Europe Moves Eastward

NATOS PEACEFUL ADVANCE

Zoltan Barany

Zoltan Barany is Frank C. Erwin, Jr., Centennial Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. He is author of The Future of NATO Expansion (2003) and The East European Gypsies: Regime Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics (2002). His essay, Bulgarias Royal Elections, appeared in the April 2002 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Over the last decade and a half, international organizations have played
a vital role in fostering economic and democratic development in Eastern Europe. Notable among these have been the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. By far the most influential, however, have been the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). For since the end of the Cold War, it has been a consistent and principal foreign-policy objective of the regions states to join the two organizations, a prospect that has given the EU and NATO tremendous leverage over these states domestic and foreign policies. While NATO membership may not promise the kinds of tangible, longterm economic benefits that EU membership does, NATO accession is nevertheless a democratic milestone for the countries of Eastern Europe. Indeed, insofar as democratic consolidation depends on the stability afforded by robust security arrangements, full membership in the Atlantic Alliance is actually, from the perspective of democracy, a more important objective than EU integration.1 And because a number of East European states perceived (accurately) that an invitation from NATO would be more readily forthcoming than one from the EU, they focused their early postcommunist efforts on satisfying NATOs less rigorous membership criteria. NATO enlargement has been one of the most important events in postCold War international affairs. In less than a decade, countries that were ardent and strategically crucial enemies of the Alliance became its newest members. How and why did this happen? The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War brought
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dramatic changes to East European security. Soon after the March 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe found itself in a security limbo, as politicians, military elites, and national-security experts widely recognized at the time. Moscows forces were gone, but the Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian militaries were simply not capable of guaranteeing their own national security. Initially, this did not seem to be much of a problem, as the new governments priorities lay in democratization and economic reform rather than the improvement of their security environment. In fact, there was a major public debate in Czechoslovakia during the early 1990s on whether the country any longer needed a military establishment at all. Three developments, however, soon compelled Eastern Europes leaders to turn their attention to security matters. The first was the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, a country bordering on three former Warsaw Pact member states (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania). Although the actual threat posed to these states was modesteven taking into account the Hungarian governments clandestine delivery of surplus infantry weapons to Croatia in 1991the war in Yugoslavia clearly exposed their poor defensive capabilities. For example, during the war, Croatian and Serbian aircraft frequently violated Hungarian airspace. In one incident, a Yugoslav National Army fighter jetrepresenting the Serbian sideaccidentally dropped a bomb on a Hungarian village, causing no casualties and only minor damage. From the subsequent public inquiry, it became clear to Hungarians that their skies were now virtually unprotected. Second, Eastern Europes leaders had come to understand that they had more to fear than conventional, or hard, security threats. Liberalization and open borders subjected the region to many new soft security threats, as wellones long known to Western democracies, such as international trafficking in refugees and contraband. The third, and most momentous, development prompting the regions elites to pay more attention to their security situation was the all-out collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This was accompanied by the emergence of political parties of all hues, but predominant among these was the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, whose ultranationalist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, promised to reinstate the Soviet Empire and to redraw the map of Eastern Europe in Russias interests.

After the Warsaw Pact, What?

Although the states of Eastern Europe did establish a number of new regional security organizations, including the Visegrad Four and the Central European Initiative, none of these had any substantive militarysecurity profilesin part due to fears that any regional military alliance might end up too closely resembling the old Warsaw Pact. By the early

