NATO's Eastward Jaunt

Diplomatic success stories often are celebrated with ceremonies, bedecked with flags and laden with symbolism. And so it was when The North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- NATO -- added three new members last week.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO's sixteen members in a ceremony at The Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, climaxing efforts by the Clinton Administration to redress what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called "a brutal and unnatural division" of Europe enforced by the former Soviet Union as it imposed a so-called "Iron Curtain" at the end of World War II.

NATO was not formed until 1949, when Pres. Truman led the U.S. into the Euro-Atlantic alliance. A huge 50th birthday celebration is scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. in late April.

President Clinton and his foreign policy team have worked very hard to make NATO expansion a centerpiece of the administration's foreign policy -- though there was opposition from some in Congress and vehement protest from Russia.

It is no small diplomatic achievement that Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright were able to persuade a majority of Congress to accept the idea and, at the same time, placate Russia sufficiently so that it has set up its own special relationship with NATO.

Russia limited its response to this week's development by issuing a statement of regret "that this step has been taken."

Albright, who is Czech-born and who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Soviet oppression in her homeland, welcomed the three Central European states, telling them that, "Never again will your fates be tossed around like poker chips on a bargaining table." And she added, "...You are truly allies; you are truly home."

Representatives from the three, all former Warsaw Pact adversaries of NATO, were clearly happy to join the western alliance.

Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek said Poland "returned to where she belongs, in the free world."

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan added that Czechs "never again be the powerless victim of a foreign aggressor."

And the Hungarian Foreign Minister said, "Hungary has come home. We are back in the family."

Now comes the hard part. Each of the three new members has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade to upgrade their military equipment & communications to reach NATO preparedness levels.

Secretary Albright said, "NATO enlargement is not an event. It's a process... We will continue erasing without replacing the line drawn in Europe by Stalin's bloody boot."

And there's no shortage of former Soviet client states watching and waiting to see how fast the process moves. The list of NATO-wannabes includes Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

For now, NATO's challenge is not Russia. The alliance is adapting to the end of thcold war and the newest threat to peace and security in Europe: how to handle Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosovic and the ethnic Albanians who live in the Serb province of Kosovo. Not exactly what NATO's founders had in mind, but clearly the most destabilizing issue facing NATO on its 50th birthday.

Written by CBS News State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson
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