W2E-007 Irish Times editorials-1.txt
European Defence

The summit meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe, which concluded yesterday in Budapest, certainly did not live up to its name. Its useful achievements - on Ukrainian adherence to the nuclear weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty, for example - were overshadowed by disagreements on NATO enlargement between Russia and the United States and, most gravely, over Bosnia, on which it proved impossible to reach a consensual statement.

Running through these disagreements are differences between major powers on how European security frameworks should best be organised and co-operation assured, which have disturbing implications for the future of both. Warnings by President Yeltsin about the danger of a "cold peace" replacing the Cold War if NATO were to enlarge to Russia's borders must be seen in the context of last week's failure by the Russian foreign minister, Mr Kozyrev, to sign a Partnership for Peace agreement with NATO ministers in Brussels. Yesterday's Russian veto of an agreed statement on Bosnia falls into the same mould.

Revealed here is a growing feeling of insecurity among Russian leaders that flies in the face of established western policy. The Partnership for Peace has, after all, been intended to serve as a mechanism which would reassure the Russian leadership that they were not to be excluded from new frameworks of European security. If the evolution of the reform process there went well, it was assumed, NATO enlargement would become less and less necessary. If, on the other hand, the Russian evolution went badly, the Partnership for Peace would have performed the useful function of bringing the great majority of states in central and eastern Europe under NATO's security umbrella.

Last week's NATO decision to pursue enlargement, which was reiterated by President Clinton in Budapest, seems to imply that the more malign scenario on the evolution of events in Russia is now believed in Washington. If not, there has certainly been a breakdown of communication and diplomacy in recent weeks. The US last week shifted its ground on the Bosnian war towards a further European attempt to find a compromise that would allow the Contact Group's settlement plan to be agreed. It is difficult to see how this sits with a policy of rapid NATO enlargement, if this is what Washington indeed intends to pursue.

These events signal a potentially far-reaching reorganisation of political and security relations between the US and Europe. The best method of bringing co-operation and security back to inter-state relations in Europe would be to concentrate on pursuing economic, political and security enlargements through the European Union rather than NATO. How this can best be done will be a crucial subject for debate at this weekend's EU Council in Essen.
