[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 51 (Thursday, April 30, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3810-S3813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           European Stability

  Mr. President, Europe has experienced military conflict down through 
the ages. Indeed, it has been a constant spawning ground for war. The 
security of the United States is inextricably linked to that of Europe 
by a common heritage and shared values. Because of those links, twice 
this century, America has shed blood and treasure in major wars in 
Europe.
  In my view, one of the two major accomplishments of NATO, the first 
being deterring the former Soviet Union, has been its serving as a 
balance wheel to keep the peace in Western Europe. The NATO Alliance 
has enabled Europe to experience peace for almost fifty years.
  One of my home-town newspapers, the Detroit Free Press put it well 
when it said:

       It (NATO) has been a vital means of maintaining a stable 
     balance between Germany and its neighbors. That was a major 
     unavowed purpose of NATO in the years after World War II. To 
     manage Germany's role in Europe may have been a secondary 
     purpose, but it was important in providing stability while 
     Europe evolved toward unity and reconciliation. Preventing a 
     recurrence of Europe's chronic civil wars is an important 
     NATO function.

  NATO has helped keep the peace in many ways.
  As a defensive Alliance, one of NATO's major strengths is that member 
nations are able to pool their complementary military assets rather 
than developing totally separate and redundant military capabilities.
  This pooling of assets allowed the Alliance to present a strong and 
united front to deter aggression from the Soviet Union. This pooling of 
assets precluded the need for any one European NATO nation to build up 
its own military arsenal of a type that would threaten its neighbors 
and destabilize the continent.
  The Alliance has also had a moderating influence on its member 
nations and has served to prevent the inevitable frictions that arise 
among nation states from erupting into armed conflict. When 
Representatives and military officers of different nations meet and 
work together on a daily basis in Brussels and elsewhere, disagreements 
among those nations are more likely to be subordinated to common 
defense requirements. For instance, Europe is more secure with Greece 
and Turkey as members of the NATO Alliance than if one or both of them 
were not members.
  The prospect of NATO membership has already had a moderating 
influence on events in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. They are 
all downsizing and reorganizing their militaries, thus avoiding the 
expenditure of scarce resources that are needed for economic 
development. If rejected for NATO membership, they will almost surely 
renationalize their approach to defense, with potentially destabilizing 
impacts on their neighbors and on their neighborhood.
  The Alliance contributes to European stability in a number of other 
ways.
  NATO's military might has the potential for application in so-called 
``out-of-area'' conflicts, but which affect stability in Europe. For 
example, NATO's air bombing of Bosnian Serb targets served to bring the 
warring parties to the negotiating table and led to the Dayton Peace 
accords. NATO then led a military mission to implement the military 
aspects of the Dayton accords and to provide a secure environment for 
implementation of the civilian aspects of the accords.
  This action by the Alliance ended a conflict that posed a real threat 
to European stability and demonstrated a willingness of Alliance 
members to take action before its members were drawn into the conflict. 
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have all provided military 
forces to the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia, and Hungary has 
provided facilities for logistic support and training for United States 
and allied forces in support of that same effort in Bosnia.
  The Bosnian conflict demonstrates that NATO provides the 
multinational mechanism that we and our European allies need to deal 
with small conflicts that threaten to spread and involve all of Europe. 
The addition of these three new members will strengthen NATO's 
capability to deal with such threats.
  NATO's action in Bosnia could pave the way for Alliance action if the 
world's energy supplies were threatened in the future as they were in 
1991 in the Persian Gulf. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have 
promised military support in the event that the United States has to 
use force to ensure the destruction or rendering harmless of Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction. This leads me to believe that enlargement 
of the Alliance will increase support for our actions in pursuit of our 
national interests in other regions either in the form of formal 
Alliance action or coalitions of the willing.
  This type of cooperation and common action is already taking place in 
situations that, while not representing direct aggression against a 
NATO member nation, are examples of the new threats we face. In the 
area of counter-proliferation, at NATO's January 1994 Summit, Heads of 
State and Government formally acknowledged the security threat posed by 
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and associated 
delivery means. NATO noted that this threat was not confined to nations 
or non-state actors, such as terrorists, on the periphery of the 
Alliance and specifically cited the cases of Iraq and North Korea. 
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic can contribute to NATO action in 
this matter by political and diplomatic means and, in the defense area, 
by the sharing of intelligence and detection technology.
  Finally, with respect to European stability, the very prospect of 
NATO membership has also produced significant positive results in 
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in terms of resolution of border 
disputes and relations with their neighbors, civilian control of their 
militaries, and protection of minority rights and advancement of the 
rule of law. The September 1995 NATO Study on Enlargement, while noting 
the there was no rigid criteria for inviting new members to join the 
Alliance, did state that possible new member states would be expected 
to take these positive actions.
  Poland has signed friendship agreements with all seven of its 
neighbors--Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech 
Republic and Germany. Poland has reached out to its neighbors and has 
created one joint peacekeeping battalion with Lithuania and another 
with Ukraine. Poland's laws now subordinates the Chief of General Staff 
to the Minister of Defense and shifts control of the budget, planning 
and military intelligence from the General Staff to the Defense 
Ministry. Poland's press is free and the government maintains a strong 
record in support of basic human rights. It has held six fully free and 
fair elections at various levels since the fall of communism in 1989.
  Hungary concluded Basic Treaties on Understanding, Cooperation, and 
Good-Neighborliness with Slovakia and Romania in 1996. Hungary has 
entered into a Bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement with Slovenia in 
1996 and has signed bilateral cooperation agreements with Ukraine 
dealing with organized crime, terrorism, and drug trafficking. It has 
good relations with all its neighbors. Hungary has legislative and 
constitutional mechanisms in place to guarantee extensive oversight of 
the military by the Defense Ministry and by the parliament. Hungary 
upholds Western standards on human rights, freedom of expression, the 
rule of law, checks and balances among branches of government, and an 
independent judiciary.
  The Czech Republic now enjoys very good relations with all of its 
neighbors and has no border dispute with any country. The Czech 
Republic signed a formal reconciliation pact with Germany in January 
1997. Under the Czech Constitution, the President is Commander-in-Chief 
and governmental authority is exercised through a civilian Minister of 
Defense. The Czech people enjoy free speech, free assembly and a free 
press. The Czech Constitution guarantees human rights and provides for 
an independent judiciary.
  In sum, NATO and its enlargement enhance the stability of Europe in 
many ways: it fosters good relations among its members; avoids the 
nationalization of members' defense; prevents frictions among its 
members from erupting into conflict; provides a mechanism to deal with 
small conflicts in Europe before they spread; provides

[[Page S3813]]

a mechanism to address threats outside of Europe but which could affect 
Europe and the United States, including new threats, such as the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and, indeed, just the 
prospect of membership has served as a moderating influence in Poland, 
Hungary and the Czech Republic to encourage settlement of border 
disputes, civilian control of their militaries, and the advancement of 
the rule of law.