GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Energized NATO: new options

WASHINGTON -- For those not afraid to remember today, think about the immediate years after the fall of communism in 1991.
There was an overwhelming mood here in Washington -- euphoric, but also naive -- that now we needed neither great public information institutions such as the U.S. Information Service (U.S.I.S.) or even NATO or the United Nations. "Who are our enemies now?" American officials, who really should have known better, asked again and again, as if human nature itself had changed simply because one more foolish empire of history had fallen.
U.S.I.S., which had with consummate professionalism told America's story to the world since Eisenhower formed it, was cynically thrown away, like old baggage -- a loss we suffer grievously today. Worse, when the neoconservative Bush administration came in three years ago, the unilateralist, we-don't-need-anybody mentality seemed to make the future even more soberingly problematical for NATO, the U.N., and others organizations so painstakingly built and nurtured for decades.
But those suppositions have turned out to be wrong -- and thank God. In fact, last week's stunning ceremony on the south lawn of the White House, where seven new members of NATO were ceremoniously welcomed into the 55-year-old organization, shows clearly the "other" way the world can go from the Bush administration's gratuitous insults.
How things have changed
Think of it! Only 13 years after Soviet communism collapsed, seven new members who had for years chafed under bitter Soviet hegemony joined the 19 NATO members whose original task was to keep Russia out of Europe by presenting Moscow with a potential bill so high, the Kremlin would not risk paying for it.
NATO thus has become one of the greatest geopolitical success stories in history, ironically not because it fought a war but because it intelligently and without surcease set up a situation in which no war would ever have to be fought.
And now, in total negation of those earlier assertions that these regional and international organizations now had no role, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria have joined NATO. In the background and ready for the next expansion are Croatia, Macedonia and Albania, and then Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan; and behind them are potentially Moldova, Armenia and Belarus.
This is all quite extraordinary, something that virtually no one could have believed possible before 1991. The West, and in particular Europe, has become the political, military and moral entity to embrace and systematically absorb all these former appendages of the Soviet Union.
This is occurring on many and parallel levels. The military role of NATO, in which these new members will tend to play specialized military roles, is now, for instance, being strongly supported by the political and social role of the European Union, which is taking in 10 new members May 1. Thus you see an extraordinary institutionalization of a larger Western world, as these new countries change their militaries, their politics and their very systems to adhere to NATO's and to Europe's.
Lost empire
There is still, of course, Moscow, but in fact the expected huffing and puffing that has come at this expansion is remarkably anemic for a poor old lost empire. The Russians don't like the fact that NATO fighter planes began actually "air policing" over NATO's new Baltic members by noon Monday, the day of the ceremony. Yet, in fact, there has been little the Russians can do; their present relationship with NATO is not unfriendly, but is as yet unfixed.
As for the United States, this administration has not been exactly unfriendly to NATO -- in fact, President Bush effusively welcomed this eastward expansion Monday in Washington before the formal ceremonies on Friday. Yet the administration's unilateralism and hostile attitude toward traditional European allies such as France and Germany -- "Old Europe" -- has put it on a collision course with all international organizations. As well, the U.S. will soon by moving many of its NATO troops and bases farther eastward -- to Bulgaria and Romania, for starters.
Universal Press Syndicate