THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 11, 1996 TAG: 9610110002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 60 lines
Alexander I. Lebed, the former Soviet Army general who is now the Russian security adviser, said this week in Brussels that ``Russia is not going to go into hysterics'' if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expands to include the countries of Eastern Europe ruled for more than four decades after World War II by the communist Soviet Union. Hysterics wouldn't be warranted.
Nearly a half-century old now, NATO was created solely to defend Western Europe and North America against Soviet aggression.
The Soviet Union formally shut down on Christmas Day 1991. Nonetheless, NATO - the most-successful military alliance in history - is still in business. Its 16 members include West European nations and the United States and Canada.
But having won the Cold War against the expansionist Soviets, NATO is an alliance without its original mission.
That doesn't mean NATO is irrelevant. The alliance endures as a useful instrument for peace and stability in Europe and could play that role indefinitely. For Europe, no less than the world generally, is bedeviled by ethnic, religious and nationalistic rivalries.
Such tensions produced uncivil wars within Russia and the Balkans following the Soviet empire's demise. Former Yugoslavia became the setting for the most-devastating war in Europe since World War II. Although the carnage shocked much of the world, neither NATO nor the United Nations rushed to stop Serbs, Bosnian and Croats from slaughtering one another.
However, NATO - with the United States providing the lion's share of leadership, warriors and weapons - eventually acted to clear the Bosnian skies of Serbian warplanes, in order to reduce the Serbs' military advantage over the Muslims, and later also provided troops to maintain the shaky ceasefire and aid peacemaking in the region.
NATO is poised to begin membership talks next year with East European states allied - not by their own choice - with the Soviet Union in the Cold War years. The addition of East European states would expand NATO to Russia's western border. The prospect that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will join NATO makes Russians nervous.
History explains the nervousness. In modern times, the armies of Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler marched across the Great Plain of Northern Europe into Russia. The last invasion was the worst: 20 million Russians perished in the war unleashed by Hitler. From the Russians' viewpoint, Moscow's domination of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Third Reich provided a comforting buffer against the West.
The buffer disappeared with the demise of the Soviet Union. NATO's enlargement inevitably stirs Russian unease. Security-adviser Lebed, who is on the list of possible successors to ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin, expressed to NATO ministers in Brussels his wish that any extension of the alliance to Eastern Europe be postponed for a generation, allowing time for Cold War bitterness to fade.
Lebed seems to understand that NATO talks next year with (most likely) Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will be held regardless of his or other Russians' preferences. However, Moscow need not be alarmed. NATO's dedication is to peace - to the muting of conflict and the promotion of cooperation, to the deterrence of aggression and to defeating aggression should deterrence fail. NATO works with, not against, peacemakers. Just check the record. by CNB