Expansão da OTAN, 2004: quando a Rússia só rosnava - Steven Lee Myers (NYT)

 As NATO Finally Arrives on Its Border,

Russia Grumbles

Yola Monakhov/Panos Pictures for The New York Times

Four Belgian F-16's have been stationed at a former Soviet base in Lithuania to

police skies over new Baltic members of NATO, prompting Russia to contend that

the alliance still sees it as a potential enemy, not a partner.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

NYTimes, Published: April 3, 2004

Yola Monakhov/Panos Pictures, for The New York Times

Meeting at Lithuania's First Air Base, from left: Col. Edvardas Mazeikis, the air

force commander; Maj. Devis Martusevicius, the base commander; and Maj.

Harry Van Pee of Belgium, the chief of a NATO unit.

VILNIUS, Lithuania, April 2 — The fighter jets that landed this

week at the airfield northwest of here do not pose much of a threat,

but their arrival at what was once one of the Soviet Union's largest

bases underlined in bold the new borders being drawn between

Europe and Russia.

The jets — four Belgian F-16's supported by 100 Belgian, Danish

and Norwegian troops — have come to police the skies over the

Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, former Soviet

republics that officially joined NATO on Monday along with

Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The operation is purely defensive, NATO officials and military

commanders here say, but the territory being patrolled abuts some

500 miles of Russia's western frontier, including the isolated

enclave of Kaliningrad.

To Russia, at least, the meaning is clear: the alliance still views it

as a potential enemy rather than a partner.

While Russia has resigned itself to NATO's expansion, albeit

grudgingly, the reality of NATO forces being deployed in the

Baltics — on short notice — has deeply unsettled and angered its

politicians and commanders, prompting some of the sharpest

criticism of the alliance since its war against Serbia in 1999.

Russia's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a

resolution on Wednesday denouncing NATO's expansion generally

and the deployment of the F-16's specifically.

Echoing warnings in Russia's new military doctrine set forth last

fall, the resolution called on President Vladimir V. Putin to

reconsider Russia's international agreements with NATO and its

own defense strategies, including its nuclear posture.

Few expect a new cold war to erupt in Europe, but NATO's

expansion has further chilled a not very warm peace, especially

between Russia and the Baltic states.

Lithuania and Estonia have recently expelled Russian diplomats

accused of spying on, among other things, NATO activities,

prompting tit-for-tat expulsions by Russia.

More alarmingly, Estonia last month accused a Russian fighter jet

of venturing into its airspace — exactly the kind of intrusion the

squadron of F-16's based here is meant to answer.

Meeting with NATO ministers in Brussels on Friday after a

ceremonial raising of the new members' flags, Russia's foreign

minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, called NATO's expansion a mistake.

"The presence of American soldiers on our border has created a

kind of paranoia in Russia," he said, according to Agence-France

Press, even though no American troops are taking part in the

operation in the Baltics.

In Moscow on Friday, Mr. Putin, meeting with Chancellor Gerhard

Schröder of Germany, played down NATO's expansion, though he

warned that Russia would closely monitor the deployment of

NATO forces and "build our defense and security policy

correspondingly."

Here in Lithuania the rising tensions have only underscored the

comfort and pride of joining NATO's warm embrace. More than

one official contrasted the welcome roar of the F-16's — heard on

Wednesday over this capital's richly preserved Old Town — to the

rumble of Soviet tanks that suppressed Lithuania's nascent

independence movement in January 1990.

The symbolism runs deep in a country forcibly occupied by the

Soviet Union in 1940, fought over in World War II and freed from

the Soviet stranglehold less than 13 years ago.

"For us, history is close," Col. Edvardas Mazeikas, commander of

Lithuania's air force, said in an interview at the base where the jets

are stationed, outside Siauliai. "We are in a very dangerous place.

All through our history war has passed through here, from

Napoleon to the Nazis to the Soviets. Lithuania is a very good

place for tanks. That's why collective security is so important to

us."

