It is also germane to note that France does play a constructive role in North Africa and in the Francophone African countries. It is the essential partner for Morocco and Tunisia, while also exercising a stabilizing role in Algeria. There is a good domestic reason for such French involvement: some 5 million Muslims now reside in France. France thus has a vital stake in the stability and orderly development of North Africa.
But that interest is of wider benefit to Europe’s security. Without the French sense of mission, Europe’s southern flank would be much more unstable and threatening. All of southern Europe is becoming increasingly concerned with the social-political threat posed by instability along the Mediterranean’s southern littoral. France’s intense concern for what transpires across the Mediterranean is thus quite pertinent to NATO’s security concerns, and that consideration should be taken into account when America occasionally has to cope with France’s exaggerated claims of special leadership status.
Germany is another matter. Germany’s dominant role cannot be denied, but caution must be exercised regarding any public endorsements of the German leadership role in Europe. That leadership may be expedient to some European states—like those in Central Europe that appreciate the German initiative on behalf of Europe’s eastward expansion—and it may be tolerable to the Western Europeans as long as it is subsumed under America’s primacy, but in the long run, Europe’s construction cannot be based on it. Too many memories still linger; too many fears are likely to surface. A Europe constructed and led by Berlin is simply not feasible. That is why Germany needs France, why Europe needs the Franco-German connection, and why America cannot choose between Germany and France.
The essential point regarding NATO expansion is that it is a process integrally connected with Europe’s own expansion. If the European Union is to become a geographically larger community—with a more-integrated Franco-German leading core and less-integrated outer layers—and if such a Europe is to base its security on a continued alliance with America, then it follows that its geopolitically most exposed sector, Central Europe, cannot be demonstratively excluded from partaking in the sense of security that the rest of Europe enjoys through the transatlantic alliance. On this, America and Germany agree. For them, the impulse for enlargement is political, historical, and constructive. It is not driven by animosity toward Russia, nor by fear of Russia, nor by the desire to isolate Russia.
Hence, America must work particularly closely with Germany in promoting the eastward expansion of Europe. American-German cooperation and joint leadership regarding this issue are essential. Expansion will happen if the United States and Germany jointly encourage the other NATO allies to endorse the step and either negotiate effectively some accommodation with Russia, if it is willing to compromise (see Chapter 4), or act assertively, in the correct conviction that the task of constructing Europe cannot be subordinated to Moscow’s objections. Combined American-German pressure will be especially needed to obtain the required unanimous agreement of all NATO members, but no NATO member will be able to deny it if America and Germany jointly press for it.
Ultimately at stake in this effort is America’s long-range role in Europe. A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that new Europe is to remain geopolitically a part of the “Euro-Atlantic” space, the expansion of NATO is essential. Indeed, a comprehensive U.S. policy for Eurasia as a whole will not be possible if the effort to widen NATO, having been launched by the United States, stalls and falters.
That failure would discredit American leadership; it would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe; it would demoralize the Central Europeans; and it could reignite currently dormant or dying Russian geopolitical aspirations in Central Europe. For the West, it would be a self-inflicted wound that would mortally damage the prospects for a truly European pillar in any eventual Eurasian security architecture; and for America, it would thus be not only a regional defeat but a global defeat as well.
The bottom line guiding the progressive expansion of Europe has to be the proposition that no power outside of the existing transatlantic system has the right to veto the participation of any qualified European state in the European system—and hence also in its transatlantic security system—and that no qualified European state should be excluded a priori from eventual membership in either the EU or NATO. Especially the highly vulnerable and increasingly qualified Baltic states are entitled to know that eventually they also can become full-fledged members in both organizations—and that in the meantime, their sovereignty cannot be threatened without engaging the interests of an expanding Europe and its U.S. partner.
In essence, the West—especially America and its Western European allies—must provide an answer to the question eloquently posed by Václav Havel in Aachen on May 15, 1996:
I know that neither the European Union nor the North Atlantic Alliance can open its doors overnight to all those who aspire to join them. What both most assuredly can do—and what they should do before it is too late—is to give the whole of Europe, seen as a sphere of common values, the clear assurance that they are not closed clubs. They should formulate a clear and detailed policy of gradual enlargement that not only contains a timetable but also explains the logic of that timetable. [italics added]
EUROPE’S HISTORIC TIMETABLE
Although at this stage the ultimate eastern limits of Europe can neither be defined firmly nor finally fixed, in the broadest sense Europe is a common civilization, derived from the shared Christian tradition. Europe’s narrower Western definition has been associated with Rome and its historical legacy. But Europe’s Christian tradition has involved also Byzantium and its Russian Orthodox emanation.
Thus, culturally, Europe is more than the Petrine Europe, and the Petrine Europe in turn is much more than Western Europe—even though in recent years the latter has usurped the identity of “Europe.” Even a mere glance at the map on page 82 confirms that the existing Europe is simply not a complete Europe. Worse than that, it is a Europe in which a zone of insecurity between Europe and Russia can have a suction effect on both, inevitably causing tensions and rivalry.
A Charlemagne Europe (limited to Western Europe) by necessity made sense during the Cold War, but such a Europe is now an anomaly. This is so because in addition to being a civilization, the emerging united Europe is also a way of life, a standard of living, and a polity of shared democratic procedures, not burdened by ethnic and territorial conflicts. That Europe in its formally organized scope is currently much less than its actual potential. Several of the more advanced and politically stable Central European states, all part of the Western Petrine tradition, notably the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and perhaps also Slovenia, are clearly qualified and eager for membership in “Europe” and its transatlantic security connection.
In the current circumstances, the expansion of NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—probably by 1999—appears to be likely.
After this initial but significant step, it is likely that any subsequent expansion of the alliance will either be coincidental with or will follow the expansion of the EU. The latter involves a much more complicated process, both in the number of qualifying stages and in the meeting of membership requirements (see chart on page 83). Thus, even the first admissions into the EU from Central Europe are not likely before the year 2002 or perhaps somewhat later. Nonetheless, after the first three new NATO members have also joined the EU, both the EU and NATO will have to address the question of extending membership to the Baltic republics, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, and perhaps also, eventually, to Ukraine.
It is noteworthy that the prospect of eventual membership is already exercising a constructive influence on the affairs and conduct of would-be members. Knowledge that neither the EU nor NATO wishes to be burdened by additional conflicts pertaining either to minority rights or to territorial claims among their members (Turkey versus Greece is more than enough) has already given Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania the needed incentive to reach accommodations that meet the standards set by the Council of Europe. Much the same is true for the more general principle that only democracies can qualify for membership. The desire not to be left out is having an important reinforcing impact on the new democracies.
EU Membership: Application to Accession
Prepared by C.S.I.S. US-EU-Poland Action Commission
In any case, it ought to be axiomatic that Europe’s political unity and security are indivisible. As a practical matter, in fact it is difficult to conceive of a truly united Europe without a common security arrangement with America. It follows, therefore, that states that are in a position to begin and are invited to undertake accession talks with the EU should automatically also be viewed henceforth as subject in effect to
