The leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, now almost the G-8, were smiling amiably in Naples last weekend and speaking of future cooperation. The Cold War, however, is by no means in the distant past and might even return in the near future.


Last week in Warsaw, President Bill Clinton stated: "Russia has agreed to join the Partnership for Peace and, therefore, to accept the integrity of its neighbors' borders ... and the premise that NATO will expand."


Any advancement by NATO toward the east, however, would be seen by the Russian public as a serious threat to Russia's national security and would be considered an action to which Russia would have to respond.


Radical Russian nationalists, though, stand to gain significant political dividends from the seemingly inevitable NATO expansion to the east. At last, they will claim, we have real, concrete evidence of the West's aggressive intentions.


Vladimir Zhirinovsky is already saying that the expansion of NATO will lead to a third world war, which Russia will win, remarks that provoked uproar in Vienna last week.


But there is more to this matter than Zhirinovsky. Many sensible generals in the Russian army and the directors of many military factories would, deep down, be extremely satisfied with NATO expansion. The mere announcement of a timetable for the entry of East European countries into NATO might well convince the Duma and Russian public opinion to increase defense expenditures and to protect the army from serious force reductions.


Five years ago, the Soviet tanks in central Europe were supposed to be able to reach the English Channel within 48 hours of the beginning of a war. Now, Russia is in no position to increase substantially its conventional forces and it will never be able to recreate such an impressive army.


However, Russia did inherit the Soviet Union's nuclear forces, and they remain fully operational. Like the United States in the 1950s, Russia will have to rely on its nuclear deterrent in the event of a serious crisis. Russia's new military doctrine has legalized the first use of nuclear weapons -- even against non-nuclear NATO member states.


During a joint press conference on June 28 with the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General George Joulwan, and Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, an American correspondent asked Grachev: "Didn't they let Russia loose in NATO like -- as the Russian expression goes -- a 'goat in the garden'?"


Grachev was visibly offended and said that "no one can compare Russia with a goat." In Russian military slang, the word "goat" signifies a passive homosexual and is considered a serious insult.


The next day, speaking at the headquarters of the North Caucasus military district in Rostov-on-Don, Grachev told a crowd of 200 officers and generals: "I told that American that Russia has never been, and will never be, a goat."


He then said that "on June 22, during a strategic exercise, President Yeltsin personally launched two ballistic missiles and one cruise missile: Two of the warheads landed within 50 meters of their targets and the third scored a direct hit.


A week later, Clinton appeared in Riga. "Our soldiers, the new Baltic battalion among them, will join together to bring a new security to the new Europe." This was nothing more than American rhetoric, which is not worth much -- Clinton promised the Baltic states $10 million to create a "peacekeeping" battalion. In the long run, however, such unrestrained rhetoric may prove very costly.





Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security editor for Segodnya.