#6
Boston Globe
May 27, 2002
Former Soviet blocs wary of Russia-NATO agreement
By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent
PRAGUE - As President Bush and Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin toasted their friendship during last week's summit in Moscow, those who once languished behind the Iron Curtain were leery.
Russia and NATO are expected to sign a landmark accord in Rome tomorrow, with Bush in attendance, that will give Moscow an unprecedented voice in the affairs of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The NATO-Russia agreement, like the nuclear arms reduction treaty signed Friday, is part of a burgeoning post-Sept. 11 thaw in Russian-US relations, which are at their best level since the end of the Cold War.
While this new era of cooperation has won praise in Washington, Moscow, and Brussels, it is less popular in former Soviet-bloc capitals like Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest. Whenever Russia and the United States get cozy, people in Central and Eastern Europe tend to get nervous.
''It is difficult for Central Europeans to look at Russia without fear and suspicion,'' said Jiri Pehe, a Prague-based political analyst who advises Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic president. ''We dealt with Russia in a different way than America. For us, it was an experience that is difficult to eradicate in the minds of people and politicians.''
NATO admitted the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary in 1999 over Moscow's objections. The three had been forcefully incorporated into the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact after World War II, and the Red Army brutally crushed pro-democracy movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
''Czechs see themselves as a Western nation that Russia tried to pull into the East by force,'' Pehe said. ''Because of this, they had to suffer for 40 years.''
Once in NATO, the former Soviet satellites felt they were finally free of Moscow's grip. That is why the NATO-Russia treaty makes people here uneasy.
''For many Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles,'' the influential Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny wrote last week, being in NATO meant that ''their dream came true to be as far from Russia as possible.''
''Now we must get used to the fact that Russia is on the inside, even if many of us prefer that they were far away,'' the paper wrote.
The agreement sets up a council for NATO and Russia to cooperate on common security threats, terrorism, and peacekeeping. It falls short, however, of giving Moscow a veto over NATO policy.
The accord is designed to allay Moscow's fears about NATO's plans to admit as many as seven new members at a summit meeting in Prague in November. But Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a former Polish defense minister, told the Warsaw Voice newspaper that Russia might use its new influence to paralyze NATO decision-making, cause internal conflicts, and stifle cooperation between the alliance and former Soviet countries.
Another former Polish defense minister, Bronislaw Komorowski, said he feared that due to Russia's new influence in NATO, ''the roles of member countries are slightly diminished.''
These views, analysts say, also reflect worries in Central and Eastern Europe that the United States will give its relationship with Russia greater priority than NATO.
''There was a lot of concern that after Sept. 11, Russian-American cooperation would sideline NATO,'' Pehe said. ''Many political leaders have watched the growing US-Russian cooperation with a degree of apprehension.''
Havel reflected those concerns in an article published in the Washington Post last week, in which he argued that NATO had an ''irreplaceable role'' in the post-Sept. 11 world. The Czech president also wrote that while NATO and Russia ''must enjoy the best possible partnership,'' Russia must remain a ''separate entity'' from the Atlantic alliance.
Speaking in Germany on Thursday prior to departing for Moscow, Bush seemed to speak directly to these fears. He called NATO ''the most successful alliance in history,'' which is ''building and defending the same house of freedom.''
In doing so, the president said, the Atlantic alliance needs to engage Moscow.
''America and Europe must throw off old suspicions and realize our common interests with Russia,'' Bush said. ''President Putin and I will again act upon these interests.''
Despite the fears in the old Soviet bloc, Pehe and others say that warmer relations between Russia and NATO could be positive. ''Russia needs to be drawn into the international community,'' Pehe said. ''By engaging them we can contribute to the democratization of Russia.''
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