Clinton hails harmony and security of the "new times"
Nato has negotiated from a position of strength, Russia from one of weakness
By Christopher Lockwood, Diplomatic Editor, in Paris
IT FELL to President Clinton to express the absolute change in mentality needed to achieve the Nato-Russia partnership signed in the Elysee Palace yesterday on a glorious early summer morning in the City of Light.
Nato, he said, "will be an alliance directed no longer against a hostile block of nations, but instead designed to advance the security of every nation in Europe. European security is not a zero-sum game, where Nato's gain is Russia's loss, and Russia's strength is our alliance's weakness. That is old thinking. These are new times".
It is eight years since the Berlin Wall was breached, yet there is still plenty of old thinking around. The new times cannot yet be taken for granted, though yesterday they looked more real than they have ever done as the old adversaries agreed to break the vicious circle of Cold War mistrust.
The road to Paris has been long and hard. Since January 1994, when the alliance first resolved to expand, its diplomats have laboured mightily to find a way of doing so that would not trigger what President Yeltsin himself once called "a Cold Peace".
For much of that time, the two goals of offering enhanced security to eastern Europe while improving relations with Russia seemed to be contradictory. Nato could have one or the other but not both. Yesterday, said one senior Nato official, "we disproved the geometricians, and squared the circle".
As recently as February, one of the elder statesman of American diplomacy, George Kennan, who served as ambassador to Russia in the late 1940s, claimed that the expansion of Nato would be "the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era".
Why, he asked, "should East-West relations become centred on the question of who would be allied with whom, and by implication against whom, in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?"
This was old thinking at its purest, a conception of Nato as nothing but a military alliance. Its expansion would be seen as an act of aggression by the Russians. It would make Europe less secure, not safer.
Mr Kennan's article received a respectful hearing in America, where the Senate must vote by a two-thirds majority to approve any move to expand Nato. His fears have been partly borne out by the evidence that old thinking remains prevalent in the Russian Duma, which is passionately opposed to Nato expansion.
The Duma has threatened to block ratification of the Start 2 strategic arms reduction treaty. Its wilder members, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, have called for Russia to begin a military build-up along its frontiers if Nato expands. Yesterday's agreements rest on the assumption that the views of such men are irrelevant.
The bargaining has been exceptionally tough and it has been Russia that has been forced to make most of the concessions. Nato has been negotiating from a position of strength, Russia from one of weakness.
Russia sought legally binding assurances that Nato would not station nuclear weapons or foreign combat troops on the territory of new members drawn from the former Warsaw Pact. It demanded that no military infrastructure - airbases, barracks, oil supply lines, communications equipment - should be constructed there.
It has achieved none of this. Instead, Nato has stated only that it has "no intention, no plan and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons in the new members and that, "in the current and foreseeable security environment", it has no need for "the additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces there".
Both formulations preserve Nato's freedom of action, should circumstances be deemed to change, though neither Nato nor the statesmanlike Mr Yeltsin imagines this will happen. Ultimately, yesterday's accord rests on Russia's trust that Nato means what it says.
Russia has also failed to gain a commitment that Nato will never take in the Baltic states or other former members of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine. That is a problem for the future.
Russia has, however, been offered a seat at the heart of Nato's deliberations, though without a power of veto. The range of issues on which Nato and Russia will consult is vast. It includes peace-keeping, arms control, preventive diplomacy (potentially worldwide), the combating of terrorism, drug-trafficking and nuclear proliferation.
This amounts to something that closely resembles Russian membership of Nato itself. Nato has agreed to trust Russia not to abuse that position. It is indeed an historic moment, but the real job of making the new relationship work is only just beginning.
