[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6000-S6003]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GETTING BACK TO BASICS: NATO'S DOUBLE ENLARGEMENT
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, the visit to Washington of Lech Walesa, the
former President of Poland, and the introduction of the NATO
Participation Act on the floor of the Senate, suggests that it is time
for the Senate to begin to seriously consider the future of the
Atlantic Alliance.
It is a particularly important time to take stock of where we stand
in the Alliance. Over the past 2 years, the Alliance has discussed and
studied many issues ranging from enlargement to command reform to the
broader structural reform of the Alliance in order to enable it to
carry out new missions.
The time for discussing and studying is now coming to an end. Over
the next 12 months, NATO must make decisions in three key areas which
will cast the die for European security and the transatlantic
relationship for the next decade.
Starting with last week's Ministerial meeting in Berlin, Alliance
leaders must decide:
First, will NATO enlarge its membership, and what policies,
recognition, and certainty should it give to countries which will not
be included in the first selection?
Second, how will NATO reform itself internally to be able to carry
out new missions? This includes article 5 defense commitments as well
as other non-article 5 missions such as crisis management beyond
Alliance borders.
Third, what should be the NATO relationship with Russia during the
enlargement process? Should NATO build a parallel cooperative
partnership with Moscow?
The ramifications of how well or poorly NATO does its job on these
issues are far reaching. We are talking about the laying of the
cornerstones of a new European peace order and building a new NATO
which deserves that name not only in theory but in reality. If we
succeed, we will have set the foundation for decades of European peace
and prosperity. If we fail, historians may look back at the early post-
cold-war period as a tragic loss of opportunities.
It is in this context that we must weigh the utility of legislative
efforts such as the NATO Participation Act.
Above all, we must realize that we are headed into a historical
debate over NATO's future, one that will reverberate for many years to
come. It is a debate that will be public and which will undoubtedly be
controversial--as befits an alliance of democracies wrestling with such
important issues. Much of the discussion about the pros and cons of
enlargement and other issues have been limited to elites and experts--
along with the occasional Senator or Minister. That, too, is going to
change.
I look forward to this public debate. I believe that we have an
historical window of opportunity to take steps that will secure
European peace and stability and which will lock in the freedom and
independence won in the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of
communism. I believe that we will win this debate, both in the U.S.
Senate and elsewhere in the Alliance, provided that we follow some
simple, common-sense guidelines.
Before charting those guidelines, I want to review the basic
questions we will undoubtedly face in the U.S. Senate, as well as in
the parliaments of both NATO allies as well as candidate countries.
The Vision Thing
In the United States, our political leaders are often asked about
what we call the vision thing. What is it you want to achieve and why?
What is your vision and how will individual policies fit together with
an overall set of objectives? As a U.S. Senator, I am often asked, by
some of my colleagues and
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constituents, why I am still so concerned about NATO and issues such as
NATO enlargement now that the cold war is over.
The more distant we get from the heady days of the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the collapse of communism, it is more clear that we entered a
new era. Dangers still abound in post-cold-war Europe. The revolutions
of 1989 not only led to the collapse of communism but also to the end
of the peace orders established after two world wars. What is at stake
here is order and stability in Europe as a whole. And that is why
American interests are involved.
NATO cannot by itself solve all of Europe's problems. But without a
stable security framework, we run the risk that the reform and
democracy in the East of Europe will not persist but will instead be
undercut by destructive forces of nationalism and insecurity. The
failure of democracy in the East could not help but have profound
consequences for democracy in the continent's western half as well. If
history teaches us anything, it is that the United States is always
drawn into such European conflicts because our vital interests are
ultimately, albeit somewhat belatedly, engaged.
That, in a nutshell, is one reason why I have always been in favor of
NATO enlargement. But this is only one reason and one part of my
vision, which consists of what I want to prevent, and also what I want
to build. I want to build a new transatlantic bargain of a unified and
integrated Europe--whole and free--in permanent alliance with the
United States. It is a vision of the United States and Europe in a
partnership of equals devoted to managing the security of Europe as
well as to the pursuit of common interests beyond Europe. The old
transatlantic bargain which offered the Europeans a form of American
protection in return for American influence must be replaced by a new
transatlantic accord.
