14
While NATO officially had an “open-door” policy in which any state could
qualify to join in principle, in practice the expanded alliance would be selective. If there
were crises in non-NATO countries, it was unclear how the alliance would respond.
Whatever the merits of the more expansive Partnership for Peace or the OSCE, pacific
multilateralists believed that by side-stepping these organization, NATO members were
undercutting them. Jonathan Dean warned: “In fact, if NATO expansion is carried out, it
will ultimately create a large no-man's land of countries between Russia and the West,
ranging from the Baltic states to Albania, a buffer zone whose status will be uncertain,
unstable, and uneasy.”
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Part of dividing line argument fell away when NATO expanded again in May
2004. Seven of the states that were excluded in the last round were allowed to enter the
alliance, including the Baltic republics. The dividing line is not fixed. The latest
expansion leaves Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova between NATO states and Russia. It
also excludes Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia, but they are
geographically behind the “NATO curtain.” If it is a geographic dividing line, then the
states that are separated are Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia along with the former
Soviet republics of the Caucuses and Central Asia. All these states are members of the
NATO-sponsored Partnership for Peace.
The dividing line criticism was always problematic. First, if NATO remained at
16 members there would have been a dividing line? Atlanticists accepted such a division
Why is such a line worrisome only at 19 members or 25 members? Second, why would
NATO take on a saliency greater than that of the PfP or OSCE membership? If the
pacific multilateralist alternative was to rely on universal membership organizations, then
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“No NATO expansion now.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 52:3 (May-June 1996).
Convention