[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 260-263]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  NATO'S ROLE IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM

  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I enjoyed the opportunity last week in 
Brussels, Belgium, to address the permanent representatives to the 
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, on the subject of the 
Alliance's forthcoming summit in Prague next November, as well as the 
likely agenda that will include the issues of NATO enlargement and 
Russia-NATO cooperation.
  Perhaps more importantly, I was asked to consider and discuss with 
the Ambassadors of NATO the Alliance's future 3, 5, and 10 years out 
and to assess the impact of the events of September 11 and the 
consequent war on terrorism with the future role of NATO. These are the 
comments I made on that occasion.
  There are moments in history when world events suddenly allow us to 
see the challenges facing our societies with a degree of clarity 
previously unimaginable. The events of September 11 have created one of 
those rare moments. We can see clearly the challenges we face and now 
confront and what needs to be done.
  September 11 forced Americans to recognize that the United States is 
exposed to an existential threat from terrorism and the possible use of 
weapons of mass destruction by terrorists. Meeting that threat is the 
premier security challenge of our time. There is a clear and present 
danger that terrorists will gain the capability to carry out 
catastrophic attacks on Europe and the United States using nuclear, 
biological, or chemical weapons.
  In 1996, I made, the Chair will recall, an unsuccessful bid for the 
Presidency of the United States. Three of my campaign television ads on 
that occasion, widely criticized for being farfetched and grossly 
alarming, depicted a mushroom cloud and warned of the existential 
threat posed by the growing dangers of weapons of mass destruction in 
the hands of terrorist groups. I argued that the next President should 
be selected on the basis of being able to meet that challenge.
  Recently, those ads have been replayed on national television and are 
viewed from a different perspective. The images of those planes 
crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11 will remain with 
us all for some time to come. We might not have been able to prevent 
the attacks of September 11, but we can draw the right lessons from 
those events now, and one of those lessons is just how vulnerable our 
societies are to such attacks.
  September 11 has destroyed many myths. One of those was the belief 
that the West was no longer threatened after the collapse of communism 
and our victory in the cold war, and perhaps nowhere was that myth 
stronger than in the United States where many Americans believed that 
America's strength made us invulnerable. We know now we are all 
vulnerable--Americans and Europeans.
  The terrorists seek massive impact through indiscriminate killing of 
people and destruction of institutions, historical symbols, and the 
basic fabric of our societies. The next attack, however, could just as 
easily be in London, Paris, or Berlin as in Washington, and it could, 
or is even likely to, involve weapons or materials of mass destruction.

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  The sober reality is that the danger of Americans and Europeans being 
killed today at work or at home is perhaps greater than at any time in 
recent history. Indeed, the threat we face today may be just as 
existential as the one we faced during the cold war since it is 
increasingly likely to involve the use of weapons of mass destruction 
against our societies.
  We are again at one of those moments when we must look in the mirror 
and ask ourselves whether we as leaders are prepared to draw the right 
conclusions and do what we can now to reduce that threat or whether it 
will take another, even deadlier, attack to force us into action.
  Each of us recognizes that the war against terrorism and weapons of 
mass destruction must be fought on many fronts--at home and abroad--and 
it must be fought with many tools--political, economic, and military.
  President Bush is seeking to lead a global coalition in a global war 
to root out terrorist cells and stop nation states from harboring 
terrorists.
  The flip side of this policy is one that I have spent a lot of time 
thinking about; namely, the urgent need to extend the war on terrorism 
to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Al-Qaida-like terrorists 
will use NBC weapons if they can obtain them.
  Our task can be succinctly stated: Together we must keep the world's 
most dangerous technologies out of the hands of the world's most 
dangerous people. The events of September 11 and the subsequent public 
discovery of al-Qaida's methods, capabilities, and intentions have 
finally brought the vulnerability of our countries to the forefront.
  The terrorists have demonstrated suicidal tendencies and are beyond 
deterrence. We must anticipate they will use weapons of mass 
destruction in NATO countries if allowed that opportunity.
  Without oversimplifying the motivations of terrorists in the past, it 
appears that most acts of terror attempted to bring about change in a 
regime or change in governance or status in a community or state.