This is a vision for the Alliance that is no longer necessarily
focused on or limited to Europe. This is also a vision for the Alliance
that transcends the old cold-war rationale, namely--to deter and, if
needed, defend Western Europe against a Soviet attack. It is a vision
for a new covenant between the United States and Europe as a force for
promoting Western values and interests in Europe and beyond. We need a
new and much broader transatlantic agenda and dialog, one that focuses
on where and how the United States and Europe can and should act
together.
I was one of the earliest proponents in the Congress of NATO
enlargement. But I always spoke of enlargement not in isolation but
rather as part of a new security partnership between the United States
and a unified Europe. The United States is a global power, a country
with interests in Europe and beyond. It is also a country that
increasingly requires like-minded allies and partners to manage that
international security agenda. And as Americans look around, they see
no better candidates than our European allies in NATO as that partner.
If this is the vision, then how do we get there? I like the phrase
``double enlargement'' to capture the twin processes of reform that I
believe must take place. NATO must enlarge eastward to integrate the
new democracies and it must expand its functional missions beyond
border defense to include crisis management and perhaps peacekeeping
beyond Alliance borders. In both cases, the Alliance must decide how
far it wants to go, both in terms of new members and in terms of new
missions. There is no escaping the fact that NATO must simultaneously
reform in both areas if it is to successfully meet the challenges we
are likely to face in the years ahead. It is a basic American interest
that the Alliance not only enlarge to help stabilize Eastern Europe,
but that enlargement be part and parcel of a broader transformation
that turns Europe into an increasingly effective strategic partner of
the United States in and beyond the continent.
Conditions for Senate Ratification
One of the key questions for the NATO Alliance is whether NATO
enlargement can be ratified in the U.S. Senate. Nearly every visitor I
have in my office from Europe asks me this question. And it is a
question about which I have thought a great deal in recent years. The
easy answer is that, of course, enlargement is ratifiable--provided a
number of preconditions are met. I am going to list my six commandments
on what must be done to ensure successful ratification in the U.S.
Senate.
But first I want to lay out several broader factors which I believe
will help shape the debate in the U.S. Senate. First, the debate about
NATO enlargement in the U.S. Senate will not only be about enlargement.
It will be about the U.S. role in post-cold-war Europe. It will be
about NATO--why we still need it, who should be in it, what it should
do, and how it should be reformed.
This will be the first time that this set of issues will be debated
at the national level since the end of the cold war. Although many
voices in the United States, myself included, have been calling for
such a national debate for some time, it simply has not happened. But
the NATO enlargement issue is likely to be the catalyst for precisely
such a debate. This makes some of my colleagues in Congress nervous.
They fear that the isolationists of the left and the right will band
together in some kind of unholy alliance to defeat the internationalist
center in U.S. politics. In short, they fear that the NATO enlargement
debate will kill NATO.
But I think they are wrong. Such a debate can have a very healthy and
positive impact in terms of reaffirming the U.S. role in, and
consolidating the American commitment to, the new post-cold-war Europe.
And, equally important, it is an opportunity to initiate the broader
transformation and revitalization of the alliance which is now clearly
overdue.
Second, this debate will also be about Eastern and Central Europe and
our moral, political, economic, and strategic stake in this part of the
world. Several years ago there was a cartoon in an American magazine
which showed a young boy pointing to a map and saying to his father:
``Eastern Europe, isn't that where the wars start?'' Eastern Europe is
where two world wars, as well as the cold war, originated in this
century. It is a part of Europe that has seen great injustices and
enormous cruelty. It is a part of Europe that has had a
disproportionate impact on the course of European and world history.
For some Americans, these are reasons to keep the United States out
of future instability and possible conflicts--as if a policy of
isolation would insulate and protect us from such instability. The
lesson I draw is exactly the opposite. The best way to ensure that the
United States must never fight a war again over Eastern Europe is to
anchor and integrate Eastern Europe into the West once and for all. We
must do for Eastern Europe what we did together for Western Europe in
the early post-war period--make it secure and integrate it into a
broader trans-Atlantic community.
