On the last day of May at a meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in Noordwijk, Holland, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev officially confirmed that Russia will join NATO's Partnership for Peace program. It will be recalled that in December Kozyrev refused to confirm the documents concerning Moscow's cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that had been worked out beforehand. Obviously, NATO officials feared a repeat performance and when this did not happen, they breathed a sigh of relief and hailed the moment as "a turning point in post-Cold War history."


However, as soon as the essence of Kozyrev's acceptance speech -- which was closed to the press -- became known, the optimism began to fade. In a delicate, "diplomatic" way, Kozyrev explained that Russia might leave PFP if NATO goes ahead with eastward expansion of the alliance. He said that Russia opposes the organization's expansion in principle and that "it must be clarified whom NATO intends to defend Europe from."


Kozyrev and the Foreign Ministry hold the most dovish, pro-Western position on NATO's expansion and East-West cooperation among the entire Russian policy-making establishment. However, the instructions with which Kozyrev was sent to Noordwijk were fairly firm. Kozyrev was instructed to first receive specific concessions on the expansion question.


Kozyrev did his best at the meeting to find some sort of face-saving formula since an open conflict with the West would represent a political defeat for him and for the policies of the Foreign Ministry. As far as one can tell, he did receive an unofficial assurance that expansion would be put off for "a certain period" -- at least until after Russia's presidential elections in June 1996.


A high-ranking Clinton administration official working in the area of U.S. policy toward Russia and the CIS told me that "a lot of people in Washington did not expect Russia to be so stubborn on NATO. They were convinced that in the end you could be persuaded to agree to expansion." He also said that people in Washington fully understand that Russia's participation in PFP is conditional, and he confirmed that it had been decided to postpone expansion.


However, this behind-the-scenes agreement on postponing expansion was in no way formalized in any document. It can be reversed at any moment. NATO Secretary General Willy Claes announced in Noordwijk that "Russia does not have the right of veto over new members." He also confirmed the organization's fundamental intention to expand, although he was cautious not to suggest any timetable.


Many in the West hope that Russia will actively participate in PFP and that in the course of practical cooperation it will be possible to overcome the Russian military's "irrational" fear of NATO. After all, this is the sort of thing the alliance does best. The entire NATO structure is designed to mediate contradictions between the 16 member states through its network of committees and commissions. "Now Russia is in and everything can be figured out," the same U.S. official told me.


But new disappointments are in store for the West. The Russian Defense Ministry has no intention of investing a lot of time, effort or money into PFP. Many high-ranking Russian generals do not see much practical sense in cooperating with NATO. Expensive joint peacekeeping maneuvers, in their view, will not improve Russian fighting capability in Chechnya or other hot spots.


Career officers in any army in the world are experts at sabotaging orders that they do not like without being openly insubordinate. In their sabotage of PFP, though, Russian generals will not have to perform any miracles of the bureaucratic art of not fulfilling orders (at which they are experts) since they already have the complete support of President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government and parliament.


Russia's participation in PFP will be "minimal." This is the official Kremlin position and it will not change until NATO rejects the idea of expanding. This is an election year in Russia and the idea of eastward expansion is not very popular among Russian voters.


Electioneering is also beginning in the United States. If it is officially confirmed in November that Russia has violated the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, the pressure on Clinton to push ahead with NATO expansion may become unbearable. And the fragile Noordwijk compromise will come tumbling down.





Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security editor for Segodnya.