Comments on the papers of Zhurkin and Iwama
Kenichi Nakamura
The problem of NATO expansion has at least three groupsof contexts; (1) US-Russian relations, (2) the Western Europeancontext, (3) the Central and eastern European context. I would
like to comment on the first two and leave the third to theparticipants from those countries.
Firstly, in the context of US-Russian relations, Professor
Zhurkin starts his paper with a strong word, "confrontation". He
mentions "shock" twice on page 153 of his paper, namely the"shock" which the Russian society felt when the North Atlantic
Council decided to start preparations for the enlargement ofNATO in December 1994. We all know that Russian elites are,almost unanimously, against NATO's plan of eastward
expansion, or some even blame NATO for the sense of being"betrayed" by the other Europeans and Americans, as wewitness on page 153 of Prof. Zhurkin's paper.
This psychological attitude of Russia should be the starting
point for the politics of NATO enlargement. For Russians, theissue is as follows: "Washington, Bonn and the other former
Western allies have engaged with Moscow to finish Cold-War.
Now, while they continue to engage in Moscow, they started toreassure the central and east Europeans that they have the future
within the alliance of NATO, the symbol of Cold-War. This isnothing but betrayal."*1
For most mainstream Americans, the issue is not a " shock"
but a "Russian question" with an increasing sense of detachmentfrom Europe. According to James Baker, "Russian question after
the collapse of USSR is the greatest challenge confronting theUnited States". According to his successor Warren Christopher,
if the Russian experiment fails and the country falls back into'anarchy' or 'despotism', this would make the US newpolicy-goals nothing. This is the reason why the Clinton
administration give a first-order concern at possible Russiancollapse (not a188

Commentspolicy-goal!).
For the psychology of America, supporting and endorsing
on-going change was not enough. Using the promising title of a"strategic alliance" or a "new democratic partnership",
Americans tried to mobilize international support and to create amore congenial environment for Russian reform. Although thename is "strategic", it was essentially a diplomatic initiative, nota military one. Therefore, Americans can assume that USinterests were identical to, or at least coincided with, Russianinterests.
But Andrei Kozyrev is correct in saying that the Russians
had interests of their own which did not necessarily coincidewith those of Americans. And Prof. Zhurkin rightly pointed outthat the debate about NATO expansion is dividing Europe. But inwhat sense is it divisive? Membership selection is generally adangerous power-game. It involves politics in Carl Schmitt'ssense because it always has to decide not only who is in, but,inevitably, who is out. And NATO has been, and still is, a symbolof military alliance. The organization with C3I, Carps, Divisionand bomb cannot be a diplomatic gathering. So, the membership
expansion of NATO would involve the high risk of dividing
would-be-friends from would-be-enemies.
According to Andranik Migranyan and others, Russians felt
they would never be offered a "full voice" in the organization.
That is to say the emergence of membership issue in itself isseparating Russia from eligible countries, because it is implicitly
saying "You Russians, you are out, you are would-be-enemy".
At this point, I have a question. I suspect that even if NATO
were to be transformed to be "Europeanized" as well as provided
with CJTF, as Dr. Iwama advocated in her paper, the baseline
conditions would hardly change. I would request both speakers
to respond to this point.
In this context what puzzles me most is the confusing
character of Russian leadership. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Yeltsin and Kozyrev clearly directed Russian foreign
policy toward, according to Kozyrev's statement on August 1992,Comments

189"integrate (Russia) into the democratic community of states andthus the world economy". During these particular months,
Russian leadership pursued broad political cooperation with thewestern partners of the UN Security Council, participation in G7
summit and even membership in NATO.
And as Dr. Iwama properly pointed out on page 164 of her
paper, it was the Russian President himself who said that Polandand other countries "did not require Moscow's approval forentering the Alliance". It could be interpreted as a clear green
light "to go ahead and join NATO" from the President of theRussian Federation. But from the second half of 1992 onward, thestatements of both the President and the foreign minister started
to fluctuate widely. Please note that the fluctuation started muchearlier than the emergence of NATO's expansion debates. I
would request Prof. Zhurkin to tell us why this is so. Was it theresult of a shift in Russian foreign policy, or that of a vacuum ofEuropean policy?
With respect to European contexts, I will comment only on
Germany, where the political epicenter has moved eastward andthe political landscape has changed drastically since the fall of
the Berlin wall. Her capital will move from Bonn to Berlin later inthe decade and at the time the Polish border will be just 50 miles
away. We might expect a 'culture-change' in norms, values andidentities in its new location. Among former west European
countries, German is particularly exposed and will beincreasingly so to new forms of security problems such aspolitical instability of the states to the east and south,
cross-border criminality, economic migration and so on.
And Germany has been and will be a superpower at least in
Europe in the sense that she could act unilaterally and force
others to accept its decision if she wishes, as in the case of her
early recognition of Croatia and Slovenia. If the EU could
proceed successfully to the third phase of European Monetary
Union and if NATO could expand eastward, the power ofGermany would be less obvious and less apparent. But the factthat it is a superpower would not change.

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Post-war West Germany used to depend heavily on foreign
policy through European institutional frameworks such as theEC and NATO. She also increased Germany's international roles
by the expansion of the institutional framework. But anexpanded EU and an expanded NATO would be much morediverse both in their interests and foreign policy cultures andwould therefore become far more inflexible and heavier to movethan the present organizations.
If so, Germany in the near iuture will be shaped by a
combination of four factors (1) the change of political landscape,(2) the exposure to new security problems, (3) the ability to act
unilaterally, (4) the increasing inflexibility of European
institutional frameworks. I would like to ask the two speakers tocomment on this kind of possibility in Germany.
Finally, a short question to both speakers: can NATO betransformed into an organization which could cope with the new
security problems such as failed states like Cambodia, theproliferation of weapons of mass-destruction, the spread ofinternational terrorism, cross-border criminals and so on?
Thank you.
#1

Editor's note: a quotation from the original version of Zhurkin' s paper.