How important is Eastern Europe to the United States? A growing
number of Europeans are trying to analyze the size of the Polish ethnic
vote, or the political clout of the Baltic-American community and what
role they will play in the United States Senate debate. Will the NATO
enlargement issue, it is sometimes asked, be the swing issue in key
battleground States in the U.S. Presidential race? While interesting, I
think all these questions miss the real point. Eastern Europe is
important to the United States because it is here that the future
destiny of the European Continent will be decided. Eastern Europe, in
many ways, holds the key to the future stability of the continent. That
is why it is a vital U.S. interest.
The third reason I believe that Senate ratification will happen is
that the arguments of the opponents of enlargement can be met and
subdued. But let's take a closer look at them, for they will be part of
the debate. Critics insist, first and foremost, that the U.S. Senate
will not be willing to extend a security guarantee to Eastern Europe.
They cite the divisive debates we have seen on Somalia, Haiti, and
Bosnia as proof that Americans are tired of foreign commitments.
What these critics overlook is the basic difference between Bosnia
and Poland as well as the lesson we should learn from the Bosnia
experience. Poland's future stability is seen as central to that of
Europe as a whole. Rightly or wrongly, Bosnia's was not. I wish it had
been otherwise. But one
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simply cannot compare the issue of extending a security guarantee to a
pro-Western democracy like Poland with the confusing debate we had
about what to do as Yugoslavia broke up. This was a conflict whose
causes were poorly understood, where the stakes for the United States
were not always comprehended, where the United Nations was involved
with a confusing mandate and a morally ambiguous set of policies and
where the military, political, and humanitarian options of the West
were extremely difficult. The lesson from Bosnia is not that we should
reject NATO enlargement. It is that the West needs to take steps to
prevent the rise of such destructive nationalism and ethnic hatred and
we must enlarge NATO to stabilize Eastern Europe before other disasters
are imminent.
Moreover, in many ways the West already has an implicit security
guarantee to a country like Poland. Can we really imagine the West
today not coming to Poland's defense if it were ever to be threatened
again? I, for one, cannot. And because I cannot, I think that we must
codify that commitment through NATO in order to make sure that it is
credible and that deterrence works. If ever confronted with the
question of whether the West will stand by Poland or once again betray
it to those who seek to do it harm, I believe that the United States,
including my colleagues in the Senate, will do the right thing.
The second major reason critics cite against enlargement is cost. Of
course NATO enlargement will cost money and resources. But the costs of
enlargement may not pose as large an obstacle as some assume. Let us
not forget that there are also costs in not enlarging. And alliances
save money. By pooling our resources together, we are able to
collectively defend our common interests less expensively.
How much NATO enlargement will cost will depend in large part upon
how the alliance decides to defend and reassure new members. Because
there is no immediate threat to these countries, the alliance can
afford to adopt a light defense posture backed up by the ability to
reinforce in the region during a crisis. Moreover, the costs of
building such a posture can be spread over an extended period. A recent
study conducted by the Rand Corp. clearly shows that the costs of
enlargement can be kept manageable and spread across the alliance.
The package proposed in the Rand study, for example, could cost an
estimated $30 to $40 billion for the alliance as a whole--both new and
old members spread over a 10- to 15-year period. While these numbers
may seem large, bear in mind, for example, that the cost of building
and operating one U.S. Army division for a 10-year period is estimated
at $60 billion. In any event, the alliance will be spending a
considerable amount of money for defense over the next 10 to 15 years,
and the costs of enlargement are unlikely to amount to more than 1 to 2
percent of planned defense spending. The point here is that enlargement
is affordable if handled properly, done in a step-by-step fashion and
if the costs are spread fairly among both old and new members.
The third reason critics cite against enlargement is the claim that
enlargement will only draw new lines in Europe and alienate Moscow. But
let us not pretend that lines don't already exist in Europe. What I
have never understood about this argument is why these critics are so
attached to and nostalgic about the old artificial cold war lines,
lines drawn by the acts of Hitler and Stalin over 50 years ago.
Expanding and consolidating democracy in the East is not drawing new
lines. If allowing new democracies in the East to seek entry into the
alliance of their choice is an exercise in line drawing, it is also an
exercise in erasing the old artificial lines of Yalta and the cold war.
