[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E450-E451]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            AMBASSADOR ROBERT E. HUNTER ON NATO ENLARGEMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 24, 1998

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, last week the Senate began the debate on the 
admission of

[[Page E451]]

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Alliance. 
One of the key players in the process of admitting these three newly 
democratic states of Central Europe to NATO was Robert E. Hunter, who 
served for most of the past five years as the United States Ambassador 
to NATO in Brussels. Ambassador Hunter was a highly articulate and 
extremely effective representative of our government in this critical 
post at that critical time, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his 
constructive and productive efforts.
  As the Senate debate began last week, Mr. Speaker, two opinion pieces 
which were published in The Washington Post--one by David Broder and 
the other by Jim Hoagland--questioned the extent to which the 
enlargement of NATO has been thoroughly discussed and evaluated prior 
to the Senate vote on this critical issue. I strongly disagree with the 
point of view that these two experienced journalists have expressed on 
this matter. While I could express the reasons for my disagreement with 
their positions at some length, Ambassador Hunter has done a much more 
effective and concise job than I could do in responding to the issues 
raised in the two Post articles.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that Ambassador Hunter's excellent response, 
published in The Washington Post on Monday, March 23, be placed in the 
Record. I urge my colleagues to read his thoughtful article.

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 23, 1998]

                       This Way To a Safer Europe

                         (By Robert E. Hunter)

       David Broder and Jim Hoagland [op-ed, March 18 and 19] see 
     a rush to judgment in the impending U.S. Senate vote to admit 
     Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO. They are 
     right that full debate is critical to create the potilical 
     underpinning for the most important U.S. commitment abroad in 
     a generation. They are wrong that the Senate is acting ``in 
     haste'' (Hoagland) or ``outside the hearing of the American 
     people'' (Broder). Rarely has any major foreign policy have 
     been developed over such a long period, displayed so fully 
     before the public and considered so comprehensively with so 
     many members of Congress.
       The commitment to enlarge NATO was made by all 16 allies at 
     the January 1994 NATO summit in Brussels, fully 50 months 
     before today's Senate deliberations on whether to ratify the 
     accession of the first new members. In the intervening 
     period, every aspect of the issue has been ventilated in the 
     media and with our elected leaders. As ambassador to NATO, I 
     welcomed to its Brussels headquarters a stream of 
     congressional visitors and immersed them in discussion with 
     the allies, the Central Europeans and the Russians. During 
     the past several months, Congress has held a score of 
     hearings and been bombarded by arguments by all sides. Doubts 
     may remain about NATO enlargement, but adequate information 
     and debate are not the problem.
       Hoagland argues that the administration is engaging in 
     ``strategic promiscuity and impulse'' and ``has not taken 
     seriously its responsibility to think through the 
     consequences of its NATO initiative.'' Not so. During the 
     past 50 months, the United States--indeed, all the allies--
     carefully and thoughtfully has sought to take advantage of 
     the first opportunity in European history to craft a security 
     system in which all countries can gain and, potentially, none 
     will lose. After a century of three wars, hundreds of 
     millions killed and a nuclear confrontation, no other test 
     can suffice.
       Thus the 16 allies understand that security cannot just be 
     based on accepting Russia's viewpoint, which includes leaving 
     Central Europe in limbo (the practical result of the views 
     Broder reports); nor can it be based on rushing all of 
     Central Europe, unprepared, into a Western alliance which 
     freezing Russia out and thus eroding allied strength and 
     cohesion. Hard as it is to achieve, the perspectives of both 
     Russia and the Central Europeans must be accounted for. They 
     and the current allies must all end up more secure, and the 
     alliance must be as strong and robust in the future as it is 
     now.
       This is an agenda of unprecedented scope, but one NATO 
     allies set out to achieve four years ago. This is why 
     enlargement is only one part of the ``new NATO'' and the 
     overall, root-and-branch reform of European security to meet 
     the realities of the 21st century. The integrated grand 
     strategy devised by the alliance includes renovating the NATO 
     command structure, creating new combined joint task forces 
     (and validating the principles in Bosnia) and making it 
     possible for the Europeans to take more responsibility 
     through a Western European union able for the first time to 
     take military action.
       This strategy also explains why NATO created the 
     Partnership for Peace, which is both a program for NATO 
     aspirants to meet the military demands of membership--a valid 
     matter for Senate scrutiny--and a means for those who do not 
     join to have practical engagement with the alliance instead 
     of feeling considered to a security gray area. It is why NATO 
     created a special partnership with Ukraine, whose 
     independence is a critical test of any European security 
     arrangements. It is why the alliance undertook responsibility 
     for preserving peace in Bosnia, and why the United States has 
     pressed the European Union to expand its membership.
       And this grand strategy is why the allies negotiated the 
     NATO-Russia Founding Act. No one coerced President Boris 
     Yeltsin into signing it, nor dragooned the Russions into the 
     practical cooperation now taking place at NATO headquarters, 
     nor drafted the 1,500 Russian soldiers who serve with the 
     Stabilization Force in Bosnia, within an American division 
     under NATO command. And remarkably, while NATO's actions in 
     Central Europe can resolve Russia's historic preoccupation 
     with stability on its western frontier, the alliance's effort 
     to forge a strategic partnership with Moscow has elicited not 
     one charge of a ``new Yalta'' from Central Europe.
       Thus, despite Hoagland's assertion, NATO allies do have a 
     clear sense of ``strategic mission.'' If the NATO plan can 
     secure the full backing of the Senate and thus of American 
     power and purpose, it offers hope for a lasting security that 
     Europe and its peoples have never known.

     

                          ____________________