The Post-Sept. 11 Impetus for NATO Enlargement

By
Vladimir Socor

Ten European countries which aspire to join NATO are about to demonstrate their unity of purpose at a specially convened summit meeting. These countries, situated between the Baltic and the Black Sea, are collectively known as the Vilnius Ten, after the Lithuanian venue of their founding conference. Their summit on March 25-26 in Bucharest will highlight their shared goal of securing NATO membership invitations this year, for the second round of the alliance's enlargement.

NATO is evaluating each country's candidacy individually. Each must fulfill a rigorous set of military, political and economic criteria, enshrined in the three-year Membership Action Plans (MAPs) worked out with each candidate country. The aspiring governments have been hard at work, expending scarce economic resources and staking their political capital on the goal of joining NATO .

While MAP performance remains the basis for evaluating the Baltic states' candidacies, strategic location takes on greater importance with respect to Central and Southeastern Europe, including Slovakia, Slovenia and the Black Sea western rim countries of Romania and Bulgaria.

In his historic address in Warsaw last June, U.S. President George W. Bush broadened NATO's enlargement agenda to cover the entire space between the Baltic and the Black seas. NATO alone is in a position to guarantee that this region is not dragged back into its former condition of a "gray zone," fragmented and up for grabs by external powers. September 11 and its lessons have added to the urgency of treating this space as an indivisible unit and bringing it into the Western alliance system.

The new international constellation, moreover, underscores the security linkages between the Black Sea's western rim countries and the region to their east. That unstable, resource-rich Eurasian heartland now looms large in U.S. and allied planning. When Romania and Bulgaria join NATO , the alliance will be better positioned to enhance its partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia, to promote strategic stability and development in the South Caucasus-Caspian area, and to connect with Central Asia.

The Black Sea currently serves as the main transit route for Caspian oil -- a function illustrated by the recent commissioning of the pipeline from Kazakhstan to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, whence supertankers take the oil to European markets. The Black Sea country of Georgia forms the linchpin in the planned overland routes for Caspian oil and gas. The Black Sea basin and Georgia, moreover, form a major segment of Traceca, the Europe-Central Asia transit corridor planned by the European Union and supported by the United States.

Another Black Sea country, Ukraine, provides an indispensable air corridor for the U.S.-led antiterrorist coalition operating in Central Asia and Afghanistan. From October 2001 to date, more than 1,400 American and allied military flights have used the route from NATO Europe via Ukraine, the Black Sea, Georgia and Azerbaijan to reach the theater of operations. The U.S. and its allies, envisaging a military presence as long as necessary in Central Asia, will need to continue using this air route.

Until now, NATO's presence on the Black Sea has been confined to Turkey on that sea's southern rim. A staunch NATO ally, Turkey was among the first to argue even in the pre-Sept. 11 world that the alliance needed to secure the Black Sea's western rim permanently by admitting Bulgaria and Romania as members. With Hungary in NATO since 1999, the inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania would not only connect NATO Europe to Turkey and Greece at long last, but would provide the Western alliance with the most convenient access to the Black Sea and the South Caucasus.

Facing Bulgaria and Romania directly across the Black Sea, Georgia forms in essential respects an extension of Southeastern Europe. President Eduard Shevardnadze has pointed to this fact, illustrated by the Traceca and pipeline projects and, now, by the prospect of NATO's southeastern enlargement. Within that context the U.S., the West European allies and Turkey agree on the imperative of safeguarding Georgia's independence. The recent U.S. decision to deploy special troops on a training-and-equipping mission to Georgia underscores that goal. Turkey, providing Georgia with a reliable strategic rear to the south, is second only to the U.S. as a source of security assistance to Georgia. Clearly, NATO's presence on the western Black Sea opposite Georgia would irreversibly anchor that country to its Western partners.

Ukraine welcomed NATO's first enlargement round in 1999 which included Ukraine's western neighbors Poland and Hungary. To the Ukrainians, this meant enhancing Ukraine's own security and stability on the western flank -- in essence, an insurance policy for the future. That flank of Ukraine was already fairly safe then. It is Ukraine's southern flank that shows a relative deficit of security and stability now, owing among other things to a frozen conflict in Moldova and the unraveling of that Communist-governed country, with ripple effects on Ukraine and further a field. Ukraine, therefore, again has every reason to welcome the stabilizing effect of a NATO that would become Ukraine's neighbor in the southwest as well.

NATO policy makers stand before an opportunity without precedent in history to bring the Baltic-Black Sea region permanently within the Western world. The basic prerequisites already exist, and are being reinforced daily by the aspirant countries themselves, through their homework on economic and political reforms and the membership action plans.

Progress is often uneven from country to country; but each of the seven countries seeking a membership invitation this year would bring with it a net advantage to the alliance in terms of location, political resolve, allied discipline and willingness to bear their share of military burdens. This they are already demonstrating through their participation in NATO exercises and allied operations in war-torn places, from the Balkans to Afghanistan. The aspirant countries' summit will help balance NATO's enlargement agenda, bringing its Baltic and Black Sea directions in harmony with each other and with the requirements of the post-September 11th world.