EXPANDING Nato eastwards seemed like a good idea at the time. The Warsaw Pact had disintegrated, the Berlin Wall had come down, and it seemed prudent to seize the moment to create a new buffer zone on someone else's turf against the day when a cash-strapped Russia might regain delusions of grandeur.

Now, with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic on the verge of joining the great alliance, the first cracks in that logic have begun to appear. Experienced military and diplomatic experts fear that Europe may be teetering on the brink of a new arms race and a new nuclear stand-off to greet the millennium.

Instead of the predicted era of peace and stability, Moscow's perception is that of an iron ring closing slowly but inexorably round the rodina - the sacred motherland. Whatever the colour of the regime in the Kremlin, that represents an unacceptable threat and begs a powerful and politically inevitable response.

Waiting in the wings for membership are Slovenia and Romania. More contentiously, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also seeking entry to the club. Beyond all others, they would be the catalyst for a Russian riposte.

Moscow regards the Baltic as a Russian lake. During the long occupation of the area, it carried out not so much a policy of ethnic cleansing as one of ethnic replenishment, packing towns and cities such as Riga with native Russian stock to supplement the iron fist of the garrisons.

All of Russia's former allies dread a resurgence of its military power and are racing for what they fondly imagine to be the umbrella of American and West European protection. That might not necessarily be the case.

Proponents of the expansion believe it to be risk-free. In Moscow's reduced straits, and with its current dependence on Western capital for its own economic regeneration, the tattered former Red Army poses little immediate danger to

its neighbours. Part of that concept is wishful-thinking. Part is financially-motivated. The three initial contenders, if accepted, will have to spend billions of dollars to bring their forces up to Nato-compatible standard. The orders for fighter aircraft alone are set to top $3bn.

The American Senate has already voted down an amendment which would have placed a ceiling on US subsidies for weapons' purchases by the aspiring new kids on the block, thus virtually guaranteeing a sales bonanza for the US defence industrial complex.

Russia, which last year exported $2.7bn-worth of arms, is effectively out of the running for the lucrative contracts up for grabs. Nato-compatible means Nato-standard, means Nato-purchased. Joining the organisation involves Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic owing their collective military soul to the company store.

The first blip on the horizon of collective security may be the Ukraine, even more poverty-stricken than its former Soviet master, but inheritor of an imposing arsenal of both conventional and

second-hand nuclear firepower.

It is just conceivable that it might, a few years down the line, get into a scrap with Poland over ancient territorial grudges.Will Nato then deploy British, American, and German troops on to the steppes to defend its new protege, knowing that Russia would be minded to intervene on the other side?

There are similar, simmering mutual resentments between Hungary and Romania, centred mainly on treatment of ethnic minorities from the respective nations living as a result of historical accident within the boundaries of the other. If both were eventually Nato

members, whose side would the alliance take? When Albania, a third world country within Europe, descended into gun-law chaos a year ago, Nato did nothing, despite the danger of the many-sided conflict spilling over into Greece's backyard. And Greece is a Nato member of long standing.

Worse, if US diplomacy and econ-omic pressure fails this summer, Greece may find itself at war with another alliance member, Turkey, over deployment of a long-range anti-aircraft missile system on Cyprus, an island with a military airbase and no military aircraft.

Even intervention in Bosnia took more than three years and was only implemented through American pressure after perhaps 300,000 people had died and the United Nations had proved its ineffectiveness to the world on a grand scale.

Kosovo's smouldering unrest, almost ready to burst into outright civil war and consequent Serb repression, is another dilemma. Scores have already died. The remnants of the Albanian army stands ready to intervene on behalf of its ethnic brethren. The Balkan tinderbox continues to live up to its age-old reputation as a flashpoint for everyone else.

Yet Nato has made no move to send in the cavalry and stamp out the flames. And that is a Nato all too aware of the dangers of non-intervention. Decision-making is paralysed by the inability of the existing 16 members to agree a

common policy or to face the military and hard-cash cost of stepping once more into the breach.

What price then, a Nato which has three new members, or five, or eight? The only immediate effect must be further dilution of resolve. Some of the new candidates are themselves Slavs, automatically prejudiced in favour of Serbia's part in the proceedings within the Balkan cockpit. If the Baltic states finally achieve the criteria for membership and Russia literally stands by its guns to oppose what it regards as the final humiliation, will Nato's governments be inclined to risk general war? More probably, they will abandon Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to the likely fate of powerless Russian satellites and accept the psychological dent to their own credibility.

Russia may be on her military uppers, but she retains, even now, a powerful punch. Only this week, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, head of the Russian navy, said his fleet could still put 27 nuclear submarines, armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles, to sea and would concentrate resources to make sure that number was constant.