In Europe, Could the Bear Be Back?

By JAMES O. JACKSON

IT WAS NO DOUBT A GOOD THING THAT BORIS YELTSIN AND the forces of reform won in Russia. But it was not such a good thing that they needed the firepower of the army to do it. Although Western leaders are relieved that the armed forces came down on the more enlightened side of Moscow's political divide, they must face the disconcerting fact that the generals have earned themselves a place of power in Kremlin policymaking. Already positions have started to harden. Echoes of old, Soviet-sounding themes are being heard beneath the lighter melodies of democracy and reform. As of old, there is an attitude of suspicion toward the West and a hint of reluctance to stick to arms-reduction goals.

The first victim of Russia's military hardening, which actually preceded the showdown in Moscow, is the goal of an expanded NATO. The second may be the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), one of the most important arms- reduction agreements of the past decade. "In the coup of August 1991, the military played a minor role," says Archie Brown, director of Oxford University's Russian and Eastern European Center. "This time its role was crucial. It wants its price, which means that Russia will not be as democratic as we expected. It also means that the Foreign Ministry's strongly pro-Western and liberal policies will be overshadowed by the Defense Ministry's harder line."

That hard line showed up first in the form of a Yeltsin flip-flop on the notion of an expanded NATO. During an August visit to Warsaw, he had declared that Polish membership in the alliance "would not be counter to Russian interests." That was taken as a green light for drawing much of the old East bloc into the alliance, and Western policy planners immediately went to work on mechanisms for membership. First to join would be the so-called Visegrad countries -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary -- probably by the end of the '90s. Then might come the Baltic states -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- and in the more distant future the others, possibly including parts of the former Soviet Union, including Russia itself. German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe enthusiastically lobbied the rest of the alliance to put expansion on the agenda for a NATO summit scheduled for January. "It is in our basic national interests to expand NATO and the E.C. eastward one step at a time," he said. "It doesn't take a genius to realize that."

But suddenly Yeltsin's green light turned red, and the logic of eastward expansion became less obvious. In a September letter to alliance leaders, Yeltsin warned that expansion would be destabilizing and should not go forward. He proposed instead that NATO and Russia jointly guarantee the security of the states in between -- a formula that sounded uncomfortably close to the situation of East-West polarity that existed in the bad old days. "That was clearly the result of the Russian generals' pressure," says Michael Dewar, deputy director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "They were furious, and Yeltsin had no option but to eat his words."

Another obvious sign of Russian military pressure is an attempt to amend the CFE treaty so that Russia can move more heavy weapons southward for deployment. The Russians contend that their southern borders are threatened by civil wars in Caucasus, a circumstance unforeseen by the original treaty. Western negotiators are opposed to changes. "CFE is a good agreement," says a senior British diplomat. "The Russian generals never liked it, and now they feel in a stronger position to press Yeltsin to dilute it." Nevertheless, some Western leaders are hinting at a compromise. Manfred Worner, NATO's Secretary-General, agrees that the treaty must not be changed. But, he adds cryptically, it can be "reinterpreted."

There is a similar Western softening on NATO enlargement. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe calls it "premature," and liberals who formerly advocated expansion are having second thoughts. "I can only advise utmost caution when thinking about moving NATO eastward," says former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. "We should not exclude Russia." Among the few remaining advocates of early enlargement are the hapless Central European countries with better reasons than Russia to fear for their security. Yeltsin's flip-flop caused acute anxiety in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. "Poland's striving toward NATO is irreversible," said Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski. "We are against placing Poland in the gray zone between East and West."

But the countries probably will have to get used to life in the gray zone for the foreseeable future. Even Worner, an advocate of expansion, concedes that progress will be slow. He now speaks only of a "concrete perspective for bringing new Central European democracies into NATO." In a Washington speech last week, he cautioned that it "will be a lengthy road and we need to act gradually, carefully and flexibly." In the same speech Worner made a curious comparison between NATO and the Roman Empire, each providing "guarantees of security for its member countries." True, perhaps, but the problem with the Roman Empire was that it was a threat to the tribes and nations gathered sullenly on its periphery. Like the Roman Empire at its height, NATO no longer stands toe to toe with an enemy of nearly equal might. If the alliance ; expands, it must expand enough to embrace Russia, the newly powerful generals included. Anything less would be to exclude them as enemies and invite the kind of hostility enemies are expected to show.