HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
Walker's World: Easternizing Europe? By Martin Walker UPI Chief International Correspondent PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 28 (UPI) -- Already members in good standing of the NATO alliance, by the end of this year the Czech Republic and its Polish and Hungarian neighbors confidently expect that they will get the nod to join the European Union. And in this Czech capital of Prague in November, a NATO summit is expected to give a formal welcome to seven more new members of the alliance -- all of them formerly part of the old Soviet empire and Warsaw Pact. Thirteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War's orphan nations finally come home to the West. That, at least, is the theory. And here in Prague, a center of European civilization since the 14th century rule of King Charles IV who built the ancient bridge and university that bear his name, it is easy to feel that the Cold War division of Europe was a hideous aberration. Europe is at last becoming, as the first President George Bush pledged in 1989, "whole and free." And yet a shadow of unease is starting to drift across this grand and moving vision. Partly it stems from the besetting weakness of the post-Communist states and governments of Eastern Europe and the fragility of their new democratic institutions. Partly it stems from the spread of organized crime, much of it run by the Russian Mafia. The feeble defenses that Eastern Europe's demoralized police and customs services can muster are already allowing these criminal systems to infiltrate Western Europe. "We dreamed for so long of the Westernization of Eastern Europe, but unless we take great care, we could see the creeping Easternization of Western Europe," warns Ognyan Minchev, director of Bulgaria's Institute for International Studies, who also chairs Bulgaria's chapter of Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog. "The deep-rooted state and official corruption in the weak state institutions of Eastern Europe threaten to infect the Western businesses that have invested there, and the Western accounting firms that audit Eastern Europe's privatized industries," Minchev adds. "Instead of the invisible hand of the free market, we have the visible fist of the Mafia and corruption." American business people and officials in Eastern Europe voice similar concerns. Ralph Johnson, former U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia, warns that corrosive effect of corruption is spreading, with some governments using local intelligence services to bring pressure on political opponents, while civil society and the media "are still too weak to hold governments accountable." "There are two new developments of particular concern," Johnson notes. "Some outside and Western businesses are adopting the local 'rules' of doing business -- which means corruption spreads. And we are starting to see organized crime getting a political agenda. This is ominous," he added, citing mounting Russian influence in Eastern Europe's energy and pipeline networks. Much of the worry comes from the faltering state of the post-Communist economies. The average income per head of the current 15 members of the EU is just over $20,000 a year. The average income of the 10 candidate states of Eastern Europe is less than a third of the EU level. The EU is about to take in the poor relations, and faces a massive challenge of aid and development for years and probably decades to come. Whatever mood there might be of joyous the reunion of a cruelly divided European civilization is darkened by the severity of the task ahead, as if the United States were suddenly to merge with a couple of Mexicos. But the darkest shadow of all is the nagging fear that just as the Eastern Europeans finally achieve their long strategic ambition to join the NATO alliance, it may no longer be quite the staunch security guarantee they had sought for so long. Plans to give Russia a privileged place -- although not full membership - in NATO councils deeply troubled many Eastern European participants at a security conference organized here over the weekend by the Prague Institute of National Security. "It would be a cruel irony if Eastern Europe finally joins NATO just as Russia's presence, and the replacement of a hard military alliance with a loose talking shop, makes NATO less worth joining," notes Petr Vancura, director of the Prague Institute. "And yet NATO's new members, Czechs and Poles and Hungarians, bear much of the responsibility because they have failed to modernize their armed forces in a way which add much to NATO's military capability. Moreover, the low level of defense spending by most European NATO members means that the alliance is losing military credibility in the United States," adds Vancura, formerly a senior Czech diplomat in Washington. "We are at risk here not just of throwing away the fruits of victory in the Cold War, but of diluting beyond recognition the very institution -- NATO -- that won it." --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
