Albright's tour is aimed against allies, Moscow
BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright began a nine-
country world tour in Rome February 16 to press the Clinton
administration's foreign policy for the U.S. capitalist
class. Foremost on Albright's agenda was an aggressive
campaign to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) into central and eastern Europe. "President Clinton
and I have no higher priority," she declared shortly before
launching her tour.
Albright's mission highlighted the U.S. rulers' accelerated moves toward their goals of overthrowing the workers states Russia and elsewhere in the region. The move would place imperialist military forces in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and assert Washington's growing economic and military dominance in Europe.
Over the last month, however, a debate has openly broken out among ruling-class figures over whether expanding NATO is the best way to pursue these objectives.
The Clinton administration is wasting no time in implementing the expansion. "We are on a very fast track here," Albright emphasized during her February 16 flight to Rome. "We have lots of work to do between now and July."
A NATO summit is scheduled for July 7-9 in Madrid that is expected to formally announce Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic as new candidates for membership and lay out plans to accept them into the imperialist military alliance by 1999 -the organization's 50th anniversary.
During a meeting at the Brussels headquarters of the 16- member alliance February 18, Albright urged negotiations for the new members' admission be completed "by end of this year, so we can sign accession instruments at our meeting in December." She said this would give parliaments of the member countries time to debate and ratify the enlargement in the course of 1998. Albright presented an arms control proposal to the Kremlin February 20 to "calm Russian fears" about NATO's planned eastward expansion. The proposals included plans to modify the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty signed in 1990 between NATO and the former Soviet- bloc countries. That accord limited the numbers of conventional weapons both sides could deploy.
The new proposal states that the number of tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery deployed in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia would remain the same. The plan, however, permits construction of new NATO bases and other installations in these countries and allows movement of imperialist troops on the territory of the proposed new NATO members "in a time of crisis." That means the composition of the tanks, artillery, and other weaponry could shift, with U.S. tanks replacing those under the Polish government's command in Poland, for instance. Washington also insists on the right to upgrade and modernize the new members' military arsenals.
According to the Wall Street Journal, NATO already possesses a 3-to-1 military superiority over Moscow. Extending its reach into the three workers states would hike its superiority to a ratio of nearly 4-to-1, NATO officials estimate.
In her efforts to "reassure" Moscow, Albright said the number of U.S. troops in Europe had declined from 300,000 to 100,000 and the number of NATO combat aircraft had dropped from 6,000 to 3,800. "NATO is not the NATO of the cold war," she declared at a news conference in Moscow. "NATO no longer has an enemy to the east."
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has begun repairs on an air base in Taszar, Hungary, near the Croatian border. Since 1995, Washington has used the base as a staging area for thousands of U.S. GIs moving in and out of Bosnia. Hungarian prime minister Gyula Horn sent 400 military engineers to serve with the U.S. occupation force in Yugoslavia.
Moscow was not reassured, however. "Our position is firm, we are opposed to NATO enlargement," Russian president Boris Yeltsin said February 23, stating the common opinion of figures across the political spectrum in Russia. "Our task is now to stall it as long as possible." Yelsin's comment reflected an acceptance that Washington will proceed with the enlargement regardless of Moscow's objections.
"If the alliance's expansion is not really directed against Russia," stated Aleksei Pushkov, foreign affairs director of Russian Public TV, "NATO should guarantee that it will neither deploy its troops in the new member countries nor prepare the military infrastructure." Pushkov said Washington's NATO plans are proof of the U.S. rulers' "desire to take advantage of Russia's present weakness," and that they are "also suspected of trying to squeeze Russia out of the oil reserves and strategic pipeline roads of Transcaucasia."
During Albright's visit to the Kremlin, Russia's National Security Council deputy secretary Boris Berezovsky called the NATO expansion "a totally aggressive decision with regard to Russia." He said the Kremlin would have to respond to the imperialist military moves "in the direction of defense."
The Clinton administration has tossed sops to Moscow like the arm treaty and joint participation in "peacekeeping" activities in an attempt to induce the regime to swallow its expansion plans. Sergei Shakrai, a Russian government official, stated earlier in January that it would be "senseless" to observe arm treaties limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe if NATO expanded.
At a meeting of senior ministers in Moscow, Shakrai asserted that unification with the former Soviet republic Belarus would be the Kremlin's most effective response to NATO expansion. "The unification of the two countries would correspond to their strategic interests, consolidate power, and bolster Russia's authority in the international arena," he declared.
Yeltsin wrote a letter to the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko - an outspoken opponent of NATO enlargement -proposing the two governments consider holding a referendum on unification. The two regimes signed an agreement last April strengthening economic and military ties. Russian soldiers currently guard Belarus's western border with Poland.
