16 October 1997
(Says the case for NATO enlargement is compelling) (3950) Boston -- Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott says the case for NATO enlargement "is compelling." Making the case before the World Affairs Council of Boston October 16, Talbott cited these key points: "Twice in this century Europe has exploded into world wars. Those conflicts cost the lives of over half a million Americans. The Cold War also began in Europe....The enlargement of NATO is key to ensuring that Europe is a more peaceful place in the 21st century than it has been in the 20th.... "NATO is, and will remain, preeminently, a military organization -- a collective defense pact. The old threat that led to its creation 48 years ago has disappeared, but new ones have appeared. "From Bosnia and Croatia in the Balkans to Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus, more Europeans have died violently in the last five years than in the previous forty-five. "New threats -- arising from the South, or from the East -- may seem remote, but they are not unthinkable, especially in an era when missile technology and weapons of mass destruction are spreading. "NATO is already working to address these challenges, and the new members can help by providing strategically important locations, energetic fighting forces and specialized military capabilities." Talbott noted that NATO is "not just a military organization -- it is also a political one. "As Vaclav Havel, the man of letters and former dissident who is now President of the Czech Republic, pointed out when he was in Washington two weeks ago: NATO is a catalyst for strengthening the values and institutions that the Allies have in common: democracy, rule of law, respect for human and civil rights, tolerance of ethnic and religious differences, and civilian control of the military." Following is the State Department text, as prepared for delivery: (begin text) A NEW NATO, A NEW EUROPE, A NEW RUSSIA An Address by Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State World Affairs Council of Boston Thursday, October 16, 1997 Thank you, Don (Evans), for that kind introduction and also for the leadership you have given to the World Affairs Council of Boston. For almost half a century, this organization has enriched our national dialogue on foreign policy. I'm pleased to have a chance to join you in keeping that tradition alive. Events like this one affirm the principle that our government is accountable to its citizens. Those of us who work in Washington are more likely to pursue the right policies if, from time to time, we subject the underlying assumptions and long-range objectives of our country's foreign policy to the "kitchen table test" with the American people -- that is, if we get out beyond the Beltway and into the real world. Boston unquestionably qualifies: it's grappling with real-world issues, like how to avoid "the Big Dig" and worrying whether the Patriots will relocate to Rhode Island and whether the Celtics will rise again under the guidance of the gentleman from Kentucky. Today I want to talk about a subject of great importance, considerable interest and some controversy: the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I sat down yesterday to discuss NATO enlargement with members of the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor, and I'll be meeting after I leave here with their counterparts at the Boston Globe. As you're aware, those two papers have taken very different positions on the subject. We in the Clinton administration welcome a spirited, thorough debate on what is one of the most important foreign policy issues of our day. NATO is 48 years old. That makes it exactly the same age as the World Affairs Council and just a little younger than the baby-boomers among us. In 1949 12 nations of Europe and North America founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in response to the clear and present danger of Soviet expansion and aggression. Over the decades that followed, four others joined -- Greece, Turkey, West Germany, and Spain. During the last several years, 12 Central European states have expressed an interest in joining. Three months ago, in July, the NATO heads of state and government met in Madrid to invite three of those states -- Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- to begin talks on the terms of membership. In December we expect NATO to issue a formal invitation to these three countries to join the Alliance. They will accept almost instantly. A more gradual process will be the ratification of enlargement by all 16 of NATO's member states. Here in the United States, ratification requires approval by two-thirds of the Senate. Last week the Senate formally began its process of deliberation with testimony by Secretary Albright before the Foreign Relations Committee. Other hearings will follow, and they will undoubtedly generate increased discussion of this initiative across the country. We in the administration believe that the case for enlargement is compelling. It is rooted in the most vital security interests of this country. Quite simply, it is this: Twice in this century Europe has exploded into world wars. Those conflicts cost the lives of over half a million Americans. The Cold War also began in Europe, and it meant the expenditure of the equivalent of over 13,000,000 million dollars. The enlargement of NATO is key to ensuring that Europe is a more peaceful place in the 21st century than it has been in the 2Oth. And if Europe is safer and more prosperous, the United States will be too. In short, the costs associated with keeping NATO vigorous and relevant are a good investment in our own future. NATO is, and will remain, preeminently, a military organization -- a collective defense pact. The old threat that led to its creation 48 years ago has disappeared, but new ones have appeared. From Bosnia and Croatia in the Balkans to Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus, more Europeans have died violently in the last five years than in the previous 45. New threats -- arising from the south, or from the East -- may seem remote, but they are not unthinkable, especially in an era when missile technology and weapons of mass destruction are spreading. NATO is already working to address these challenges, and the new members can help by providing strategically important locations, energetic fighting forces and specialized military capabilities. But NATO is not just a military organization -- it is also a political one. As Vaclav Havel, the man of letters and former dissident who is now President of the Czech Republic, pointed out when he was in Washington two weeks ago: NATO is a catalyst for strengthening the values and institutions that the Allies have in common: democracy, rule of law, respect for human and civil rights, tolerance of ethnic and religious differences, and civilian control of the military. This is not something new. The Alliance has always had that political function and responsibility, including in its old, Cold War incarnation. In the `50s, NATO provided the security umbrella under which reconciliation between France and Germany could take place, and that laid the ground for the European Union. In the early `80s, NATO promoted the consolidation of civilian-led democracy in Spain. On numerous occasions, NATO has helped keep the peace between Greece and Turkey. Throughout its existence, NATO's unified command has removed the incentive for military competition among West European powers. I stress that point because it's easy to forget in today's world, when the unity of Western Europe seems natural and commonplace, that it was not always thus. For centuries, it was precisely the Western European powers -- anything but unified -- that were almost constantly at war with each other. NATO helped break that pattern of behavior and induce, in its stead, one of cooperation, collective defense and collective security. Some critics of NATO enlargement pose what they believe is the definitive rebuttal to our administration's policy: what's the point, they ask, in having an Alliance at all -- not to mention enlarging it -- if the original and principal adversary has disappeared? An alliance, according to the line of thinking, needs a clear-cut enemy in order to justify its existence. Well, not necessarily. In fact, in the past, particularly in 19th century Europe, alliances not only served to wage or deter war -- they have also been a device for managing constructive, non-competitive relations among their member-states. For example, the Quadruple Alliance of 1815 among Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain was intended to promote cooperation and stability in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. NATO doesn't need an enemy to justify its continued existence -- what it needs is an enduring purpose, and that it has: namely, to undergird transatlantic security, to provide the mechanisms for coordinating mutual defense, and to concert the will and capability of its members to meet new threats. President Clinton and his fellow Allied leaders believe that today, while retaining its military capacity and its core identity as a defense treaty, NATO can, more than ever before, foster integration and cooperation between what we used to think of as East and West. Moreover, NATO's open door to the East can foster integration and cooperation among the Central Europeans themselves. We want to do for the Central and East Europeans what Dean Acheson and George Marshall's generation did for Western Europe; we want to finish the historic project they started in 1949 -- making war in Europe impossible. There's already progress in that direction. The very prospect of NATO membership has encouraged positive, peaceful trends in Central Europe. In pursuit of their goal to join NATO, a number of Central European states have accelerated their internal reforms and improved relations with each other. To wit: Poland and Lithuania have created a joint peacekeeping battalion; several states have recently reached agreement on historically divisive issues like border recognition and the rights of ethnic minorities. Hungary and Romania have done this. So have the Czech Republic and Germany, and Romania and Ukraine. Accords like these can serve as potent vaccines against the kind of plague that has befallen the former Yugoslavia. These are the positive, affirmative arguments in favor of NATO enlargement. When the President faced this decision, he also had to consider the question of what the consequence would be if NATO did not enlarge. They would have been negative and serious. Had NATO refused to open its doors to new members, many in Central Europe would have heard a dispiriting, even antagonizing message; they would have concluded that we were permanently endorsing the dividing line that Joseph Stalin carved across Europe in 1945 and that he and his successors thereafter enforced through occupation and terror. The Central Europeans would have inferred that, having been subjugated in the past, they were now to be disqualified for security in the future. That would have been, I believe, an unconscionable case of double jeopardy. I know there is concern that any change in NATO, including expansion of its membership, will dilute its strength, undermine its effectiveness or alter its very identity. But just the opposite is true. NATO was strong during the Cold War precisely because it was dynamic -- because it was adaptive, because it was able to face the security challenges as they existed at the time, and as they evolved over time. Freezing the old NATO in amber would subject it to the risk of irrelevance and perhaps dissolution. If NATO did not take in new members, the Alliance would weaken as the Central and East European countries scrambled to jury-rig their own security arrangements, no doubt often