SMITH: Mr. -- Secretary Cohen you mentioned the instability as being the threat that the future NATO might -- the dominant threat that future NATO might face. Let me see if I can get a little better understanding of that. In the preamble and also in Article Five of NATO the term common defense is used. And also frankly, the term stability -- to protect stability and also to ensure the common defense. But in terms of instability for example, if one of the prospective members of NATO were to have the type of domestic problems that, say, Bosnia is now having. In your mind would that be the type of instability that would warrant a collective action on the part of the other members of NATO should that government or the government of one of those countries ask for help?
COHEN: No. That is not what is contemplated at all. A domestic problem of instability is not NATO's interest, as such. It's a collective defensive mechanism where anyone of the countries who are a part of NATO are attacked from another country. But an internal dispute is not something that NATO would be engaged in.
SMITH: Supposing that internal dispute moved beyond the borders of that nation?
COHEN: It would depend on the nation that were possibly subject to attack from without. That may very well -- if that country were a member of NATO, then obviously you'd have a collective defense involved.
SMITH: In using the term "instability" though, aren't we really redefining NATO beyond the common defense argument?
COHEN: Well...
SMITH: What type of instability...
COHEN: Let me give you an example as to why I think having countries who otherwise will be outside who might qualify for NATO, but who are not in NATO today, might find it more easier to engage in conflict.
I have to raise the question as to whether or not, if Turkey and Greece were not part of NATO, whether or not they might have engaged in conflict in the past. By virtue of the fact that they are in NATO, given the historic differences that they have, nonetheless, we've been able to subordinate those to the overall interests of NATO itself.
Whether -- if they hadn't been involved in NATO, what might be the result? One can only speculate. But it seems to me that if you have countries that have historic animosities, tensions, ethnic rivalries, and somehow they are in a security relationship, you have a mechanism whereby you can prevent conflict from occurring.
And that would be an example where good neighborliness is one of the key elements. Under Bill Perry's principles, new members must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders. That's a key element involved as well.
ALBRIGHT: Could I just tack on to that?
SMITH: Certainly.
ALBRIGHT: I think that we have always thought of NATO, obviously, as a military alliance. But it has had a political dimension all these years. And in addition to the Greek-Turkish example that Secretary Cohen used, I think it has led to
reconciliation between Germany and France. It has helped to solidify democracy in Spain.
And just the prospect of NATO membership has, in fact, helped deal with a long-standing problem between Hungary and Romania. So the -- I think we need to broaden our ideas of what NATO has, in fact, been doing all this time, so it's not a complete departure.
SMITH: There's a lot of concern, certainly on this committee, I know, and I'm sure other members of the Senate as well, about what we perceive to be shortfalls in the defense budget itself in areas of modernization, procurement, et cetera -- some say as high as perhaps $18 billion just in this fiscal year alone.
Can we handle, adequately handle, Madame Secretary, the whole aspect of the additional member states? Number one.
And number two, is there some role for the State Department to -- although all the dollars come from the same source -- but is there some role for the State Department here in picking up some of those costs?
ALBRIGHT: Let me just say that the State Department budget -- thank you for asking this -- is less than 1 percent of the federal budget. We can barely do what we're doing. And in front of other committees, I am asking for money there.
So clearly, we are partners. And the State Department is picking up large portions of negotiating all of this, as well as working, obviously, with all those countries to make sure that there is not instability, and assisting in, for instance, the consummation of the Romanian-Hungarian new relationship that was carried on by a State Department diplomat.
SMITH: Let me ask you one final question, Madam Secretary, regarding some of the ethnic problems that have -- let me ask you a specific one. In Poland, there is this -- the concern, the dispute going on now between a very small Jewish minority of, say, 20,000 or 25,000 people, but also in a broader respect, the whole nation of Israel supporting, preserving Auschwitz as a historical marker, or monument, if you will.
Whereas the Catholic majority of Poland opposes that. They want to tear it down and get rid of it. And these kinds of disputes -- I use that as an example of the kind of dispute that could elevate substantially and cause severe unrest in the government of Poland at some point. Does this concern you at all, this kind of thing?
