2120 Rayburn House Office Building ° Washington, DC 20515 Committee Webpage Address ° HTTP:// www. house. gov/ nsc/
PRESS RELEASE House National Security Committee
Floyd D. Spence, Chairman
STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN FLOYD D. SPENCE
HEARING ON NATO EXPANSION
July 17, 1997
Today the committee convenes to consider the critically important issue of the expansion of the NATO
alliance.
It is probably not an exaggeration to say that NATO is the most successful alliance in history. However,
NATO's success sometimes obscures how hard it is to forge an alliance that works. Napoleon once remarked
that he preferred to fight against alliances because they could not maintain political solidarity.
NATO's success – and its victory in the Cold War — is due in large part to two fundamental principles:
First, NATO has sustained its focus on collective defense, designed primarily to respond to an external threat to
alliance members. And second, NATO has always been characterized by strong American leadership. In my
judgment, deviating from these principles could place at risk both the alliance as we know it and, perhaps in the
long term, even the stability and security that prevails today in Europe. While I personally lean in favor of
NATO expansion – I do so only if the fundamental character of the alliance and American leadership are
preserved.
NATO's adherence to these fundamental principles not only has served the cause of security and
stability in Europe, it has solidified American support for the alliance here at home. In the wake of the recent
Madrid summit, many Americans are considering this idea of NATO expansion for the first time. This past
April, Mr. Dellums and I jointly wrote to the president to express our bipartisan concerns about the
Administration's plan for expanding NATO. We raised a number of fundamental and important questions on
issues ranging from the role of NATO in U. S. national security strategy to new military force requirements and
costs – questions that we believed need to be answered prior to initiating the expansion of NATO.
Such a development would be a tragedy for those nations that aspire to join NATO, but it
would represent a strategic disaster for the United States. From this nation's birth, matters of war and peace in
Europe have had a profound effect on America. If NATO is to remain a valuable instrument not only of Euro-pean
security, but also of American security, the fundamental character of the alliance, even an expanded
alliance, must remain the same.
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2120 Rayburn House Office Building ° Washington, DC 20515 Committee Webpage Address ° HTTP:// www. house. gov/ nsc/
Henry Kissinger has been one of the leaders in the drive to expand the alliance, but he recently con-cluded,
"I confess that, had I known the price of NATO enlargement would be the gross dilution of NATO, I
might would have urged other means to achieve the objective." This is a sobering statement from a serious
statesman that ought to give us all pause for thought.
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