And I look forward to erasing more lines. There is something odd about
people in the West who already enjoy a NATO security guarantee telling
those who do not have one that extending the guarantee would somehow
create a new security problem.
In short, I am not especially impressed by the arguments of the
opponents of enlargement. Their prescriptions are really a recipe for
doing nothing, for postponing all key decisions. We must demand of them
what their future vision of the alliance and the trans-Atlantic
relationship is.
But this does underscore that we are going to have a debate in the
Senate.
How can we win this debate and ensure successful ratification in the
U.S. Senate? I'd like to share with you six commandments on NATO
enlargement which, if followed, should help to ensure ratification.
First, show leadership. Leadership is key, above all, Presidential
leadership. There is no substitute. This will be a national debate and
the President must lead. He must also work closely with the leadership
of the U.S. Senate. The sooner he starts this process, the better.
Leadership must not only come from the United States. It must come
from Europe too and Germany in particular. And such leadership must be
visible both within NATO and beyond. Let me give you one example. If
the European Union falters in terms of its own plans for enlargement,
it will make NATO enlargement more difficult to sell in the United
States because it will be seen by Americans as a European failure to
pull its fair share of the bargain.
Second, have a clear moral and political vision and rationale.
Enlargement must be seen as the right thing to do. While NATO
bureaucrats and diplomats may be consumed by the details of tactics and
compromise communique language, what will be crucial in the public
debate will be occupying the moral and political high ground. We will
ask the opponents of enlargement to lay out their alternative vision--
and we will see whose vision is more convincing.
Third, start with the strongest candidates and keep the door open.
The enlargement of NATO will start with the strongest candidates for
membership. But this does not mean that the alliance is drawing new
lines or forgetting about those who, for whatever reasons, cannot be
included in the first tranche. Those who are first have an obligation
to ensure that stability be extended beyond their borders as well.
Fourth, know the costs and commitments--and who will bear them--in
advance. This must be clear and known in advance. We need to understand
the burdensharing arrangements before we assume the new commitments.
The U.S. Senate will not ratify enlargement until it knows the costs
and consequences for both the U.S. Armed Forces and the American
taxpayer.
Talking about important details of defense planning issues should not
be seen as militarizing the debate. Instead, it is simply prudent and
responsible to sort out among ourselves just what these new commitments
mean in practice and to develop plans and programs to ensure that NATO
has the capabilities to carry them out. This is what alliances are all
about.
Fifth, have a strategy for dealing with the have nots. The initial
selection of members may be small. When another round of enlargement
will take place may be uncertain. Thus, the need to have a clear
strategy to underscore that enlargement will not produce a new Yalta.
In some cases, the United States has a special relationship with
countries that, at that moment, seem unlikely to be included in the
first tranche.
The United States and Germany have a special responsibility toward
the Baltic States. No U.S. President can enlarge NATO without having an
adequate set of policies to sustain Baltic independence. The Baltic
States may not be included in the first round of NATO enlargement. This
underscores the need for an active policy of engagement with them. It
is important that we make it clear that they will be full members if
they meet the qualifications; that the door for eventual NATO
membership for these countries remains open and that we will expand our
cooperation with them in the interim period. Non-NATO countries such as
Finland and Sweden should also be encouraged to expand their
involvement in the region. Countries such as Germany should take the
lead in trying to bring the Baltic countries into the European Union as
soon as possible and, if they qualify, in the first tranche.
Sixth, realize the U.S. need for partners beyond Europe. While many
Europeans do not want to acknowledge it, the reality is that there is a
linkage between burdensharing arrangements within Europe and outside of
it. As a U.S. Senator, it is easier for me to
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argue the case for NATO's double enlargement to the American people
than it is for NATO's eastward enlargement alone. Americans understand
that we have vital interests in Europe and they are willing to do their
share to ensure that the new Europe which is emerging remains stable.
They understand a strategy that posits that we and the Europeans are in
this together and that we will work together to defend shared
interests--both in Europe and beyond. What they will not understand is
an arrangement where the United States is asked to do more in terms of
extending new security guarantees, and more in terms of budgetary
commitments, in order to extend stability to Europe's eastern half--and
at the same time be expected to carry, more or less on its own, the
responsibility for defending common Western interests outside of
Europe.