  Usually, the terrorists made demands that could be negotiated or 
accommodated. The targets were selected to create and increase pressure 
for change.
  In contrast, the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States were 
planned to kill thousands of people indiscriminately. There were no 
demands for change or negotiation. Osama bin Laden was filmed 
conversing about results of the attack which exceeded his earlier 
predictions of destruction. Massive destruction of institutions, 
wealth, national morale, and innocent people was clearly his objective.
  Over 3,000 people from a host of countries perished. Recent economic 
estimates indicate $60 billion of loss to the United States economy 
from all facets of the September 11 attacks and the potential loss of 
over 1.6 million jobs. Horrible as these results have been, military 
experts have written about the exponential expansion of those losses 
had the al-Qaida terrorists used weapons of mass destruction.
  The minimum standard for victory in this kind of war is the 
prevention of any of the individual terrorists or terrorist cells from 
obtaining weapons or materials of mass destruction.
  The current war effort in Afghanistan is destroying the Afghan-based 
al-Qaida network and the Taliban regime. The campaign is also designed 
to demonstrate that governments that are hosts to terrorists face 
retribution. But as individual NATO countries prosecute this war, NATO 
must pay much more attention to the other side of the equation--that 
is, making certain that all weapons and materials of mass destruction 
are identified, continuously guarded, and systematically destroyed.
  Unfortunately, beyond Russia and other states of the former Soviet 
Union, Nunn-Lugar-style cooperative threat reduction programs aimed at 
non-proliferation do not exist. They must now be created on a global 
scale, with counter-terrorism joining counter-proliferation as our 
primary objectives.
  Today we lack even minimal international confidence about many 
weapons programs, including the number of weapons or amounts of 
materials produced, the storage procedures employed, and production or 
destruction programs. NATO allies must join with the United States to 
change this situation. We need to join together to restate the terms of 
minimal victory in the war against terrorism we are currently 
fighting--to wit, that every nation that has weapons and materials of 
mass destruction must account for what it has, spend its own money or 
obtain international technical and financial resources to safely secure 
what it has, and pledge that no other nation, cell or cause will be 
allowed access to or use of these weapons or materials.
  Some nations, after witnessing the bombing of Afghanistan and the 
destruction of the Taliban government, may decide to proceed along a 
cooperative path of accountability regarding their weapons and 
materials of mass destruction. But other states may decide to test the 
U.S. will and staying power. Such testing will be less likely if the 
NATO allies stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. in pursuing such a 
counter-terrorism policy.
  The precise replication of the Nunn-Lugar program will not be 
possible everywhere, but a satisfactory level of accountability, 
transparency and safety can and must be established in every nation 
with a weapons of mass destruction program. When such nations resist 
such accountability, or their governments make their territory 
available to terrorists who are seeking weapons of mass destruction, 
then NATO nations should be prepared to join with the U.S. to use force 
as well as all diplomatic and economic tools at their collective 
disposal.
  I do not mention the use of military force lightly or as a passing 
comment. The use of military force could mean war against a nation 
state remote from Europe or North America. This awesome contingency 
requires the utmost in clarity now. Without being redundant, let me 
describe the basic elements of such a strategy even more explicitly.
  NATO should list all nation states which now house terrorist cells, 
voluntarily or involuntarily. The list should be supplemented with a 
map which illustrates to all of our citizens the location of these 
states, and how large the world is. Through intelligence sharing, 
termination of illicit financial channels, support of local police 
work, diplomacy, and public information, NATO and a broader coalition 
of nations fighting terrorism will seek to root out each cell in a 
comprehensive manner for years to come and keep a public record of 
success that the world can observe and measure. If we are diligent and 
determined, we will end most terrorist possibilities.
  Perhaps most importantly, we will draw up a second list that will 
contain all of the states that have materials, programs, and/or weapons 
of mass destruction. We will demand that each of these nation states 
account for all of the materials, programs, and weapons in a manner 
which is internationally verifiable. We will demand that all such 
weapons and materials be made secure from theft or threat of 
proliferation using the funds of that nation state and supplemented by 
international funds if required. We will work with each nation state to 
formulate programs of continuing accountability and destruction which 
may be of mutual benefit to the safety of citizens in the host state as 
well as the international community. The latter will be a finite list, 
and success in the war against terrorism will not be achieved until all 
nations on that list have complied with these standards.
