[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 29, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11389-S11390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            NATO ENLARGEMENT

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I rise this evening to discuss an issue 
that relates to NATO enlargement that I believe merits careful 
consideration by the Senate at this early stage of the ratification 
process.
  Enlargement of the Alliance is based upon Article 10 of the North 
Atlantic Treaty, also known as the Washington Treaty, which states in 
pertinent part as follows:

       The parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other 
     European state in a position to further the principles of 
     this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North 
     Atlantic area to accede to this treaty.

  So Article 10 sets up two conditions for Alliance membership. One, to 
further the principles of the Treaty, and, two, to contribute to the 
security of the North Atlantic area.
  Madam President, the principal focus of the Senate and expert 
commentators thus far has been to examine whether the accession of 
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will contribute to European 
security. That is the second condition. And that is surely an 
appropriate focus.
  For instance, one of my first concerns was the impact that these 
additions would have on democratization and movement to a market 
economy in Russia, which I believe has a major bearing on European 
security. Those concerns have been greatly ameliorated by the NATO-
Russia Founding Act and other NATO initiatives. But we also need to be 
aware of the other condition of Article 10; namely, to further the 
principles of the Washington Treaty.
  Now, those principles are summed up in the preamble which reads as 
follows:

       The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the 
     purposes and principle of the Charter of the United Nations 
     and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all 
     governments.
       They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common 
     heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the 
     principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of 
     law.
       They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North 
     Atlantic area.
       They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective 
     defense and for the preservation of peace and security.

  Those are the principles in the preamble to the NATO Treaty.
  In the April 23 testimony of Secretary of State Albright and 
Secretary of Defense Cohen before the Armed Services Committee that 
kicked off the Senate ratification process, my first question to 
Secretary Albright dealt with this issue. I asked her to list the 
criteria which will be applied in judging the applications for 
membership of the various countries.
  Secretary Albright responded as follows:

       Senator Levin, what we are doing is looking at a general 
     set of criteria that fit into some of the comments that I 
     made in my statement, as did Secretary Cohen. That is, we are 
     interested in countries, first of all, that can be active 
     contributors to the Alliance. This is not a way of just 
     trying to give gifts to countries. This is the world's 
     strongest military alliance, and members have to be capable 
     of pulling their weight in it.

  And she continued:

       We are looking at democracies, at free market systems. We 
     are looking at the way that countries treat their minorities, 
     their attitude toward human rights. We are looking to make 
     sure that there is civilian control over the military, 
     generally looking at

[[Page S11390]]

     the ways that they are approaching the post-cold war world 
     and their sense of responsibility toward their own 
     populations.
  She continued:

       So in broadest terms, our criteria are, first of all, their 
     ability to contribute to this foremost alliance, so that the 
     alliance itself is never diluted; and, second, their bona 
     fides in terms of being functioning democracies with market 
     systems that respect their people and where civilian and 
     military relationships are the kind that we believe are 
     pursuant to those ends.

  Madam President, I believe that these are appropriate criteria for 
judging the suitability of countries for admission to the NATO 
Alliance. Additionally--and this is my point this evening--I believe 
that they are appropriate criteria for continued membership in the 
Alliance. In other words, I believe that the criteria which are used to 
judge a country's suitability for membership should also remain 
applicable during its membership, and that if a country fails to live 
up to those criteria after becoming a member of NATO, that a process 
should be available whereby that country's membership can be suspended 
until it can once again meet those criteria.
  During the cold war, when the Warsaw Pact posed a major threat to 
NATO, the emphasis understandably was on the military contribution that 
NATO members brought to the Alliance. That has changed, however, in the 
post-cold-war period. There is no current major threat to NATO member 
countries, and the rationale for enlargement of the Alliance in the 
present environment, as the Alliance's own September 1995 ``Study on 
NATO Enlargement'' makes clear, is different than it was during the 
cold-war period. Chapter 1 of the NATO study entitled ``Purposes of 
Enlargement" list the following as the first of seven ways in which 
enlargement will contribute to enhanced stability and security for all 
countries in the Euro-Atlantic area as:

       Encouraging and supporting democratic reforms, including 
     civilian and democratic control over the military.

