U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 93/12/02 Excerpts of NAC Intervention, Brussels Office of the Spokesman AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY EXCERPTS OF NAC INTERVENTION BY SECRETARY OF STATE WARREN CHRISTOPHER NATO Headquarters (Brussels, Belgium) December 2, 1993 I am delighted to be with you for this very important meeting of the North Atlantic Council. First let me pay tribute to our Secretary General. Manfred Woerner deserves tremendous credit for his leadership, determination and dedication. We are all in his debt. Let me add that I have valued the exchanges that I've had in recent weeks with many of my colleagues here today as we have approached this ministerial. Last June in Athens, on behalf of President Clinton, I proposed a NATO summit. Today, we must ensure that the Brussels summit that is just six weeks away is successful for our alliance and for each of our member nations. At the summit, President Clinton will articulate his vision of transatlantic security and prosperity -- and the strong and unbreakable link between the United States and Europe. The President recognizes that American leadership remains indispensable. And he is determined that the United States will continue to provide that leadership because it is profoundly in the interest of both the United States and Europe to do so. The security of our Alliance depends not only on our military capability. Security also depends fundamentally on our ability to consolidate democratic institutions, ensure respect for human rights, and sustain the hard march of economic reform to eventual prosperity. Each of these post-Cold War elements of security must advance -- or none of them will. Western leaders in the late 1940s created the institutions that enabled Western Europe to rebuild and renew itself after the Second World War. Their foresight and fortitude and the steadfastness of their successors enabled our values to prevail in a long and bitter Cold War. And millions of people, for the first time in their lives, have the chance to enjoy political freedom and economic opportunity. We must resolve to secure and expand the blessings of peace that our predecessors did so much to achieve. We must help to reduce the insecurity and instability that has come with the demise of the Soviet empire. We must build the structures and the patterns of cooperation that will help to ensure the success of democracy and free markets in the East. We must move decisively beyond the age of confrontation in Europe when the balance of power was a poor substitute for a concert of free peoples. We must infuse this Alliance with the new vision and vitality that earned many of our distinguished predecessors the mantle of statesmanship. We have many issues to decide. But the Alliance must also make an historic choice. That choice is whether to embrace innovation or risk irrelevance. We must adapt this Alliance to the new security challenges that confront Europe today. At the same time, we must strengthen the core political cooperation, security commitments and military capabilities that have kept the Sixteen strong and free. We must act to revitalize the Alliance's continued central role in European security and in the transatlantic partnership. We all recognize that our most important summit task is to decide how the Atlantic Alliance will reach out to the East. Two years ago, we created the North Atlantic Cooperation Council -- the NACC. With the Partnership for Peace, we can now deepen NATO's engagement with the East. We must demonstrate that the West is committed to helping Europe's new democracies address some of their most immediate security problems. At the same time, we should signal that we envision an evolutionary expansion of the Alliance. We should extend an invitation to join the Partnership for Peace to all NACC states and other nations on whom we agree. Those who join will enter a much fuller relationship with NATO. The Partnership for Peace will provide a means for each state to develop a practical working relationship to NATO and determine what resources it wants to commit to that relationship. We envision defense cooperation developing in a broad range of fields. The Partnership will be a military relationship but, like all of NATO's activities, it will have a strong political dimension. The Allies should provide all participants in the Partnership with a pledge of consultation in the event of threats to their security. And for partners once part of the communist world, this cooperation will help adapt defense structures to civilian control. The Partnership will enhance regional stability. It will develop capabilities to meet contingencies, including crisis management, humanitarian missions and peace-keeping. It will develop useful habits of cooperation. It will enable us to develop common military standards and procedures. Peace Partners will train side-by-side with NATO members and take part in joint exercises. To ensure operational effectiveness, the Partnership should have a planning group in Mons and should make full use of the political and military institutions of NATO here in Brussels. Active partners will have permanent representatives to take part in the work of these organizations when dealing with Partnership matters. Our new partners should finance their own involvement, but some new NATO resources will be necessary. There will be costs, but of a manageable size. The United States