INHOFE: Right. I want to, Mr. Chairman, insert in the record after my comments an article by Thomas Friedman, who wrote a column in The New York Times about 10 days ago called "Bye, Bye NATO." Since I share some of that concern and the prejudice, I think it's pretty smart. So I want to put it in the record.
INHOFE: It's a little less optimistic than our two outstanding secretaries, but I do want it in the record if that would be permissible, Mr. Chairman.
THURMOND: Without objection, so ordered.
INHOFE: Secretary Albright, I just want to thank you for raising foreign policy and our national security to more than an occasional blip on the radar screen of public consciousness in America. I think you've done a great job in that respect.
I have a very quick question for Secretary Cohen. The European Union is in quite a debate now about a single currency. And one of the things that happens when they go to that form or that equation is that they're going to have some pretty tough deficit regimens.
And when I was talking to the Transatlantic Partnership Network Group headed up by Bill Frenzel, quite a few of that membership indicated a lot of pressure on entitlements and spending over there, even worse than we have it here -- or even more severe.
Have we factored that in, in terms of what happens if Europe goes to the single currency, and we have less money on the part of the nations that are in NATO now and the prospective people that will be coming in in terms of cost? I worry about that.
COHEN: I think most of the countries that I have dealt with -- the NATO countries -- are looking at restructuring their militaries to take that into account. They know they're going to be under heavy pressure as far as spending is concerned -- deficit spending.
You're seeing restructuring taking place. Certainly, it's been proposed to the British, the French, the Germans, the Italians; they're all now looking at ways in which they can restructure so that they can achieve the kind of savings that will be necessary for them to maintain adequate spending for the defense.
INHOFE: Well, you know the pressures that we hear in both the House and the Senate. I can remember many speeches by my colleagues in the House when I had the privilege of being there. Make NATO pay more as a way to get our deficit down. And obviously, if they go to the single currency, those pressures will be great.
We've about explored the Russia issue to the degree I'm not sure I can add anything. But I do want to let you know, several weeks ago I went with Ted Stevens on -- I survived CODEL Stevens -- and we went to Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok, and Sakhalin Island, as well as South Korea and North Korea.
And I can tell you that economic survival is number one on the minds of everybody we talked to -- not NATO expansion, although I will say that several of the governors and the military leaders sort of shrugged their shoulders, and said, well, it's perception in Moscow. They're a long ways from Moscow.
But I think in terms of our vital national interest, I want to toss my two cents worth in. I think obviously the oil reserves in the Caspian Sea, and the oil reserves and the gas reserves in the Russian far east, which are immense -- just incredibly lucrative in terms of the free world's future oil supply -- the borders -- the common borders that Russia has with the nations of Islam, and the nuclear strategic forces, as questioned by Senator Kennedy -- all those things are in our national interest.
And I go back to the question asked by Senator Kempthorne, and I'm not going to ask it because you've already responded many times.
But I wonder in our nostalgic memory of the threat from the former Soviet Union and our desire to -- what? -- rewrite history or start in on a new beginning.
INHOFE: I'm sort of like Senator Nunn. I worry about those national interests. I don't want to isolate the hardliners over in the Soviet Union.
And so I think we have to be very careful. And I can appreciate all of your responses. As a matter of fact, I'm learning a whole new vocabulary here in my new membership here. I even made a list, which I can't find now. Robust structures, relationships; old think; new think; dynamic, creative stability; enlargement, hegemony; and bona _[0mfides. It's the bona fides, Madame Secretary, that really got my attention. I hope I have my bona fides in order. I don't know what the hell they are. But I hope you have them in my order.
ALBRIGHT: I hope you do, too.
INHOFE: And somebody wrote down here that was Socrates' dog, you know, bona fides.
And that's all very good. But it's like the TV ad with the fellow with the telephones -- I can't remember, you know, who's ad it was -- and the phone rings, and he said: I can do that. I can do that. I can do that.
And the phones are ringing all around, and all of a sudden he looks in the camera, and he says, how am I going to do this?
And it is a real worry, because we have strong national interests, I think, with the existing Soviet Union, and they're not much concerned about NATO. I can tell -- well, they are concerned about NATO in Moscow, but in the Russian far east, they're worried about their survival. I don't know if you want to make a comment on that. You've pretty well gone into it. But I did want to toss that in, in terms of my real concern.
ALBRIGHT: Let me just say, Senator, that I admire you for having taken that trip, and I would say that it's very important when members of Congress travel. I think it allows you all to be able to see the issues as they are played out on the ground, and I think allows us all to have a much more bona fides debate.
And if I might say that, I think we have a genuine issue here, in terms of the numbers of issues and problems that reach out to the level that we all have to deal with.
Life, as I said earlier, was pretty simple for a long time, where there were blocs, and we didn't have to deal with the myriad issues that you have discussed. We are very much aware of what you are talking about in terms of the Caspian and the oil and the relationships with the former Soviet republics. And we are working all those issues.
But -- and this is the point, and this is why we are so interested in trying to develop a variety of other structures, not the NATO enlargement, but other structures that can deal, help us deal, with those issues, because we cannot do them alone. We are not the world's policeman. There are issues that we cannot deal with, but somebody has to.
And so we are trying through the United Nations peacekeeping operations or other methods through the UN or other organizations -- the OSCE -- to deal with problems that, while they may not be vital national security interests at this moment, may in fact spread in a way where they will come home to America. And so I think the issues are how to divide them, decide what the best tool for dealing with X problem is, and decide what we can do, what we can't do. And that's what you pay us for.
INHOFE: My time is up.