Special to the Town Crier
Dr. Coit Blacker, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, gave the Los Altos Morning Forum a lot to digest on Jan. 6 when he explained the complex issue of expanding NATO in Europe.
"At the top of its agenda, the United States considers this the most reliable instrument of United States policy in Europe, he said.
"Ten years ago the continent was split into two confrontational nations, with two opposing military alliances - NATO (led by the U.S.), and the Warsaw Pact, (led by the Soviet Union)," said Blacker, a special assistant to President Clinton for national security affairs.
He said diplomatic initiatives undertaken by the Soviet Union engendered a movement toward the reconciliation and reduction of tension today.
"The Warsaw Pact had collapsed along with its architect, the USSR, between 1989-1991," Blacker said.
"Today there is but one alliance and military confrontation is a thing of the past."
Accepting the fact that dazzling successes have been made in United States-Russian relationship, Blacker sees 1998 as the most hopeful time in Europe since the turn of the century, while cautioning, "The present successes are no guarantee of future successes.
"Today Europe is more unstable, still in great disparity," he said. "Europe is more violent. A succession of wars in the former Yugoslavia has taken at least 30,000 lives. The question now is how the U.S. and the Russian Federation will manage the explosive issue of security in the new era?"
Since 1994, support by the U.S. of the expansion of new NATO members has become the leading edge of controversy in U.S.-European policy, Blacker said.
Prosperous Western Europeans have responded slowly because Eastern Europeans are not so prosperous, he said. Consequently, economic integration could be decades away and the Russians have taken strong exception to expansion.
Blacker cautioned it could divide rather than unite.
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, Warsaw Pact members until 1990, are the most likely to be first considered as new members to NATO, Blacker said.
Ongoing conferences between presidents Clinton and Boris Yeltsin over the past few years have made progress, but a major stumbling block exists, according to Blacker - Yeltsin's veto power request.
That request in unacceptable to Western diplomats, who favor leaving the NATO door open to all states in Europe.
In all, Blacker said that intensive negotiations have created promising and capable leadership on the part of the American, Russian, and several West European states.
"The key variable is likely to be the health of bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow," he said. "If relations remain positive, I am confident that we and the Russians working together can build a conclusive, durable, stable security system.
"I am just as confident, though, that without such a partnership - one with democratizing, marketing, liberalizing Russian state, no such system in Europe will result or be possible."