping operations outside NATO.
A recurring theme was money, or the lack of it. Several speakers suggested that everyone is for the continuation of a robust NATO except for taxpayers who have to foot the bill both here and in Europe.
Another issue was much discussed: whether former Soviet satellites and even former Soviet republics should be granted admission to NATO. A kind of halfway house has been created in the form of the so-called Partnership For Peace. But Jeffrey Simon of the National Defense University said that program is often ridiculed as the policy for postponement. And several states, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, are refusing to be put off.
Dimitri Trenin of the Russian Academy of Science foresaw difficulties. ``All is now quiet on the western front, and Russians are glad of it,'' he said.
But if the countries of central Europe were to become a part of NATO, Russia might find that disquieting.
Elle Marcuse from NATO headquarters in Brussels said that, before worrying about new members from the East, NATO needed to set its own house in order. He was concerned that three new members of the Western European Union are not members of NATO - Austria, Sweden and Finland. NATO assures its members that an attack on any will be regarded as an attack on all. He wondered whether members of the European Union can be denied similar assurances for long.
KEYWORDS: NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION FOREIGN RELATIONS COLD
WAR by CNB