Mother and son, Tagaytay, Philippines. The Philippines is left out of the "gated community" of the north.Boston Herald
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will hold its annual summit meeting next month in Prague. Leaders from 19 member nations and 27 partner countries will review continued NATO expansion. In preparing for this meeting, it is essential that the Bush administration put aside the language of diplomatic generalities and ask tough questions about long-term American interests.
We worked with one Northern Alliance to unseat the Taliban and diminish al-Qaeda, but are we now giving birth to a very different Northern Alliance - a sort of NATO-on-steroids that is slowly encompassing much of the Northern Hemisphere? Is this good or bad for America? NATO comprised 12 nations when it was created in 1949. It grew to 16 members through the Cold War. In 1999, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined, followed by Russia's entry as a ``junior partner'' earlier this year. It's just a question of time before Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia join, with Bulgaria, Ukraine and others waiting in the wings. Some analysts suggest NATO eventually might have 50 members or more.
Who's to argue with success? NATO certainly played a key role in winning the Cold War and protecting our principles of market democracy. The alliance helped give us the time and security needed to let communism rot from within and ultimately collapse. It worked. That former enemies are now partners is obviously a very good thing, too. So what's the problem? In short, the rest of the world. On its current trajectory, NATO risks creating a ``gated community'' of the North, one that will deepen an already perilous divide between rich and poor nations.
Set aside for the moment that NATO, a mutual-defense treaty organization, has no traditional nation-state enemies. Never mind that an ``Atlantic'' alliance now encircles a huge chunk of northern Pacific geography. Forget that a security alliance designed to deter Soviet aggression now counts Mother Russia among its proud affiliates. It seems so long ago that we were anticipating potential Warsaw Pact tank movements through Germany's Fulda Gap or watching Soviet ``fishing trawlers'' watch us during naval exercises in the North Atlantic. Decades of East-West confrontation ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, thanks in good measure to NATO.
Ironically, NATO now risks building a new North-South ``wall'' of sorts, with the increasingly isolated, poorer nations of the South becoming cauldrons for the politics of resentment, retribution and revenge that give birth to terrorism. Consider sub-Saharan Africa, where one in four soldiers tests HIV-positive. Not even the most formidable fortresses found in swanky gated communities can disarm AIDS, which respects no boundaries. It does make one ask whether NATO should spend less time on Turkish tank tactics or Portuguese port procedures and more time worrying about hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive soldiers running around Africa brandishing AK-47s. The same questions apply to Kashmir, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Will our new Northern Alliance soften or harden developing-world opinions of the United States? Answering these questions effectively will require the White House to overcome its penchant for simplistic ``good guys and bad guys'' notions of how the world works and carefully weigh the complex, long-term consequences of leading a members-only club of the North.