The ceremonies in Washington and Brussels marking the largest

expansion in the alliance's history officially culminated a military

integration that began years ago. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

have all trained with NATO forces, restructured their own forces to

NATO standards and contributed soldiers to NATO operations,

including those in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

None possess significant military forces — Lithuania's entire

armed forces total 13,000 troops, smaller than some United States

Army divisions. NATO in fact urged them not to invest heavily to

bolster their navies and air forces but to rely instead on collective

defense, particularly for air cover. Instead, the three countries have

invested in modernizing their ground forces and focusing on niche

fields like special operations.

Lithuania, whose air force has only a handful of trainer jets and

helicopters, has welcomed the offer, since neither it nor the other

Baltic states had sufficient forces to patrol their skies.

The current deployment, led by the Belgians, is scheduled to last

three months, but other NATO countries will continue to provide

around-the-clock air coverage, Lithuania's defense minister, Linas

Linkevicius, said in an interview on Friday.

Maj. Harry Van Pee, the Belgium commander of the force here,

described the operations as routine, even boring. The jets, armed

with cannons and air-to-air missiles, will be on standby to respond

not only to any intrusion, but also to commercial airliners in

distress or hijackings like those involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It makes no sense to patrol 90, 95 percent of your borders and

leave the other 5 percent uncovered," Major Van Pee said when

asked about Russia's objections to the deployment.

He, like Lithuanian officials, emphasized that the patrols were not

directed against the Russians, but such assurances have done little

to ease Russia's strong displeasure with what it views as a

provocation.

When NATO sent an AWACS reconnaissance aircraft to Rumbula

Airfield in Latvia on Feb. 23 and then to Siauliai two days later on

what NATO called a demonstration flight, Russian officials angrily

protested that the plane's sophisticated radar equipment could peer

deep into European Russia.

NATO's expansion may not amount to a new containment of

Russia, as many in Russia fear, but it has nonetheless created an

armed divide from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea that has left

Russia on the other side.

Although Russia has a seat at NATO's headquarters in Brussels,

allowing it to discuss areas of cooperation and concern, it remains

outside the alliance's decision-making process.

While NATO has significantly reduced its forces in Europe and

shifted its focus to new threats like terrorism and weapons

proliferation, Russian officials have said deployments like the one

here betray a sense of mistrust.

"In admitting the Baltic states and arranging guarantees for their

security, many in NATO apparently proceeded from previous

perceptions that a war is possible in Europe," the spokesman for

Russia's Foreign Ministry, Aleksandr V. Yakovenko, said on

Monday.

He and other officials have complained in particular that Lithuania,

Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia are not covered by the Conventional

Forces in Europe Treaty, a cold-war-era agreement that imposed

limits on tanks, aircraft and other military equipment.

They did not exist as independent states when the treaty was

negotiated, but in Russia's view the failure to include them leaves

open the possibility of a significant military buildup on its borders.

Russian politicians and commanders have vowed to increase their

forces in Kaliningrad and northwestern Russian in response.

Mr. Linkevicius, the Lithuanian defense minister, brushed aside

Russia's complaints as "political rhetoric," some of which he

ascribed to those in Russia who "are sad to lose territory of the old

empire."

"We have no list of enemies," Mr. Linkevicius said, seeking to

reassure the Russians. "We're talking about instability,

unpredictability. We're talking about that kind of stuff, and it has

always surrounded Lithuania. We need some guarantees."

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THE STRATFOR WEEKLY

02 April 2004

NATO Expansion: More Muscle for U.S. To Flex

Summary

On March 29, NATO took in seven new member states. The

enlargement ensures that the NATO of the future will work as a

reliable arm of U.S. policy.

Analysis

At a 1999 summit in Washington, D.C., the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization welcomed its first new members of the post-Cold War

era: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The expansion was

broadly hailed in Europe and the United States as a bridge-

building effort to seal the Cold War rift. Moscow did not agree,

and the expansion condemned Russian-Western relations to the deep

freeze for three years.

Once the brouhaha of the summit died away, however, there were

some uncomfortable questions that NATO's supporters had to deal

with. The alliance was formed to defend Europe from the Soviet

Union; what would it do, now that the Soviet threat no longer

existed? The answer from the new members was simple: Soviet =

Russian. The answer from the Russians was equally simple: Disband

NATO. Others felt that NATO should evolve into a political talk-

shop, a peacekeeping force, a military adjunct to the European

Union or some other nebulous confidence-building organization.

