EDITORIAL : PREMATURE PROMISES PLANS TO EXPAND NATO PUT THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE.

THE West has a good thing going for it in Russia. Thanks to Russian President Boris Yeltsin's election victory over a Communist earlier this month, democracy is alive in most of what former President Ronald Reagan once called ``the evil empire.''

So, why spoil things by creating needless tensions? Why give Russia's ultranationalists or die-hard Communists an emotional issue that they can exploit by presenting them with something that they can characterize as an external threat? Russians have been fearful of invasions for centuries. There is no need now for the West to give Russians the impression that outsiders are ganging up on them.

But that's precisely what Washington is doing by promising to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Yeltsin is deeply disturbed by the prospect that Poland and perhaps some other nations in Eastern Europe will be allowed to join NATO. Thus, the push to expand NATO threatens to jeopardize the warm relations that have been established between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An even broader issue is what role, if any, should NATO play now that the Soviet Union is history and its former Eastern European satellite states have achieved independence. Are there strong, valid reasons for maintaining NATO? Or are politicians and bureaucrats trying to keep the old anti-Soviet military alliance alive simply because they have become accustomed to it and haven't seriously considered more appropriate political alternatives?

Nevertheless, plans to expand NATO seem firmly in place. President Clinton welcomed Poland's president, Alexander Kwasniewski, to Washington Monday by saying, ``You should make no mistake about it: NATO will expand.''

Clinton's prospective rival in the November election, Republican Bob Dole, has been even more insistent on expanding NATO. Shortly before leaving the Senate, Dole introduced the ``NATO Enlargement Facilitation Act,'' which would authorize $60 million in military aid for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

It's obvious what Clinton and Dole are trying to accomplish politically. They are wooing the votes of Polish-Americans and others with roots in Eastern Europe.

What's less clear, however, is what precisely the expansion of NATO would accomplish.

Expanding NATO to the east isn't likely to increase security, especially if it inflames nationalistic passions in Russia. Such a move also would stretch NATO's supply lines even further while achieving few if any strategic or tactical advantages for the alliance.

The fundamental problem, though, is that Washington and its NATO allies have yet to determine precisely where they are going and why. They need to decide those matters before extending invitations to others to join the club and go along for the ride.