at each other's expense -- and to the detriment of peace on the continent as a whole. Since the Madrid Summit, at which the three invitations were issued, there has been, naturally enough, considerable focus on the countries that have not been invited, along with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, to make up the so-called first tranche or admissions class. Those of us, from the President on down, who are working on this policy spend a lot of time thinking about precisely those emerging democracies. Some have applied for membership but were not selected at Madrid; others have not applied; still others are wary about, or opposed to, enlargement. While their attitudes toward NATO vary, our attitude toward them has a crucial common denominator: we are determined that the enlargement of the Alliance enhance not only the security of its own members, current and new, but that it also enhance the security of Europe as a whole -- members and non-members alike. To that end, we are bolstering and energizing the Partnership for Peace and creating the new Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. These are two bodies, the first founded in 1994 and the second just last May, that facilitate military and political cooperation with NATO among the 43 participating countries -- the 16 Allies, plus traditional neutral and non-aligned states like Austria, Sweden and Finland, plus the Central Europeans, plus the three Baltic states, plus all 12 former Soviet republics that now make up the Commonwealth of Independent States. For those who have now -- or may develop in the future -- a desire to join the Alliance, we have made clear that enlargement is not a one-time event. Madrid was the beginning of a process, not the end. The first will not be the last. Moreover -- and this is an especially important principle -- the process is ongoing and inclusive. At the Madrid summit in July, the leaders of NATO's member states affirmed that the Alliance's door remains open, and that no emerging democracy that aspires to full integration is excluded. In the days following the summit, President Clinton and Secretary Albright traveled to a number of countries that were not initially invited to join the Alliance to repeat and amplify that message. In Romania, the President was cheered by an enthusiastic crowd of over 100,000, while in Vilnius the assembled foreign ministers of the three Baltic states told Secretary Albright that they endorsed NATO's step-by-step approach to enlargement. In short, NATO's method for taking in new members is designed -- and widely acknowledged -- not to leave some states out in the cold; rather, it will, if executed skillfully, help thaw the security environment all the way across Europe to Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus and Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, on the border of China. Thinking, perhaps, of those rather exotic-sounding and remote countries at the far end of the Silk Road, some have asked, where are the geographical limits to NATO expansion? The right answer is: let's see; let's not be in a hurry to answer the question; which is to say, let's not be in a hurry to proclaim limits; let's keep an open mind as we look out the open door of the new NATO. The wrong answer would be one of premature and prejudicial precision, for that would be to draw a new line on the map. It would be to betray the chance we have to help build an undivided, increasingly integrated Europe. Now let me say a word about one very large and important country that is already part of the new Europe -- a country I've spent much of my life trying to understand: Russia. As all of you know, the issue of NATO enlargement is acutely neuralgic in Russia, especially for the political elite there. I was there last week, so my awareness of Russian views on this subject is quite fresh. Part of the problem is that NATO, in Russian, is a four-letter word; for half a century, it has been a synonym for "the enemy." Stereotypes die hard, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain. Just as many of our own experts and commentators cling to Cold War prejudices about Russians and what makes them tick, so many Russians still have in mind a Cold War image of NATO. These include Russian hardliners who long for what they remember as the glory days of the USSR and who exploit what they depict as the specter of an armor-plated, hostile NATO juggernaut to whip up nationalistic insecurities. There are also plenty of Russian reformers and democrats who worry -- and warn -- that NATO enlargement threatens to strengthen those reactionary forces. Judging from the time I've spent here, this is a view widely held in Boston, or at least in Cambridge. We believe that that risk is both exaggerated and manageable. President Clinton and President Yeltsin have devoted many hours over the past three years to discussing, face to face, how to keep their disagreement on this subject within the bounds of an overarching cooperative relationship between Russia and the United States. Earlier this year, Secretary Albright met four times with Foreign Minister Primakov to flesh out an idea that her predecessor, Warren Christopher, proposed a little over a year ago -- a charter between NATO and Russia. Those negotiations, involving all the members of the Alliance and ably led by the NATO Secretary General, Javier Solana, were successful. Last May, the 16 leaders of NATO and President Yeltsin met in Paris to sign the charter -- which is formally called the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security Between NATO and the Russian Federation. It sets forth the rationale for NATO-Russia cooperation and reaffirms the basic rules of the road of international behavior. These include respect for the inherent right of every state to choose the means for ensuring its own security. That means any European state has the right to seek membership in NATO. The Founding