Bosnia has significance far beyond the borders of the former Yugoslavia. It has turned out to be one of the most serious challenges for America’s foreign policy in the post cold war era. It has produced five years of debate in Congress. It is the centerpiece of any discussion about American military intervention around the world. In short, it has become a critical test of our foreign policy.

Rightly or wrongly, whether U.S. foreign policy in this era is viewed as a success or failure will depend in large part on the success or failure of our policy in Bosnia. So we better get it right.

At the outset, let me state the obvious: I have cared deeply about Bosnia for a long time, since the beginning of the war. Some would say I bring “historical baggage” to the issue. I care not just because of the strategic implications — as Bosnia goes, so goes NATO — but for humanitarian reasons.

Appalled by the naked Serbian aggression and genocidal attacks on Bosnian civilians, in September 1992 I called for a “lift and strike” policy. That was shorthand for lifting the illegal and immoral arms embargo against the Bosnian government, which was the victim of aggression, and launching air strikes against the Bosnian Serb aggressors.

My views were not widely shared at that time. As the war escalated — with massacres, “ethnic cleansing,” and rapes — a few other senators, including Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman, joined my call for action. But it took more than two years of failed diplomacy — and a quarter-million killed and two million homeless — before we finally came around to the “lift and strike” policy in the fall of 1995.

Guess what? The policy worked! The Serbian bullies sued for peace, and under the leadership of ambassador Dick Holbrooke we were able to hammer out the Dayton accords in November 1995. I’m leaving out the details — all the peace plans that didn’t work — but in a nutshell that’s what happened.

Honest people may disagree about the compromises that were made at Dayton. I think the accords accomplished as much as we could have hoped for, given the obvious reluctance of our government, and of our European allies, to get more deeply involved militarily.

And I wish I could say that even the modest results envisioned in Dayton had been achieved. But they have not. It’s true that conditions today are far better than the bloody mayhem that existed during the war. The killing has stopped. But we are only halfway to the full peace envisioned in the Dayton accords. The question is: “How do we get the rest of the way? How do we finish the job?

Having returned six weeks ago from my third trip to Bosnia, I am certainly aware of the contradictions, the ambiguities, the ironies, and the uncertainties of Bosnia today. Bosnia and Herzegovina might be labeled the classical land of “yes, but.”

Yes, there has been ongoing conflict among the various religious groups in Bosnia — the Orthodox Serbs, the Catholic Croats, and the Muslim South Slavs — for centuries.

But, for most of the time, these conflicts were kept under control, usually by an outside hegemon: first the Ottoman Turks, then the Austrian Habsburg, and more recently the communists under President Tito.

When violence broke out in the spring of 1992, a cosmopolitan society existed in much of Bosnia. Sarajevo, for example, had one of the highest rates of inter-marriage in all of Europe. What killed the “live and let live” character of Sarajevo were unscrupulous, ultra-nationalist politicians, many of whom were searching for a new “-ism” to replace communism, an ideology that had been discredited.

Yes, there were elements of civil war in Bosnia, but there was also blatant aggression from Serbia across an internationally recognized border. In fact, it was through the overwhelming advantage of the weaponry, the salaries, and the support services furnished by Slobodan Miloševi that the Bosnian Serbs perpetrated their systematic slaughter.

The “yes, but” dichotomy persists in Bosnia today. Yes there has been considerable progress in Bosnia since Dayton, but a huge amount remains to be accomplished.

Yes the fifty percent unemployment rate in the Bosnian Croat federation is huge, but it has come down from ninety percent in only one year. Incidentally, it still hovers at ninety percent in the Republika Srpska, which has been denied all but a trickle of international aid because it has refused to implement Dayton.

Yes, Bosnian Serbs regularly try to paralyze many of the institutions of national government created at Dayton, but the parliament has begun to meet, and even the three-member presidency shows signs of life.

Yes, the nationalist parties representing the Serbs, Muslims, and Croat are narrow-minded and corrupt, and in many ways resemble the characteristics of the old Yugoslav league of communists, which they supplanted.

But even in this cynical Bosnian political arena there is hope. In last month’s municipal elections a non-nationalist, multi-ethnic coalition triumphed in Tuzla, one of Bosnia’s largest cities.

A non-nationalist opposition also exists in the Republika Srpska. I met with three of its leaders in Banja Luka. They are confident that they — not Karad i and his thugs from Pale, not President Plavši — are the wave of the future.

Yes, more than two-thirds of the indicted war criminals remain at large — an international disgrace. But, ladies and gentlemen, just last week, under strong pressure from Washington, Croatia and the Bosnian Croat surrendered ten indicted Bosnian Croat to the Hague.

Virtually every observer of Bosnia believes that Dayton cannot be implemented until indicted war criminals are indicted and transported to the international tribunal at the Hague to stand trial.

The other major precondition for progress in Bosnia is the return of refugees and displaced persons that was mandated by the Dayton accords.

Yes, this will be the most difficult of all the Dayton tasks to accomplish. But, contrary to popular belief, even here there has been noteworthy progress. As many as 150,000 refugees have returned to Bosnia from abroad, and another 160,000 persons who were displaced within Bosnia have returned to their homes.

Most of these have returned to areas where their ethnic group is in the majority, but an “open cities” program has induced several towns — even a half-dozen villages in the Republika Srpska — to accept returnees from other groups in return for economic assistance.

On my last trip, I visited one of these sites in a suburb of Sarajevo occupied by the Bosnian Serbs during the war and returned to the federation by Dayton. The U.S. Agency for International Development and its subcontractor, Catholic Relief Services, are helping returning refugees to rebuild their homes. I was moved by the selfless dedication of the young Americans and Europeans working at this important task.

Finally let me address the issue of security in Bosnia today. In a country that has recently suffered some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century, the citizens need physical security. For the Muslims and Croats, who were forced into an alliance in 1994 by the United States, this means guaranteeing their ability to deter renewed Serbian aggression in the future.

