[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4005-S4006]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NATO: THE NEXT GENERATION

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this weekend, the 19 member nations of the 
North Atlantic Treaty Organization

[[Page S4006]]

will gather in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 
establishment of NATO. Some may see the juxtaposition of this summit 
against the images of NATO airstrikes over Yugoslavia as being ironic. 
I see it differently. I see it as prophetic.
  The world has changed in the past 50 years, but as the events in 
Kosovo so graphically illustrate, the world has grown no less 
dangerous. NATO, likewise, has undergone significant changes over the 
years but remains no less important to the security of Europe. The key 
challenge facing NATO today is the dramatic change in the nature of the 
threat. The cold war is history; the Soviet Union is defunct; the 
Berlin Wall is just a pile of rubble. Forces massed along the borders 
have given way to flash points dotted around the globe. The tense but 
symmetrical standoff in Europe between the East and the West has been 
exchanged for the capriciousness of terrorists and tyrants.
  Just as the nature of the threat has evolved, so must the structure 
and mission of NATO metamorphose if it is to remain relevant into the 
21st century.
  In 1949, when the alliance was formed, the Soviet Union and its 
satellites posed the only credible threat to Western security. It was 
the chilly dawn of the cold war era, and NATO was precision-tuned to 
meet the cold war challenge. In the ensuing decades, as NATO expanded 
from the original 12 to 16 member nations, the alliance grew in 
strength and stature to guard Western Europe against the formidable 
forces of the Warsaw Pact nations.
  Conflict in Korea and Vietnam, turbulence in the Middle East, the 
growing influence of China--none of the cataclysmic events of the 
second half of the 20th century deterred NATO from its focus on the 
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And, in the end, NATO's intensity and 
single-mindedness paid off handsomely, with the fall of the Berlin Wall 
and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
  Through the years, NATO has adjusted its strategy and its mission to 
meet changing circumstances, but never has the challenge been as great 
or as far reaching as it is today. Where once NATO contended with the 
shifting fortunes of a cold war enemy massed along a single front, 
today the alliance is confronted with brush fires in its backyard, the 
threat of terrorism from geographically remote nations and 
organizations, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in virtually 
every direction.
  To meet this shifting political and military landscape, NATO has 
expanded on its primary focus of defending its members against the 
threat of attack by reaching out to its former foes to promote European 
stability and security. Only last month, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech 
Republic were welcomed into the alliance. And nine other nations are 
clamoring for membership.
  It is in this context that the 19 members of the alliance will gather 
in Washington to mark the anniversary of NATO and to discuss the future 
of the alliance. And it is in this context that the conflict in Kosovo 
can serve as a useful template for many of the challenges that the 
alliance is likely to face in the early years of the 21st century.
  The lessons learned in Kosovo, preliminary though they may be at this 
point, should be brought to the summit table. The lessons that are 
still to come, as NATO prosecutes the attack on Yugoslavia, must be 
accommodated in any future strategy.
  Several specific issues arising from the Kosovo conflict deserve 
careful consideration by the members of the alliance. And these include 
the following:
  First, NATO should discuss the wisdom of establishing a more robust 
forward operating presence in Europe beyond alliance headquarters. 
Given their history, the Balkans are a logical choice. The time and 
logistical constraints built into ferrying people and equipment from 
the United States, Britain, France and elsewhere to the front are 
formidable. The result is a potentially serious disconnect in the 
ability of commanders in the field to respond rapidly and effectively 
to changing circumstances. One example of the problems this remote 
staging has caused is the agonizing wait for the U.S. Apache 
helicopters to arrive in theater--a delay that has cost NATO in terms 
of tactical flexibility and has given the Serbs in Kosovo a lethal 
window of opportunity to carry forward their ethnic cleansing 
activities.
  Second, and in conjunction with a more aggressive NATO forward 
operating presence, the allies must accelerate their efforts to field 
common systems and increase interoperability. This does not mean that 
the United States should become an open-ended pipeline for the transfer 
of technology to our NATO allies, but there are basic military tools 
that should be available to, and designated for, NATO operations.
  Third, the Kosovo operation should be the genesis for a top-to-bottom 
review of the NATO decisionmaking process. While the system seems to be 
working reasonably well considering that it is a conflict being fought 
by committee, there is no doubt in my mind that decisionmaking must be 
streamlined. It is, for example, far too cumbersome to give each of the 
member nations veto power over the list of military targets. It may be 
well for NATO to consider establishing subgroups of responsibility 
defined operationally and perhaps even geographically. At all costs, 
NATO should not blunder into the decisionmaking no-man's-land that has 
paralyzed the effectiveness of the United Nations.
  And finally, NATO should continue to engage Russia as a vital partner 
in its quest for stability and security, and redouble it efforts to 
bring other former Soviet bloc nations into the alliance once they have 
met NATO membership criteria. This is the time to reach out, not to 
pull back. NATO's sphere of interest and influence no longer spans just 
the Atlantic Ocean; it spans a vast and complex territory never 
contemplated in 1949. In this new operating arena, a broader but still 
solid base will mean a stronger, more vigorous alliance.
  We would be foolhardy to believe that Kosovo is an anomaly, just as 
we would be foolhardy to believe that Kosovo will be the only model of 
future conflict. The threats that face the NATO alliance at the 
beginning of the 21st century are many and varied, and they will 
doubtless proliferate in the coming years. The threat of nuclear attack 
from rogue nations, the possibility of so-called ``loose nukes'' 
falling into the hands of terrorists, the danger of chemical or 
biological warfare, the prospect of cyber-attack, the reality of 
increasing ethnic tensions amid shifting resources and contested 
borders--these are some of the threats that the United States and its 
NATO allies face in the coming years. And these are just the threats we 
can predict today. Who knows, ten years or twenty years from now, what 
perils the world will face and what shape our defenses will have to 
take. But as the conflict in Kosovo so sharply indicates, we must be 
prepared for the unexpected, even the unimaginable. If NATO has the 
staying power to celebrate its centennial fifty years from now, it will 
be in a world that few of us can image today.
  NATO has served a worthy purpose since its inception in 1949. Its 
role in the future security and stability, not only of Europe, but also 
of the United States as well as far-flung corners of the world, is 
equally essential. And so I salute NATO on its 50th anniversary, and I 
urge its representatives to weigh carefully the future goals and 
mission of the alliance. NATO is at a crossroads: it can remain a force 
for security and stability in the world, or it can become just another 
relic of the cold war. For the sake of us all, I hope that NATO charts 
a course of action that will steer it safely through the turbulence of 
today and into the 21st century.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative assistant proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. 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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