ALBRIGHT: Well, that particular dispute is one that I think is being handled in a responsible -- it's gone through many ups and downs. But let me just say here that I think that our best bet in kind of eliciting good behavior is basically to know that countries are a part of our system.
That our watching their human rights records or conflicts within various groups is unacceptable within a democratic system, within the way that we expect countries to behave. And I think that the best way to make sure that these kinds of conflicts, a variety of them, do not get more serious is, in fact, to have a way that we are all encompassed in order to live up to the ideals that we want.
But I think the issue here is that we and Secretary Cohen has stated this now many times, Europe's problems that were kind of visited on the world came as a result of the lack of early thought about a variety of border conflicts, ethnic conflicts, relationships of states splitting up.
And I think that what we're trying to do here now is get a handle on what could be greater problems down the road. And have a system through an alliance system and a -- there are a lot of other organizations that we can talk about some other time that Europe is using in order to try to deal with the kinds of problems you're discussing.
But the main thing here is we're trying to get ahead of the curve this time. We have an opportunity here, and we think that the enlargement of NATO is one method to have that happen.
SMITH: Secretary Cohen, did you want to respond to the procurement question? I kind of moved away from you, and -- if you...
COHEN: Well, I do. And let me try to respond to not only that question but several have been raised here. When you look at the amount of money that's being spent in Bosnia, by way of example, we will have spent during our stay there some $6.5 billion to try and prevent the spread of that particular conflict south and east.
If we can, in fact, help shape the environment, if NATO enlargement brings countries in that qualify for admission that help stabilize a region, we're far less likely to spend that kind of money. If you measure up what it's projected as far as modernizing the infrastructure and what our contribution would be, and we're looking at the -- roughly that $150 to $200 million a year. Again, rough estimates.
COHEN: But if you measured that against what we spent now in Bosnia or will have spent by June of next year, you can see that preventing instability from spreading will be very cost effective.
With respect to the procurement side of things, we are going through the QDR process, as Secretary -- Senator Warner -- sorry, I was in the chair too long here -- but Senator Warner mentioned about QDR. We're going to have to reshape our forces as well. We have to modernize our forces.
And we've come up with a strategy, and you'll be hearing about this from me. And I'm not sure I'll be invited to sit on the other side of this podium when I come here in the middle of May.
But it's going to require us to have a strategy of shaping the environment. How do we do that? Forward presence. We're going to have roughly 100,000 people in the Pacific. We're going to have roughly 100,000 people in Europe.
And our presence will help shape the environment to prevent conflicts from breaking out. And shaping the environment can run all the way from humanitarian operations, peacekeeping operations, a variety of things that will be involved in shaping the environment to make sure we don't get involved in conflicts, that we help prevent the spread of conflict.
So shaping the environment, being able to respond effectively, that means relying not only the current systems, but what we call leap-ahead technologies; and how do we get there; and finally, preparing for the future. All of that is involved in the QDR process, and we're going to have -- we're planning on this -- I'm planning on this right now -- roughly, the same amount of money that we have today.
Now, is that unrealistic of me to expect that we should have roughly 3 percent of our GDP that goes to defense? We're getting below that. We're actually going to be down to 2.9. That's the lowest we've ever been prior to World War II.
And so we've got to maintain adequate levels of spending, and I'm planning on projecting that spending at roughly where we are today with inflation adjustments, constant dollars.
I think that we can achieve what we need to achieve in our procurement budget by a number of pretty spartan measures that will have to be undertaken. Other nations will have to do the same. They're going to have to restructure their budgets as well.
But we're moving into a new era. We're looking to new technologies. We're looking to new structures in order to carry out our responsibilities. But being forward-deployed, being engaged, shaping the environment, is part of preventing conflict, and that's what NATO enlargement also means.
And so if you look at the price tag for NATO enlargement, and you compare that in terms of what might happen if you had to contend with a fuse that starts to get lit and burns throughout Central Europe, for whatever reason, I think the price tag is going to look very, very reasonable.
SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.