BEHIND THE HEADLINES Kosovo war could influence Israel’s future link with NATO

LONDON, April 19 (JTA) — More than 1,500 delegates from 43 countries are descending on Washington this week for what should have been a weekend of partying to mark the 50th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the festivities will be tempered by foreboding over an increasingly contentious, albeit humanitarian, war — the first in NATO’s history — that was intended to ease suffering and halt the program of ethnic cleansing by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosovic. Few will watch the current conflict and its fallout more closely than Israel, which, while not itself a NATO member, has a stake in the alliance through its membership in a five-year-old NATO initiative, the Mediterranean Dialogue, which is aimed at enhancing stability and security in the region. But the future of the Mediterranean Dialogue could be affected by events in the Balkans. Israel, like NATO, has much to lose if a decent exit is not found out of the conflict in Kosovo. At the same time, NATO’s current experience could prompt NATO leaders to further emphasize dialogue as a way to prevent future military action. While NATO is carefully incorporating states of the former Soviet bloc into an enlarged structure — Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were admitted last month — the organization is also examining potential post-Soviet-era threats to Europe. The Mediterranean rim has been identified as a prime source of such threats. NATO’s urgent desire to accelerate cooperation with and within the Mediterranean region is therefore not hard to fathom. It is possible, say strategic analysts and military planners, that within 10 years every European capital — certainly every southern European capital — will be within range of ballistic missiles based on Europe’s periphery. At that point, it will no longer be possible to divide European security from Middle East security. The world, note the analysts, is moving away from neat divisions based on regional geography. The buzzword of the future, they say, is interdependence. It is against this backdrop that the Mediterranean Dialogue was established. It now includes five nations in addition to Israel: Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania and Jordan. Others may follow. The threat to Europe is not perceived in solely military terms, but is likely to be spawned by factors such as nationalism, fundamentalism, socioeconomic crises and demography. One analyst notes, for example, that within the next 25 years, the population of North Africa will grow from its present 63 million to an estimated 142 million, with far-reaching implications for employment, housing, food, water, sanitation, transport and communications in the region. Trade with the Mediterranean region is also an important issue because the area provides substantial portions of Western Europe’s energy needs in the form of oil and natural gas. NATO is now planning to move from such issues, which it defines as “soft” security, to the “hard” security issues, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. The contours of the Mediterranean Dialogue were designed by a team at the California-based Rand think-tank that created a two-track structure. On the bilateral level, a regular political dialogue is conducted between ambassadors of each of the dialogue states and NATO officials. On the multilateral level, participating Mediterranean states are engaged in a broad range of NATO-initiated activities, including cooperation in the field of civil emergencies, joint search-and-rescue operations, environmental issues and scientific advances. In addition, dialogue states also send representatives to observe NATO land, sea and air exercises, and to participate in seminars and workshops with their NATO counterparts in Europe. The intention is not only to develop a cooperative regional approach to problem-solving, but also to expose the regional group to NATO’s security perceptions and to immerse them in the culture of the organization. Exchanges extend beyond military officials of the six Mediterranean nations to include politicians, academics, journalists and other opinion-making elites. “We want to ensure that we reach out,” a senior NATO official told JTA, “and explain our objectives more widely.” Israel, the most developed and most powerful of the six, is playing an active and enthusiastic role in advancing the NATO agenda through the Mediterranean Dialogue, added the official. But the advancement of the dialogue hinges, in part, upon the outcome in Kosovo, where NATO is in a desperate struggle — if not for survival, then at least for credibility. The war, it is now clear, is likely to be more protracted and ultimately more divisive — politically, militarily and, not least, financially — than any of NATO’s 19 member-states had anticipated at the outset. Against the backdrop of burning villages and terrified refugees, the free world has been given a humbling lesson in the limits of power. When NATO officials sat down to plan the 50th anniversary celebration in Washington, the focus of the festivities was to have been on the unequivocal triumph of the most successful alliance in history, whose deterrent ability had won the Cold War without a shot being fired. Instead, organizers are frantically recasting the “festival of peace” as a council of war: a triumphal fly-by of NATO planes has been canceled; the White House champagne banquet has been downgraded to a working dinner; and the “black-tie” instruction on invitations has been replaced by “lounge suits.” Even the issuing of a commemorative stamp has been put on hold. Two months ago, NATO’s deputy secretary-general, Sergio Balanzino, confidently told delegates at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations in Brussels: “We’re moving from an era of competition to cooperation, from collective defense to collective security.” And just this month, when the U.S.-led NATO war against Yugoslavia was barely one week old, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was able to declare optimistically: “This is a test of the NATO of the 21st century,” For many observers, these brave words have acquired an unusually bitter taste as NATO political and military leaders struggle with an unpredictable war in a corner of the Balkans.