NATO's Door Must Remain Open, State's Volker Says
04 May 2006
Transforming alliance's partnerships, missions to top November Riga summit agenda
By David I. McKeeby
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – To meet the security challenges of the 21st century, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) must continue the transformation that has characterized the alliance’s successes since the end of the Cold War, says Kurt Volker, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs.
In May 3 testimony to the House International Relations Subcommittee on Europe, Volker outlined major issues facing the alliance as it prepares for the November 28-29 summit in Riga, Latvia, where leaders from NATO’s 26 member countries will meet to assess current and future NATO operations, strengthen the alliance’s military capabilities and resources, and better define NATO’s relationship with a growing number of partner countries and international organizations.
NATO EXPANSION
“In 1994,” Volker said, “NATO was an alliance of 16 [countries], without partners, having never conducted a military operation. By 2005, NATO had become an alliance of 26, engaged in eight simultaneous operations on four continents with the help of 20 partners in Eurasia, seven in the Mediterranean, four in the Persian Gulf, and a handful of capable contributors on our periphery.”
Volker said that this expansion of the NATO alliance in the 1990s resulted in one of its great successes – preventing a post Cold War security vacuum predicted by many experts by extending membership to former Eastern Bloc countries once they completed necessary democratic and military reforms.
“By guaranteeing our shared security and defending our values – freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law, and free markets – NATO helped create the conditions for democracy and prosperity in the Europe we know today,” Volker said.
Further expansion of the alliance is among the issues on the Riga agenda, Volker said, adding that the United States would support:
• Membership invitations for Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia in 2008, provided that those countries continue governmental reform efforts to bring to comply NATO’s political and military standards;
• Membership for Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina in Partnership for Peace, a bilateral agreement between individual states and NATO previously extended to several Central European countries and several former Soviet republics;
• A future membership action plan for Ukraine, which Volker said demonstrated its commitment to democratic ideals in its 2004 Orange Revolution, and again in 2006 parliamentary elections; and
• Use of NATO’s intensified dialogue process with Georgia to support continued progress in governmental and military reforms, which could lead to a membership action plan in the future.
“The process of NATO enlargement is not complete, and NATO's door must remain open,” said Volker.
OTHER U.S. PRIORITIES FOR THE RIGA SUMMIT
In addition to expansion, reform within NATO also will figure prominently on the Riga Summit agenda. “When they and other NATO aspirants become ready for NATO,” Volker said, “NATO must be ready for them.”
Volker said that the 1990s saw a period of unprecedented operational activity for the alliance, beginning with a series of peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia, and continuing to this day, with a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, military training efforts in Iraq, and support of the African Union’s humanitarian mission in the Darfur Region of Sudan.
In the post Cold War world, Volker said, “NATO has become an instrument for assuring our collective defense and advancing peace and security, by directing its political and military resources to end conflicts, deter terrorists, provide security in strife-torn areas, and relieve humanitarian suffering far beyond its borders,” Volker said.
But, Volker said, “A common purpose unites our disparate missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Darfur, and Iraq: the promotion of peace and security; the protection of freedom.”
Volker said the top U.S. priorities at the Riga Summit include:
• Ensuring that NATO succeeds in expanding the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, allowing U.S.-led coalition forces there to concentrate on counterterrorism;
• Urging NATO to do more to assist the African Union and the United Nations in resolving the ongoing conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, and to fully support upcoming final-status negotiations for Kosovo;
• Increasing support for the expansion of NATO’s military officer training programs in Iraq, whose success might provide a prototype for future NATO missions in “using its expertise to help nations around the world improve the professionalism and accountability of their armed forces;”
• Addressing NATO’s need for strategic airlift in almost all its operations and finding a means to equitably share the financial burden of it and other collective defense capabilities;
• Considering expansion of NATO’s role in post-conflict situations based upon the alliance’s experience in Afghanistan, as well as a future role in supporting large-scale humanitarian emergency response operations, based upon NATO’s experiences in Pakistan following the South Asian earthquake and the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and
• Finding ways to allow NATO to build partnerships with like-minded countries from all parts of the globe, such as NATO-sponsored education and training resources for countries in the Middle East and Africa.
A transcript of Volker’s testimony is available on State Department Web site.
For additional information, see International Security.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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