From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thus spaketh the Grand Chess Master of Shaitanistan.... Dawn (Pakistan)/International Herald Tribune (UK) NATO, European Union need to grow together May 18, 2001 By Zbigniew Brzezinski WASHINGTON, The NATO began as a security treaty among a number of sovereign states, and formally that is still the case with its current 19 members. But as the European Union both integrates and expands, NATO is effectively becoming an alliance between the US and Europe. Almost all European members of NATO are also members of the EU, and NATO's most recent three new members are also actively negotiating admission. The political criteria for membership in NATO and the EU are the same. The overlap between NATO and the EU is thus a new and globally significant geostrategic reality. It will have to be faced next year at summit meetings of the EU in Copenhagen and of NATO in Prague. Since the EU will continue to expand, it is conducting accession negotiations with 11 states, it follows that it would be absurd if in the future NATO were committed to the defense of, say, only three-quarters of the EU. Such a situation could foster genuine insecurity in the unprotected one-fourth. The threat once posed by the Soviet Union is gone and Russia is engaged in a difficult process of self-redefinition. As a consequence, NATO is being transformed from a defensive alliance focused on a very clear danger into an integrated security coalition that spans the European-Atlantic space and is capable of reacting to threats to peace both within and near that region. Given these realities, what next for NATO's enlargement? Since NATO is a military alliance and not a unilateral guarantee of protection, every member must be credibly committed to self-defense as well as be ready to make a tangible contribution to collective security even when itself not directly threatened. For the process of enlargement to remain politically vital, it is also important that the most recent three members fully carry out the commitments they undertook prior to membership. Failure to do so by Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic would certainly be exploited by opponents of expansion. The process of admission to NATO is unpredictable and subject to capricious politics. This should not be so. The enlargement of NATO should be neither a bookkeeping exercise, nor a bureaucratised guessing game, nor a political bazaar. -Dawn/The International Herald Tribune News Service. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