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1990s, most of the regions governments had concluded that the only solution to their security problems was full membership in NATO which, not incidentally, would allow democratization to advance in their countries without distraction and also endow their leadership with greater legitimacy, both at home and abroad. Once the states of Eastern Europe realized that there was no alternative to NATO accession, they undertook to lobby the Alliance and its membersparticularly the United Statesthrough diplomatic channels and the media. At this time, elite support for NATO membership was unambiguous and overwhelming throughout the region, with the exceptions of Bulgaria and Slovakia, where governments firmly committed to Euro-Atlantic integration would not come to power until 1997 and 1998, respectively. As to public enthusiasm in the region for NATO accession, three generalizations may be made. First, the popularity of Alliance membership correlated positively with geographical proximity to Russia (historically and still perceived as a threat), and negatively with state performance in both democratization and economic reform. Accordingly, as numerous public opinion polls revealed, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles (all sharing borders with Russia), and Romanians (whose democratic progress had been slow) were keener on joining NATO than were Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Slovenes. 2 Second, public support for NATO membership dropped in every candidate country during the Alliances 1999 air war against Slobodan Miloevis Yugoslavia. And third, wherever state campaigns were conducted to bolster popular support for NATO accession (as in Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia), the campaigns tended to succeed. Propitiously, the East European states recognition of the necessity of joining the Alliance roughly coincided with an identity crisis in NATO itself, caused by uncertainties about its postCold War raison ^etre. The gradual inclusion of newly independent East European states offered NATO a plausible, if partial, way of responding, but it also delayed a genuine resolution of the Alliances existential quandary. At its 1990 London summit, NATO took the first step in this new direction by inviting Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union to establish regular diplomatic liaisons with NATO. Subsequently, important steps were taken with the founding of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council the following year and the inauguration in 1994 of NATOs Partnership for Peace program, which created an institutional framework for further interaction and cooperation between NATO and aspiring members. The prospect of actually incorporating former Warsaw Pact states into NATO generated a spirited public discussion in member states on both sides of the Atlantic. Scores of scholars, pundits, and policy makers debated the benefits and drawbacks for both NATO and the East European states, the cost of enlargement, and its probable impact on the

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Alliances relations with Russia. One of the few points on which both supporters and opponents of enlargement agreed was that, in purely military terms, no East European state could be admitted. Proponents contended, however, that NATOs decision had to be made on political rather than military grounds. One of the key arguments of enlargement supporters was that NATO expansion would spread and strengthen democracy in Eastern Europe. U.S. president Bill Clinton claimed that NATO could do for Europes East what it did for Europes West: prevent a return to local rivalries, strengthen democracy against future threats, and create the conditions for prosperity.3 Not to enlarge NATO, the reasoning went, would be tantamount to encouraging the division of Europe between a self-confident and secure West and an unstable and insecure East. All the same, those backing NATO membership for Eastern Europe could not quite justify why a cold-war military alliance, rather than the European Union, [was] the best way to secure those aims.4

Enlargement as Reward
The champions of enlargement portrayed Alliance membership as a reward for consolidating democracies and establishing market economies. Opponents maintained, however, that democracy had to be its own reward. In any event, they added, if the Alliance was truly interested in protecting democracy, then it should have extended membership to states where democracy was not yet consolidated (such as Albania, Romania, Russia, or Ukraine) and not to those (such as Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary) where it was. Opponents also noted that the primary aim of NATO was never to maintain free-market democracies. Greece, Portugal, and Turkey had hardly been consolidated democracies when they joined. Furthermore, there was no solid evidence that NATO had a decisive influence on its members progress toward democracy: Witness the colonels regime in Greece and Turkeys lackluster democratic development. NATO was interested in these countries not as models of democracy but as strategically important real estate. Moreover, NATOs enlargement was widely predicted to encourage antidemocratic political forces in Moscow, which would squarely contradict the Western objective of strengthening democratic elements on the Russian political scene. As the liberal reformer Anatoly Chubais noted in 1997, NATO expansion was the only issue on which he agreed with Communist Party leader Gennady Zhuganov and the nationalist maverick Zhirinovsky.5 Many observers suggested that the EUs expansion would make NATO enlargement unnecessary. Although EU membership was not going to be a realistic short-term prospect for some of the regions states, it was the EU, not NATO, that was in a position to foster democratic consoli-

