MISSOURI COMMENTARY: WHY ESPAND NATO BEYOND ITS NEEDS?

Adorned in a cowboy hat and boots, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright departed Andrews Air Force Base ready to take charge of the 'first wave' enlargement of NATO. Hew predecessor Warren Christopher was a cautious man who went to great pains to talk in elliptical phrases. Albright speaks the language of righteous certitude.

The current popular international nostrum is the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to membership in NATO. Why? It must be done to show we are on our way to the 21st century. It must be a bridge to something. It has to be right. Zbig Brzezinski, Albright's guardian angel, and Henry Kissinger, the country's guardian angel, say it is so. Why?

The United Sates certainly does not need the ragtag armed forces of the Czechs, Hungarians or Poles in order to bring greater security to America or Western Europe.

NATO was created primarily as a mechanism of U.S. foreign and military policy. It's been "our baby" to mastermind and, in large measure, to finance. When the three new members form Eastern Europe sign up, they will immediately order copies of the Pentagon equipment catalogs to see what they need. If the purpose of their admission is to make them full military participants in NATO, they will need most everything in the catalog.

We know how bereft the Russian military units have become. The military machines of our presumed new allies are just as shabby, probably worse.

Our Western European friends, who are going along with America's diktat to expand NATO membership, are not going to foot the bill to arm the members. They find it increasingly difficult to maintain their own armed services. Only the U.S. can be presumed to serve as a non-profit military hardware store. How does all of this fit into the plan to balance the budget by 2002? What further curtailment of Medicare or Medicaid will be necessary to ensure that Poland has lots of new tanks and planes?

the one European nation with some degree of enthusiasm over NATO expansion is Germany. Chancellor Helmut Kohl believes that bringing Poland into the club would protect Germany's eastern flank. Against whom? The Russians, of course. If Germany feels it security is enhanced with Poland in NATO, then can't we appreciate how concerned the Russians feel with NATO encroaching on their borders? Brzezinski, for one, thinks Ukraine should be the next to come in with the Baltic states not far behind. Perhaps the Moscow suburbs are also within our protective grasp.

We don't seem to care all that much about what demoralized Russia thinks. We can kick 'em in the tail. We can make 'em like it.

But there is one thing we are certain to accomplish by forcing the NATO issue. We will arouse further nationalistic, anti-democratic, anti-Western sentiment in Russia. We will strengthen the authoritarians and weaken the democrats. We can move Russian foreign policy in an increasingly belligerent direction. If we try hard enough to justify Russia's perception of encirclement, we could force Russia to patch things up with China. Remember that last week, Deng Xiaoping was praised on the floor of the Russian parliament as a free enterprise visionary.

If it is so essential to bring in the three new members into NATO, why isn't it just as essential that those same nations be brought into the European Union?

Secretary Albright rhetorically puts the question this way. "What central Europe needs is stocks and bonds, not stockpiles and bombs ... EU expansion is vital," she said. But it would be "complex," requiring "adjustments" and changes in "regulations." EU membership would have to deal with tough issues like "tomatoes" and "pesticides." By her reckoning, pulling in three new military partners is not tough. It's relatively quick and comfortable, opines our new secretary.

Truth is the EU is not about to let any Eastern European nation into its ranks. It's OK if the Americans want to shower the three nations with arms; it's another thing if Eastern Europe were to shower Western Europe with cheap food, cheap goods, cheap labor and cheap immigrants. Professor Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins says: "We are going to extend the NATO nuclear umbrella to Eastern Europeans, so that the Western Europeans won't have to buy their tomatoes."

Albright returns home receiving conventional accolades and imparting conventional wisdom that NATO has been strengthened. May the benefits of her work, if any, outweigh the consequences.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.