Seven Central and East European countries became full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Monday after submitting their legal documents to Washington for accession to the organization. This is the largest NATO eastward expansion in history since the founding of the organization in 1949, thus bringing the number of NATO members from 19 to 26. Since NATO had accepted Poland, Czech and Hungary in 1999, the eastward enlargement this time brought not only almost all former Warsaw Pact members under its command, but also three republics of the former Soviet Union-Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia into its embrace. This move of NATO dramatically changed the geological security pattern of Europe, and thus aroused "the most serious concern" from Russia.  

Logically speaking, both NATO and Warsaw Pact are products of the Cold War, after the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact, NATO had lost its rival and reason for existence, it should have headed for decline and dying out, but why has it contrarily developed and grown in strength?

Firstly, US-led NATO does not regard the disintegration of the Soviet Union as disappearance of threat, and its alertness against a comeback of Russia has not diminished in the slightest, therefore collective defense remains an important function of NATO. And this is also the intention of these "new European countries" who are eager to join NATO, because they seem to have lingering fear and so cannot set their minds at ease in the face of their eastern neighbor intending to recapture its past glory, they invariably want to find a stronger protector. President Bush pointed out at the welcome ceremony: The central task of NATO hasn't changed, that is, to protect its members from any aggression. NATO's aggressive posture compelled Russia to rise in reaction: Russian President Putin has always held that NATO's eastward enlargement is a "mistake", while Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov said clearly that "Russia will take countermeasures once NATO poses a threat to Russia by deploying military installations in Baltic countries". Earlier, he had asked NATO to completely change its lurking anti-Russia nature, otherwise Moscow will revise its military strategies correspondingly.

Another motivation of NATO expansion is that after the Kosovo and Afghan wars, NATO finally found a new mission of carrying out "humanitarian intervention" and keeping peace after the wars. NATO has now deployed peace-keeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia. The United States, now beset with predicament in Iraq, is particularly anxious to drag NATO into Iraq to replace itself. Recently senior US officials have repeatedly expressed the hope that NATO could participate in peace-keeping activities in Iraq in a collective name. NATO's new secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer responded more active than his predecessor, he said at the welcome ceremony that troops from 18 NATO members had entered Iraq and they would remain there. He added that if the Security Council could pass a resolution on the deployment of international security troops, NATO would be willing to play a role in the country, even act as commander of these troops.

Furthermore, urged by the United States, NATO has taken anti-terrorism and prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as a new global mission for itself. To complete this new mission, NATO has expanded its defense area to the globe. Urged by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, NATO is setting about to organize a 21,000-strong quick reaction force which is required to be able to deploy troops anywhere in the world within a week instead of being limited to Europe. By now the troop has taken initial shape and is expected to number 15,000 people by yearend and be all put into combat mission by October 2006.

It is known to all that NATO is an indispensable link between the United States and Europe. Without NATO European defense would head for complete independence and the United States would lose most of its influence and control over Europe.

In the final analysis, the existence and development of NATO are tied up with the fundamental interests of the United States that does not want to see the former withering away. The United States intends to reshape NATO into a tool to restrain Russia's rising, hold back Europe's independence and safeguard its global interests. However, NATO is, after all, not owned solely by the United States, and the independence inclination and influence of "old Europe" members in NATO are also on the rise, which is bound to check US unilateralism to a certain extent and this has been proved by the differences of NATO members over the Iraq war.

(People's Daily April 2, 2004)