[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10727]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             NATO EXPANSION

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are waiting for wrap-up. I would like 
to make a few brief remarks in support of the provision offered by 
Senator Warner and Senator Levin and others that deal with the 
expansion of NATO, and in particular, the rule of consensus in NATO.
  NATO is now 26 countries. It is a group that has provided a bulwark 
for freedom and liberty against the totalitarian Communists of the 
Soviet Union and their footstools they dominated in Eastern Europe. 
They stood firm for a half century, and we have lived to see the 
collapse of the wall, collapse of the Soviet Union, and freedom spread 
across Eastern Europe. It is one of the great events in all of history, 
maybe the highlight of the 20th century.
  The NATO alliance has a rule called the consensus rule. It says:

       In making their joint decisionmaking process dependent on 
     consensus and common consent, the members of the alliance 
     safeguard the role of each country's individual experience 
     and outlook while at the same time availing themselves of the 
     machinery and procedures which allow them jointly to act 
     rapidly and decisively if circumstances require them to do 
     so.

  That is the rule. We have gone up in numbers. We are going to add 
more members now. We are probably going to go over 30 members. As a 
result, we have to ask ourselves what is this unanimous group? What 
happens if a country goes bad? What if the Communists take back over 
one of their former footstools they ran over in Eastern Europe? What if 
a Milosevic takes over a country and rejects the ideals of NATO? What 
if some radical religious party takes over a country and leads it on 
the wrong road? What if a Saddam Hussein, a fascist-type government, 
takes over one of these countries? We are not able to act anymore? We 
have to sit here and stop all of NATO's legitimate actions?
  What this amendment would do is ask the NATO alliance to talk openly 
and honestly about this problem. It does not require anything. What it 
requires and asks is the NATO ministers meet and discuss this rule and 
see if they want to keep this rule.
  It focuses on a couple of questions. One is should you always have to 
have a unanimous vote? I remember very distinctly in the Armed Services 
Committee after the Kosovo effort, which was mainly driven by our air 
power, the commander of the American Air Force who directed our air 
campaign against Kosovo, answered some questions I asked him.
  I asked him if the unanimous rule and consent requirement hinder his 
selection of targets.
  He said: Yes.
  I said: Did that hindrance delay the successful outcome of the war? 
Did it cost more lives of Kosovo citizens and Serbian citizens? And did 
it endanger American lives?
  Yes.
  Why did this happen? The NATO group approved even the targets our Air 
Force were selecting before they committed their flights over Kosovo. 
This is not healthy. This is not a good way to run a war. Now we are 
going to have 30-plus nations, some of which may have ethnic or 
political or weird ideas, and they may object to targets. They may 
object to tactics.
  We had an incredible 11 days to figure out a way to get NATO to vote 
to support Turkey, in case Saddam Hussein attacked Turkey. Some have 
said that was a good record. Eventually they did get the agreement, but 
they had to move outside the political NATO to the military NATO. That 
means France is not in it. You know France is not even a part of the 
military NATO compact. So they got out of the political NATO and 
finally got our people all to agree to defend a NATO member against 
Saddam Hussein. It took 11 days to do so.
  I would say to my friends in the NATO alliance, we are so proud of 
this alliance and what it has achieved. We are proud of the commitment 
and high ideals that NATO has set for that region and throughout the 
whole world. But we are a little nervous. We think it is about time to 
think through this consensus rule.
  I don't want to stir up anything. I don't want to say that we don't 
respect any one nation's vote in NATO nor give it great respect. But I 
do think that a mutual respect to the United States' overwhelming 
majority of NATO would be to ask questions: Wait a minute. What kind of 
mechanism could we do that would protect small nations, and that would 
protect the minority of nations but allow NATO to act legitimately even 
without an absolute unanimous vote?
  I think Senator Warner, Senator Levin, Senator Roberts, and others 
who have offered this are on the right track. I have asked about it for 
some time. In fact, when the matter came up several years ago to expand 
NATO, I asked a number of the witnesses from President Bush's 
administration some tough questions about it. They were forward. I 
asked about the rule of consensus. They defended it. They said, Well, 
we think it is going to be OK. Senator Levin, likewise, took the same 
position. When we had the recent hearing on the further expansion, we 
dealt with this same issue.
  I quoted some of Senator Levin's remarks previously. I think this is 
a good time for us to move forward to bring this to a head. Let us talk 
about it openly. I don't think a discussion without any requirement to 
act could upset anybody. Let us talk about it and maybe we can make 
some progress.

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