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dation and market reform and to promote long-term stability and prosperityjust as it had in Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Of the states aspiring to NATO membership in the mid-1990s, those with consolidated democracies and relatively well-functioning market economies garnered the most support. Poland was clearly the favorite among them, owing to its leading role in the demolition of one-party rule, and its radical political and economic reforms. The Czech Republic (having split from Slovakia in 1993s Velvet Divorce) won somewhat less backing on account of its weak military and limited public enthusiasm for membership and for stepped-up military expenditures. Hungary proved a less popular choice still, because it did not share a border with the other two or with any other NATO member, and because of Budapests often tense relations with neighboring states harboring large Hungarian ethnic minorities. The U.S. State Department was against the inclusion of Romania and Slovenia, arguing that, if these two countries were included, then membership for the three Baltic statesEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuaniawould have to be addressed, and such a step would risk antagonizing Russia. In any case, Romania and Slovenia had several strikes against them. Romania did not elect a government committed to substantive political and economic reform until late 1996, and even then was far from consolidating democracy or establishing a functioning market economy. Slovenia, by contrast, was a consolidated democracy with the regions most prosperous economy, but its status as a former Yugoslav republic raised questions in many minds, albeit out of ignorance. Ironically, Ljubljana was penalized precisely because it had openly distanced itself from the crises in the former Yugoslavia. Slovakia was more or less automatically disqualified, because it remained under the quasi-authoritarian rule of Vladimr Meiar until 1998. Slovenia aside, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were postcommunist Europes only consolidated democracies when NATO invited them to join the Alliance at its 1997 Madrid summit. Their success in democratizing was clearly the most important factor in their favor, and this was not lost on the states that remained outside NATO. Public support for membership was overwhelming in Poland (according to some surveys, between 79 and 88 percent).6 In Hungary, public support never reached 50 percent prior to 1994, primarily owing to the popular desire for neutrality, concern about the cost of membership, and skepticism about the severity of the security threats that the country faced. An elaborate government-run media campaign, however, had raised that figure to 61 percent by the time of the 1997 Madrid summit.7 Czechs appeared even less excited about NATO membership, for similar reasons. As Alliance leaders made clear both in Madrid and at the 1999 Washington summit, NATOs doors remained open for new members as long as they fulfilled the accession criteria, the most important

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of which were consolidating democracy and establishing democratic civilian control over the armed forces.

The Debate Enters a New Round

After the Washington summit, NATO leaders affirmed that further expansion should become part of the Alliances mission. The nine aspiring states (Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the three Baltic republics) became participants in the Membership Action Plan (MAP), which was intended to assist candidates in their preparations for membership and to assess their progress through annual reviews. At the Alliances November 2002 Prague summit, all MAP members but twoAlbania and Macedonia, which in most respects were far behind the others in fulfilling Alliance criteriawere invited to join the organization at its next summit in 2004. The second round of NATO expansion presented a number of contentious issues, yet debate leading up to the invitation of the new candidates was much more muted than it had been before the first round. Many of those who opposed the second round of enlargement were not against further expansion per se, but had qualms about bringing in new countries that were unqualified in certain areas, especially military spending, equipment, and readiness. The opponents contended that the Alliance should learn the lessons of the first round, which had brought in new members that still had profound and long-term military deficiencies. In general, the integration of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into NATO has been more difficult than expected. Since they were invited to join in 1997, and particularly since they became full-fledged members two years later, these states had given few reasons for NATO leaders to applaud their admission. All three needed continual NATO prodding to increase their defense expenditures and to implement longoverdue defense reforms, notwithstanding their ardent promises to meet NATO guidelines prior to being invited. The modernization of equipment, reduction of manpower, and improvement of training to meet NATO standards are still a long way off in these countries, and in many cases little progress has yet been made. The three new members are not expected to achieve mature capability before 2009that is, not until a decade after joining the Alliance. While it is true that many longstanding NATO members might also be classified as free riders, that hardly justifies taking on new ones. The mixed record of the first round of enlargement may have been on NATO secretary-general George Robertsons mind when in October 2000 he addressed a conference of the aspiring countries defense ministers in Sofia. Robertson warned that accession to the Alliance could not be regarded as a political award, and added that expansion would take place when both NATO and the candidates were ready for it. He noted

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that NATO wants [those] countries not only to consume, but also to generate security, insinuating that the first three new entrants were free riders.8 In any case, there is a broad consensus among experts that the Alliance underestimated the problems of militarily transforming the three new member states. Notwithstanding Robertsons admonitions, critics of further enlargement charge that few politicians in either Eastern Europe or the existing NATO member countries are truly concerned with military issues. Rather, they maintain, the Alliance has seemingly become a political honor society that grants membership to consolidated democracies regardless of their capacity to make military-security contributions. The current candidates for NATO membership are even less qualified than were those in the first round: Romania and Bulgaria have weak economies; Romania has yet to consolidate its democracy; and the contribution of the Baltic states and Slovenia to NATOs capabilities would be little more than symbolic. Moreover, approximately 40 percent of Latvias population, 30 percent of Estonias, and 7 percent of Lithuanias are ethnic Russians whose treatment has frequently prompted international criticism, the implications of which do not escape opponents of Baltic membership.