U.S. rulers debate NATO expansion
Last July, the U.S. Senate approved the NATO Enlargement
Facilitation Act, endorsing the expansion and granting $60
million to the governments of Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Hungary to prepare their militaries. While that vote
passed 81 to 16, a debate over the planned expansion has
now broken out in the open among U.S. ruling-class figures.
No formal decision can be made before the July summit
meeting.
"Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era," asserted George Kennan in a opinion piece in the February 5 New York Times. Kennan was the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952. He also served as U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1961-63 and helped formulate the Truman administration's policy of "containment" of the Soviet workers state - which heralded the period know as the "Cold War".
Kennan warned that Clinton's NATO plans could backfire and "impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking." Warning the U.S. rulers to expect the move to "inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies" in Russia, he added, "Anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it."
Responding to Kennan in the Times two weeks later, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot claimed, "This danger, while real, is exaggerated and manageable." Talbot opined that unlike the "political elite," Russian working people are far more concerned about "domestic issues - salaries, pensions, and crime."
Kennan's and Talbot's columns provoked several letters in the Times debating the White House's course.
One of the letters supporting NATO expansion stated that Moscow "proposes to join NATO or calls for its dissolution, both of which amount to a negation of the alliance."
Another Times reader backed Kennan's position, arguing, "There would soon be irresistible pressure to admit Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia [to NATO]. The latter step would, however, place NATO forces - ultimately under United States command -on territory that separates Russia from its Baltic outpost, the Kaliningrad."
Ultraright politician Patrick Buchanan voiced his opposition to moving "NATO's Red Line east" in a column published in the February 12 Conservative Chronicle. The article marked Buchanan's resumption of his syndicated commentary following his 1996 campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. president.
Tensions deepen among imperialists
While in France, Albright reiterated the Clinton
administration's rejection of Paris's demand that an
officer from a country in Europe take control of NATO's
Southern Command. This is a strategic post that includes
the U.S. Sixth Fleet. French president Jacques Chirac told
Albright February 17 that his regime would try to reach a
compromise with the U.S. government by April or May, but if
no pact was found by then he would keep French soldiers out
of the NATO military structure.
"Whether you like it or not, it's American," sneered a French legislator, referring to NATO in a parliamentary debate on a French-German agreement in January. "Its command is American, since the Americans haven't given it up, not even in the southern European sector in Naples, despite a demand by President Chirac."
Washington's domineering posture in Europe has helped spur closer military cooperation between Paris and Bonn. The German government, which backed Chirac's demand, agreed to open a discussion with Paris on joint "nuclear deterrence in the context of a European defense policy." German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Chirac stated in a document that their nations' security interests had grown "inseparable".
U.S. officials were assured that the joint policy would remain within the framework of the NATO alliance.
NATO was founded in 1949 with the aim of pushing back the struggles of workers and peasants around the world. It codified Washington's economic and military predominance in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, scores of military bases across western Europe, and the U.S. Sixth Fleet based in the Mediterranean form the foundation of Washington's superiority in Europe today.
The U.S. rulers rely on NATO's military might to ensure stable capitalist relations in Europe. Instability, however, is increasingly becoming the order of the day in many regions there. Washington is worried about the escalating crisis in Cyprus, for instance, an island forcibly divided by Turkish troops in the north and forces backed by the Greek government to the south - where some 900 clashes occurred last year. Relations between the regimes in Athens and Ankara have become increasingly tense.
The Greek Cypriot government alarmed the Clinton administration when it signed a $416 million missile deal with Moscow in January. This move triggered threats from Ankara, which has 30,000 troops stationed in northern Cyprus as result of its invasion in 1974. The president of the Greek Cypriot regime promised U.S. State Department official Carey Cavanaugh he would not to deploy the missiles for 16 months or Greek F-16 war planes for 13 months in order to defuse tensions.
Albright also made a stop in southern Korea. Speaking to U.S. troops stationed along the so-called demilitarized zone dividing the Korean peninsula, the secretary of state reiterated Washington's policy of aggression against the workers state in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north. She declared that a peace settlement in Korea - one was never signed at the end of the U.S.-led Korean War - depended "basically on how much the north Koreans are hurting." It's therefore "very important to keep our forces here," she added.
Some 37,000 U.S. troops are based in the south of Korea. Washington and its junior partner in Seoul are now using food aid as a weapon against Pyongyang, which appealed for international assistance after two years of flooding destroyed much of the grain crop. The U.S. and south Korean governments have given only token aid, and stymied the DPRK's attempts to get other support.