51.   Many conservatives in the coalition fear that expanding NATO will dilute the military alliance and subject the United States to myriad new military commitments.

52.   NATO expansion, Soros said, would provoke the Russians to look for military alliances.

53.   NATO was born after World War II as an anti-Soviet military alliance.

54.   NATO, the Atlantic military alliance spawned and shaped by the Cold War, has taken an important step toward restructuring itself for the needs of a new era.

55.   No military alliances are faced off in a global arms race.

56.   NATO last week invited Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to be the first former Soviet bloc nations to join the transatlantic military alliance.

57.   NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said that the military alliance was not ready to endorse a missile defense system, which he said still remains sketchy.

58.   None of this means that Russia wants to forge an military alliance with Iraq or renew cold war hostilities with the United States.

59.   Now that the Germans are very much up and the Russians are embracing capitalism, an anti-Soviet and to some extent anti-German military alliance is hardly viable.

60.   Nor do the Hungarian people regret joining the military alliance, he said.