Old Tanks versus Old Tractors

The connection between EU and NATO enlargement was raised during and after NATOs second round of expansion with much greater frequency than it had been during the first. In the late 1990s, the United States, trying to preserve as much decision-making room as possible, was anxious to downplay any link between the pace of the two enlargement processes. At the same time, Washington wanted to ensure that EU enlargement took place and that membership in the two organizations overlapped to the greatest possible extent.9 Many analysts in aspirant countries had come to believe that NATO accession would strengthen their chances of joining the EU, recognizing that NATOs enlargement decision is both more subjective and tied to infinitely fewer technical requirements. As former German defense minister Volker Rhe remarked, You can join the Atlantic Alliance with old tanks, but joining the EU with old farm tractors causes problems.10 Not unexpectedly, the governments and populations of those countries with relatively remote chances for rapid EU integration have tended to demonstrate more enthusiasm toward NATO than those that are set to gain EU membership in 2004. According to one set of 2002 public opinion polls, joining NATO was favored by 88 percent of Romanians and 60 percent of Bulgarians, whereas only 41 to 52 percent of Slovaks and 39 percent of Slovenes felt that way.11 The populations of the Baltic countries, each of which was forcibly incorporated into and brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union, overwhelmingly back Alliance mem-

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bership. In early 2002, 68 percent of Estonians, 64 percent of Latvians, and 59 percent of Lithuanians supported accession. 12 What arguments are being marshaled on behalf of the second round of NATO enlargement? First, it is said, NATO leaders explicitly pledged at the Madrid summit to keep the door open for any European country ready and willing to shoulder the obligations of membership, and the Alliance has a moral obligation to make good on that promise. Those making this argument, however, often overlook the important qualifier that new members must meet entrance requirements at the time of entry. Clearly, none of the seven states invited to join in Prague satisfy all of NATOs membership criteria. Second, it is said that incorporating Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia into the Alliance will expand its deterrent potential and enhance its rapid-intervention capability in the Balkans and elsewhere in the region. Moreover, such expansion will improve NATOs geostrategic position by linking Hungary with new members on its borders (Slovakia, Romania, and Slovenia), as well as by linking Greece and Turkey with the rest of the Alliance through Bulgaria. Third, it is claimed that the first round of NATO enlargement at least temporarily institutionalized the divide between postcommunist Europes haves and have-nots. One could argue that, if expansion were to be halted now, the resultant isolation of the Balkan and Baltic states from Euro-Atlantic integration might pose a long-term threat to European security, because they have the potential to foster the creation of political associations hostile to democracy and to reinforce nationalist tensions in the region. Of all the past and current NATO aspirants, it is the three Baltic states that face the most realistic security challenges. Since 1991, Baltic-Russian relations have often been tense because of Moscows inflexible stance on a range of policy issues, the treatment of Russian minorities in the Baltic states, and Moscows brash and absurd public insistence that these states had voluntarily joined the USSR in 1941. Bulgaria and Romania, still far removed from EU membership,13 are in a different situation altogether. For their governments, NATO accession signifies not only the solution to their security dilemmas but also a much-needed endorsement of their Western orientation and, just as important, a measure of domestic legitimacy.

The Impact of 9/11

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001 had profound effects on the course of NATO expansion. Previously, NATO, and especially the United States, were pursuing enlargement only halfheartedly. But after 9/11, Washington, searching for dependable and dedicated allies, began intensely pushing for a big-bang expansion.

