NATO’S SUPREME COMMANDER HIGHLIGHTS BALTIC CONTRIBUTION TO COMMON SECURITY.

Last week’s visit to the Baltic states by U.S. General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), helped brighten the outlook for the Baltic quest to join NATO. Clark’s visit contributed to clarifying four important points. First, it dispelled apprehensions that the Balkan crisis has caused NATO to move aspiring countries from southern Europe to the head of the admission queue, at the expense of the Baltic states. That possibility had temporarily seemed to emerge, notwithstanding the weaker political and economic qualifications of certain southern countries and the low probability of external threats against them. Second, Clark indicated that NATO’s admission conditions are primarily political, not military. That point, related to the first, also constitutes an effective counterargument to the naysayers’ thesis that the Baltic states are militarily indefensible.

Third, the SACEUR recommended against procuring expensive military equipment, emphasizing instead the importance of military reform, personnel training, communications, airspace control, inter-Baltic security cooperation and joint actions with NATO. This set of priorities should accommodate the Baltic states’ current budgetary constraints and enable them to make the most of the returns on the planned increases in defense spending (see the Monitor, July 27, and The Fortnight in Review, July 30). And, fourth, Clark highlighted the ongoing transformation of NATO’s concept of security, which is no longer confined to the territory of the member countries themselves, but is being extended to cover nonmember neighboring countries as well. Implicitly, such conceptual extension holds the promise of facilitating NATO’s eastward enlargement.

During his talks with the top political and military leaders in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, Clark favorably rated the progress achieved on the joint Baltic defense and security projects: the peacekeeping battalion BaltBat, the naval squadron Baltron, the airspace control system Baltnet and the defense staff college BaltDefCol. Clark described these projects–backed by the United States and other NATO countries–as a Baltic contribution to common security. The supreme commander’s remarks also confirmed the Baltic leaders’ view that participation in NATO’s peacekeeping operation in the Balkans demonstrates their political will to qualify for alliance membership. The Baltic leaders attending the July 30 summit in Sarajevo made a point of visiting their units, which serve with the Danish-Norwegian contingent under NATO command (BNS, LETA, Radios Tallinn and Vilnius, July 27-31).

U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY, UKRAINIAN LEADERS DISCUSS NEW MILITARY COOPERATION PROGRAMS. U.S.