After experiencing the genuine alarm felt by Americans when we envisioned missiles only a step away in Cuba aimed at strategic points in our country, the U.S., and even at us individually, how do we expect the Russians to react when faced with a 1,000-mile wall (you name it) from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea at their very boders formed by U.S.-sponsored NATO partners? They are not going to be left to decide whether our intentions are peacful or not.

Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalists have already been awarded enough ammunition to undo every bit of Yeltsin’s reassurances and cast a shadow of fear and uncertainty across 11 time zones to the Pacific. It almost looks as if we were trying to revive the Cold War.

Assuming that most Americans really desire peace, let’s invite Russia itself to join NATO as a partner-in-peace and, if she accepts, then jointly ask her immediate neighbors to the west and the former members of the Soviet Union to become partners too. Stuart M. Gross Orono