by Ted Galen Carpenter
The ongoing diplomatic food fight between Russia and Estonia over the latter’s removal of a Soviet war memorial should be one of those things Americans can safely ignore. But because Washington successfully pressed its NATO allies into admitting Estonia and the other two Baltic republics into the alliance, the U.S. now has a treaty obligation to defend those tiny countries on Russia’s border if Moscow ever resorts to force. It is an unwise, extremely dangerous commitment. As American trade with Asia increases by leaps and bounds, and China and India grow to great power, the Baltics are the last place the U.S. needs to assert itself.
Most American proponents of NATO’s eastward enlargement act as though the alliance is now little more than a political honor society. Their logic is that, because the nations of Eastern Europe have become capitalist democracies, they deserve to be members of the West’s most prominent club. And because NATO is now primarily a political body, so the argument goes, Russia has no reason to fear or oppose its expansion — even to Russia’s own border.But as the Estonia episode should remind us, NATO is still a military alliance with serious obligations for the United States. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty proclaims that an attack on one member is an attack on all. That means the United States is obligated to defend every member — no matter how small, how militarily and economically insignificant, or how strategically exposed that member might be.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8254
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=552