| 摘要 | For all the problems and challenges it now faces, NATO can celebrate a triumph in Istanbul at its upcoming summit. Seven countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea have completed the accession procedures and will for the first time attend NATO’s summit as members. This-along with the previous accession round by three Central European countries-represents the alliance’s greatest strategic, political and moral victory in its 55-year history. It is, moreover, the right basis for building NATO’s future-because its essential missions will henceforth focus on theaters to the east of its new perimeter, beyond the Black Sea.
Predictions that the enlargement would turn NATO into an ineffective political body akin to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been laid to rest by the performance of the new member countries. Their entry contributes significantly to the alliance’s political cohesion, even as this asset shows signs of fraying on the older, western flank.
If anything, the OSCE’s culture of compromise and consensus with those opposed to Western values seems right now to be seeping in via older allies. How else to explain the suggestion from several West European governments that NATO needs to make a special effort and invite Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to ensure a “successful summit” ?
In truth, the alliance’s seven-country enlargement, and about as many countries that will confirm their membership aspirations at the summit, give the real measure of the alliance’s permanent viability and appeal. Can anyone argue that NATO really needs a photo-op with the restorer of Russian autocracy as a demonstration of alliance success ?
Some apparently do so argue, as seen from NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’s efforts to secure Mr. Putin’s presence at the Istanbul summit. NATO’s leader made that invitation public in Moscow on April 8 and has repeated it several times publicly since then; most recently in his May 17 Brussels speech, saying: “I hope that the conditions will be right for him to come to Istanbul.”
We don’t know what those conditions would be; but we do know that Mr. Putin is playing hard to get. He says he’s considering the invitation, but that his advisers tell him he shouldn’t go. Translation: the conditions are not right and should be improved.
Mr. Putin’s conditions include: continuing tolerance of Russia’s breaches of the 1999-adapted Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and associated Commitments on the alliance’s southern flank; and-those breaches notwithstanding-an allied move toward ratification of that same treaty so as to place the three Baltic states under its restrictions.
Approved at the OSCE’s 1999 Istanbul summit, the adapted CFE Treaty and the documents known as “Istanbul Commitments” form twin parts of a single package. From Istanbul 1999 to Istanbul 2004, what is the balance sheet on implementation ? To make a long technical story short, the following stipulations remain unimplemented to date:
The verification provisions in both the CFE Treaty and the Istanbul Commitments are also being breached; and the treaty’s hallowed principle of host-country-consent (no country may station its forces on another country’s territory without freely-given consent) is simply being flouted here on the southern flank.
The Treaty is meant to be legally binding, once it enters into force; the Commitments are defined as “politically binding,” whatever that means. To Moscow, by all evidence, neither set of documents is binding-unless the West makes clear that commitments are binding by definition.
Russian diplomacy wants NATO to:
Several West-European governments have signalled an inclination to go along with such a scenario. Some have asked Georgia and Moldova to consent to Russian retention of Gudauta and of the “peacekeeping” troops in Transdniester (this would bestow host-country-consent on those foreign forces).
When NATO’s Secretary-General and the OSCE’s Chairman-in-Office state publicly that Russia should remove its arsenals from Moldova, without mentioning the commitment to withdraw the troops, Moscow reads this as a message that it can keep the troops in place.
Whether at the summit or in some other NATO forum, the alliance can not avoid addressing the issue of peacekeeping and conflict resolution on its own vital strategic perimeter. Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, peacekeeping in this region remains in practice Moscow’s monopoly, which only serves to freeze the political settlements of the conflicts.
Two years ago, NATO and the U.S. seemed set to engage jointly with Russia in peace-support operations and conflict-resolution efforts in Moldova, Georgia, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. These intentions figured prominently in the joint communiques in May 2002 of the U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia summits. However, nothing further has been heard about these intentions since those summits.
To be sure, U.S. forces and resources are now overextended worldwide. But there is a strong case to be made for European allies to take the lead in peace-support operations and conflict settlement in the Black Sea-South Caucasus region, Europe’s doorstep.
European NATO allies complain of a shortfall in deployable forces against a vast backdrop of static forces in their homelands. In any case, peacekeeping and conflict-resolution in this region need be neither large-scale, nor predominantly military. On the contrary, they should be compact and should emphasize civilian aspects of peace-support.
The U.S., NATO and the European Union have the strategic and democratic motivations, as well as the means, to initiate a transformation of peacekeeping and conflict-resolution at this strategic crossroads, where the access routes to the Greater Middle East and the energy transit routes to Europe intersect. This must become a Euro-Atlantic priority. The NATO summit agenda would be incomplete if it did not address, or at least set the stage for addressing soon, this imperative.
Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, publishers of the Eurasia Daily Monitor. |
