Molly Ivins April 30

Expansion of Western alliance just makes arms folks happy.

And for a really, really bad idea, try expanding NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In fact, this one is such a stinker that now is the time for all good citizens to take pen in hand and write the congressperson, beginning with the traditional "I am shocked and appalled ... "

Since any fool eyeballing this one can tell what's wrong with it, you may wonder how such a bad idea has gotten so far. Simple: The U.S. arms lobby wants this one real, real bad, and it has put a huge slug of money into buying it through Congress.

Expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the product of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, etc. In fact, Lockheed Martin's Vice President Bruce L. Jackson is also president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO — isn't that nice? Bernard L. Schwartz, another top gun at Lockheed, has been a top individual soft-money donor to Democratic Party committees, contributing a generous $601,000 in 1995-96. Lockheed as a whole put $2.3 million into the political system campaign in the same period (ka-ching, ka-ching).

Both The Progressive and The Nation have done excellent magazine stories on the lobby money behind the campaign to expand NATO. The Progressive reports that U.S. arms manufacturers have already broken their record political spending of $11.8 million in '95-'96. During the first seven months of '97, they spent more than $3.5 million on political contributions — and it was not an election year.

The weaponeers, looking for actual citizens who favor NATO expansion, have coordinated their activities with ethnic organizations, such as the Polish American Congress and the Hungarian American Foundation. A number of U.S. weapons manufacturers have provided financing for ethnic-based lobbying groups working NATO expansion. Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter Textron are supplying funds for a pro-NATO expansion foundation that the Romanian Embassy in Washington is establishing, according to The New York Times.

Many Czech-, Polish- and Hungarian-Americans have been convinced that membership in NATO is like joining some exclusive club — or, more precisely, that being rejected for membership would somehow be a slur on their ethnic group. The policy reason for joining is presumably to keep these countries from being taken over by Russia, should Russia suddenly somehow become an imperialist power.

Think about that — not just the sheer unlikeliness of it but the entire problem of dealing with Russia at this point. The biggest problem we have with Russia is not that the country will somehow become our enemy again (although some old Cold Warriors seem to be operating on that assumption) but rather that the country will become so economically desperate that it will start selling nukes to other nations — say, Iran, for example.

In order to prevent that, we urgently need Russia's cooperation. It is in our best interests to have Russian cooperation in any number of important areas, but the spread of nukes is probably the most important.

Why would we expect the Russians to be cooperative if we start expanding NATO toward their borders, thus waking up all their old feelings of fear, hostility and paranoia? This is so simple, it's painful. Why are we expanding NATO at the very time when the reason for its existence in the first place has disappeared? Hello?

The Clinton administration and the Pentagon claim that expanding NATO will cost $400 million, which is nonsense. Try tens of billions — the United States has already spent $1.2 billion when you count all the arms-export subsidies over the last three years, according to the World Policy Institute.

You see, we taxpayers subsidize the arms manufacturers; programs to promote arms exports are squirreled away all over the Pentagon, the State Department and the Commerce Department. Boeing, Lockheed, et al. have been all over Eastern Europe touting NATO, running seminars, buttering up officials.

How come? The weapons makers stand to make billions, of course. Jet fighters, choppers, guns, tanks, missiles. You understand that the way this works is the United States loans money to these countries so they can in turn buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers; the taxpayers end up financing the re-arming of Eastern and Central Europe.

This is such a remarkably bad plan that it's almost painful to hear the strained arguments in favor of it. Fortunately, there are some nice old xenophobic Republicans still given to steering clear of "foreign entanglements," plus some sensible cost-cutting-type Republicans who are capable of noticing how much this horror show is going to cost us. (The Pentagon's estimate keeps getting smaller and smaller, which is really funny because of course it becomes less and less credible every time they shrink it. They would have had a better chance if they'd moved it the other direction; now, no one believes them.)

However, the politics of this don't shake out neatly. Some R's just can't give up thinking of Russia as the enemy; some D's are trying for brownie points with Polish, Czech or Hungarian constituents. Frankly, I can't figure out what President Clinton thinks he's doing — except (obviously) paying off big contributors. Also, I think he's afraid of crossing the Pentagon folks because he knows they hate him already.

Is there any reason to listen to the Pentagon on this? No, the Pentagon is just acting as a functionary of the arms lobby; there's not a military reason in the world to expand NATO.

Truly, this is monumentally bad policy that is going to cost us all billions; it is stupid, unnecessary, counterproductive and incredibly expensive. And if we go back into subsidizing arms manufacturers big-time, of course it sops up all the money that we might use to fix the schools, provide health care for children, clean up the environment, etc.

Neither facts nor logic can persuade Congress on this issue because of the huge contributions involved. In order to overcome the huge advantage that the arms makers have through their campaign giving, we the people have to speak up very loudly indeed to persuade Congress not to do this. Write, fax, call, e-mail — this one is a citizen-must.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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