NATO Romania

NATO is not just a military alliance; it is an alliance of values, and NATO’s success in the past and promise for the future reflect its fusion of strength and democratic values. I will speak today about how the Alliance is transforming itself to address global security challenges; its current missions and challenges, including ongoing operations in Afghanistan; and our goals for the Bucharest Summit and beyond.

NATO provided a foundation for freedom’s victory in the Cold War. It is now evolving into its 21st century role: defending the transatlantic community against new threats and meeting challenges to our security and values that are often global in scope.

NATO’s mission remains the same: the defense of its members. But how NATO fulfills this mission is evolving. Much of what I discuss today has to do with this important ongoing adaptation.

During the Cold War, NATO was superbly prepared to face the Soviet Army across the Fulda Gap, but never fired a shot. Yet, by maintaining the peace in Europe, the Alliance provided time and space for the internal decay of the Soviet system and the Warsaw Pact, and for forces of freedom in Warsaw, Vilnius, Budapest, Prague, Bucharest, Kyiv and even Moscow to prevail.

NATO’s other historic achievement is not mentioned often, but is no less important: it served as the security umbrella under which centuries-old rivalries within Europe were settled. NATO provided an essential precondition for the European Union, a united Europe, to take shape. Since 1945, Western Europe has enjoyed its longest period of internal peace since Roman times.

After the end of the Cold War, NATO faced two fundamental challenges: first, should it remain fixed in its Cold War-era membership? Second, should it remain fixed in its Cold War activities?

Three successive American Administrations – those of President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton and President George H.W. Bush – have demonstrated leadership in helping transform NATO from a Cold War to a 21st century profile. Members of this Committee played, and continue to play, a major part in that bipartisan policy effort. In the 1990s, under American leadership, NATO enlarged its membership for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It did so again in 2002. Also in the 1990’s, NATO engaged in its first military combat operations to force an end to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. NATO’s operational role has continued to grow since then. On September 12, 2001, a day after the attacks on New York and Washington, NATO invoked for the first time the Washington Treaty’s critical Article Five clause of collective defense. In the 52 years of NATO’s existence prior to that date, no one ever expected that Article Five would be invoked in response to a terrorist attack; an attack on the United States rather than Europe; and an attack plotted in Afghanistan, planned in Pakistan, Malaysia, and Germany, carried out inside the United States, and financed through Al Qaeda’s fund-raising network. I was in the White House on September 11 and 12; I remember and greatly appreciate NATO’s act of solidarity. That decision, and its implications, eventually brought an end to NATO’s now seemingly .quaint. debate about going .out of area.. But let me be frank: in 2001, despite this decision, NATO lacked the capability of responding to the challenge of September 11. And, to be even franker, at that time the United States had not thought through how to work within NATO so far afield as Afghanistan. But within months, several individual Allies had joined us in Afghanistan, and on August 11, 2003, NATO took over the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Kabul. From that moment, NATO had crossed into a new world, and transformation became an operational as well as a strategic necessity. NATO has come far since the Cold War. In the early 1990s, NATO was an alliance of 16 countries, which had never conducted a military operation and had no partner relationships. By the middle of this decade, NATO had become an alliance of 26 members. And its soldiers and sailors had experienced:

• bringing security and stability to Afghanistan,

• maintaining security in Kosovo and Bosnia,

• supporting and training peace-keepers in Africa,

• training the Iraqi security forces,

• delivering humanitarian aid in Pakistan after the earthquake and in Louisiana after Katrina, and

• patrolling shipping in the Mediterranean to prevent terrorism.

NATO also has established partner relationships with over 20 countries in Europe and Eurasia, seven in North Africa and the Middle East, four in the Persian Gulf, and has global partners such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore, which are working with NATO in Afghanistan.

I should also add that one of the transformations we have tried to make at NATO is to build a new kind of relationship with Russia – one where NATO and Russia can work together to address common interests. This was the thinking behind the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997, and the NATO- Russia Council, created in 2002. I must admit that we have been disappointed that the NATO-Russia Council still has not lived up to its potential.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced that President Putin plans to attend the meeting in Bucharest. This represents both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity is to renew efforts to work together on issues where NATO and Russia really do have common interests – from nonproliferation, counterterrorism, to border controls and counternarcotics with respect to Afghanistan. The challenge, however, is to make sure that NATO takes decisions on issues on their own merits – based on what is good for the Alliance and good for the issues at hand – without undue pressure from any outside actors. Whether on enlargement, missile defense, or a Membership Action Plan, NATO must make its own decisions for the right reasons.

Fifteen years ago, no one would have predicted such far-reaching changes for NATO. So we must be modest about predicting the future challenges NATO will face, and the way NATO will adapt to them. But I can report to you about NATO’s ongoing transformation to address global security challenges, and indicate how we believe this will be addressed at NATO’s summit in Bucharest next month and beyond.

• First, I will deal with capabilities NATO must build in this new era. NATO is making progress, but this task is not done.

• The second issue is how NATO is bringing these new capabilities to bear in ongoing operations, particularly:

• In Afghanistan, where NATO is helping establish security and stability, to enable reconstruction, development and good governance.

• And in Kosovo, where NATO is maintaining peace and freedom of movement in a now independent and sovereign country.

• Third, I will speak about enlargement. NATO is taking on new members and helping others prepare to become members in the future if they so desire.