United States Outlines "Ambitious Agenda" for Riga NATO Summit
03 November 2006
Heads of state plan to discuss Afghanistan, global missions, allied partnerships
Washington -- Afghanistan will top the agenda of the November 28-29 NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, say senior U.S. diplomats, adding that the American priority will be to enhance alliance capabilities and partnerships for future global missions.
“[O]ur goal for the Riga summit is to showcase a NATO that must have global missions, and has partners and capabilities to achieve those missions,” Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns told a German policy forum in late October.
At the operational level, Burns said, “Afghanistan is our topic number one – and the most difficult military mission NATO has ever undertaken.” The alliance’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) now patrols the bulk of Afghanistan and is providing security for the new government while also assisting reconstruction. (See related article.)
Leaders from NATO’s 26 member nations plan to meet in Riga at the end of November, and Burns said the United States and Europe have become “essential partners in meeting 21st century challenges.” Burns spoke October 23 to the Welt-am-Sonntag Bundeswehr Forum in Berlin. The State Department released the text of his prepared remarks on November 1.
In the second term of the Bush presidency, the United States has worked to strengthen bridges with Europe, Burns said, and is again working closely with trans-Atlantic partners to promote shared values around the world.
“We have rebuilt those ties,” Burns said. “We are working with Europe on the agenda of the future. … We are increasingly engaged in common diplomatic, military and reconstruction actions around the world.”
Having grown beyond its Cold War roots, NATO today “is part of a broader and growing web of multinational institutions seeking to address global challenges,” Burns said. “We need a NATO that works seamlessly with other key actors” such as the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, nongovernmental organizations and development agencies, he said.
PARTNERSHIPS MAGNIFY ALLIANCE EFFECTIVENESS
In Afghanistan, he noted, NATO’s 26 member nations are working with 16 nonmember nations. “Our partnerships with non-NATO countries magnify our effectiveness and benefit the alliance,” he said. Therefore, alliance leaders want to continue developing these partnerships with countries such as Australia, Finland, Japan, South Korea and Sweden so that they can cooperate more effectively on joint missions.
The United States also seeks more deployment flexibility from those nations that have contributed troops to Afghanistan. Some nations have placed geographic or mission-related restrictions on how their troops can be used in Afghanistan. “It would be better to have the flexibility to move forces around Afghanistan,” Burns said, “from the relatively stable north and west to the more difficult south and east, as required by the situation on the ground.”
Burns also repeated his assessment that “the Taliban is not a strategic threat to the Afghan government, but a serious tactical threat.” NATO forces are “fighting back,” he said, “but the bulk of the fighting is being done by four allies: the U.S., the U.K., Canada and the Netherlands.”
RIGA SUMMIT SEEKS TO EXPAND ALLIED STRATEGIC DIALOGUE
Speaking October 30 at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland said the United States has “a very, very ambitious agenda. … We want the strongest possible NATO; we want the strongest possible EU [European Union]; and we want the strongest-possible NATO-EU relationship.”
However, she added, NATO’s operations and strategic discussions now range far beyond its traditional boundaries in Europe. In the past 18 months, she said, 50,000 NATO troops have operated on four continents – from keeping the peace in the Balkans and Afghanistan to supporting African Union forces in Sudan’s Darfur region to delivering humanitarian aid in Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake and in the United States following Hurricane Katrina.
Nuland said that a significant goal of the Riga Summit is to “expand the strategic dialogue among allies.”
Meetings at alliance headquarters in Brussels already have expanded the scope of issues under discussion, Nuland said. “Over the last year … we’ve talked about Iran at the foreign minister level; we’ve talked about energy security with experts; we’ve had Africa experts in to talk about the broader challenges we face there. We’ve recently released statements on the North Korean nuclear threat. So the dialogue is getting broader.”
At Riga, the United States also wants allies to reaffirm NATO’s open-door policy for new members, Nuland said.
“At a time when many Europeans are questioning the limits of Europe,” Nuland said, “from an American perspective, NATO’s role as a mentor and magnet for change and positive democratic reform … has been one of its greatest exports. It is absolutely essential that we keep that door open, and that we continue to work with those countries who aspire to meet NATO’s performance-based standards for membership.”
The United States also wants to strengthen NATO’s role as a “security trainer” that helps instill democratic principles in regional forces. NATO today is training “the next generation of military officers in Iraq” as well as training the Afghan National Army, she said, adding, “Our operation in Darfur is essentially a training mission for African Union forces.”
Already, Nuland said, the 26 NATO allies are in extensive behind-the-scenes negotiations as they prepare draft documents to be approved and signed at Riga. “For the next four weeks, allies are going to spend a lot of time arm- and mud-wrestling about the words that we are going to use in our NATO documents … to reflect today’s reality,” Nuland said. “It’s going to be an intense conversation as we head towards Riga.”
Transcripts of Burns' and Nuland’s remarks are posted on the State Department Web site.
For more information on U.S. policy, see The United States and NATO.
(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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