3unday, April 13, 1997/Las Vegas Review-Journal NATO expansion could topple Yeltsin regime

By Dmitri Shalin policy. Depending on which faction Special to the Review-Journal wielded influenceat the moment, the Russian government sought a rap­ B oris Yeltsin tried to sound up­ prochement with the West or raised beat after the Helsinki summit, an iron curtain to protect its indige­ but the news didn't play well back nous culture. home. Bill Clinton's concessions Deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal, could not offset the fact Yeltsin failed reductions in conventional forces, in­ to forestall theNATO expansion into ternational summitry, cultural ex­ Central and Eastern Europe. changes - Mikhail Gorbachev's for­ This fateful decision is having a eign policy showed a clear pro­ peculiar impact on the Russian polit­ Western bias. Boris Yeltsin built on ical this legacy, urging Russia's speedy NEVADA VIEWS scene: It integration into the international This overwrought rhetoricis a same associate membership status, has community. Now he findshimself on touch self-serving. After all, it is go easy on the military integration, . brought the defensiveas the North Atlantic Stalin's imperialism that spurred the and there will be no need to worry together the pro-Western elites and Treaty Organization is poised to ex­ North Atlantic Treaty. Eastern Eu­ about offending anybody's sensibili­ their anti-Western opponents, histor­ pand eastward. ropean nations have reasons to fear ties. ic archrivals who are setting aside The opposition to the NATO plans Russian expansionism. And the like­ their differences and uniting in their IfNATO remains a military alli­ cuts across the familiar divides in lihood that the enlarged NATO ance par excellence designed to opposition to what they perceive to Russian politics. Liberals hailing would strike Russia pre-emptively is be Western ingratitude and en­ thwart the Russian menace, then fromAndrei Sakharov's camp, mod­ negligible. bringing the Eastern European croachment. erate nationalists nurtured by Alex­ Still, it is a mistake to treat the · Ever since Peter the Great began armies into theNATO command ander Solzhenitsyn, populistswith Russian concern as "an issue of pri­ structure should be a priority. to modernize Russia, pro-Western in­ ties to Alexander Lebed, Gennady marily of perception, of political sen­ As the Clinton administration de­ tellectuals mused about their place Zyuganov's Communists - all sibility," the way Strobe Talbott, in Europe. Russian Westernizers cultural/political elites in today's President Clinton advisor, did in a cides onNATO's raison d'etre, it saw in their country an easternmost Russia deplore NATO's effortsto en­ recent policy statement. might want to ponder history. Many flankof Occidental culture and list new members. Rationales forthe NATO expan­ in the West remember the Cuban swore to defendits values against Westernizers feel betrayed by the sion are more than a bit confusing. missile crisis, when John Kennedy the Asian menace. Whether they West. The desperate messages they We hear thatNATO is no longer humiliatedNikita Khrushchev into hailed the Enlightenment, socialism send to the Clinton administration chieflya military alliance, that it is a withdrawing Soviet nuclear missiles or human rights, Westernizers did so warn of the disastrous consequences political association promoting de­ from Cuba. Few people are aware of in the hope that some such Western that its policy spells for the liberal mocracy, that it poses no military what Russians called the European scheme would help transform Russia camp. After the Soviet empire willed threat to any nation. At the same missile crisis -NATO's successful into a mainstream European nation. itself into oblivion - an unprece­ time, we are told that the threat program to install nuclear weapons By contrast, Slavophiles pictured dented case in world history, fromthe East is real, thatNATO along the Soviet borders. This double Russia as the westernmost plank of Westernizers claim - the fledgling should maintain a credible deter­ humiliation gave Khrushchev's con­ Eastern civilization, superior to its Russian Republic deserves a better rence, and that bringing Eastern Eu­ servative opponents the ultimate ra­ Western rival. The Russians' concern treatment. ropeans into NATO without fully in­ tionale for routing his regime. forethics is a cut above the Western Neo-Slavophiles are gloating. They tegratingthem militarily would of­ What an irony it would be if the preoccupation with law; their prefer­ heap scorn on hapless liberals and fend their feelings. double humiliation facingRussia to­ ence forcommunal living beats demand to restore Russia's waning These two sets of reasons are at day - its failure to maintain a su­ Western individualism; and their glory. The West failedto appreciate cross-purpose. IfNATO is now pri­ perpower status and to prevent aversion to private property is loftier the ultimate sacrificeRussia made marily a political organization pro­ NATO fromexpanding eastward - than bourgeois philistinism, contend­ on behalfof the European unity, moting democracy, then all Europe­ gives Yeltsin's opponents the final ed Slavophiles. The opening to the Slavophiles contend. This truly an nations should benefit fromit. rationale for toppling his regime. West could only undercut Russia's Christian act won them no reprieve Russia is a European country that unique mission among Christian na­ fromtheir enemies, who hasten to needs a helping hand with its demo­ Dmitri Shalin chairs the Committeeon tions. take advantage of Russia's dire con­ cratic reforms more desperately than Russian and East-Central European These competing ideologies have ditions and entice its historical allies Poland, Hungary or the Czech Re­ Studies at the Universityof Nevada, Las left their mark on Russian foreign into a hostile military pact. public. Give all interested parties the Vegas.