  The Nunn-Lugar program has demonstrated that extraordinary 
international relationships are possible to improve controls over 
weapons of mass destruction. Programs similar to the Nunn-Lugar program 
should be established in each of the countries in the coalition against 
terrorism that wishes to work with the United States and hopefully its 
NATO allies on safe storage, accountability and planned destruction.
  If these remarks had been delivered before September 11, I would now 
offer some eloquent thoughts about the importance of continuing NATO 
enlargement and of trying to build a cooperative NATO-Russian 
relationship. In a

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speech last summer preceding the remarkable call by President Bush in 
Warsaw for a NATO which stretched from the Baltics to the Black Sea, I 
listed Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and 
Bulgaria as strong candidates for membership consideration. I visited 
five of these countries last summer to encourage continuing progress in 
meeting the criteria for joining the Alliance. After ten years of 
hands-on experience in working with Russian political, military, and 
scientific leaders to carefully secure and to destroy materials and 
weapons of mass destruction in cooperative threat reduction programs, I 
anticipate that a new NATO-Russian relationship could be of enormous 
benefit in meeting the dangerous challenges which we must now confront 
together. In many ways, September 11 has strengthened my conviction 
that both of these efforts are critical.
  But they can no longer be our only major priorities. As important as 
they are, neither NATO enlargement nor NATO-Russia cooperation is the 
most critical issue facing our nations today. That issue is the war on 
terrorism. NATO has to decide whether it wants to participate in this 
war. It has to decide whether it wants to be relevant in addressing the 
major security challenge of our day. Those of us who have been the most 
stalwart proponents of enlargement in the past have an obligation to 
point out that, as important as NATO enlargement remains, the major 
security challenge we face today is the intersection of terrorism with 
weapons of mass destruction.
  If we fail to defend our societies from a major terrorist attack 
involving weapons of mass destruction, we and the Alliance will have 
failed in the most fundamental sense of defending our nations and our 
way of life--and ultimately no one will care what NATO did or did not 
accomplish on enlargement at the Prague summit in November this year. 
That's why the Alliance must fundamentally rethink its role in the 
world in the wake of September 11.
  At the Washington summit in the spring of 1999, NATO heads of state 
made a bold statement. They stated that they wanted NATO to be as 
relevant to the threats of the next 50 years as it was to the threats 
of the past five decades.
  The Alliance invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history in 
response to September 11. But, NATO itself has only played a limited, 
largely political and symbolic role in the war against terrorism. To 
some degree, Washington's reluctance to turn to NATO was tied to the 
fact that the U.S. had to scramble to put together a military response 
involving logistics, basing and special forces quickly--and it was 
easier to do that ourselves. Since it was the U.S. itself that was 
attacked, we were highly motivated to assume the lion's share of burden 
of the military role of the war on terrorism and we had the capability 
to do so.
  But U.S. reticence to turn to NATO was also tied to other facts. Some 
Americans have lost confidence in the Alliance. Years of cuts in 
defense spending and failure to meet pledge after pledge to improve 
European military capabilities has left some Americans with doubts as 
to what our allies could realistically contribute. Rightly or wrongly, 
the legacy of Kosovo has reinforced the concern that NATO is not up to 
the job of fighting a modern war. The U.S. did have confidence in a 
select group of individual allies. But it did not have confidence in 
the institution that is NATO. The fact that some military leaders of 
NATO's leading power didn't want to use the Alliance it has led for 
half a century is a worrying sign.
  Some in Washington did suggest to the Administration that it could 
and should be more creative in involving NATO. Senator Joseph Biden and 
I, for example, wrote an ``op-ed'' suggesting a number of tasks the 
Alliance could assume in the war on terrorism. But I am not here to 
second-guess the President and his national security team on these 
issues. Whether we should have used NATO more is a question best left 
to future historians. The strategy the U.S. employed in Afghanistan 
worked, and I congratulate the Administration for that success.
