EDITORIAL : BALKANIZING NATO IT'S TIME FOR SERIOUS DEBATE OVER THE HAZARDS OF EXPANDING THE ALLIANCE.

MILITARY alliances are inherently clumsy. Even the one between the United States and Great Britain had its bumpy moments during World War II, notwithstanding the diplomatic talents of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, and the close personal relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The North American Treaty Organization is enormously more cumbersome than the one forged by the United States and Britain to defeat Nazi Germany. Further, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has left NATO without a credible potential enemy, it's raison d'etre.

So what are Western leaders doing about all this? Amazingly, they are engaged in a headlong race to expand NATO.

The leading candidates for membership at this time are Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. But it's not likely to stop there. Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and others are clamoring to join NATO. Some are openly lobbying Washington politicians who are sensitive to the clout of ethnic groups. ``NATO remains open to all European democracies,'' says Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

It's enormously encouraging and satisfying to see the emergence of freedom and democracy in nations that, for the most part, suffered at the heels of tyrants for centuries. But their participation in NATO is bound to lead to more confusion at a time when NATO's mission is unclear - and its military capacity is being reduced.

Fortunately, some members of Congress are having second thoughts about this. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has appointed a 20-member observer group to work on NATO expansion. ``We must not tear the fabric of the alliance by stretching it too quickly,'' group member Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said last month.

Hutchinson's remark was on target. We hope that it will alert Congress to the risks of NATO expansion and finally prompt the kind of debate that this critical issue deserves.

In our opinion, there are two paramount issues. One is whether it really makes sense militarily to extend NATO and U.S. commitments deep into Eastern Europe.

The other is whether the Western democracies are playing into the hands of anti-democratic elements in Moscow by giving the Russian people the impression that the West is ganging up on them. If NATO expansion has the effect of reversing the democratic trend in Russia, the world will become a more dangerous place, regardless of how many members NATO has.