Five years later -- 15 years after the Berlin Wall fell -- it is

a different world and a different NATO. On March 29, the alliance

admitted the three remaining former Soviet satellites (Bulgaria,

Romania and Slovakia) and three former Soviet republics (Estonia,

Latvia and Lithuania), as well as a piece of the former

Yugoslavia (Slovenia).

But the expansion did more than add 50 million people and

rationalize NATO's eastern border.

For the most part, the confusion of 1999 is gone; with the 2004

expansion, NATO knows exactly what it is -- even if some members

are not happy with the outcome. NATO is an instrument for Western

(read: U.S.) influence globally. The alliance now has troops

operating in long-term missions in Afghanistan, and soon will

have troops in Iraq. Because the United States remains the pre-

eminent power in the alliance -- and in the world -- it is

Washington that calls the shots.

Core NATO members such as France and Germany certainly disagree

with this turn of events, but have lacked the influence to stop

it. That has become -- and will continue to be -- the case

because of the admittance of NATO's newest members. All of the

fresh blood can be safely grouped into the "new Europe" that U.S.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so charmingly coined in the

lead-up to the Iraq war. These states all share historical

experience in betrayal by France and domination by Germany and

Russia. It is only natural that such states would search further

abroad for allies to help guarantee their security. In the 1999

Kosovo war, the United States was able to use NATO to generate a

veneer of international respectability for actions that it could

not get the United Nations to sanction. From Estonia to Bulgaria,

the United States now has 10 new -- or newish -- states within

NATO that Washington can count on for support when such a state

of affairs surfaces in the future. The 2003 Iraq war is a prime

example; Bulgaria practically led the charge at the United

Nations for Washington.

Russia might not be thrilled with this development, but it is

certainly glad NATO's eyes are casting about the planet and are

not riveted solely on the East. Further smoothing Russian-NATO

relations is the fact that -- although U.S. influence over the

alliance is stronger than ever -- NATO forces in Europe are

weaker than ever and are only expected to be further downsized.

Germany, long the European bugaboo, has cut its military forces

to the point that it has next-to-zero power projection capacity,

while the United States is openly discussing pulling troops out

of bases across Europe (much to the Berlin's chagrin, we might

add).

NATO's home front is not merely secure, it is not even a front

anymore. The only spot on the European continent that requires

forces is the Balkans, and even this is child's play compared to

the tasks of NATO's past. Places such as Kosovo will be a

headache for at least a generation, but such brushfires do not

threaten NATO's core -- or even new -- members. That has changed

the very nature of NATO from a defensive (or offensive, depending

on your politics) military alliance to a tool of global

influence.

NATO's Neighbors

On the surface, Russia's strategic situation is miserable. All

its former satellites -- plus three of its former republics --

are in an alliance with a nuclear first-strike policy that was

formed to counter the Red Army. Its only reliable allies are an

incompetently led Belarus and militarily insignificant Armenia.

Russian military spending is well up from its late 1990s lows,

but failed nuclear exercises earlier this year and the 2000 Kursk

submarine sinking are real reminders that even the once-feared

Soviet nuclear arsenal is only a shadow of its former self. The

question at the top levels of the Russian government is how to

manage the military decline; they are not yet to the point of

asking how they can reverse it.

In this regard, NATO's 2004 expansion is a symptom of a much

deeper issue: Russia's endemic decline. Putin spent the bulk of

his first term simply asserting control over the levers of power.

Now, with a tame Duma and a relatively loyal government at his

beck and call, Putin is focusing Russia's energies on halting

(and hopefully reversing) Russia's not-so-slow-motion collapse.

Attempting such a Herculean task will take nothing less than 200

percent of the Russian government's time and attention, assuming

everything goes perfectly -- and in Russia things rarely proceed

perfectly.

In the meantime, Moscow simply lacks the bandwidth to seriously

address anything going on in its neighborhood, much less farther

abroad. Attempts to counter what it considers unfriendly

developments will be flimsy and fleeting. Witness the recent

violence against Serbs in Kosovo: Russia sent a few harshly

worded press releases and some humanitarian aid, and that was the

end of it. The fact that the Baltics made it into NATO with so

little Russian snarling -- or that Georgia transitioned to such

an anti-Russian government so easily -- is testament to Moscow's

distraction.