  The key issue is: where do we go from here? Will we--Americans and 
Europeans--now decide to prepare NATO for the next stages in the war 
against terrorism? If not, how should we organize outside of NATO to 
meet the military challenges of the war on terrorism? What do we want 
NATO to look like in three to five years? How do we launch that process 
between now and the Prague summit next November?
  We will not find a single American answer to these questions. Indeed, 
as I listen to the administration and my colleagues around Washington, 
I hear very different views. One school of thought holds that NATO 
should simply remain the guarantor of peace in Europe. With successful 
integration of all of Central and Eastern Europe into the Alliance, 
they see NATO's next priority as trying to integrate Russia and Ukraine 
into European security via the new NATO-Russia Council. They accept the 
fact that NATO is likely to become more and more a political 
organization such as the OSCE but one with at least some military 
muscle. They consider any attempt to give the Alliance a military role 
beyond Europe ``a bridge too far.'' If all NATO does is keep the peace 
in an increasingly secure Europe, that's enough.
  A second school thinks NATO as it is currently constituted is about 
the best we can do. It does not want to take a big leap forward either 
with regard to NATO cooperation with Russia or with respect to new 
missions such as a war against terrorism. This school would be willing 
to enlarge to some additional countries but is much more cautious about 
NATO-Russia cooperation. It is willing to work with allies on future 
missions, but on an ad hoc basis and not as an Alliance, lest a NATO 
framework create ``war by committee'' and coalition ``drag'' on the 
prosecution of hostilities. It prefers a division of labor whereby the 
U.S. focuses on the big wars and leaves peacekeeping in and around 
Europe to the Europeans.
  A third way of thinking about NATO is to see it as the natural 
defense arm of the trans-Atlantic community and the institution we 
should turn to for help in meeting new challenges such as terrorism and 
weapons of mass destruction. With Europe increasingly secure, the 
Alliance needs to be ``retooled'' so that it can handle the most 
critical threats to our security. If that means it has to go beyond 
Europe in the future, so be it.
  This last way of thinking about NATO's future is closest to my own 
for several reasons. First, I have always had a problem with the 
``division of labor'' argument that assumes the U.S. will handle the 
big wars outside of Europe and lets Europeans take care of the small 
wars within Europe. It presupposes that the U.S. has less interest in 
Europe and that Europeans have less interests in the rest of the world. 
Both are wrong. We have interests in Europe and Europeans have 
interests in the rest of the world--and we should be trying to tackle 
them together.
  Second, the U.S. needs a military alliance with Europe to confront 
effectively problems such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. 
We cannot do it on an ad hoc basis. We were willing to proceed more or 
less alone in Afghanistan. But we might not be so inclined next time, 
depending on the circumstances. What if the next attack is on Europe--
or on America and Europe simultaneously? The model used in Afghanistan 
would not work in those scenarios. Americans expect our closest allies 
to fight with us in this war on terrorism--and they expect our leaders 
to come up with a structure that allows us to do so promptly and 
successfully.
  Third, the problem we faced in Kosovo, and the problems we are 
encountering with respect to developing adequate military capabilities 
to meet the new threats, do not lead me to conclude that the answer is 
to reduce NATO to a purely political role. Rather, they are arguments 
to expand our efforts to fix capability problems so that NATO can 
operate more effectively in the future. Americans do not want to carry 
the entire military burden of the war on terrorism by themselves. Nor 
should we. We want allies to share the burden. The last attack

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may have been unique in that regard. We were shocked by attacks on our 
homeland. The U.S. was prepared to respond immediately and to do most 
of the work itself. But what if the next attack is on Brussels, or on 
France and the U.S. at the same time?
  Finally, some of my critics have said: Senator, that is a great idea 
but it simply is not ``doable.'' And it would be a mistake even to try 
because you might fail and that would embarrass President Bush and hurt 
the Alliance. I find it hard to believe that the U.S. and Europe--some 
of the richest and most advanced countries in the world--are incapable 
of organizing themselves to come up with an effective military alliance 
to fight this new threat.
