Bush, Senate back NATO expansion. (Insider Report).

President Bush used the 58th anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory over Germany, on May 8th, to hail the addition of seven "former" Communist nations as new members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. With White House backing, the Senate voted 96-0 to ratify the addition of the seven new NATO members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. President Bush and the internationalist cheerleaders are suggesting that the NATO expansion will greatly assist the global fight against terrorism. They point to NATO's new mission in taking over the occupation of Afghanistan. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson has called NATO's April 16th Afghan decision a "watershed" for the alliance. "Indeed," said Robertson in a May 12th op-ed for the International Herald Tribune, "it is now seen as natural for NATO foreign ministers to look beyond Afghanistan to consider a possible role for the Alliance in post-conflict Iraq. That is also what happened last month. There are no decisio ns yet but no NATO country is ruling out a role in the right circumstances."

These developments, said the NATO chief, represent "hard-nosed, pragmatic multilateralism in action by an alliance that has dramatically adapted and transformed, and is now demonstrating that it can deliver when the going is at its toughest." It also represents a major step forward in NATO's evolution as the UN's global military enforcement arm.