NATO’S OSTPOLITIK: CONSOLIDATION, BUT KOSOVO LOOMS

After the major decisions of 1997, 1998 was a year of consolidation for NATO’s Ostpolitik. In 1997, after five years of debate, NATO took its first decisive steps towards eastward enlargement by inviting the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to join the alliance as full members. At the same time, other measures were agreed to “sweeten the pill” for Russia and disappointed Central and Eastern European candidates: the NATO-Russia Founding Act and a NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC); the NATO-Ukraine Charter on Distinctive Partnership; an “enhanced” Partnership for Peace (PfP); a new Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) bringing together NATO with almost all other European states; and an official “open door” to further enlargement. Nineteen ninety-eight saw the ratification of the Visegrad three’s integration into NATO by the legislatures in the alliance’s existing members and the consolidation of the other new institutional arrangements established in 1997. The escalating crisis in Kosovo, however, posed a growing challenge to NATO’s credibility and dragged the Alliance ever deeper into the Balkans.