It is also a harbinger of things to come as Russia's

introspection creates opportunities for power groups far more

aggressive than NATO:

* Uzbekistan hopes to become a regional hegemon, and will

capitalize on its indirect U.S. backing to extend its influence

throughout eastern Central Asia, particularly vis-a-vis Russian

allies Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

* Militant Islamist groups will deepen their influence in the

southern former Soviet Union, particularly in the Caucasus.

* China will continue quietly encouraging its citizens to

populate eastern Siberia while working to lash Kazakhstan,

traditionally Russia's playground, to it economically.

* India is planting flags in the energy-rich Caspian basin,

particularly in Kazakhstan, while its intelligence services flow

anywhere Kashmiri militants might travel.

* Turkey is deepening its political, economic and military ties

with Georgia and particularly with Azerbaijan where Turkish

military forces often patrol the Azerbaijani skies.

* Japan is looking to carve out the resources of Siberia for

itself and is steadily expanding its economic interests in the

Russian Far East.

* The European Union is pressing its economic weight across the

breadth of Russia's western periphery. As it brings the former

Soviet satellites into its own membership, Russian interests will

find them cut off from their old partners and markets.

* The United States is making inroads whenever and wherever it

can.

The question is not whether Russian influence can be rolled back

in the years ahead, or even where -- it is by how much.

NATO's Future

Diplomatically, the second post-Cold War expansion was not as

loud an affair as the first. The 1999 expansion also occurred

during the run-up to the Kosovo war. Within a two-month period

Russia saw the three most militarily powerful of its former

satellites join an opposing alliance with a nuclear first-strike

policy, while its most loyal European ally suffered a bombing

campaign, courtesy of that same alliance. Russia fought tooth and

nail in diplomatic circles to prevent the expansion, and quite

rightly felt betrayed. One of the deals made by the

administration of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in the

last days of the Cold War was that Moscow would allow Germany to

reunite and remain completely in NATO, so long as the alliance

did not expand eastward.

Stratfor does not expect NATO's next enlargement, likely within

the next five years, to be particularly troublesome. If Russia

had a red line, it drew it at the Baltics -- three of its own

former republics -- or Kaliningrad, a Russian Baltic enclave that

NATO's new borders seal off from direct resupply. The next

enlargement is likely to take in the Balkan states of Albania,

Croatia, Macedonia and perhaps Bosnia. All fall behind NATO's new

eastern "front line" and would not threaten Russia at all.

The only expansion in the near future that might elicit a rise

would be one that included Finland -- which considered submitting

an application in the late 1990s -- but even this would not be as

traumatic to the Russians as the now-official Baltic entries.

There is even the possibility that Austria, another of Europe's

traditional neutrals, might someday join NATO. Vienna is already

more active in NATO exercises than are several full members. Any

serious discussion of a second across-the-Russian-red-line

expansion will be put off until well after 2010, although by that

point Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine could shape up as

possibilities.

NATO certainly has challenges ahead of it. The strain and

political arm-twisting that are likely to precede the expected

Iraq deployment could well reopen wounds that only recently

closed, and competing visions of what NATO should be will

certainly hound it for years. Ironically, this divergence of

perception is part of what will keep NATO powerful, present and

relevant to U.S. policymakers.

While several Western states -- and Stratfor -- no longer view

NATO as a true military alliance, that view is not shared

uniformly. It is a simple fact that many European countries feel

threatened by the political or military strength of Germany or

Russia. The age-old adage of NATO that it existed "to keep the

Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down" was always

far more than a clever turn of phrase. Many European states still

see this as a core NATO raison d'etre. Such belief is not an

issue of wealth -- Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway are just

as pro-NATO and pro-American as Latvia, Hungary and Bulgaria --

it is an issue of place. These countries, by virtue of their

proximity to large neighbors with a past predilection for

domination, want a counterbalance.

So long as that is the case, a majority of NATO's membership will

be enthusiastic about the alliance as an alliance. Even the

dullest of U.S. administrations will be able to translate that

energy into international influence in Europe -- and beyond.

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