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Before 9/11, only two countries, Slovenia and Slovakia, had reasonably good prospects of winning invitations from the Alliance at its 2002 summit, and even these two had weaknesses that tempered NATOs eagerness to integrate them quickly. First, although elite support for NATO membership in Ljubljana and Bratislava was solid, popular backing mostly lingered below 50 percent. Second, given the first three entrants military shortcomings, NATO had become acutely concerned about the ability of newly invited states to satisfy its defense-related criteria. Yet Slovakia and especially Slovenia were handicapped by staggering deficiencies in their armed forces. In late 2001, Slovak defense minister Jozef Stank admitted that to reform the Slovak army along NATO guidelines would take till 2015 at the earliest.14 And in October 2001, a Dutch study revealed that the Slovene army did not have a single unit prepared for international operations.15 Third, the possible return to power of Vladimr Meiar and his populist Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) in Slovakias September 2002 national elections posed a potentially significant barrier to democratic consolidation. (Although the HZDS garnered a greater share of the vote than any other single party 19.5 percentfour center-right parties together gained a narrow two-seat majority in the legislature, allowing the formation of another coalition government without HZDS.) Fourth, many former communist officers remained in positions of high authority in the military and security domains in the new candidate countries (except in the Baltics). If Slovakia and Slovenia were in the promising bracket, what of the two Balkan states? Until 9/11, few experts would have bet on speedy NATO accession by Bulgaria or Romania. Indeed, Romania appeared to be the regions undisputed basket case. The governments under Emil Constantinescus presidency (19962000) were as corrupt and incompetent as those under his predecessor Ion Iliescu, if not more so. The countrys unreformed economy continued its nosedive (per-capita GNP fell from $1,562 in 1995 to $1,515 in 1999). And in the December 2000 presidential runoff, in which Iliescu defeated the viciously xenophobic Corneliu Vadim Tudor by a margin of two-to-one, a leading Romanian newspaper said that voters were being forced to choose between AIDS and cancer, while the influential German daily Die Welt called it another giant step in the wrong direction.16 Since Premier Adrian Nastases government took office in December 2000, members of Romanias infamous communist-era secret police, the Securitate, have continued to enjoy privileged positions despite NATOs repeated expressions of concern. As a number of international organizations, including the European Parliament, have pointed out, the Romanian judiciary remains heavily subject to political pressures. Romanian elites continue to deny the mass murder of Roma and Jews that took place in their country during World War II, and appear not to worry much about the de facto rehabilitation of Romanias wartime

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leader, Marshal Ion Antonescu. High-ranking members of the armed forces have attended events extolling the marshals virtues. In a recent case, the current chief of the general staff, General Mihai Popescu, sent the organizers of an Antonescu commemoration a letter expressing his regrets that he could not attend due to family obligations.17 Bulgaria has not encountered major problems of democratic consolidation, but until the belated introduction of reforms in 1997, its economy could only be described as disastrous. 18 Like Romania, Bulgaria has been plagued by massive corruption that reaches into the highest echelons of political power. And while Romania did the most it could to reform its armed forces on a shoestring budget, the Bulgarian military lags behind all others in the region. Moreover, longstanding conflicts between uniformed personnel and civilian bureaucrats in Sofias ministry of defense have continued to diminish the chances of substantive reform of the armed forces. Former prime minister Ivan Kostov used to joke that his countrys contribution to peace in the Balkans was that it could not threaten any of its neighbors. As one Bulgarian commentator summed up the situation, God help us if life decides to test our national security system!19 And yet, 9/11 has changed everything. In its aftermath, the United States needed all potential allies, regardless of their deficiencies. Compared to the situation in Russia (locked in a war against its own citizens in Chechnya) and to what was going on in the sultanistic regimes of Central Asia, the shortcomings of Romania, Bulgaria, and the other NATO applicants must have seemed negligible. At the same time, some aspirants, sensing the opportunity to make up for their failure to meet Alliance membership criteria, jumped at the chance to ingratiate themselves with Washington.

From Wallflower to Spearhead

Romanias case is the most instructive. In the wake of the attacks, the Romanian government repeatedly expressed its heartfelt solidarity with the United States and offered whatever help it could (including troops to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan). In August 2002, Washingtons growing goodwill toward Bucharest was further cemented when, in the face of direct EU disapproval, Romania became the first state (and the only one among the seven invited to join NATO) to sign an agreement with the United States exempting U.S. peacekeepers from prosecution under the International Criminal Court. After Bucharest secured an invitation to NATO in November 2002, Romania volunteered to host U.S. missile bases on its territory and Iliescu decorated George W. Bush with Romanias highest state order. For his part, the U.S. president declared that Romania brings moral clarity to our NATO alliance.20 So, in the course of little over a year, Romania, the least

