“NATO, Kosovo, and the U.S. Role in the World”
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked to reflect on the role of the United States in the world as we enter the twenty-first century. It is generally recognized that because of this country’s size, wealth, technological expertise, and societal flexibility, it is in a unique position to exert influence on the world stage.
Nonetheless, the cliché describing the United States as “the sole remaining superpower,” while literally true, strikes me as somewhat beside the point. We may be unchallenged in the depth and breadth of our might, but in some ways we had more effective power relative to many other countries in the days when we were challenged by the other superpower, the Soviet Union. The world has become a much more complex place, and no single player can dominate it.
Even if it wanted to, the United States certainly could not solve every global problem alone. But it is difficult to imagine a major world problem that could be solved without the involvement of the United States, and in most cases without American leadership.
This means that in order to lead effectively, the United States must also cooperate - cooperate with its allies, its friends, and with the rest of the world community in many international organizations.
It is, NATO more than any other organization, that engages the United States internationally, for our relations with Europe are fundamental to our position in the world. Europe, together with Japan and the United States, is one of the three great global centers of wealth and power. And more than any two other areas, North America and Western Europe are on a daily basis inter-related politically, economically, and culturally.
It wasn’t always that way. After World War II large parts of Western Europe were desolate wastelands. Thanks to the wisdom of George Marshall, who announced his far-sighted relief plan here at Harvard nearly fifty-two years ago, the United States primed the pump of European recovery.
But it took NATO, founded in Washington, D.C. fifty years ago this month, to guarantee that these promising beginnings continued. The nations of Western Europe could not have flourished without the security umbrella that the Alliance has provided. Without NATO there would have been no European Coal and Steel Community, no Common Market, no European Community, and no European Union. It’s as simple as that.
Recognizing the changed post-communist world, NATO met in 1991 and revised its so-called Strategic Concept, its mission statement. In it the Alliance enumerated new threats to its members including ethnic and religious conflict, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and international crime and terrorism.
It is true that many of these new threats originate outside of Europe, and that all alliance members share vital interests such as guaranteeing energy supplies from the Middle East and keeping the sea lanes open around the world.
Nonetheless, I reject the idea that NATO partners should be obliged to undertake missions outside of Europe. For the foreseeable future “coalitions of the willing” such as in the Gulf War, which involve the United States and NATO allies who so wish, remain appropriate.
Within Europe, considering the continent as an integral whole is inherent in any attempt to create a stable, just, and peaceful order. But while the formal division of Europe has ended, it has proven difficult truly to integrate its former communist half with the wealthy democratic and capitalist West.
It is clear that, once again, a security structure must provide the umbrella under which democratic politics, free-market economics, and institutions of civil society can painstakingly effect a transformation.
As it did for Western Europe, NATO has a pivotal role to play for the rest of the continent. I believe that the Alliance’s strategy to extend the zone of stability into Central and Eastern Europe should contain three elements:
First, NATO must continue the measured, criteria-based enlargement of its membership. The accession last month of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic was a giant first step in this process, and the “Open Door” must stay open. Second, NATO must deepen its partnerships with non-member states of Europe. The Partnership for Peace, a creative and hugely successful American initiative, already involves forty-four countries in a variety of consultations and operational exercises. Similarly, NATO has concluded two special partnership relationships with Russia and Ukraine. Because of the war in Yugoslavia, Russia has suspended its relations with NATO, but I believe that the Kremlin understands the benefits its gains from continued and sustained involvement with NATO and that at the opportune moment it will resume cooperation. The third element of NATO’s strategy to extend the zone of stability in Europe must be to counter murderous anti-democratic regimes like that of Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic, which whip up the ethnic and religious tensions described seven years ago in the Strategic Concept to further their own authoritarian political agenda. Not only is regional stability at risk in Kosovo, but also our core values. If the West does not stand for putting an end to genocide and vile ethnic cleansing, then what do we stand for? I will be glad to join Minister Robertson in discussing the Kosovo situation at length during our question period. For now, let me summarize my position in three words: NATO must prevail.
The catastrophe in Kosovo illustrates that European-American cooperation is more important than ever. Whenever I am asked why we have contributed six thousand to twenty thousand troops to IFOR and SFOR to protect the people of Bosnia from further massacres, I respond by saying that for most of the last fifty-four years we kept more than three hundred thousand troops in Western Europe to guarantee its freedom. We now have 100,000 soldiers currently deployed in that theater.
I ask the opponents of American involvement in the Balkans the following question: why is the idea of keeping, say eighty-five thousand troops in Western Europe and fifteen thousand in the Balkans, such a radical intellectual breakthrough?
As we in the United States carry the responsibilities of leadership within the NATO alliance we must remember that a constant theme in West European-American relations ever since the founding of NATO has been an equitable sharing of burdens within the Alliance.
It was understandable in the early days of NATO, when Western Europe was in the first stages of its economic recovery, that Washington should shoulder the lion’s share of defense costs. Now, however, with eleven Alliance members also part of the vibrant European Union, and other European NATO members in good economic shape, those days are long gone. The United States has a right to expect that its allies will assume more of the burden.
If there is one positive aspect of the Kosovo nightmare it is that our European NATO partners have been stepping up to the plate, as exemplified by the British role. Nonetheless, the national defense budgets of most European NATO countries are sinking, and with the exception of the United Kingdom, our European partners are allowing an alarming technological gap to widen between their militaries and those of the United States.
Steps must be taken to address this imbalance and close the technological gap in our respective military capabilities. But, I must emphasize, upgrading European military capabilities in a European Security and Defense Identity, known by its acronym ESDI, must not be at the expense of NATO cohesion.
As Minister Robertson has described, the Anglo-French cooperation announced last December in St. Malo (sah-mah-LOW) by Prime Minister Blair and President Chirac represents a potentially important step in creating a real ESDI.
Implicitly responding to the burden-sharing issue, the Blair-Chirac communique declared that the EU is to acquire the “capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises.” It went on in somewhat ambiguous terms to speak of the need to maintain the collective defense commitments of the Atlantic Alliance.
As the United States has made clear, in any ESDI there are “three no’s” that must be observed:
no decoupling of Europe from North America within NATO; no discrimination against non-EU European NATO members; and no duplication of scarce defense resources. I am encouraged by Minister Robertson’s assurances on these issues, but the devil is in the details.
I could not conclude without a personal appeal to the students in the audience not to heed the siren song of the neo-isolationists. Self-imposed detachment didn’t work for the United States after World War I, and it would be incomprehensible in today’s interconnected world.
I urge you, who are receiving the finest education this country can offer, to see it as a duty to be active not only in domestic politics, but also to steep yourselves in the complexities of international affairs and in foreign cultures and languages. Wherever your careers take you, it is a rare profession that does not have an international dimension, so your engagement will further personal as well as national goals.
The United States can, and must, continue to play a positive, leading role on the world stage, but it can only do so with the support of an informed citizenry. I am confident that you will help create this consensus. Thank you.