Toward that end, the “train and equip” program, led by retired U.S. military officers, is molding a unified force under joint command. We have supplied over three hundred million dollars worth of equipment. I visited the main training center in Had i i, near Sarajevo, and met with Muslims and Croats who are studying and training together.

On the local level, in the federation, multi-ethnic police forces are being formed. Believe it or not, joint Muslim-Croat police units are now patrolling Mostar, scene of some of the worst warfare in 1993 and early 1994. So there is progress here as well.

In citing these examples of progress, I do not want to suggest for a moment that conditions in the federation, let alone in the Republika Srpska, are rosy. They are not. But those to whom I spoke in Bosnia agreed on two things. First, significant progress has been made in the federation. Second, it is absolutely essential for the international military force to remain in Bosnia after June 1998 to guarantee that progress will continue.

So what should our policy be in Bosnia in the coming months? I believe we should redouble the efforts we are already making. Yes, I would like to see a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society re-emerge like the one that existed in Sarajevo before the war. But, I fear that too much blood has been shed and too many atrocities committed for that to happen in the near future.

More realistic, and politically feasible, is the development of a multi-ethnic state. Most likely that will mean a confederation with a good degree of de-centralization in all but foreign policy and defense.

Am I sure that we can achieve the goal of a democratic, decentralized Bosnia? No, I am not. Last year I would have rated the odds at about one in twenty. As a result of the progress made in the last twelve months, I would now put the odds of success at about fifty-fifty, if we stay the course.

But fifty-fifty looks good compared to the probable outcome if we followed the advice of those now calling for a re-negotiation of Dayton and a formal partition of Bosnia. “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” might be a slight exaggeration, but this policy prescription tends in that direction.

Those who favor partition seem unaware of the progress already made in Bosnia and blind to the calamities that would result from scrapping Dayton. Warfare would almost certainly erupt again, with even higher casualties, given the new military balance.

But renewed fighting would only be part of the tragedy. The vile ethnic cleansers and the war criminals would see their policies vindicated. Europe’s remaining anti-democratic rulers like Serbia’s Miloševi and Belarus’s Lukashenka would be emboldened.

Moreover, if we pulled the plug on Bosnia just as international efforts are beginning to bear fruit, we could kiss goodbye American leadership in NATO. In fact, the plan to enlarge NATO, I predict, would fail in the Senate.

And soon thereafter, even the future of NATO itself would be cast in doubt. After all, if Bosnia is the prototypical European crisis of the twenty-first century — and if NATO is unable to solve Bosnia — then why bother spending billions of dollars on NATO every year?

So, leaving Bosnia would be a fool’s paradise. Just as certainly as night follows day, an American abdication of responsibility and withdrawal from Bosnia would eventually cost us more in blood and treasure than we would ever spend in the current course.

Let me sum up: the tragedy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although complex, ultimately boils down to old-fashioned oppression. It was preventable, and, with the requisite American and European steadfastness, it is solvable.

By continuing to lead the effort to put Bosnia and Herzegovina back on its feet and guarantee its citizens a chance to lead productive lives, the United States will be both living up to its ideals and furthering its national self-interest.

Thank you.

Several years ago at a gathering such as this, I began my speech with the following quote from the Atlanta police chief:

“70% of all the crime in this city is due to cocaine.”

I went on to say that:

“The eighties saw the highest rate of cocaine consumption in our history. Cocaine-related violence and crime spiraled out of control. As a result, during that decade, our cities became battlegrounds; our hospitals filled with cocaine addicts desperate for treatment.”

Everyone nodded politely, but this was not exactly earth-shaking news.

But the fact is, that the Atlanta police chief’s quote comes from 1914 and the decade I was describing was not the 1980s, but the 1880s.

I tell this story because it is too easy for all of us to be discouraged by the difficulties of fighting drugs. We should learn from our experience a century ago, when we confronted a drug epidemic, worse on a per-capita basis than today’s — and we beat it.

And we beat it with a pretty simple prescription — enforcement was a part of it, but prevention and education were equal partners — so much so, that by 1914, most states (many more than today) had mandatory drug education in the public schools.

And it worked so well that by the thirties, our first national “drug czar” — Harry Anslinger — concluded that because we had driven drugs from our national landscape, that to teach kids about the dangers of drugs would only “encourage” them to try drugs.

The chief lesson we can take from the first drug epidemic is that prevention and education work to keep kids off drugs.

The second lesson is that we can beat drug abuse once it starts.

Let me offer a more recent example — it was only a very few years ago, when no one thought we could do anything about violent crime. But in 1994, we started getting smart — we did it all — more police, more prisons, more treatment and more prevention.

And, what was unthinkable just a few years ago has happened — just look at the most recent FBI data: murder has fallen to the lowest rate since 1970.

Folks, I believe that we can do the same against the drug epidemic: if we are smart, if we are committed to solving the problem, if we stop the simplistic sloganeering.

But, you on the front-lines know better than anyone what barriers lie in our way:

Not only do too few believe we actually can reduce drug use. In addition, our “Puritan ethic” gets in the way of putting in place the drug prevention and treatment programs we know are in our self-interest.

Perhaps because of that, when push comes to shove, despite all the speeches I hear from all corners of the political debate about the need to do “something” about drugs — we won’t spend the money.

Another barrier — one that too few recognize — is that the fight against drugs actually has some very powerful enemies –

That was put in stark relief for me when I started fighting two years ago to slap the maximum federal controls against “row-hip-nol” — the “date-rape” drug — and the “club drug” “ket-a-meen,” known as “special k.”

I was stunned when my efforts against “row-hip-nol” were beaten back by the concentrated political muscle of a foreign drug manufacturer worried about losing drug profits overseas if we targeted this illegal drug here in the United States.

Just last week, even our own DEA was backing away from their unequivocal statements offered only 20 months ago that the “date-rape” drug should be subject to the toughest treatment possible under federal law.