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attractive applicant for NATO membership, had become, in Bushs words, the spearhead of the Alliance. The improvement of U.S.-Russian relations following 9/11 also allowed Washington to push with yet more determination for the inclusion in the Alliance of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow was not pleased at the prospect of these elements of its former empire becoming NATO members, but the Kremlin calculated that the advantages of better relations with NATO and the United Statesamong which would be an enhanced stature in international forums, economic benefits, and the quieting of U.S. condemnation of the war in Chechnyawould outweigh the drawbacks. To be sure, Moscow had little to fear from the small Baltic states, which were hardly more qualified for NATO membership than the other candidates, at least in military-security terms. Russias more relaxed attitude toward NATO expansion may come from an emerging realization that what the enlargement process signals is precisely the Alliances transformation from a Cold War military pact into a mainly political partnership. Indeed, NATOs internal conflict (spawned by Washingtons unilateralist foreign policy in general and the 2003 war against Saddam Husseins Iraq in particular) and the increasing support within NATO for continued expansion (to include Georgia, Ukraine, and even Central Asian states) presage the Alliances likely demise as an effective military organization. Since the end of the Cold War, in any event, U.S. domination of NATO has only increased, which is not surprising given that Washingtons annual military expenditures (about $290 billion in 2002) are more than twice the combined spending of its European allies (about $120 billion). In sum, one consequence of the big-bang expansion in Prague that followed 9/11 was the dilution of NATO membership standards. Although the military preparations of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were inadequate, these countries were consolidated democracies with relatively robust economies at the time of the first round of Alliance enlargement. In the second round, most of the seven invitees are less qualified in virtually every respect, and if NATO moves further east, this dilution of NATO standards is almost certain to continue. With the decision to invite unqualified states, the Alliance has lost much of its leverage over them, because it has neither an enforcement mechanism nor any sanctions at its disposal to compel members to carry out their responsibilities. Nor has the Alliance opted to modify its charter to cope with this institutional flaw. Several reasons explain Washingtons post-9/11 push for a largescale expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. One is that East Europeans seem more convinced than West Europeans that a U.S. military presence is Europes fundamental guarantee of stability and security, as well as an important promoter of democratization. Likewise, East Europeans tend to be less cynical about U.S. motivations. The United

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States has received proportionately more support from its new East European allies in its military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq than it has from NATO members of long standing. Nearly all the governments of Eastern Europe have sent specialized units of one sort or another to join the fight against terrorism, while Poland has deployed an entire division in northern Iraq. In a more elemental sense, though, it seems that East Europeans retain an enduring sense of gratitude to the United States for the part it played in defeating tyrannys threat to Europe, whereas among West Europeans this sense has largely disappeared. In Eastern Europe, NATO is still perceived in a sentimental vein as the alliance that triumphed over the evil that descended upon the region in the aftermath of World War II. In contrast, while the EU may foster the regions long-term economic development, it is widely viewed as a bureaucratic and technocratic institution concerned mainly with regulatory matters.

NATO and East European Democratization

Has NATO encouraged democratization in postcommunist Eastern Europe? The answer to this oft-debated question should be a resounding yes, for three reasons. First, securing national sovereignty and security establishes the fundamental basis that makes it possible for democratic transition and consolidation to proceed. East Europeans found themselves in a highly uncertain security environment following the end of their countries state-socialist regimes. They had no security alternative to the Alliance. Second, the prospect of NATO membership has created generally positive incentives for democratization in the region. For example, a key attraction to Slovak voters of the coalition that unseated Meiar in the 1998 elections was its commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration. Prior to the 2002 elections, President Rudolf Schuster remarked, Everybody realizes that if we want to get into NATO and the EU, this must be granted by certain personalitiesin other words, people such as Meiar, the obstacle to Slovakias integration into Europe, would have to be voted out of power. 21 Another example is the signing of basic treaties between East European governments aspiring to NATO membership and their neighbors. The main reason why the aspiring countries concluded these pacts with traditional adversaries (such as Slovakia with Hungary in 1995, Romania with Hungary in 1996, and Romania with Ukraine in 1997) was the signatories realization that it would substantially improve their chances of being admitted to the Alliance. Third and finally, NATO has promoted democratization in a number of specific policy areas. To be sure, NATOs policy influence is seldom easy to gauge precisely, because in many respects it has sought policy adjustments similar to those urged by other international organizations

