"The Next NATO: Building an American Commonwealth of Nations" by James Kurth, in The National Interest (Fall 2001), 1112 16th St. N.W., Ste. 540, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Ten years ago, the plucky Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania claimed their independence from a crumbling Soviet Union, and ever since they’ve been sterling citizens in the new global order of liberal democracy, free-market economics, and the rule of law. Now it seems only natural that they’re in line for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But that’s worse than a bad idea, argues Kurth, a Swarthmore College political scientist—it’s insane.

President George W. Bush’s call last June for NATO’s enlargement "from the Baltic to the Black Sea" should have sparked a "Great Debate" on the scale of the League of Nations fight of 1920. Instead, the nation snoozed. Meanwhile, it’s taking on military commitments of unprecedented scope, and for the wrong reasons.

"For the past decade, the grand project of the United States in world affairs has been globalization," Kurth writes. That has meant securing in Europe a "solid base" that accepts "the American way of globalization" against those parts of the world that don’t, which include China and Russia, and the large portions of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America that have simply been left out. But for this economic and political project—which Kurth sees as an undertaking of dangerous hubris—the United States has no suitable vehicle. So it has adapted a military alliance (NATO) to its purposes. And that’s the problem.

What’s rarely considered in the talk about extending membership to the Baltic is that the American global predominance so easily taken for granted today may not exist decades from now. Yet, as NATO members, the Baltic countries would always be able to call upon the United States to come to their defense. And that call may not be as unlikely as it now seems. Estonia’s border, for example, lies only 30 miles from St. Petersburg, and while Russia is surly but weak today, it could be surly and strong tomorrow. Most troubling to Kurth is the problem of Kaliningrad, the Russian oblast, or province, cut off from the rest of Russia when Lithuania got its independence. This "dismal slum" of 900,000 is full of Russian soldiers and Russian woes: crime, infectious disease, and pollution. If Lithuania joins NATO, Kaliningrad "will become a Russian island and strategic anomaly surrounded by a NATO sea"—"a crisis in waiting."

It’s no accident that the Baltic countries have not enjoyed the protection of an outside power for several centuries, Kurth observes. The looming presence of Russia ensured that no European power would ever guarantee their independence. To do so now would be "reckless and irresponsible," Kurth says. It would "require of the American statesmen of the 21st century a level of sophistication and determination that would have amazed those of the 20th."