You all had the same experience in 1995 — when the liquor industry with the help of Congress went after the budget of Center for Substance Abuse Prevention — your voice — and bragged about it to the Wall Street Journal. Let me quote their lobbyist:

“This is our response: we want to cut their funding, stop their lobbying and basically end the use of that structure [he meant you folks] to bash the beer industry.”

“Bash the beer industry?” — all I have seen you do in my home state of Delaware is try to stop kids — underage kids — from drinking!

These are the key challenges we must surmount if we are to make more progress against the scourge of drugs –

Of course, the challenge facing every member of this Coalition America is, how can we change public attitudes? How can we increase society’s “moral disapprobation” against drugs, without unleashing the unproductive “moral righteousness” of our Puritan ethic past?

This is the over-arching challenge you must meet every day, in literally every conversation you have with the people of your neighborhoods and communities.

But, I respectfully suggest, that in the next several months, our national drug policy will be advanced — or diminished — in four or five very important, very specific debates.

I further suggest, that the involvement of you and every member of the coalition will be key to what is decided here in Washington on each of these specific debates.

First, will our powerful enemies win — or, will Congress adopt my proposal to crack down on the “date rape” drug “row-hip-nol” and the “club drug” ket-a-meen?

We reversed epidemics of quaaludes and steroids in the 1980s with the controls I now propose for “row-hip-nol” and “special k.”

We should learn from our successes and pass this legislation as soon as Congress returns next year.

Second, what about the youth violence legislation pending in Congress? Will we focus solely on the roughly 100,000 kids who have already become violent criminals?

Or, will we expand our focus to include the more than 600,000 children who are just now becoming susceptible to crime and drugs ?

Will we give the millions of at-risk children the after school supervision they need if we are to prevent so many of them from turning to drugs and crime?

We must also face the implications of the fact that America now has 39 million children younger than 10 years old. The implications of this “baby-boomerang” — the largest number of young children since the 1960s — are potentially devastating.

Consider just one fact: even if the percentage of drug use among young people stays the same, we will have 250,000 more 8th graders using drugs in 2005 than we do today, simply because there will be so many more 8th graders.

The recently released pride survey on drug abuse pointed out that 88% of fathers — and 63% of mothers — have full-time jobs. In other words, even though it is clear that parents hold the key, our economy is now structured so that there will be nobody home when millions of children get out of school this afternoon.

If we really want to keep kids away from drugs and drugs away from kids, we should pass the youth violence bill now before Congress — but not before we include in that bill $100 million to give 1 million kids after-school supervision.

Third — will Congress re-authorize the drug director, or will this effort fall prey to partisanship — which will leave but one result, a return to the days when no one was in charge of the fight against drugs.

Too many take it for granted today that we have General McCaffrey around to lead the fight against drugs — no one should.

Perhaps because crime is no longer an issue that can be used to partisan advantage — the bill to re-authorize the drug director may become mired in partisanship which could end up costing us the very existence of the drug office.

I fought from 1980 to 1988 — nearly a decade — for a drug director for one simple reason. You know that reason, because you all remember how many administrations made the drug issue a national priority before we had a drug director: not a single one.

But, mark my words, the day we no longer have a drug director in the cabinet, is the day we begin unraveling our national commitment against drugs.

And, this will be exactly the situation you all will face unless Congress gets its act together and passes legislation to keep the General’s office in place.

I have been working with General McCaffrey and my colleagues in the Senate, and I believe we will ultimately agreeing on a bi-partisan bill.

But I am worried about the House of Representatives. Because of the partisan way this issue is being handled in the House the continued funding for the drug office is in doubt and the entire operation of our national drug effort is in danger.

To be absolutely frank, unless you all — the folks who are listened to on the drug issue in every congressional district in the nation — insist that the House of Representatives resist the temptation to let this issue descend into partisan politics, that is exactly where this debate will go.

And, fourth, will we take advantage of the $195 million Congress appropriated for General McCaffrey’s anti-drug media campaign to reduce drug abuse among our children?

Jim Burke, as the Chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-free America, I suspect that it will be your efforts which answer this question — perhaps more than anyone else here.

With all the folks here, and the thousands more watching us via the satellite hook-ups provided by the National Guard, it is clear that the national media campaign will be supported by the words and deeds of community leaders around the country.

Now is the time to turn to our work — and let’s get this job done.

The costs of delay are too great to bear because they are measured in nothing less profound than the lost futures of children who turn to drugs — and that piece of our nation’s future which is lost with each one of these children.

Thank you.

It is a pleasure and an honor once again to address the council. Last year in Washington, I spoke about our Bosnia policy. Tonight you have asked me to address a not-unrelated topic — the outlook for ratification by the United States Senate of an amendment to the Washington Treaty of 1949 to admit Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Before I examine this issue, however, I should note that earlier this fall the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held extremely detailed hearings on five key aspects of the enlargement question: the strategic rationale; costs, benefits, burdensharing, and military implications; the qualifications of the three candidate countries; the NATO-Russia relationship; and public views on enlargement. Among the witnesses were several council members who testified in favor of enlargement, and several who testified against it.

As a result of these hearings, I am more convinced than ever that if the three countries meet the rigid admission criteria, NATO enlargement will strengthen the alliance, further the cause of European security, and, therefore, will be squarely in the national interest of the United States.

Time does not permit me to go into detail about the reasons for this conclusion. I know that Mr. Danner is an opponent of enlargement. Perhaps he, or some of you during the discussion period, may wish to address individual issues.

Now, though, I’d like to turn to the main topic of this evening. The debate in the Senate has already been joined. In fact, I cannot think of another important foreign policy question in my twenty-five years in the Senate that has been publicly examined in such detail.

To spare you any suspense, I believe that the chances are very good that the Senate will ratify NATO enlargement early next march. I have heard about several head-counts that purport to put the definite votes for enlargement somewhere in the low-fifties– or roughly fifteen short of the necessary two-thirds super majority mandated fro treaty ratification by our Constitution.

