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How to Enlarge NATO M.E. Sarotte the Debate Inside the Clinton Administration, 1993–95

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How to Enlarge NATO M.E. Sarotte the Debate Inside the Clinton Administration, 1993–95 How to Enlarge NATO How to Enlarge NATO M.E. Sarotte The Debate inside the Clinton Administration, 1993–95 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. According to former State Department ofªcial 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. Neither the pacing of enlargement nor the method—the unconditional ex- tension in 1999 to a small number of the states seeking to join, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland—was initially self-evident. In fact, dur- ing the creation and Cold War expansion of the alliance, various countries had struck special deals on their memberships, generating a spectrum of historical precedents. Denmark, Iceland, and Norway had, as conditions for joining, re- stricted 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military activity on their territory; Spain had also limited its military integration into the alliance; and France had withdrawn from the integrated military command in 1966.2 There was even a post–Cold War example of contingent enlargement, M.E. Sarotte is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The author thanks Francis Gavin, Serhii Plokhii, Svetlana Savranskaya, Vladislav Zubok, and par- ticipants in seminars on this project held at the California Institute of Technology, Harvard Univer- sity, and Stanford University, as well as the anonymous reviewers, the staffs of the archives consulted, and the declassiªcation authorities who helped secure release of many of the sources cited in this article. This article was submitted on August 18, 2018. 1. Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 58. 2. On the history of expansion and the various special deals, see the historical summaries on NATO’s website, including “Denmark and NATO,” https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/ declassiªed_162357.htm?selectedLocaleϭen; “Norway and NATO,” https://www.nato.int/cps/ en/natohq/declassiªed_162353.htm; and “A Short History of NATO,” https://www.nato.int/ cps/ie/natohq/declassiªed_139339.htm (Brussels, Belgium: NATO, n.d.). See also “France and NATO” (Paris: Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, France, n.d.), https://www.diplomatie .gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/defence-security/france-and-nato; William H. Hill, No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions since 1989 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO Divided, NATO United: The Evolution of an Alliance (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), pp. 25–34; Sean Kay, NATO and the Future of European Security (Oxford: Rowman & Littleªeld, 1998), p. 43; Timothy Andrews Sayle, Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 2019); Ian Shapiro and Adam Tooze, eds., Charter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- tion (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2018), p. xi; Stanley R. Sloan, Defense of the West: International Security, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Summer 2019), pp. 7–41, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00353 © 2019 M.E. Sarotte 7 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec_a_00353 by guest on 30 September 2021 International Security 44:1 8 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 uniªcation.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 ex- pand at all.4 And the stakes surrounding this debate could not have been higher; as President Bill Clinton put it to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, NATO, the European Union, and the Transatlantic Bargain (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2016); and Gerald B. Solomon, The NATO Enlargement Debate, 1990–1997: Blessings of Liberty (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), p. 22. 3. On expansion during the George H.W. Bush era, see Kimberly Marten, “Reconsidering NATO Expansion: A Counterfactual Analysis of Russia and the West in the 1990s,” European Journal of In- ternational Security, Vol. 3, No. 2 (June 2018), pp. 135–161, doi.org/10.1017/eis.2017.16; and Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post–Cold War Europe, updated ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Prince- ton University Press, 2014). See also Mary Elise Sarotte, “Perpetuating U.S. Preeminence: The 1990 Deals to ‘Bribe the Soviets Out’ and Move NATO In,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 110–137, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00005; Mary Elise Sarotte, “A Broken Promise? What the West Really Told Moscow about NATO Expansion,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 5 (September/ October 2014), pp. 90–97, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483307; Mark Kramer and Mary Elise Sarotte, “Correspondence: No Such Promise,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 6 (November/December 2014), pp. 208–209, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483985; Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, “Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Spring 2016), pp. 7–44, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00236; Kristina Spohr, “Precluded or Precedent-Setting? The ‘NATO Enlargement Question’ in the Triangular Bonn- Washington-Moscow Diplomacy of 1990–1991,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall 2012), pp. 4–54, doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_a_00275; and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017), pp. 606–607. 4. A useful overview of the voluminous public discussion appears in George W. Grayson, Strange Bedfellows: NATO Marches East (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1999). The academic debate was extensive as well; in this journal alone, a number of major articles appeared during the period under study. See, for example, Charles L. Glaser, “Why NATO Is Still Best: Future Security Arrangements for Europe,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Summer 1993), pp. 5–50, doi.org/ 10.2307/2539031; Robert O. Keohane and Lisa L. Martin, “The Promise of Institutionalist Theory,” International Security, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 39–51, doi.org/10.2307/2539214; John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 5–49, doi.org/10.2307/2539078; and William C. Wohlforth, “Realism and the End of the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 91–129, doi.org/ 10.2307/2539080. For relevant later discussion of the same issues, see also Michael Beckley, “The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 7–48, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00197; John Lewis Gaddis, “History, Grand Strategy, and NATO Enlargement,” Survival, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 145– 151, doi.org/10.1093/survival/40.1.145; John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018); Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014); Dan Reiter, “Why NATO Enlargement Does Not Spread Democracy,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), pp. 41–67, doi.org/10.1162/01622880151091899; and Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5– 41, doi.org/10.1162/016228800560372. The author is grateful to Daniel Drezner for emails on the debate among political scientists. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec_a_00353 by guest on 30 September 2021 How to Enlarge NATO 9 “We have the ªrst chance ever since the rise of the nation state to have the en- tire continent of Europe live in peace.”5 Given the wide range of options and high stakes, which issues did the Clinton administration prioritize in choosing the course of expansion that it ul- timately did twenty-ªve years ago? Accounts by participants in decisions lead- ing to enlargement have already shed light on this question.6 Synoptic evaluation of the historical evidence by scholars with no personal involvement in the events remains essential, however. This article offers such an evaluation, based largely on sources declassiªed by the Clinton Presidential Library, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State because of numerous re- quests and appeals by the author.7 These documents include, most notably, in- ternal records from Clinton-Yeltsin conversations. The article also draws on interviews, on related U.S. and foreign archival collections, and on declassiªed materials secured by other researchers. Using these sources to reconstruct an analytical narrative of the critical pe- riod, this article illuminates the contest inside the Clinton administration over expansion. As President Clinton repeatedly remarked, the two key questions about enlargement were when and how. The argument here is that supporters of a relatively swift conferral of full membership to a narrow range of coun- tries outmaneuvered proponents of a slower, wider, and looser process of 5. “President’s Dinner with President Yeltsin,” described in State Department cable, 1994- Moscow-01457, January 14, 1994, declassiªed by author’s appeal and made available by the U.S.
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