Origins of National Interests by Glenn Chafetz Benjamin Frankel Michael Spirtaz

Author:Glenn Chafetz, Benjamin Frankel, Michael Spirtaz [Glenn Chafetz, Benjamin Frankel, Michael Spirtaz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Military, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science
ISBN: 9781136327551
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2012-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

NATO ENLARGEMENT:

A CONSTRUCTIVIST EXPLANATION

FRANK SCHIMMELFENNIG

At its Madrid summit in July 1997, NATO invited three central and eastern European (CEE) countries to accession talks: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In December of the same year, the accession protocols were signed. In this article, I seek to explain NATO enlargement. More precisely, I ask (1) why CEE countries strive to become NATO members;1 (2) why NATO decided to expand to the east;2 and (3) why (only) the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were invited to become NATO members.3

I argue that the most prominent rationalist international relations approaches to the study of alliances and international institutions cannot answer these questions convincingly. In both their neorealist and their neoliberal variations, they may be able to account for the CEE countries’ bid to join NATO but fail to explain the interest of NATO in expansion (see “Rationalist Puzzles” below). This puzzle for rationalism is solved by a constructivist approach to the study of international institutions which analyzes enlargement as a process of international socialization. In the constructivist perspective, NATO is a specialized organization—the “military branch”—of the Euro-Atlantic or Western community of liberal-democratic and multilateralist values and norms. The international socialization approach gives an answer to all three questions: (1) CEE countries strive for NATO membership inasmuch as they share the community values and norms and seek identification with, and recognition by, the West; (2) NATO decided to expand in order to strengthen liberal democracy and multilateralism and to build, in central and eastern Europe, a stable peace based on these values and norms. When a country has internalized the community values and norms and has changed its domestic and foreign policy practices accordingly, it is admitted as a full member to the organization as a reward for its efforts and because of the community's moral commitment to guarantee the security of countries that share its principled beliefs; (3) the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were invited to join NATO first, because they were more advanced than the other CEE countries in the internalization of the community values and beliefs.

The constructivist explanation of enlargement as international socialization is backed up by an analysis of the enlargement process: In the section “Enlargement Discourse,” I show that the discourse of NATO and its members reflects the value-rational motivation for enlargement. Furthermore, the stages of enlargement, above all the PfP Program, fit the image of a process of socialization in which the Western alliance teaches its values and norms to its cooperation partners and evaluates their learning progress. The only facts that constructivism cannot explain (and are better accounted for by rationalism) are the bid to join NATO of rather authoritarian governments (like the Romanian government until 1996 and the Meciar government in Slovakia) and the exclusion of Slovenia from the first round of expansion.

The aim of the study is to give a convincing explanation of NATO enlargement. I do not claim to refute rationalist institutionalism in international relations theory. To begin with, the research design does not allow a thorough test of theories.

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