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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,675197,00.html Bush comes to shove Nato was being counted out a few months ago. Now the US is using it to control the new Europe Simon Tisdall Thursday March 28, 2002 The Guardian While Britain and other member states ponderously plod towards agreement on the EU's eastern enlargement, the Bush administration is steaming full speed ahead with the reunification of Europe - under US auspices, on US terms, and primarily for US purposes. This worrying extension of American power and influence is happening almost without debate in western European capitals, under the noses of leaders in France and Germany preoccupied with elections and of others, in Britain, Italy and Spain, too willing to do Washington's bidding. Yet the US plan, now being pursued by high-level envoys, has enormous political, military and commercial implications. Such US expansionism across Europe, proceeding in tandem with its equally unabashed move into central Asia, may represent the true dawning, after a decade of false starts, of the age of the solo superpower. It is probably irreversible. And it poses fundamental questions for European integrationists and nation-staters alike. The chosen vehicle for this grand American putsch, this new, US-orchestrated concert of Europe, is the traditionally US-led Nato alliance; the catalyst was September 11; and the crunch will come at next November's heads-of-government Nato summit in Prague. Up to seven eastern European countries - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania will be invited to join Nato in Prague. Others such as Croatia, Macedonia and Albania will remain in line, hoping their turn will come soon. Yet others, such as Ukraine and Georgia, will edge closer. And if all that were not enough, Russia itself will by then in all probability have been drawn into a sort of associate membership, too. At that point, Nato could girdle the entire northern hemisphere. In other words, a post-cold-war transformation that is both amazing and permanent is in prospect right across Europe. Once security and military ties are formalised, US economic investment, aid, arms and trade deals will surely follow. Speaking in Bucharest this week, at a Nato meeting entitled The Spring of New Allies, the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, told 10 Nato aspirants that "we're looking to the widest possible accession" in November. In a message sent to the meeting, President George Bush made his objective unambiguously clear: "In Prague our nations will take a historic step toward removing the last divisions of Europe." In London, and Paris, and Berlin, however, at this salient juncture in the continent's affairs, the silence is palpable and telling. For this is principally a US gig, American-driven and American-organised, with EU countries mostly tagging on behind. It almost did not happen. Nato's post-cold-war role has been the subject of fierce debate. US-European rows over the Kosovo campaign, defence budgets and the EU's rapid reaction force made matters worse. When the alliance was effectively sidelined after September 11 as the US largely went it alone militarily in Afghanistan, it looked like curtains for the iron-curtain-era partnership. But as the dust settled in New York and Washington, the Bush administration started looking for ways, in radically altered circumstances, to make Nato the effective instrument of a now more assertive and single-minded US global policy. In theory, the aspiration was already in place. Bush vowed in Warsaw in June last year to assure freedom and security for "all of Europe's democracies, from the Baltics to the Black sea". But now, the US has found new uses for Nato - and expansion is key. The US, as ever, primarily seeks to bolster Nato to bolster its own security - which it now believes to be under unprecedented threat. Thus bringing in new members to assist the "war against terrorism" is suddenly much more attractive. This applies in particular to Bulgaria and Romania, on Nato's southern flank. Both are already providing bases for US forces flying into Afghanistan and peacekeepers in Kabul and the Balkans. And neither appears to blanch (unlike Nato member Turkey) at the prospect of new wars across the Black sea in Iraq or even in Iran or the Caucasus. As Solomon Pasi, Bulgaria's foreign minister, candidly said this week, the two countries "are making the best use of this tragic opportunity". The Bush administration clearly sees an opportunity, only vaguely glimpsed by a befogged, dawdling EU, to advance its security, commercial and energy interests in eastern Europe and beyond. To this end Nato appears destined to become a far more "political" organisation than in the past with the criteria for membership emphasising such issues as adherence to democratic governance more than military capability. This rapid, biggest-ever expansion of Nato under proactive US leadership sends an unmistakable message to those Europeans who, decrying their "vassal status", would repel America's supposed global hegemony through greater, self-propelled integration - or, sadder still, cling to the fiction of an independent sovereign existence. Washington's message is plain: through an expanding, US-directed Nato, Europe will be reunited despite the Europeans. They are in danger of becoming spectators at their own wedding. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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