Such exercises may have more to do with advocacy tactics than with science, and I take them with a grain of salt. Predicting the likely vote in the Foreign Relations Committee — to which the resolution of ratification will be referred — may be somewhat more reliable. There I fully expect an overwhelming vote for ratification on the order of somewhere between 16-2 and even 18-0.

With regard to the full Senate, I believe that momentum is on the side of the proponents of enlargement, but that I nonetheless expect a lively floor debate and a spirited fight.

In the coming weeks, of course, however, several things could go wrong to make ratification problematic. I will touch on those issues, although I doubt that they are insurmountable.

However, even if the Senate does ratify enlargement — as I believe it is highly like to do — I worry seriously about the continued American commitment to NATO in the coming years.

My reason for this conclusion revolves around several sides of the same issue: burden-sharing.

The first side relates less to sharing the costs of NATO enlargement than to continued NATO upgrading in the coming years, including the all-important issue of force-projection.

The second side, closely related to the first, concerns possible NATO missions outside of Europe and, in a broader sense, allied support for American out-of-area actions that clearly serve European security interests.

The third side involves sharing the military duties in Bosnia after June of next year.

And the fourth and final side of burden-sharing relates to the European Union’s ponderous pace on its own enlargement into central and Eastern Europe.

First the costs. In the coming days, NATO will make public its official cost estimate for enlargement. For weeks it has been clear that it will be substantially lower than the twenty-seven to thirty-five billion dollar estimate given by the Pentagon last february, of which nine to twelve billion involved the direct costs of enlargement.

First of all, we now know that the first round of enlargement will involve three countries, not the four envisioned in the Pentagon study. (Incidentally, I was the strongest proponent in the Senate of Slovenia’s candidacy, and I still believe that it is completely qualified for membership right now).

Second, NATO investigators have found the military infrastructure in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to be in better shape than anticipated.

Third, the official NATO study will probably factor out the ten billion dollars-worth of force-projection enhancements connected with the 1991 “strategic concept” that were included as enlargement costs by the Pentagon. More about that later.

The lowered total estimate will make an equitable sharing of enlargement costs more palatable to our West European allies. But many of my colleagues in the Senate have good memories, and not just the elephants– some donkeys too. President Chirac’s comment at the NATO Madrid Summit last July, which I was privileged to attend, that France would not pay an additional franc for enlargement did not exactly sit well on Capitol Hill. After all, no matter how individual American politicians felt about NATO enlargement, not a single one of my congressional colleagues or anyone in the executive branch threatened not to pay our fair share if enlargement were ratified.

I understand that the Europeans face a set of competing priorities. The eleven European NATO members who are also members of the European Union are currently engaged in painful budget cutting in order to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria for Economic and Monetary Union (E.M.U.) on January 1, 1999. But Americans must not be led to believe that Europeans will cut corners on NATO in order to fulfill European Union requirements.

While the likely reduced cost estimate, as I said, will ameliorate the immediate problem of financial burden-sharing, longer-term burden-sharing problems remain.

In order for NATO to remain a vibrant organization with the United States continuing to play a lead role, the non-U.S. members must also agree to pay for the power-projection capabilities mandated in the 1991 “strategic concept.” The flexibility afforded by these enhancements is central to NATO’s ability to carry out its expanded new mission — to defend its common ideals beyond the borders of alliance members, while it continues to carry out the core function of collective defense.

The Clinton Administration has publicly recognized that the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands are making strides in improving the deployability and sustainability of their forces, but neither the forces of those four allies, nor those of the rest of our European partners, are as yet fully deployable.

Unless that situation is fully remedied, the United States, with the only fully deployable and sustainable land and air forces in the alliance, would be cast in the permanent role of “the good gendarme of Europe” — a role that neither the American people, nor the Senate would accept.

It is true, as many of you know, that the alliance will begin a revision of the “strategic concept” next year. Here we may encounter another aspect of burden-sharing: the unwillingness of many of our European allies to consider using NATO for out-of-Europe operations, such as in the Middle East. This mind-set stems partly from differing perceptions of Arab-Israeli relations, but also from a fear of somehow enhancing the already preponderant American global power position.

It is true that in the immediate future, Middle East military actions are likely to be “coalitions of the willing” of the Desert Storm type, rather than formal NATO operations. But in the current confrontation with Iraq we see French behavior that hardly resembles that of an ally, to put it mildly.

It is difficult for me to see how Congress will continue indefinitely to appropriate more than one hundred billion dollars per year for NATO activities when many of our NATO partners manifestly do not share our view of security elsewhere — and even actively oppose our positions.

Thus, in that context, if in the revised “strategic concept” our European allies would insist on scaling back the power-projection doctrine — for budgetary or for ideological reasons — I would fear a serious erosion of support for NATO in the Congress in the future.

Above and beyond enlargement and force-projection, unless our European allies significantly upgrade their militaries, a “strategic disconnect” between a technologically superior United States military and technologically outdated Western European militaries will make it impossible for NATO to function.

My sentiments have been voiced by several of my colleagues, including some who do not share my passionate commitment to continued American involvement in Europe. They have also been voiced by many leading uniformed European military.

The third aspect of burden-sharing is a dark cloud looming on the immediate horizon of European-American relations: post-Sfor Bosnia.

As it now stands, the U.S. will pull out its ground forces after June 1998, and our European Nato allies will follow suit, repeating an “in together, out together” mantra. This despite a U.S. offer to make air, naval, communications, and intelligence assets available to a European-led follow-on force, with an American rapid reaction force on standby alert “over the horizon” in Hungary or Italy. In short, a C.J.T.F. (Combined Joint Task Force) — the solution officially proposed by the U.S. Senate in the fiscal year 1998 Defense Authorization Bill.

Many of my colleagues, mindful of the repeated calls by some European NATO members, led by France, for more European leadership in the alliance and a sturdier “European pillar” within NATO, see in the European refusal to maintain troops in Bosnia unless we stay on the ground, evidence of inequitable burden-sharing or — worse still — are having their doubts about the worth of NATO reinforced.

