HELSINKI- Without waiting for either President Boris Yeltsin's heart operation or the U.S. presidential election, NATO has launched a complex set of negotiations to bring about what is called a strategic partnership with Russia designed to serve as an umbrella for an enlargement of the Western alliance. The goal is to wrap it all up by early next summer, when a NATO summit is expected to ratify the outcome.
This is primarily an American-German undertaking American, because it will make NATO the linchpin of a European security order under U.S. leadership; German, because after half a century of frontline duty the Germans understandably wish to be relieved.
"The heart of Europe beats in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw just as in Vienna, Berlin and Paris," the German foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, said in a recent speech, thus pointing his finger at the three countries at the head of the line outside NATO's door.
In the bad old days they would have been called buffer states. Today it is politically correct to describe their inclusion in NATO as an eastern complement to Germany's western integration.
Russians are not likely to use such language. The difference is more than semantic; it is conceptual. In Russian eyes, NATO enlargement will formally ratify the loss of the "outer empire" that the Soviet Union (with American acquiescence) conquered during the last phase of World War II.
Poland, for centuries the pivotal country in the East-West contest, will finally move out of Moscow's shadow, in a fundamental shift in Europe's geopolitical structure. It is futile to expect the Russian government to grant it explicit approval.
A Russian diplomat recently described his government's position by way of an analogy. He recalled that the United States never recognized the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic states, but this did not affect the overall relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Similarly, he said, Russia will not recognize the legitimacy of a NATO enlargement, but this will not prevent it from cooperating with the Western alliance.
Russia is prepared to deal with NATO - on its own terms. Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov has rejected the notion that Russia could be coopted into Western institutions. Russia must be treated as a Eurasian superpower on equal footing with the Western alliance. A compromise on NATO enlargement, according to Mr. Primakov, is possible if "NATO is developed through a dialogue with Russia, and an understanding with Russia is reached before decisions on enlargement are made."
NATO insists that Russia will not be given a veto on enlargement. Nevertheless, the search for an agreement with Russia is on. A formal decision on new NATO members will not be made before the summit planned for early next summer.
The NATO-Russia agreement has even been given a name before its birth. It is to be called a charter - an ambitious term designed to satisfy Russia's craving for status. This makes the nations in between, like the Baltic states, all the more anxious about their own status.
They are. being reassured that NATO's door will remain open. The answer to the applicants who will not make the first group of entrants will not be "no" but "not yet." In the meantime they will receive therapy in the form of PFP Plus - an enhanced program of Partnership for Peace activities.
Given the Russian attitude, the promise of possible later admission to NATO sounds hollow. Once the charter is in force, any further enlargement is bound to become subject to negotiations with Russia.
Nor will there be much pressure within NATO for taking in additional members. German interests will be satisfied by the inclusion of Poland and the former Hapsburg lands. Other NATO states have even less interest in eastward expansion. The Baltic peoples may feel that they will have to wait until "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb."
The hope is that such apprehensions will be rendered obsolete by the ever closer web of military cooperation that NATO and Russia have envisaged in the projected charter. This reflects the faith in the universality of democratic values that underlies Western policies today.
But the second coming of the Enlightenment has not yet reached Russia, which is still struggling to find its way out of the ruins of the Soviet system.
While in the West the military function has been sublimated into crisis management, peacekeeping and other "soft" activities, in Russia it is still primarily a matter of hard-core defense. The West believes that security can best be achieved through integration; in Russia, geopolitics is still a much used term.
Thus those whose task is to design the NATO-Russia charter will have to pick their way through a minefield of potential misunderstandings.
The writer, a former Finnish ambassador to the United Nations, is a member of the executive committee of the Trilateral Commission's European branch, which meets in Helsinki this coming weekend. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.