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especially the EU. Nevertheless, NATO focuses on military effectiveness, civil-military relations, defense expenditures, and a host of issues that other organizations have not concerned themselves with. Foremost among these is civilian control over the armed forces. Such control is essential to the success of a democratic polity, and in this regard it is beyond question that the demands of NATO membership have had a strongly prodemocratic effect in Eastern Europe. Both in Slovakia (during its 1998 national elections) and in Romania (during its 1998 local elections), ruling political elites attempted to influence the votes of military personnel. Neither government had to wait long for NATOs condemnation. The increasing transparency of defense budgetsone of the most important means by which civilian control is exercisedis also largely attributable to NATOs influence. Since 1999, the Alliances Membership Action Program has provided an effective new framework through which NATO has been able to motivate further reforms (dealing with such issues as ethnic discrimination in the military and the treatment of conscripts) and to offer guidance for the identification of priorities in allocating scarce resources. In these and many other instances, the causal links between incentives created by NATO and domestic policy changes are clear. By providing the security essential for successful democratization as well as inducing positive changes in specific policy areas, NATO may have made an even more essential contribution than the EU to Eastern Europes democratic transformation. And if NATO continues to expand further east, it is even more likely to surpass the EU in its impact on democratization. For it then will be expanding to countries where the prospect of EU enlargementand hence the EUs leveragewill be quite small. At the same time, however, by engaging in such politically driven enlargement, NATO may also risk its demise as a cohesive and functional military alliance. NOTES
1. See Jacques Rupnik, Eastern Europe: The International Context, Journal of Democracy 11 (April 2000): 11529. For a theoretical analysis of the broader context, see Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 2. See Tatiana Kostadinova, East European Public Support for NATO Membership: Fears and Aspirations, Journal of Peace Research 37 (March 2000): 23549; and Zoltan Barany, The Future of NATO Expansion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 22425. 3. Remarks by President Clinton at Fisher Theater in Detroit, Michigan, 22 October 1996 (Federal News Service). 4. Tinkering with Europe, New York Times, 12 December 1996. 5. Alexei K. Pushkov, Dont Isolate Us: A Russian View of NATO Enlargement, National Interest 47 (Spring 1997): 58.

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6. William D. Hartung and Richard F. Kaufman, NATO Expands East, in Martha Honey and Tom Barry, eds., Global Focus: U.S. Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Millennium (New York: St. Martins, 2000), 205. 7. Zoltan Barany, Hungary: An Outpost on the Troubled Periphery, in Andrew A. Michta, ed., Americas New Allies: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in NATO (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 87. 8. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline, Part II (henceforth: RFE/RL II), 16 October 2000. 9. Martin A. Smith, The NATO Factor: A Spanner in the Works of EU and WEU Enlargement? in Karen Henderson, ed., Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union (London: University College of London Press, 1999), 5456. 10. Cited in Lev Voronkov, The Challenges of NATO Enlargement, Balkan Forum 5 (June 1997): 21. 11. Respectively: BTA (Sofia), 2 October 2002; Romanian Radio cited in RFE/ RL II, 10 October 2002; RFE/RL II, 18 October 2002; RFE/RL II, 3 June 2002. 12. Graina Miniotait, The Baltic States: In Search of Security and Identity, in Charles Krupnick, ed., Almost NATO: Partners and Players in Central and Eastern European Security (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 288. 13. Recent figures indicate that Bulgaria would take 60 years and Romania 80 years to catch up to the EUs GDP average if they were to grow by an annual 3.8 percent and the EU by only 2 percent (RFE/RL II, 17 June 2003). 14. Army Reshape to Last Until 2015, Slovak Spectator 7 (17 October 2001). 15. Margriet Drent, et al., Organising National Defences for NATO Membership: The Unexamined Dimension of Aspirants Readiness for Entry, Harmonie Paper 15 (Centre of European Security Studies, University of Groningen, October 2001), 57. 16. Respectively: Cited in Gulp, Economist, 16 December 2000, 57; and in Ji ediv, The Puzzle of NATO Enlargement, Contemporary Security Policy 22 (August 2001): 15. 17. Mediafax (Bucharest), 3 June 2001. 18. See Zoltan Barany, Bulgarias Royal Elections, Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 14155. 19. Both cited by John D. Bell, Bulgarias Search for Security, in John D. Bell, ed., Bulgaria in Transition (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998), 309. 20. RFE/RL II, 25 November 2002. 21. RFE/RL II, 14 February 2001.