The French position on Bosnia is — if you pardon the pun — particularly galling, considering their insistence on European command of allied forces southern europe (”AFsouth”) in Naples.

As you know, AFsouth is the home of the U.S. sixth fleet. No matter how Paris tries to dress it up, Senators perceive this demand as a gratuitous poke in the eye. Aside from the fact that it’s a non-starter of an idea, it contributes to poisoning the atmosphere, particularly since some of the other European allies have at least formally supported the French.

The final matter concerns the enlargement of the European Union. From the early 1990’s the E.U. firmly proclaimed that NATO enlargement had to precede E.U. expansion (the accession nearly three years ago of Austria, Finland, and Sweden excepted). I am well aware of the complexity of melding the political, economic, and to some extent social systems of divergent countries into — in E.U. language — “an ever closer union.”

But many observers — and not a few of my colleagues — suspect that to some extent the E.U. has yielded to domestic pressure groups like farmers and has used NATO enlargement as a convenient way to postpone the admission of Central and Eastern European countries. To put it crudely, for now NATO should serve as a “poor man’s E.U.”

The situation was somewhat improved last july when the European commission recommended that the European Union begin accession negotiations with Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Estonia. Cyprus was already on the list.

I recognize that Poland’s large agricultural sector makes its early admission to the E.U.’s famed “Common Agricultural Policy” (C.A.P.) difficult. The Czech Republic’s and Hungary’s low industrial wages also may cause lengthy adjustments before they are admitted.

But Estonia and Slovenia — both very small countries with agricultural sectors that would not ruffle the C.A.P. — pose no such problems. And the rapid admission of Estonia to the European Union — a move against which Russia has no objections — would go a long way toward stabilizing the security situation in Northeastern Europe.

Slovenia, which already has a higher per capita G.D.P. than a few current E.U. members, would similarly fit in quite easily, just as it will fit into NATO in the next round.

The Senate debate on ratification will be lively, occasionally raw, but necessary. As I have already indicated, I think that in the end it will be very difficult for most of my colleagues to vote against admitting the Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians.

But, I repeat, I also believe that unless we quickly come to a satisfactory burden-sharing understanding in all its facets with our European and Canadian allies, the future of NATO in the next century will be very much in doubt.

I hope these thoughts will provoke some questions from this distinguished audience, and I thank you for your attention.

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you to the President of the National Association of Attorneys General, Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle. I would also like to recognize Delaware’s Attorney General, and a friend of mine — Jane Brady.

I would like to share with you this morning my views about two issues I hope Congress will address this year — pending youth violence legislation and new violence against women legislation I will soon be introducing.

First, the Youth Violence Bill, S.10. To put where we are on the Hill in some context, I know that many of you are closely involved in the negotiations over tobacco legislation. Well, compared to the many disputes and political “fault-lines” over the Youth Violence Bill, I am starting to think that working out the details on the very complex issue of tobacco may not be so tough after all!

Let me outline just some of these “fault-lines” holding up the Youth Violence Bill –

First, governors — as I’m sure many of you — do not like all the new federal strings attached to S. 10’s $500 million block grant. Even though most every state has enacted juvenile justice reform legislation over the past five years, the bill contains mandates instructing the states how to maintain their juvenile records, how to determine whether juveniles are tried as adults, and which juveniles should be drug tested. The greatest point of contention is the record-keeping mandate which many states have figured out is too prescriptive and too expensive.

Second, everyone from the Chief Justice of the United States to state and local prosecutors are complaining that S. 10 goes way too far toward federalizing juvenile crime. And they are right. The “anti-gang” title of the bill contains sweeping new federal crimes that turn many traditional state law juvenile offenses into federal cases.

S. 10 also repeals the law that gives state officials a “right of first refusal” to prosecute juveniles when there is concurrent state/federal jurisdiction. Under S. 10, federal prosecutors would have first crack at juvenile cases and state officials get whatever is left over.

Remarkably, both sides of the gun debate oppose S. 10. The far-right gunners — we’re talking about groups like the Gun Owners of America — are aggressively opposing provisions which make violations of serious federal gun laws RICO predicates. Since selling bootleg music videos is a RICO predicate, you would think that it should also be a RICO predicate to sell guns kids in furtherance of a violent crime.

But, there is so much opposition to these provisions that three Republican senators — all “gunners” — dropped their sponsorship of S.10.

But, even though many believe the bill is “too tough” on guns — in reality, the bill falls well short of meaningful youth gun enforcement. For example, the bill does not contain the so-called “Juvenile Brady” Proposal, which would impose a life-time gun ban on juveniles convicted of “three-strikes” crimes.

The bottom line on guns — S.10 has major problems with the gunners, the anti-gunners and everyone in between.

Next, a coalition of police, prosecutors, and crime victims are highly critical of the legislation because none of the new federal money is dedicated to after-school juvenile crime prevention.

Two of your members — Grant Woods and Jim Ryan — are on the board of directors of this coalition, which is calling on the Senate to earmark specific funds for after-school prevention. You all know the evidence — if you want to reduce juvenile crime, you have to increase both enforcement and prevention efforts.

Finally, there is a great deal of controversy over the current laws requiring separation of juvenile and adult offenders. The bill guts these requirements by permitting even the most minor juvenile offenders to be housed in adult jails for unlimited duration and placed in cells next to adult criminals. It even goes as far as permitting “intermittent” physical contact between adults and juveniles.

Again, a broad array of prosecutors, police, and corrections officials know that this is bad crime policy — the more we expose kids to grizzled adult criminals, the worse they will be once they are back on the streets.

These are just some of the key reasons why I believe that S.10 is on life-support in the Senate.

We can — and should — fix S.10 but, that the bottom line for me is the same as it is for the vast number of attorneys general. I am convinced that youth violence is a tremendously serious problem facing our nation and our nation’s prosecutors, so I think it is real simple — let’s get it done. Let’s get together, and reach compromise.