  When NATO was founded, there were those who said it would be 
impossible to have a common strategy toward the Soviet Union. And in 
early 1993 when I delivered my first speech calling for NATO not only 
to enlarge but to prepare for substantial ``out of area'' activities, 
many people told me that what I was proposing ran the risk of 
destroying the Alliance. Those of us who believed in NATO enlargement 
stuck to our guns. We now have three new Permanent Representatives at 
NATO Headquarters, and a much more vital NATO as a result.
  My view can be easily summarized. America is at war and feels more 
vulnerable than at any time since the end of the cold war and perhaps 
since World War II. The threat we face is global and existential. We 
need allies and alliances to confront it effectively. Those alliances 
can no longer be circumscribed by artificial geographic boundaries. All 
of America's alliances are going to be reviewed and recast in light of 
this new challenge, including NATO. If NATO is not up to the challenge 
of becoming effective in the new war against terrorism, then our 
political leaders may be inclined to search for something else that 
will answer this need.
  I believe that September 11 opened an enormous opportunity to 
revitalize the trans-Atlantic relationship. It would be a mistake to 
let this opportunity slip through our fingers. Neither side of the 
Atlantic has thus far grasped that opportunity fully. It is a time to 
think big, not small. It is a time when our proposals should not be 
measured by what we think is ``doable'' but rather shaped by what needs 
to be done to meet the new existential threat we face.
  In the early 1990s we needed to make the leap from NATO defending 
Western Europe to the Alliance assuming responsibility for the 
continent as a whole. Today we must make a further leap and recognize 
that, in a world in which terrorist threats can be planned in Germany, 
financed in Asia, and carried out in the United States, old 
distinctions between ``in'' and ``out of area'' have become utterly 
meaningless. Indeed, given the global nature of terrorism, boundaries 
and other geographical distinctions are without relevance.
  At NATO's founding on April 4, 1949, President Harry S Truman 
described the creation of the Alliance as a neighborly act taken by 
countries conscious of a shared heritage and common values, as 
democracies determined to defend themselves against the threat they 
faced. Those same values that Truman talked about defending in 1949 are 
under attack today, but this time from a very different source.
  In 1949, President Truman went on to say that the Washington Treaty 
was a very simple document, but one that might have prevented two world 
wars had it been in existence in 1914 or 1939. Protecting Western 
Europe, he opined, was an important step toward creating peace in the 
world. And he predicted that the positive impact of NATO would be felt 
beyond its borders and throughout the World.
  Those words strike me as prescient today. Truman was right. NATO 
prevented war in Europe for 50 years. It is now in the process of 
making all of Europe safe and secure and of building a new relationship 
with Russia. That, in itself, is a remarkable accomplishment. But if 
NATO does not help tackle the most pressing security threat to our 
countries today--a threat I believe is existential because it involves 
the threat of weapons of mass destruction--it will cease to be the 
premier alliance it has been and will become increasingly marginal.
  That is why NATO's agenda for Prague has to be both broadened--and 
integrated. While NATO enlargement and deepened NATO-Russia cooperation 
will be central to the summit's agenda, they must now be complemented 
by a plan to translate the fighting of terrorism into one of NATO's 
central military missions. NATO enlargement and NATO-Russia cooperation 
should be pursued in a way that strengthens, not weakens, that agenda. 
This means that new members must be willing and able to sign up to new 
NATO requirements in this area, and that the new NATO-Russia Council 
must be structured in a way that strongly supports the Alliance in 
undertaking such new military tasks.
  To leave NATO focused solely on defending the peace in Europe from 
the old threats would be to reduce it to sort of a housekeeping role in 
an increasingly secure continent. To do so at a time when we face a new 
existential threat posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction 
will condemn it to a marginal role in meeting the major challenge of 
our time.
  That is why this issue has to be front and center on NATO's agenda 
before, during and after Prague. The reality is that we can launch the 
next round of NATO enlargement as well as a new NATO-Russia 
relationship at Prague, and the Alliance can still be seen as failing--
that's right, failing--unless it starts to transform itself into an 
important new force in the war on terrorism.
  I plan to work with the Bush administration in the months and years 
ahead in an effort to promote such a transformation of the Alliance and 
hope that Allied governments as well as Members of Congress and the 
members of the legislatures we represent will strongly, 
enthusiastically join me in this effort.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I 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. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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