MILITARY : Agenda Shows NATO Is Still Vital to Security

BRUSSELS —  When the Cold War ended in the debris of the Berlin Wall six years ago, many security experts were convinced that, with communism conquered, the Atlantic Alliance would either lapse into decline or die out completely--a victim of its own success.

In a new era that called for healing across the old East-West divide, for a European defense identity and for constructive links with Moscow, it was the European Union, not NATO, that most believed would shape the Continent’s new security system.

The experts were wrong.

Just how wrong will be underscored when the 16 North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers gather in Berlin on Monday.

Meeting less than a mile from where the Berlin Wall once stood, alliance ministers will grapple with key issues facing the Continent today--including the extension of NATO membership to Central and Eastern Europe and the search for a more positive relationship with Moscow.

Three simple facts explain why the alliance has kept its central role:

* Member states have realized that four decades of close military cooperation and training are a valuable asset.

* The alliance has successfully shifted its focus to address the Continent’s new threats.

* Europeans have concluded that American involvement is a vital ingredient for peace in the Old World.

Because of all this, the NATO agenda in Berlin is loaded with significant security issues, although some of them will purposely be played down.

On the eve of the Russian election, for example, ministers will barely whisper the word “enlargement,” even though they are committed to formalizing a timetable for expansion by the end of the year.

For Moscow, the idea that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic might one day become members of NATO raises political hackles.

Instead, the ministers are expected to highlight the success of Russian participation in the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia-Herzegovina and also stress the desire to engage Moscow in planning a security system for the next century.

“Only together with Russia can there be security in Europe,” said the meeting’s host, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.

But it is the delicate issue of “Europeanizing” the alliance that tops the Berlin agenda.

The foreign ministers are expected to approve a concept that would enable some or all of NATO’s 14 European states to undertake a military operation without U.S. ground forces but with technical and logistic help from the Americans.

The concept constitutes a major step in the direction of a much-discussed European security and defense identity, a step that would permit the European allies to tackle brush-fire conflicts either at home or abroad with limited, yet essential, U.S. help.

Under the plan, a NATO nation operating on its own could draw on alliance assets if the other countries agree.

Despite its attractions, many details remain unresolved. The foreign ministers are expected not to resolve these differences in Berlin but to merely approve the work completed so far.