I am convinced this is possible, and let me just outline how we could resolve the outstanding issues: separation of juveniles and adult prisoners — on this issue, it seems to me that the House got it right. By a vote of 413-14 in July, 1997, the House passed H.R. 1818 — which eliminated the current prohibition on shared staff, eliminated the prohibition on inadvertent “sight & sound” contact, and I — along with Senator Grassley — got an amendment adopted in the Senate which eliminated the blanket prohibition against putting juvenile status offenders in secure detention facilities.

These are the concerns you all have raised in your June, 1996 resolution. So, it seems to me that with the overwhelming, bi-partisan vote in favor of H.R. 1818 — it is not “rocket science” to figure out that H.R. 1818’s separation standards are a fair compromise.

On the “new strings” requiring changes in state laws and practices related to trying kids as adults, record keeping and drug testing — I believe that compromise is possible if we stay away from overly prescriptive, very specific federal standards.

In other words, I believe that my friends on the other side, are convinced that they have to give the states at least some general policy direction. But, they need to listen to you, the governors and local officials and give you all some flexibility as to how you all meet the general policy directions of trying the most violent kids as adults; drug testing more kids; and getting the records of violent kids into the system.

But, let me borrow President Reagan’s adage — “trust, but verify.” Last November, at the last minute, in the dark of night, the majority put a $250 million Youth Violence Block Grant into an appropriations bill. And, despite the fact that we had made some progress in the Senate to give you all some flexibility in these “new strings” — none of that flexibility was included in the appropriations bill.

There was a general loophole — states only had to “consider” making these very specific changes. But, mark my words, unless you all remain vigilant, that general loophole will be eliminated in a heartbeat and you will have no flexibility. Again — “trust but verify.”

On taking the decision on whether to proceed in state or federal court from you all and giving it federal prosecutors — well, that is just plain silly. The federal government tries fewer than 325 juveniles each year. You all and local prosecutors try hundreds of thousands.

So, I admit, my version of compromise on this one is pretty simple — drop the provision. But, mark my words, unless you all continue to speak up, this provision will be one of those that will stay in the bill.

On prevention, in the Senate, we are down to a difference over whether prevention will be an eligible use for 40% of the block grant or a required use for some specific percentage of the block grant.

I believe that the policy argument made by cops and prosecutors from all over the nation is correct — that if prevention is not required, it simply does not happen, because an investment in prevention pays benefits which are both hard to see and usually happen sometime down the road.

But, to be candid, I believe it will be the political argument that will prevent S.10 from moving without a a specific earmark for prevention. First, because cops and prosecutors are demanding a specific earmark. And, second, because putting kids in supervised programs in the after-school hours when they are most likely to turn to drugs and crime makes so much sense to the public.

In fact, in a February poll, 73% agreed with spending money on prevention — even when asked if they favored “setting-aside money for prevention” out of a block grant for “punishment, new detention facilities, and drug testing.” It doesn’t get much clearer!

When it comes to funding for state and local prosecutors, to be candid, while I am confident that we will be able to boost the annual authorization from $50 million to $100 million — getting an actual appropriation will be very difficult because you will be in direct competition for dollars with the new youth violence block grant.

As I am sure many of you know, I think that block grants are generally bad policy — it always seems that the dollars just get lost or divided so many ways that nothing noticeable is gained.

Instead, I think we get more results if we target dollars to specific purposes — such as, support for prosecutors. But, the team that is in charge now favors block grants. So, that will be their funding priority.

And, even though the 1994 crime law has quadrupled federal support for state and local law enforcement from $900 million to $4.8 billion — it is now a zero-sum game. A game which will put your funding in direct competition with the new Youth Violence Block Grant.

The bottom line, I will support you. But, we are going to have work the appropriations process to ensure that any authorization “promise” is actually delivered upon.

Finally, guns. Frankly, this is the one area where I have great difficulty in figuring out how we forge a compromise. But, I have been through these “crime bill” fights enough to know — that if we reach compromise on the other issues, we can figure out a way to get legislation through the Senate.

At the same time, I have done this enough to know, if we do not reach significant compromises, this bill is dead.

Will we reach compromise? On that basic question, I submit that your voices will be absolutely central to the debate. I am not sure if a push from you all for compromise will definitely produce compromise. But, I am certain that if the attorneys general do not push compromise, there will be no compromise.

And, we will have lost a major opportunity to do something positive against youth violence, crime and drug abuse.

Violence Against Women Act — II

Now, let me turn briefly to the Violence Against Women Act. Frankly, because the efforts of all of you — and that of many others — the act is working. One simple fact illustrates our success — the murder rate for wives, ex-wives and girlfriends at the hands of their “intimates” has fallen to a 20-year low.

Still, there is plainly much to do — and that is why I have been working to put together new legislation: the Violence Against Women Act Two. In general terms, the act will focus on three main targets:

* First, let’s continue the successes of the original act by continuing funding for the “stop” grants to prosecutors, police and victim services; for shelter grants and other proven efforts;

* Second, there are areas where we have to improve on the original act — for example, inter-state enforcement of “stay-away” orders has proven difficult. I suggest that we provide resources, technical assistance, and most important — do what the feds do best — help disseminate the “best practices” you all are developing.

* Third, I believe there are some new areas where we must target our attention — for example, making sure that victims of abuse don’t lose their jobs when they have to testify or seek protection orders.

I am working with several other Senators, of both parties, to put together this bill. I expect we will be introducing it later this month.

But, let me stress to all of you, after introduction, there will be time for your feedback. In fact, I welcome and encourage your feedback on this legislation — and, I assure you, that I am not wedded to any particular language. If you think you have a better idea, please, let me know.

Conclusion

In closing, let me just take a step back from the specific issues of youth violence and violence against women — and talk more generally about criminal justice policy.

Over the past year, as I have taken over as the lead Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, I have noticed a fundamental difference between “foreign policy” and “criminal justice policy.” When I talk to folks about foreign policy, people listen, and usually don’t say anything unless they actually know something.