  Similarly, in listing 13 criteria for possible new Alliance members, 
chapter 5 of the NATO study lists the following as the very first 
criterion:

       Conform to basic principles embodied in the Washington 
     Treaty: democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.

  I have reviewed several collective security treaties to which the 
United States is a party. In the course of that review, I discovered a 
number of relevant provisions; for instance, the Charter of the 
Organization of American States, the world's oldest regional 
organization. While not as widely celebrated as some of the other 
charters, nonetheless all of the countries in the Americas but one are 
today democratic, and it should come as no surprise, then, although the 
event received virtually no publicity, that on September 25, with the 
ratification by Venezuela of the Protocol of Washington, the OAS 
Charter was amended to provide for the suspension of any member country 
if that country's democratically elected government is brought down by 
force. The suspension requires the vote of two-thirds of the member 
states. So in the OAS there is a way of suspending a member who no 
longer complies with the criteria for membership in the OAS.
  In the United Nations Charter, for instance, it provides in Article 5 
that a member against which preventive or enforcement action has been 
taken by the Security Council may be suspended from the exercise of the 
rights and privileges of membership. Moreover, Article 6 of the United 
Nations Charter provides that a member who has persistently violated 
the principles of the Charter may, indeed, be expelled from the United 
Nations.
  When we review the Washington Treaty that created NATO, we see that 
it has a provision, article 13, which enables a NATO member to cease to 
be a party 1 year after notice has been given by it, but the treaty 
does not contain any provision or process for the suspension of a 
member nation. And, I think that it should. Specifically, I believe 
that the NATO treaty should provide for a mechanism to suspend the 
membership of a NATO member if that member no longer adheres to the 
principles of the Washington Treaty. Like the recent amendment to the 
Charter of the Organization of American States, the suspension of a 
NATO member, I believe, should require the affirmative vote of two-
thirds of the members of NATO.

  I want to quickly add, this proposal that we add a suspension 
provision to the NATO Charter is not aimed at any of the current member 
countries. It is not aimed at Poland or Hungary or the Czech Republic. 
It is not aimed at any of the nine other members that sought NATO 
membership or any other nations that may be contemplating seeking 
membership in NATO in the future. It is simply a mechanism which is 
needed in any collective security agreement to assure that if a member 
of that collective security pact no longer adheres to the fundamental 
principles which bind that pact, that the other members should have a 
mechanism to suspend the country which is no longer adhering to the 
fundamental principles.
  At the Armed Services Committee's hearing with Secretaries Albright 
and Cohen, I listed several major issues that the Senate would have to 
consider in the course of our examination of the wisdom of NATO 
enlargement. One of those issues was, ``Should the United States 
consider the security of Central European nations one of our Nation's 
vital interests, so that we would go to war if their security is 
threatened?''
  That is not the only issue, but it is a central issue. And I, for 
one, am not ready to put the lives of American youth at risk for a 
nation unless that nation adheres to the principles of the Washington 
Treaty: democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. If there is 
a nation in NATO now or that might be added later that no longer 
adheres to those fundamental principles, then I believe there should be 
a mechanism in NATO to suspend that country so that we are not bound 
collectively to go to the defense of a nation that doesn't adhere to 
the fundamental principles which bind NATO.
  Accordingly, I believe that the Senate should add a condition to its 
ratification of the accession of new members and that condition be that 
the North Atlantic Treaty be amended to enable NATO to suspend one of 
its members on the affirmative two-thirds vote of the NATO countries.
  I thank the Chair for her patience tonight. I don't think any motion 
or other action on my part is appropriate. So I simply yield the floor.

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