NATO, EU experience growing pains

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Leander Schaerlaeckens THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The expansion of NATO and the European Union have brought benefits to former members of the Soviet bloc, but raised new questions about the missions of these institutions and their decision-making abilities.

Over the past decade, 12 former Soviet satellites have joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization first and then the European Union.

The expansion "for a long time left NATO without a very clear role," said Giles Merritt, director of two Brussels-based organizations — the Security and Defense Agenda and Friends of Europe.

"Who was the enemy? What was the purpose of NATO, now that there was no Warsaw Pact and no great conventional conflict? Everybody was and remains very concerned about that," he said.

NATO has tried to answer these questions by taking on the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, providing more than 40,000troops to augment 65,000 Americans. Next to the United States, the largest contributions have come from older members of the alliance, such as Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Italy. Of the newest NATO members, only Poland and Romania have significant troops deployed — 2,025 and 990, respectively, as of Oct. 1.

TWT RELATED STORIES:
• 20 years after the Berlin Wall's fall: An East European looks back
• For Germany, unity proves elusive
• Democracy a struggle in former Soviet Union
• Poland embraces past while moving ahead
• Relics of grim era keep past in mind
• Students lack historical perspective of Berlin Wall
• Threats blurred for U.S. after Cold War
• Artists marginalized by own revolution
• Communism's fall opened sports world

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the new members were making an important contribution in Afghanistan.

"You have to look at the size of their armed forces and remember that in most cases they had Soviet armed forces, which they've had to convert, at enormous cost, to the NATO standard at a period of financial difficulty," he said. "Proportionally, most of them are contributing as much as the long-standing members."

Mr. Appathurai denied that expansion has made decision-making more difficult, except in one area.

"Enlargement has made for a more complicated decision-making process in NATO with regard to Russia," he said.