That’s a little different than on crime — because on crime, everyone’s an expert.

I think that is a great disservice to criminal justice policy — and policy makers such as you all. But, it seems to me that we are beginning to change that. In the face of absolutely astounding reductions in violent crime — after a serious effort to do everything smarter: prosecution, policing, punishment and prevention.

In both the mind of the public and the press, this is starting to translate into — “hey, if we are smart, I guess we can actually do something about crime” — in other words, maybe we ought to listen to those who know something about crime.

Due to the opportunity made available by the success you all at the state and local level have had in reducing crime — I believe we have a chance to make a most important and fundamental change: to look at crime as a serious policy issue, not a political football.

If we can make that change, you all will have changed three decades of political history, and opened the door to even more profound reductions in the level of crime and violence americans must tolerate.

Two months ago, in the Rajasthan desert, the Government of India claimed to have exploded five nuclear devices. Just 15 days later, the Government of Pakistan followed suit.

These events, in a few short weeks, expanded the acknowledged nuclear club by forty percent. They confront the United States, as well as the rest of the international community, with a monumental challenge, calling into question decades of U.S. non-proliferation policy.

Addressing this challenge — devising a new approach toward South Asia — is the subject of my remarks today. I thank you for the kind invitation.

We can expect the policy community to dramatically increase the time and attention it devotes to South Asia in the coming months, but you at the Carnegie Endowment can credibly claim that you were focusing on nuclear tensions long before it was even remotely fashionable. If only more had listened.

Clearly the tests by India and Pakistan require us to reexamine many aspects of our foreign and national security policy. We need to jettison some long-held beliefs that have acted as self-imposed constraints on U.S. policy.

Traditional approaches have not worked in the past in South Asia and will not work in the present situation. We need to think “outside the box.” Most of all, our national interests throughout Asia dictate that we end our benign neglect of South Asia. Let me outline the shortcomings of our policy:

First, we have not acknowledged or addressed the fundamental sense of insecurity felt by both India and Pakistan since the end of the Cold War.

It is both facile and misleading to blame India’s decision to test solely on the election of the BJP government. While the BJP certainly had a domestic political imperative to test, there was already a consensus across the political spectrum in India (except for the Communists) that India needed to conduct tests.

Why? Because of India’s underlying perception in the aftermath of the Cold War that it was isolated, vulnerable, and not taken seriously.

For much of the Cold War, but especially after the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, a measure of stability prevailed with China and the United States as key supporters of Pakistan, and the Soviet Union as the chief ally of India. This set of power relationships, combined with the threat of U.S. sanctions, restrained India and Pakistan from either testing or deploying nuclear weapons.

With the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, India could no longer rely on Moscow to balance China. In addition, India perceives us — falsely, I believe — as cultivating China as the regional hegemon that will preserve Asian stability.

The perceived U.S. preoccupation with China generates deep concern in New Delhi. Remember: China defeated India in the 1962 war and occupied several thousand square kilometers of disputed territory, a humiliation from which India has yet to recover. And a decade ago India and China massed several hundred thousand troops along their disputed border.

India’s sense of strategic encirclement was heightened by reports of Chinese missile and nuclear transfers to Pakistan and budding Chinese military and security ties to Burma throughout the 1990s. Pakistan’s test of a missile with a 1,000 kilometer range last April appeared to fit this pattern even though U.S. officials pointed to North Korea as the real source of the missile.

To put this in context, how would China feel if the tables were turned? What if India transferred its missiles to Vietnam, fighter planes to Mongolia, or a nuclear bomb design to Taiwan?

In such an environment, India felt that it was on its own and needed to demonstrate its capabilities, change the strategic landscape, in order to be taken more seriously by China, the United States, and other powers.

Pakistan’s motives for testing are far less complicated than India’s, but no less serious. Its strategic aim has been to resist Indian hegemony and guarantee its survival. Just as India’s drive for a nuclear device can be traced to the defeat it suffered at the hands of China in 1962 and China’s subsequent nuclear test in 1964, Pakistan’s nuclear program can be traced to the role India played in splitting Pakistan into two with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Many in Pakistan believe that India has never accepted the partition of the Indian subcontinent back in 1947. In Pakistan, therefore, nuclear capability is seen as the ultimate guarantor of its statehood.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Pakistan felt it needed to test to reestablish the deterrence that was disrupted by India’s tests.

The end of the Cold War also made Pakistan feel abandoned and isolated. The United States no longer needed Pakistan to contain Soviet power. The Pressler amendment, invoked in 1990, banned aid to Pakistan and led directly to the erosion of Pakistan’s conventional arsenal. This was seen as a betrayal, and has limited our influence with Pakistan ever since.

Unfortunately, we failed to acknowledge or act upon these fundamental shifts affecting Pakistan, just as we ignored the changes in India’s security perceptions.

The second shortcoming of our South Asia policy is that its two chief elements — commerce and sanctions — are contradictory. We use sanctions to punish proliferation at the same time we are promoting commercial ties to take advantage of long-overdue market openings in both countries.

This policy is half right. The expansion of trade and investment ties with India and Pakistan will help these countries realize their full potential as well as benefit our own economic interests.

But the application of a one-size-fits-all non-proliferation policy is not appropriate to the special circumstances in South Asia. It lumps India and Pakistan with the far more dangerous outlaw states such as Libya and Iraq. It ignores the great lengths both countries have been prepared to go in order to achieve a basic sense of security. It presumes our influence is much greater than it actually is. Finally, it has prevented us from developing creative approaches to stabilize nuclear and missile development in the region.

Legislation initiated by the Congress, and signed by successive Presidents, is the basis for this rigid approach. I voted for that legislation. But when viewed in the context of Pakistan’s and India’s decision to test, I have to conclude that while our approach worked for many years, it is no longer working. It didn’t stop them from testing, and it provides no incentive for India and Pakistan to take positive steps now.