Russia
This brings us to a discussion of Russia. We all know how important
Russia's future is for the future of European and international
security. But where does Russia fit into the vision of the trans-
Atlantic relationship I have laid out? My vision of the alliance does
not depend on the existence or possible emergence of a new Russian
threat in the East. We do not want an alliance whose vitality and
success depends on failure in Russia. Instead, we want a Russia that
will successfully reform--and whose success at reform make it a more
interesting and useful strategic partner for the alliance.
The United States and Europe have an enormous stake in the success of
the reform process in Russia. A stable and reformed Russia can be an
active partner in maintaining security in Europe, in resolving regional
conflicts, and in fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
We wish to establish a strategic partnership with Russia that takes
account of Russia's position in Europe, a partnership that could and
should, lead to formalized relationship with the alliance.
Russia's place, in my vision, is clear. I do not see Russia as a
candidate member of the alliance. Russia is simply too big, too
different. No member of the alliance today or in the foreseeable future
would be willing to extend an article 5 guarantee to the Russo-Chinese
border. And the Russians--unlike the East Europeans--are not really
interested in assuming the obligations and responsibilities that NATO
membership entails. At the same time, Russia will inevitably be more
than a mere neighbor of this new and enlarged alliance. We hope it will
become a partner, indeed a country with which we have a privileged
partnership.
The NATO I envision is one which guarantees stability in Central
Europe, a stability which is just as much in Russia's interest as our
own. The Russians should realize that enlargement is not directed
against anyone, certainly not against them. Stabilizing democracy in
Eastern Europe does not threaten democracy in Russia. Russia will be
better off with Poland in NATO than outside of NATO. A Poland that is
secure within NATO will be less anti-Russian and more interested in
cooperation and bridge building. We cannot save reform in Russia by
postponing or retarding reform in Eastern Europe.
The Alliance can and should have close strategic relations with
Russia. NATO and Russia are allies in IFOR in Bosnia. We hope that this
is not a one time affair but the start of a longer and more stable
relationship. I hope to see the day when the border between an enlarged
NATO and its Eastern neighbors, including Russia, are just as stable
and secure as any others in Europe.
But it takes two to tango. Moscow has increasingly spoken out against
enlargement, with some Russian commentators already bringing out their
list of real or imagined countermeasures that they claim Moscow will
have to take. Such talk is counterproductive.
I belong to those who not only supported NATO enlargement from the
outset, but who believed that the Alliance should have moved sooner and
more resolutely in enlarging. The Clinton administration, as well as
the Alliance as a whole, opted for a slower approach than I would have
preferred. And they did so in the hope that dealing with Moscow on the
NATO enlargement issue would get easier over time as Russia came to
understand the Alliance's true motivations.
But by now I think it is crystal clear that a policy of postponing
key decisions has not made our lives easier. Some in Russia have
misinterpreted Western patience as a sign of Alliance weakness and lack
of resolve. Some Russians still believe that they can stop
enlargement--and some of them are still tempted to try. As it has
become increasingly clear that Russians do not support NATO
enlargement, our policy increasingly looks to them like a kind of
Chinese water torture. For several years, NATO has issued every couple
of months a statement saying that it will enlarge, to which Moscow
feels obliged to say that it opposes enlargement. When nothing happens,
some observers in Moscow think that they have slowed or even stopped
the NATO train.
It is too late now to go back and undo the policy decisions on
timing. What is important now is that NATO not waver, that it stick to
the agreed-upon timetable and move ahead with the initial decision on
enlargement--irrespective of the outcome of the Russian elections.
Conclusions
Let me sum up.
There are many other factors that could yet shape the U.S. politics
of NATO enlargement. If democratic reforms in the candidate states were
to stall, the entire enlargement plan might be put on hold. It also
makes some difference whom the next President appoints to key posts
such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. Overall, however,
while ratification of new NATO members faces many obstacles and
pitfalls, there is little evidence for the claim that it is politically
infeasible.
The real tragedy would be if the Senate, in successfully encouraging
the administration through legislation to proceed with the inclusion of
new members in the Alliance, jeopardized or neglected the development
of a bipartisan consensus and public support necessary to secure the 67
votes it will take in the Senate to ratify NATO enlargement.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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