8 Full Article 5 guarantees (under which an attack on any member would be considered an attack on the alliance as a whole) would come later, and only as a reward for strong performance in the PfP. The Partnership had offered a contingent form of affiliation open to all Eurasian countries, including Russia and the other post-Soviet states. The argument here is that supporters of a relatively swift conferral of full membership to a narrow range of countries outmaneuvered proponents of a slower, wider, and looser process of enlargement, embodied in a program known as the Partnership for Peace (PfP). As President Clinton repeatedly remarked, the two key questions about enlargement were when and how. Using these sources to reconstruct an analytical narrative of the critical period, this article illuminates the contest inside the Clinton administration over expansion. Stakes surrounding this debate could not have been higher as President Bill Clinton put it to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, “We have the first chance ever since the rise of the nation state to have the entire continent of Europe live in peace.” 5 3 As a result, throughout the 1990s, there was both a lively public discussion and an academic, theoretical debate-most notably, between liberal institutionalists and realists-addressing not only the pros and cons of varying modes of expansion but also the question of whether to expand at all. 2 There was even a post–Cold War example of contingent enlargement, namely, the extension of the alliance with restrictions on certain kinds of troops and weapons to the territory of former East Germany in 1990 as part of German unification. Denmark, Iceland, and Norway had, asĬonditions for joining, restricted and/or refused nuclear warheads, bases, and certain kinds of military activity on their territory Spain had also limited its military integration into the alliance and France had withdrawn from the integrated military command in 1966. In fact, during the creation and Cold War expansion of the alliance, various countries had struck special deals on their memberships, generating a spectrum of historical precedents. Neither the pacing of enlargement nor the method-the unconditional extension in 1999 to a small number of the states seeking to join, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland-was initially self-evident. According to former State Department official Ronald Asmus, “1994 was the year the Clinton Administration crossed the Rubicon in deciding to enlarge NATO.” 1 While it was clear by then that the administration would expand the alliance, it was less clear how it would do so. ![]() The expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include Central and Eastern European (CEE) states represents one of the most controversial strategic choices of the post–Cold War era. ![]() Finally, the sources suggest ways in which the debate's outcome remains significant for transatlantic and U.S.-Russian relations today. ambassador and later deputy secretary of state, and Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister. The documents also reveal the surprising impact of Ukrainian politics on this debate and the complex roles played by both Strobe Talbott, a U.S. congressional election all helped advocates of full-membershipĮnlargement to win. ![]() ![]() Pleas from Central and Eastern European leaders, missteps by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and victory by the pro-expansion Republican Party in the 1994 U.S. The sources make apparent that, during a critical decisionmaking period twenty-five years ago, supporters of a relatively swift conferral of full membership to a narrow range of countries outmaneuvered proponents of a slower, phased conferral of limited membership to a wide range of states. As President Bill Clinton repeatedly remarked, the two key questions about enlargement were when and how. This evidence comes from documents recently declassified by the Clinton Presidential Library, the Defense Department, and the State Department because of appeals by the author. Newly available sources show how the 1993–95 debate over the best means of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unfolded inside the Clinton administration.
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