Nato And Us-eu Relationship

Jennibeth D. Baculna BA Political Science III

A.

During the Cold War, the security goals and security-oriented actions of virtually all of the developed countries were powerfully influenced by the international struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States were the key actor in the NATO, a mutual security pact among the developed countries, and it was prepared to undertake military actions anywhere in the world where Soviet activities threatened its conception of international stability. The central focus of the NATO is to provide for the immediate defense and security its member countries. Those countries weakest and most exposed to salient environments desire NATO membership most. NATO as an organization dealt with military issues only. During the past, however, there have been significant cleavages accepting that NATO is not only a military alliance, but an instrument securing democracy and monitoring peaceful developments in the Trans-Atlantic area. The stressing and the weighting of various membership criteria should depend on which specific path to NATO expansion that one has in mind. The basic requirements for NATO membership; democracy, market economy, civilian control of the military and the country’s willingness to burden-sharing. There are other main factors that are relevant for an applicant’s membership odds; they are the Western strategic self-interest wherein the Poland is vital to the security of Europe as a whole and Germany in particular, Finland and the Baltic states are not seen in the West as forming an area of vital Western strategic interest, Russian strategic or political sensitivities, Russia seems to be ascribed a certain de-facto veto-power, even though this term is not used in public. Whereas former Warsaw pact members are being allowed in, in spite of Russian objections and it seems that Russian sensitivities will be respected regarding former parts of the USSR. NATO enlargement to the Baltic countries in the wake of Polish membership would actually encircle a piece of Russian territory. Minority issues and border disputes, analogously to the EU, NATO does not want to import trouble. Whereas Poland and Finland are unproblematic, the Baltic countries have border issues in relation to Russia as well as minority issues. Since Russia’s security doctrine makes the protection of Russians outside its border a top priority, large Russian populations in Estonia and Latvia tend to nourish Western reluctance to admitting these countries to NATO and finally the defensibility. NATO has in the past successfully guaranteed West Berlin, for instance, or admitted countries with correspondingly low immediate defensibility and it seems that the argument is playing a role in Western military considerations. B. The United States-Europe relationship has been put to its severest challenge since the beginning of the Cold War; the disappearance of the common potential enemy in the form of the Soviet Union. Moreover, there was the wish to relieve the US of some of its European military burden by letting the Europeans pay more for their own security. On the other hand, there was the wish to assert United States global status, now as the only remaining superpower. The policy that was actually pursued by both the Bush and Clinton administrations gave priority not only to keeping North Atlantic Treaty Organization alive, but also an innovative, healthy and expanding. The NATO enlargement process with Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary in the first round was to a large extent a United States initiative. The wellbeing of NATO so vital to the US, in the absence of its original purpose because it provides a vehicle by which the US can maintain influence on European affairs, not least economically and it is prudent to keep a military foothold in Europe. For a globally paramount power like the US the enemy is not a single country, but chaos and risks. Way back on Clinton’s administration, who took a more relaxed attitude than the previous administration to independent European security assertion as in the Western European Union, the actual logic of events unfolding not least the Bosnian experience was that an independent WEU was militarily and politically unrealistic. Western European Union that had been planned as the EU defence arm in the EU Maastricht Treaty and a potential competitor to NATO seemed to end up as European pillar of NATO. An indication of this was that France, the major proponent of an independent WEU, decided for reentry into NATO military structures and the deployment of troops under NATO command in Bosnia. It seemed also that WEU as a kind of backdoor to NATO from EU membership to full WEU membership according to the Maastricht Treaty, and from there to de facto NATO membership, given the militaryoperational implications of the strong WEU commitment was locked; any candidate for WEU membership would have to get de facto US approval as a NATO member before being let into the WEU. Bibliography: Mouritzen, Hans. Bordering Russia Theory and Prospects for Europe’s Baltic Rim. England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd Gower House Croft Road, 1998. Danziger, James. Understanding the Political World 5th ed. United States: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 2001.