Without the umbrella of the U.S. military alliances, this unprecedented postwar economic prosperity is unlikely to continue. As the Nobel Prize winning economist Douglass C. North has explained, when governments provide law, order, and ideological consensus, they lower the transaction costs for economic enterprise, allowing greater growth. The U.S. alliance system has extended this phenomenon to an international level, effectively lowering the transaction costs for international trade in the trilateral regions. Those who would dismantle the old security system would be more likely to raise the transaction costs of economic interdependency than to sustain our present prosperity. And the proponents of a new balance of power system might find the military burdens of that system equal to or greater than the old burdens. Moreover, the economic transaction costs would almost be certain to rise for many trade patterns within a collective security system after U.S. military withdrawal from Europe and East Asia.

The points stands: this American empire is a profitable venture for all its members. That is precisely why outside states want in. Mexico has overcome its longstanding anti-U.S. feelings and fought its way into the North American Free Trade Agreement. Little wonder that several Central European states want to join NATO and the EU. When members of the American empire begin to leave it, we will know that the transaction costs of membership have risen greatly and that "imperial overstretch" would be a real problem if we tried to stop them.

There is more to the American involvement in Europe than idealism. It pays. It pays, in part, because idealism helps lower transaction costs, but at the same time it has a realist component. Much of Europe is not yet democratic, and parts of it are likely to fail in creating democracy. The power politics approach leaves out the idealism component. Russett's call for "grasping the democratic peace" raises the neglected issue. How much of Central Europe can NATO reasonably expect to bring under its umbrella and nurse through the painful processes of transitions to democracy and market economies? A corollary question is what will happen to the present NATO region and European unification efforts if no expansion is attempted, or if NATO is allowed to wither as the West drifts willy-nilly into a purely balance of power game in the whole of Europe?

Expand NATO Now

Against all of the foregoing views, of course, is the judgment that NATO must not only be preserved, but expanded. Senators Richard Lugar and Mitch McConnell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Henry Kissinger have been the most notable although not the only proponents of NATO's expansion. Like the other groups, the expansionists are not of one mind on the details of implementation. Their divergences are best understood in their answers to why, who, and when to expand NATO, as well as by what means.

Why? The key difference among the proponents of expansion lies in the emphasis that some put on external military security threats and others put on the internal development problems of prospective new members. The potential of a new Russian military threat to Central Europe concerns some more than others. Even if Russia poses no military threat, a new Russian diplomacy of meddling in Central Europe is feared. The new military threat is an extremely weak argument, unlikely to persuade anyone who is familiar with the state of the Russian military and its industrial base. Although a new Russian imperialism is already evident in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus, the burden of that empire will impede a serious Russian military modernization that could actually pose a threat to Central Europe.

A much better argument for NATO's expansion is found in its inception: the concern of its proponents with internal political and economic affairs in Western Europe. While their national motives were at odds--Germany seeking early independence, France seeking to prevent a new German military threat--leaders in both countries realized that a U.S. military presence within an Atlantic alliance structure would create the security and political context for economic recovery and the building of new interstate relations. To play its role, the United States had not only to be a military hegemon; it also had to bring its political ideology to Europe. A purely realist American approach to NATO would have failed.

An expansion of NATO today can only occur under strong U.S. leadership, and it must have as its primary purpose the internal transformation of new member states. As they create successful market economies and liberal democracies within NATO, their foreign policies will also have to change. New Central European members cannot let themselves become the pawns of competitive diplomacy between Germany and Russia, between France and Germany or between Britain and Germany. Nor can they return to their interwar irridentism and patterns of ethnic politics. The expansion of NATO would be a failure if it did not break those old patterns, as it has already done in Western Europe.

To be sure, in principle external military security is also a purpose for an expanded NATO. But that challenge is nonexistent today, and to emphasize it as primary is to distort what is at stake and to frame the American debate in a way that stirs up unjustified fears of U.S. soldiers dying on the Polish eastern frontier. The military challenge could however reappear in the long run if NATO is not expanded.

Who? Answers range from three or four Central European states to all of them as well as the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine, and even Russia. If the primary purpose of NATO is to extend a roof over new members under which they can more quickly make the transformation to the pattern of domestic and interstate relations of Western Europe, then it is easier to see which states are proper candidates for membership. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary seem to be solid prospects for such a transformation. Slovakia, often mentioned with this group, is more dubious, but because it would provide a contiguous border between the present NATO boundary and Hungary, it should at least be considered. Romania and Bulgaria are too problematic in their internal developments for NATO to bet on today. The same is true for Ukraine and Belarus. Although good arguments can be made for admitting the Baltic states, they should be excluded as assuming too great a reach.

Beyond these three or four Central European countries, the risks to NATO of biting off more than it can chew are considerable. The more troublesome requests for NATO membership are likely to come eventually from Sweden and Austria, countries difficult to reject because they are solid democracies and also belong to the European Union. They would probably have to be accepted although there is no urgency for their early admission as there is for other cases, for example the Baltic states.

What about Russia? Kissinger and Brzezinski have made sound arguments against its membership, saying essentially that it would destroy the European character of the alliance and weaken its internal structure. Moreover, Russia shows no serious interest in joining. The task of accomodating Russia in a post-Cold War security structure is global, not just a European security issue. Here the proponents of collective security and a new concert of powers have the best argument, but the new system must include East Asia and the Middle East, not just a larger Europe to the Urals.

On the global level, Russia could be brought into the G-7, which is now the single global forum of liberal democratic market states. Although the G-7 was conceived to manage economic affairs, it has increasingly addressed political affairs. Unlike the UN Security Council, where the permanent members include China, a country that does not share Western principles of international relations to the degree they are shared in the G-7, and where the new strong powers of Germany and Japan are excluded, a G-8 would represent all the major powers committed to liberal democracy and market economics. The condition for Russian membership of that group should be continued progress to a market economy and democracy.

On the European level, a security committee could be created within the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), composed of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States. A consensus among these states to act to preserve the peace would be a strong foundation for European collective security. Without that consensus, OSCE could not act, and it should not. In such circumstances, NATO would be the fall-back for military action. In other words, a great power group within OSCE would provide Russia with the institutional opening to participate as cooperatively as it desired in the security of Europe and to block any OSCE action it opposed. For the next decade or so, that is about all that can be done in accomodating Russia. Its strong desire to join the G-7 suggests that if the limited expansion of NATO were coupled with both G-7 membership and a security committee in OSCE, Russian leaders might find NATO expansion less irritating. And it should not be overlooked that some Russian democrats have actually favored NATO's expansion to prevent a destabilizing vacuum in Central Europe. The proponents of the "Russia first" approach fail to realize that their goal of a democratic Russia is more likely to be achieved by the "expand NATO" approach than by their own.