Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton clashed Monday over the U.S.-backed plan for NATO to expand toward Russia’s borders. The Russian president warned that such plans sow mistrust and could bring a “Cold Peace” to Europe.
Clinton declared, however, that the 16-nation NATO pact remains the “bedrock” of security in Europe and that “no outside country”-meaning Russia-“will be allowed to veto expansion.”
It remains unclear whether Yeltsin was playing mainly to nationalist sentiment at home with his verbal blast at NATO, as American officials contend, or whether he is growing resentful of Washington’s political dominance, as he suggested in Budapest.
“It is a dangerous delusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community . . . can somehow be managed from a single capital,” Yeltsin said.
The Russian president’s words may have sounded alarming, but his actions were reassuring. Minutes later, he joined President Clinton in clearing away dangerous Cold War debris and advancing cooperation in dealing with Europe’s explosive ethnic conflicts.
Most significantly, the two presidents brought into force the long-delayed 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) to eliminate 9,000 strategic nuclear weapons. They also pledged to seek quick ratification of deeper cuts under the 1993 START II treaty. The two treaties combined would reduce nuclear arsenals from the Cold War by two-thirds.
“The world will be a safer place as a result,” said Clinton, marking one of his most important foreign policy achievements.
The START I treaty, which fell into limbo with the collapse of the Soviet Union, was put into effect Monday after Ukraine renounced nuclear weapons and formally acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. and Russia then gave limited security assurances to the three former Soviet republics that are giving up their inherited nuclear weapons: Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
U.S. officials asserted that relations with Russia remain solid despite evident tension over NATO’s plans to offer membership to former Soviet satellites such as Hungary and Poland.
The two leaders took part in the summit of the 53-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which is seeking ways to support the newly-democratic countries of Europe and to avoid future Bosnias.
With the war in the Balkans raging just 200 miles from Budapest, Bosnia’s Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic brought a reality check to leader after leader, many of whom spoke grandly in Budapest about visions for European security but are doing little to end the 32-month war on Western Europe’s doorstep that has claimed more than 200,000 lives.
“Against the serious illness, they applied tranquilizers,” Izetbegovic complained.
“What shall be the result of the war in Bosnia which is now being prolonged due to a mixture of incapability, hesitation and sometimes even ill-will of the West?” asked Izetbegovic, answering: “. . . A discredited United Nations, a ruined NATO, Europeans demoralized by a feeling of inability to respond to the first crisis after the Cold War.”
Clinton, who flew in for about six hours before racing home for a White House dinner Monday night for lawmakers, met briefly with the Bosnian leader. The American president, having bowed to Europe in abandoning even limited NATO military pressure, once again publicly appealed to the Bosnian Serbs, who weren’t represented in Budapest, to end their aggression and accept the peace plan put forward by the U.S. and its European allies.
British Prime Minister John Major, who had joined the French in pressuring Clinton to cancel threatened NATO airstrikes against Serb forces, said British UN peacekeepers may have to be withdrawn from Bosnia-Herzegovina if they continue to be obstructed and even held hostage by ethnic Serbs.
Against the backdrop of such ethnic turmoil, European leaders met to expand the role of the CSCE, which was renamed Monday, after lengthy debate: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
U.S. officials said talks with Russia are near agreement on a CSCE-led peacekeeping force of up to 3,000 soldiers to monitor the cease-fire in the former Soviet territory of Nagorno-Karabkh.
The dispute over NATO’s future, however, highlights the difficulties in finding ways to bolster European security.
“We are concerned about the changes that are taking place in NATO . . .,” Yeltsin said.
By expanding NATO eastward, he warned, “Europe, not yet having freed itself from the heritage of the Cold War, is in danger of plunging into a cold peace.
“Why sow the seeds of mistrust, after all? We are no longer enemies; we are all partners.”
Yeltsin said no major country like Russia “is going to live by the laws of isolation and any such country will reject such a game played with it.” He sternly declared, “Our very best intentions to build a single democratic Europe will sink into oblivion if they do not feed into practical actions.”
Clinton, who spoke before Yeltsin, said NATO’s doors won’t be closed to Russia, though officials concede that prospects are dim that Russia could gain-or would even seek-full membership in NATO, which carries a Western security guarantee.
“At the same time, no country outside can be allowed to veto NATO expansion,” Clinton said.
The American president said it is important for Western institutions to reach out to the formerly Communist nations to avoid replacing the Iron Curtain with “a veil of indifference” or creating a sort of “gray zone” in Central Europe between East and West.
Russia has long sought to make the CSCE the premier security organization in Europe. Created in 1975, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was the only institution in which NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact came together to discuss security and human rights issues.
The implementation of the START I treaty comes about 12 years after President Ronald Reagan first proposed it, and three years after it was signed by President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow.
The breakup of the Soviet Union several months later spawned four nuclear powers: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Washington and Moscow thereafter agreed to mutually begin dismantling the nuclear weapons covered by the treaty while working together on a diplomatic formula to implement the treaty.
While some reductions have begun, START I is important because it brings into effect the most extensive verification and on-sight inspection regimes ever to guard against cheating. And Ukraine, which emerged from the Soviet breakup as the world’s No. 3 nuclear power with 1,840 strategic warheads, after much hesitation and uncertainty is now obligated to give up all its nuclear weapons in the next two years.
Clinton hailed Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, who took part along with the leaders of the other former nuclear weapons republics, for making “a bold move away from the nuclear precipice.” The U.S. joined Russia and Britain in assuring those three former Soviet republics that they won’t be threatened by nuclear weapons or pressured through economic intimidation.
Importantly, the U.S. and Russia couldn’t proceed with ratification of START II, with even deeper cuts, until the obstacles to the first accord were resolved. Clinton and Yeltsin expressed hope that their countries would ratify START II before they next meet in the spring.
