As NATO Moves Eastward, Costs Could Move Upward, Critics Say

WASHINGTON —  With presidents and prime ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization now virtually certain to select three new members early next month, the biggest potential obstacle to expansion of the alliance may be sticker shock on Capitol Hill and in 15 other legislative chambers.

Estimates of the cost of integrating Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO over the next dozen or so years vary alarmingly from less than $27 billion to more than $125 billion. The U.S. share is pegged at between $2 billion and $19 billion--or more.

Expansion is expensive because the three new members must upgrade their military forces to meet NATO standards and replace their Soviet-designed weaponry with arms that are compatible with the arsenals of their new allies.

In addition, the alliance must expand its common facilities to accommodate new members. And some military bases in the new countries must be modernized to accommodate rapidly deploying NATO forces.

With Congress struggling to balance the federal budget, the costs of NATO expansion would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere. Although relatively small by Pentagon budget standards, the NATO expenditure could be politically troublesome.

If actual U.S. spending hits the midpoint of current estimates--say, $10 billion or so--it would equal the cost of operating all of the national parks until 2010. That amount would also equal the combined budgets for vocational education grants and heart disease research for the next dozen years. And if actual spending is closer to the high end of the estimates, or if the European allies kick in less than anticipated, the budgetary offsets would be far greater.

The cost estimates are based on widely diverging assumptions about the military threat the alliance will face in the early years of the new century and about the portion of costs that the new members will be able to pay themselves. The lower estimates assume that NATO will not face the threat of war.

*

Harder to quantify is the potential cost in blood. Once the three new nations become part of the alliance, they will enjoy an open-ended pledge that the United States and the 15 other NATO members will come to their defense if they are attacked.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton administration--which has made NATO expansion the centerpiece of its second-term foreign policy agenda--has weighed in with the lowest estimates.

Critics accuse the administration of “low-balling” the costs to avoid putting off U.S. senators and the parliament members of other NATO nations. The invitation to new members must be ratified by the Senate and the parliaments of all other current members.

So far, very little opposition has developed on Capitol Hill.

Among the comparatively small number of lawmakers who have expressed an opinion on the subject, the most frequent criticism of the administration is that its plans are too modest--that there should be more than three new members and the expansion should take place sooner than the end of the century, as planned.

But supporters of the expansion plan are concerned that once the debate on costs begins, opposition could develop quickly.

Cost “is certainly one area of debate that must be thought through and met very carefully,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a strong backer of expansion.

He said he regrets that the issue has received relatively little attention so far in Congress.

Lugar said he thinks that the administration’s lower cost estimates are the most realistic because “if NATO looks formidable enough, and is sufficiently integrated, the odds are much greater that the force will not be used.”

*

Jeremy Rosner, special advisor to President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on NATO expansion, agreed that costs will be “one of the big issues, if not the big issue,” when the Senate takes up ratification.

Now that congressional concerns about Russia’s negative reaction to expansion have receded, a senior White House official said, “the main thing is going to be the cost” when the Senate takes up ratification.

The administration’s estimate of $27 billion to $35 billion as the total cost of expansion--between $2.25 billion and $2.9 billion annually for the length of the conversion--is based on the assumption that the threat faced by the military alliance will remain low, allowing the new members to take their time in upgrading their military establishments to NATO standards.

The cost estimate also assumes that new members will pay a substantial amount themselves, perhaps a total of as much as $1 billion annually. In that scenario, the United States would pick up between $150 million and $200 million a year.

But the Congressional Budget Office fixes the total expansion cost at $60 billion, even if the threat remains low. To meet more dangerous contingencies, the CBO says, NATO would have to spend $125 billion.

The agency estimates U.S. costs at $4.8 billion under the low-threat scenario and as much as $19 billion if things heat up.

Even the CBO estimates are considered too low by some critics outside government.

“If the administration wants to offer nothing more than worthless paper guarantees, it could get by for no more than the cost of printing the new directory of members,” said Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank.

If the administration wants to remain credible, “it must consider the cost of defending vulnerable front-line states” should Russia reassert imperial ambitions, he said.

Carpenter said the high end of the CBO’s estimate “is the starting point” if NATO is serious about extending security guarantees to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Under all of the estimates, the biggest cost will come in upgrading the military forces of the new members and establishing bases that NATO forces can use if necessary.

The new countries are expected to pay most of the cost of reequipping their military forces with weapons that meet alliance standards in place of their aging arsenals of Warsaw Pact arms.

*

Administration officials say costs will be kept down by stretching the conversion process over 12 or 13 years so that much of the existing equipment will not have to be replaced until it wears out.

At the same time, the military establishments of the new members will have to begin what officials call “inter-operability between the ears”--making sure that officers and troops are fluent in NATO languages and understand the alliance’s doctrine, map-reading techniques and other practices. While not cheap, those changes are less expensive than buying new warplanes, tanks and artillery tubes.

Officials in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have all said they are ready to meet their share of the costs, pointing out that they would have to upgrade their military forces even if they were not joining the alliance.

Petre Roman, speaker of the Senate in Romania--one of the also-rans in the expansion race--said during a visit to Washington that his country will have to spend more on its military outside NATO than inside.

Military cooperation among members of the alliance, he said, “is designed to decrease the overall cost of defense.”

Maybe so. But some critics in the United States doubt that the new members will be able to come up with the cash even if they genuinely want to do so.

Michael Mandelbaum of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, said that in Europe, NATO expansion is considered a U.S. initiative.

He predicted that European governments, faced with declining budgets and political pressure to maintain domestic welfare programs, will not pay as much as the Pentagon or the CBO expects.

“I don’t think the existing members or the new members expect to pay a dime,” he said. “Whatever the burden is, it will fall on us.”

But administration officials dismiss such suggestions.

Robert Hunter, Washington’s ambassador to NATO, said: “It’s not going to be free, but it is not going to be enormously expensive. . . . I would argue that [the Pentagon estimate of a U.S. cost of $200 million a year], which is well under one-tenth of 1% of the defense budget, is an amazingly good investment, considering what we are building for the 21st century.”