Kennan sees 'fateful error' in NATO expansion

by Victor Perlo

This article was reprinted from the March 22, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

George Kennan, one of the initiators of anti-Soviet cold war ideology, and later peace advocate, now fears that "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era."

He warns that expanding NATO to former Soviet and current Russian borders "... may be expected ... to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy ... and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."

In Washington lingo, "democracy" means "capitalism" and the foreign policy "not to our liking" means "anti-imperialist" foreign policy and actions of the former USSR.

Despite bitter verbal attacks on extending NATO eastward, the Yeltsin regime systematically capitulates to the United States, and will probably do so again. Except, Kennan worries, that with the Communist Party and its supporters holding sway in the Duma, and they may be expected to take more militant action in the future.

The NATO expansion, Kennan fears, will make it more difficult to get the Russian Duma to ratify Start II. He adds that will also make it "more difficult" to put over the arms reduction deal that Sec. of State Madeleine Albright and Co. are offering, to reduce and put a ceiling on the armaments of each of the proposed new NATO members.

There are just two major hitches in this "offer." The first is that Washington demands corresponding cuts in Russian weaponry in the Kaliningrad salient, and in still- socialist-friendly parts of the former Soviet Union - Belarus and the Western Ukraine. The Kaliningrad salient is the former East Prussia, the heart of historic German expansionism, which was ceded to the USSR after World War II - with the agreement of the Western allies. It is indicative of the now neo-colonial status of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic that Washington can make assurances concerning the levels of their armaments without even consulting with them.

The second big loophole of the proposal is its authorization for "outside countries" - meaning the United States, or Germany - to deploy troops in these countries in case of crisis. The United States already has a base, and troops, in Hungary and will surely establish them in Poland and Rumania if these countries are brought into NATO. This would put US troops at the advanced line from which Hitler launched his fateful assault on the USSR in 1941.

Finally, Albright, on her European tour to "sell NATO" said that the United States now has "no plan, no need, and no intention" of stationing nuclear weapons on the territory of new NATO members. This is double-talk to hide the fact that the U.S. refuses to guarantee against ever placing nuclear weapons in these countries.

Yes, from the viewpoint of those like Kennan, NATO expansion will strengthen the forces striving to restore socialism and an effective anti-imperialist policy in the former USSR.

But it will also be most harmful to the American people. First, because the danger of nuclear war, which was assumed to have receded or ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, will certainly reappear. Second, the expansion of NATO will be used as the rationale for further increasing U.S. military spending, which, in the latest budget, goes up 60 percent between 1998 and 2002.

Thus, Boeing-McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed-Martin and the handful of other super-weapons monopolies, encouraged by Clinton, are very actively going to support - and lobby for - the NATO expansion, and American workers are gong to add more billions to corporate coffers by still higher taxes.

A further point: The expansion of NATO, if consolidated, will encourage Washington to step up pressure on Russia to remove remaining obstacles that prevent US corporations from plundering resources and super exploiting Russian workers. Thus American big business as a whole is a powerful proponent for the expansion and a motivating factor in Albright's haste to get compliance before some of the uneasy NATO members put road blocks in the way.

The expansionist drive of Hitler, of the Japanese and Italian imperialists, was a "fateful error." And Kennan is right to say that this move will also prove to be a "fateful error." But history shows that the forces that profit from imperialist expansion are not deterred by such considerations. What can deter it is a powerful peace demand in the United States, especially from the trade unions.

-Vic Perlo is an economist and columnist for the People's Weekly World.