Act also created a new consultative forum, the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council. The new Council gives NATO and Russia a means to explore the possibility of joint decision-making and joint action on some issues, such as the prevention and settlement of conflicts. Let me stress that the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council is entirely distinct from the North Atlantic Council, known as the NAC, which remains NATO's governing body. The NATO-Russia Council will operate by consensus on those issues where NATO and Russia agree to act jointly. But that does not mean that Russia will have a veto over any aspect of NATO activity or policy. Quite the contrary -- the Founding Act makes explicitly clear that NATO and Russia maintain total freedom to act independently if they do not choose to act in concert under the aegis of the Joint Council. The Permanent Joint Council has already met at the level of foreign ministers -- in New York last month, during the UN General Assembly. It was a promising beginning, and it will meet again in Brussels on December 17. Meanwhile, contrary to the predictions of some critics of enlargement, as that process has moved forward, Russia has actually strengthened its program of internal reform. President Yeltsin has beefed up his government with innovators committed to economic modernization and integration; he has made dramatic progress in reconciling differences with Ukraine, participated at the Summit of the Eight in Denver, and accelerated Russia's effort to join the World Trade Organization, the OECD and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. And then there's Bosnia. There are 34,000 troops there as part of the NATO-led Stabilization Force, or SFOR, which is helping to implement the Dayton Peace Accords. 1,400 of those soldiers are Russian. They are under the command of General Anatoly Glebovich Krivalapov of the Strategic Rocket Forces and Colonel Alexander Sergeyevich Iskrenko, a battle-hardened field officer who is a veteran of combat in Afghanistan and Chechnya. I'd ask all of you to step back for a moment and think about this bit of current events against the backdrop of history: NATO was founded in 1949 in response to the Soviet threat, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. Throughout those 42 years, American and Russian troops were squared off against each other, taking orders from Washington and Moscow respectively. For much of his career, General Krivalapov spent his working hours pointing intercontinental ballistic missiles at Boston and Washington. Throughout the Cold War, when NATO's adversary was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the Alliance was always ready -- but, thankfully, it was never called upon -- to deploy for battle. NATO succeeded in its mission of deterring the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and it did so without ever having to fire a shot in anger. Hence its rightful claim to being the most successful alliance in history. Now that the Cold War is over and the threat to the peace of Europe is instability and disintegration rather than Soviet aggression, NATO has finally suited up and gone into action; it has done so in Bosnia, and it has done so with Russia rather than against Russia. This historic undertaking has not only given the people of Bosnia the chance to continue the slow, troubled, uneven, but crucial task of constructing a new, stable, unitary state. It has also served the larger purpose of building a new Europe in which military, political and economic integration will make future Bosnias far less likely to occur. Let me conclude with a reflection on the history of this century: One of the keys to peace in every post-war era involves the arrangements between former adversaries. After World War I, the victors got it wrong. At Versailles, they imposed crashing reparations on a defeated Germany, thus dooming the Weimar Republic and setting the stage for the eventual rise of Hitlerite revanchism, fascism and aggression, and, of course, the Holocaust. After World War II, we and our Allies, having learned many of the lessons from World War I, did a better job: rather than drawing back into our own shell, the United States remained engaged in Europe through the Marshall Plan and the founding of NATO itself. We essentially got it right in the West. But in the East, many countries suffered nearly half a century under the shadow of Yalta. Yalta -- that is a place name that has come to be a codeword for the cynical sacrifice of small nations' freedom to great powers' spheres of influence, just as Versailles has come to signify a short-sighted, punitive and humiliating peace that sows the seeds of future war. Russia is, in a very real sense, a former adversary in one of the great struggles of this century and of human history. It is the largest, most powerful successor state of the USSR, and its capital, Moscow, was the former headquarters of the Warsaw Pact. But unlike Germany in 1919 or again in 1945, Russia in 1997 is not a defeated power. Quite the contrary, its people and its reformers deserve credit, support, gratitude and patience from all of us for their role in defeating the Soviet Communist system that oppressed them as well as so many others for much of this century. Part of the challenge we face in dealing with Russia now that the Cold War is over is to avoid either a new Versailles or a new Yalta. Versailles and Yalta: those are the Scylla and Charybdis of the course we are steering as we make our way forward into the 21st century and the third millennium -- which, by the way, begins in exactly two years, two months, 15 days and 11 eleven hours. To be sure that our country is ready for that challenge, those of us who work in Washington had better have good answers to the toughest possible questions, some of which I look forward to hearing from you right now. Thank you very much. (end text)