To be sure, sanctions, when carefully calibrated, are a valuable policy tool. But I think it is clear that multilateral sanctions are more effective than unilateral sanctions. For example, the recent decision by the Group of Eight to delay indefinitely World Bank loans for India and Pakistan is more likely to produce results than unilateral U.S. action.

Given these defects in our policy, I believe we have no choice but to construct a new conceptual framework. Here are our options.

First, we could maintain the status quo. That is, we retain sanctions on India and Pakistan indefinitely, not recognize their nuclear status, and keep the fundamentals of our Asia policy unchanged. That would “keep the faith” on non-proliferation, but leave the underlying tensions in place and set the stage for the next, perhaps more dangerous, crisis.

A second approach that has been suggested is bolder: why not enlist India as a potential strategic ally against a “China threat?” But this runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. China does not show signs of becoming hostile, nor are China’s interests necessarily in conflict with our own. China prizes peace, stability, and economic development above all else.

I suggest a third approach. First, we should abandon our one-size-fits-all non-proliferation policy that we have applied to South Asia. We need to make distinctions between India, Israel, and Pakistan on the one hand, and nations that flout international norms such as Iraq and Libya on the other. The former should not concern us as much as the latter.

We are better served by bringing India and Pakistan into non-proliferation arrangements than by simply expecting them to foreswear their nuclear programs. In practical terms, this means that Congress should provide the President with the flexibility to negotiate a package that would lift sanctions in exchange for restraint by India and Pakistan in the areas that matter most to us.

We should seek agreement on five items:

Formal commitments, preferably through adherence to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to refrain from further nuclear testing.

Pledges to enter negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.

Assurances that both countries will continue to refrain from spreading nuclear and missile technology.

Verifiable commitments not to deploy nuclear weapons on missiles, submarines, or aircraft.

A resumption of comprehensive bilateral discussions between India and Pakistan aimed at reducing tensions.

Such a package would serve our twin objectives of repairing the damage to the global non-proliferation regime, while not indefinitely isolating one-fifth of humanity.

Second, we need to distinguish between the relative importance of India and Pakistan to our interests over the long-term. Pakistan has been a good friend in the past, and we should not forget that. Moreover, a policy that dismisses Pakistan’s legitimate security needs is bound to fail.

In fact, I believe that when we eventually ease the recently-imposed sanctions on India and Pakistan, we should simultaneously waive the Pressler and Symington amendments, which restrict military and economic aid to Pakistan. The time has come to clear the decks in our relationship with Pakistan and end a policy which is perceived as discriminatory by Islamabad.

Nor should we overlook the important strategic role Pakistan could play as a secure transit route for the vast oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Basin, if, and this is a big if, peace can be secured in Afghanistan.

But American national interests in the new multipolar world dictate a different level of relations with India. Because of its growing economic and political weight, India will become a significant player in Asia and at the global level.

Already India has a middle class approaching 200 million people. If Indian governments make policy decisions that continue to unleash the latent potential of a talented population, then India will in time achieve the great power status to which it has long aspired.

Furthermore, if current trends hold, I believe that it is only natural for some form of rivalry to persist, if not intensify, between a growing India and China. Obviously, this would diminish security and threaten U.S. interests across Asia.

To prevent it, two things must be done. First, the Sino-Indian rivalry must be channeled into a healthy and constructive competition. Second, as both India and China achieve great power status, they will need to ease the anxieties of lesser powers.

To deal with this emerging regional picture we must move away from a focus on discrete bilateral relationships in Asia, and broaden our vision with a more integrated region-wide approach that regards South Asia as an integral part of Asia.

I propose a new framework that would give a “seat at the table” to all of the major players in Asia — India, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The emphasis should not be so much on formal structures, but on substance. The goal of this new framework would be to promote greater consultation and transparency among the countries.

The two emerging powers in this group — India and China — should be encouraged to set an example of cooperation for the rest of Asia. Such a system would also help them to realize that along with great power status comes responsibility. They must convince smaller nations of their peaceful intentions; they must act to strengthen, not weaken, international norms; and they must be seen as supporting an international environment that promotes peace and prosperity for all.

The “Gujral doctrine” demonstrates that India has the potential to mature into a responsible great power. As espoused by the previous Indian Prime Minister, this doctrine called for India, as the dominant power in South Asia, to go more than halfway in easing the fears of its smaller neighbors. I hope that the new Indian government will not stray from this far-sighted policy adopted by its predecessor.

The United States will need to take the lead in setting this regional security mechanism into motion. It could begin today with the President picking up the phone and speaking to the leaders of India, Russia, and Japan about the insights he gained from his trip to China and make arrangements to go to India.

Regular consultation among the key Asian countries could go a long way toward dispelling anxieties and suspicions. It would give everyone a stake in maintaining stability. It would provide an incentive for regional powers to work toward the settlement of long-standing disputes such as those over the Sino-Indian border, the Kurile islands, the Korean peninsula, and the South China Sea.

Key countries could be encouraged to share information about their armaments and defense budgets. If the other side does not have information, it will assume the worst. This inevitably leads to decisions and potentially dangerous cycles of action and reaction that are predicated upon assumptions that may be false.

Let me conclude. Devising a new approach to South Asia will not be easy, especially considering that it is being done in response to actions we don’t approve of — namely, the Pakistan and Indian nuclear tests. But we have no choice, because the status quo is not an option.

We must show India and Pakistan that while we condemn their tests, we understand their security concerns and are willing to deal with them. If we don’t devise a new approach, tensions will grow and South Asia’s endemic security problems will undermine our long-term interests. And one thing is clear: South Asian security is becoming inseparable from Asian security.

And, of course, Asia matters to the United States. Despite recent economic setbacks, Asia will continue to be the most dynamic region into the next century. Our economic links will continue to grow. The regional balance of power and security perceptions will also undergo dramatic changes. I believe that we will need to find new mechanisms to preserve our security interests.

An effort that begins today in enlisting the key Asian powers in advancing our common objectives of peace, stability, and prosperity is one that could pay dividends far into the next century. Now is the time to begin.