The new "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Co operation and Security" between NATO and the Russian Federation will be ushered in with great fanfare today in Paris with Presidents Clinton, Chirac and Yeltsin at centre stage. The set piece occasion will be a glittering one in the Elysee Palace with Mr Chirac intent on giving a boost to his flagging parliamentary colleagues and Mr Yeltsin enabled through the medium of the compliant Russian television services to portray Russia as a major world power. The new partnership between the Western alliance and its onetime enemy may not, however, be an enduring one. As he left Moscow for Paris yesterday, Mr Yeltsin was already threatening that relations between Russia and NATO would deteriorate dramatically should former constituent republics of the old Soviet Union be admitted to the alliance.
When NATO announces the first stage of its eastward expansion in July, it is generally expected that Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary will be announced as the new members. This will not put great pressure on Russia which has no borders with Hungary and the Czech republic and only a short frontier with Poland at the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. But the entry of the Baltic States to NATO at a later stage would be viewed much more seriously by Russia. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have borders with metropolitan Russia. And they have major minority populations of Russian extraction. There can be little doubt that when Mr Yeltsin voiced his opposition to the accession to the alliance of former Soviet republics it was to these three countries that he was referring.
Should the expected announcement of new members be made in July without giving a date for further expansion into the Baltics, Russia will be seen by other countries to have prevented the accession to membership of the alliance by Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Russia itself may see such an announcement as a tacit agreement by NATO that the Baltic states lie within its sphere of influence. Should it actually name a date for Baltic membership, NATO while genuinely assuaging the fears of the three Baltic states would infuriate Russia to the extent that a new dividing line, a new iron curtain, could descend across Europe, this time 500 miles further east than its predecessor.
What appears today, therefore, to be the sealing of a pact between the alliance and Russia to strengthen democracy in Europe and make the continent's future more secure, may not be the case at all. Gen Alexander Lebed, who could well be Russia's president when Mr Yeltsin retires, has described NATO in central and eastern Europe as "a big drunken hooligan in a kindergarten who says he will hit anyone he likes". This view is widely shared in a Russia frustrated at its waning influence and worried over the collapse of discipline and efficiency of its armed forces. In short, there is a feeling in Russia of being treated as a defeated enemy rather than as a potential ally. Major reforms, including the strengthening of the European component in NATO (with a consequent change in emphasis in dealing regional conflicts and threats of regional conflicts in Europe) would help bring Russia closer to NATO than the document which is being signed today.