The National Interest
Fall 2001

The Next Nato

by James Kurth

 

. . . Most accounts of globalization have assumed that the phenomenon is indeed global in its scope, or that it will soon become so. This assumption is mistaken, and the awareness that globalization is not global, and probably never will be, will itself soon become widespread.

After a decade of experience with globalization, we can see a greatly variegated map of the globe, and the reality that it presents is not a linear and smooth progression, but a lumpy and jagged construction. It is a pattern of uneven development, uneven acceptance and uneven resistance. When even the U.S. State Department—one of the most enthusiastic promoters of globalization—identifies 27 countries (including such major ones as Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria and Colombia) that Americans should avoid entirely because of war, crime, anti-American hostility or simply chaos, it is clear that globalization’s ambit is hardly complete.

Indeed, vast areas of the globe are less integrated into the global economy and a world order than they were fifty years ago. This is the case with most of Africa, most of Southwest Asia, an increasing part of Southeast Asia, and an increasing part of the Andean region of South America. These four regions add up to a vast realm where globalization has already failed and where it is highly unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future. There has been much talk about "the African renaissance", "the Islamic resurgence", and "Plan Colombia", but no one has offered a credible plan or even hope for turning these regions into stable parts of the global economy and world order. On the contrary, they have created their own perverse, underworld version of the global economy consisting of a very widespread traffic in narcotics, diamonds, weapons and human beings—all run by global criminal or terrorist organizations.

Furthermore, major powers, in particular China and Russia, have declared that they oppose the American version of globalization. China is probably the biggest single winner from the globalization of the past decade, and Russia may well be the biggest single loser, but they can agree on one thing: they are not going to be globalized in the American way. There are also those "rogue states" (or "states of concern"), especially Iraq and Iran but also Afghanistan and North Korea, which persist in trying to thwart the American project.

The regions where the American way of globalization is succeeding are actually rather few, and together they add up to much less than half the area of the globe and much less than half its population. These regions include almost all of Europe, much of Latin America, some of the countries on the periphery of East Asia, and of course Australia and New Zealand. As it happens, these four regions largely correspond to the U.S. system of alliances as it existed fifty years ago (NATO, the OAS, a series of bilateral treaties with Asian countries, and ANZUS). The extent of "globalization" in 2001 is not that different from the extent of the "Free World" in 1951. . . .

From the realist (and conservative) perspective there are no U.S. national interests at stake in the Baltic states. These three small countries together add up to an area that is only 50 percent of Finland’s (whose admission to NATO has never been seen as a U.S. national interest) and a population that is only 50 percent more. The United States has no significant strategic or economic interests in these countries, and certainly none that are anywhere near as weighty as the very substantial strategic risks and costs that would come with a U.S. military commitment to them. As Henry Kissinger, a realist advocate of the first round of NATO expansion, has put it: "[T]he border of Estonia is thirty miles from St. Petersburg. Advancing the NATO integrated command this close to key centers in Russia might mortgage the possibilities of relating Russia to the emerging world order as a constructive member." Put more baldly, when the Baltic states are weighed in regard to U.S. interests and when NATO is defined as a military alliance, the proposal to admit them into NATO seems simply reckless and irresponsible.

Conversely, from the idealist (and both the liberal and the neo-conservative) perspective, there are fundamental American values at stake in the Baltic states. Over a period of more than seven centuries and in at least four successive incarnations, these countries have represented the easternmost extension of Western civilization. They have long seen themselves, and have been seen by other Europeans, as the "East of the West." (Just as, ever since they were acquired by Peter the Great, they have been seen by the Russians as their "window on the West", the "West of the East.") Today, ten years after their heroic restoration of their national independence, the Baltics have been extraordinarily successful in establishing and embodying the American values of liberal democracy, the free market and the rule of law. If any countries ever deserved to become members of NATO by virtue of their achievements by American standards, these do. It would be fitting indeed if, after one decade of national independence, they are welcomed into many decades of American protection. When the Baltic states are understood with regard to American values and when NATO is defined as a liberal-democratic and free-market community, the proposal to admit them into NATO seems to be one of those truths that we hold to be self-evident. . . .

The extension of an American military commitment to the Baltic states, up to the very border of a sullen and resentful Russia that is armed with a sense of historical entitlement and 5,500 nuclear weapons, will present the United States with a strategic and diplomatic challenge of unprecedented complexity. At the same time, the integration of the Baltic states into the American commonwealth will represent the culmination of an American calling, of a 225-year project of spreading American values and re-creating Western civilization in the American image until it has at last reached its easternmost frontier, at the "East of the West." To bring both the challenge and the calling into a stable synthesis, to create a Baltic order distinguished by both peace and justice, will require of the American statesmen of the 21st century a level of sophistication and determination that would have amazed those of the 20th.