stands ready to contribute its share, and it is essential that all Allies do the same. Let me be clear with respect to a very important issue that the Partnership raises. The Partnership is an important step in its own right. But it can also be key step toward NATO membership. NATO is not an alliance of convenience, but an alliance of commitment. Expanded membership must strengthen, not weaken the ability of the Alliance to act. The Partnership will maintain NATO's core purpose and capabilities. The current military and political processes of the Alliance will continue undiluted, but the Partnership will multiply the ability of the Alliance to meet security needs. I am pleased that the Partnership for Peace has received the active support -- and reflects the constructive suggestions -- of every NATO ally. The Alliance must understand that this Partnership represents a decisive commitment to become more fully engaged in security to the East. This is an historic commitment that our leaders should be prepared to make at the January summit. Today we should continue our work to make sure that next month, NATO will take this decisive step to deepen our security cooperation with our new Partners. We want the Partnership to begin functioning next year. Turning former adversaries into partners is in the fundamental interest of every member of this Alliance. We must seize this extraordinary opportunity -- the opportunity that this Alliance has worked so successfully to create. A second summit objective I want to address is the need to strengthen the evolving relationship between NATO and the Western European Union. Previous American administrations were ambivalent about the development of a distinct European security capability. Today, the United States fully supports efforts to create a strong and effective European Security and Defense Identity. Such an identity is a natural element of European integration. It will make the European Union a more capable partner in the pursuit of our mutual interests. A third summit objective should be adapting Allied military capabilities. The United States has proposed the creation of Combined Joint Task Forces. We believe CJTF strikes the right balance. It would allow new flexibility for organizing peace-keeping and other tasks. It would enable NATO to take effective action in contingencies that do not evoke Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. The CJTF concept will strengthen existing command arrangements and make them more flexible. It will allow maximum use of limited resources. It will demonstrate that each of our countries is bearing its fair share of common responsibilities. And it will ensure that NATO and WEU work as partners, not rivals, as their relationship evolves. Finally, between now and the summit, we must also prepare the Alliance to meet other new challenges that have come in the wake of the Cold War. Most urgent is curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. This threat constitutes the arms control agenda of the 1990s. At the summit, we must make a fundamental alliance commitment to combat proliferation. The most immediate task is to develop the overall policy framework to NATO efforts against proliferation. We envision a senior group at 16, with representatives of both foreign and defense ministers. NATO supports, but should not duplicate, non-proliferation efforts underway through other institutions and negotiations. Our non-proliferation agenda should be consistent with our essential mission of protecting the security of our members. We must adapt alliance military strategy and capabilities to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction and protect against their use. We must intensify our individual and collective efforts to isolate states that actively pose proliferation threats. Let me raise one final issue that is not on our agenda today but that each of our nations must also address. Last June at our Athens ministerial, I made a statement in this forum with respect to the Uruguay Round. Let me repeat that advancing transatlantic security requires us to focus not only on renewing the NATO Alliance but also on successfully concluding the GATT negotiations. Our publics and parliaments understand that transatlantic relations cannot be overly compartmentalized -- either substantively or institutionally. As great allies and great powers, Europe and the United States share great responsibilities. We are partners in a community of shared values and interests. Our values and interests converge in this Alliance -- and they converge in a successful conclusion to the Uruguay Round. Through NATO and through GATT, we can reinforce transatlantic security and prosperity -- and reaffirm the transatlantic partnership. We have the chance to construct the architecture of a better world. Since the end of the Second World War, together we have created and sustained a successful liberal trading order. That system has allowed our economies to grow and our people to prosper. Now we have an historic opportunity to open markets further, to the benefit of our nations on both sides of the Atlantic. These are momentous weeks for the West. By December 15, we have the responsibility to come together and lift the global economy. On January 10, we have the responsibility to come together and renew the most successful Alliance in history. The United States and Europe share these responsibilities -- and we must meet them. (###)