NATO Leaders Embrace Transformation Agenda, U.S. Officials Say
29 November 2006
Riga Summit Declaration stresses need for expansion, defense of values
Riga Latvia -- The United States achieved all of its major objectives at the NATO Riga Summit November 28-29, said senior U.S. officials, who described the heads-of-state meeting as “a vital moment” transforming the military alliance for the 21st century.
“A year ago we laid out a transformation agenda; we achieved all of the things that were on our agenda today,” a senior U.S. official said November 29. Senior administration officials spoke to reporters immediately after the Riga Summit on condition they not be identified.
All 26 heads of state -- including some who have been skeptical of NATO operations in the past -- strongly affirmed the importance of the alliance mission in Afghanistan, according to the officials.
In private high-level talks, an official said, “there was an agreement that we have the power to succeed, the will to succeed, and that we must succeed as an alliance on the Afghanistan mission; that this is important … not only for the future of Afghanistan, but also for the future of the global war on terror and the future of the alliance -- the alliance credibility is on the line in Afghanistan.”
The Riga Summit Declaration -- a document agreed upon by the heads of state -- includes language discussing the importance of NATO’s role in the 21st century and the sweeping scope of the alliance’s global missions.
NATO leaders have committed to further expanding the alliance by saying Albania, Croatia and Macedonia could be invited to join as early as 2008, an expansion President Bush proposed the previous day when he spoke at Latvia University, where he insisted, “The door to NATO membership remains open.” (See related article.)
Alliance leaders also agreed with Bush about the importance of continuing to support the membership for Georgia and Ukraine as both countries continue to undertake political reform.
In other discussions, alliance leaders frequently mentioned the importance of “values,” a word that also is used repeatedly in the Summit Declaration, U.S. officials said. “Look at the number of times we use the word ‘values,’” one official said, indicating the opening paragraphs of the Summit Declaration. “‘Defensive values,’ ‘defense of our security and values.’”
The declaration also includes some of the strongest language yet on the issue of defense spending among member countries. The United States spends 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, but the average NATO nation spends just 2 percent. The declaration read, in part, “We encourage nations whose defense spending is declining to halt that decline and to aim to increase defense spending in real terms.” The language is nonbinding, but U.S. officials said the words are significant because heads of state collectively agreed to them.
The United States sought and achieved a Middle East training initiative. “That was a big thing on our list,” one U.S. official said, “to further what the alliance has been doing in training, increasing the capability of partners that we might interact with in the future.”
Declaring the NATO Response Force fully operational was another “big achievement,” a U.S. official said.
In addition, NATO adopted a seven-page Comprehensive Political Guidance, which is comparable to the U.S. Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review, a strategic document that outlines long-term military funding and force structure priorities. The document focuses on a key U.S. goal of making NATO “a more deployable, interoperable organization,” a senior official said.
The agreement to offer Partnership for Peace status to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia is “a step forward, we believe, in strengthening security in the Balkans region, and improving the Euro-Atlantic integration of those countries,” a U.S. official said.
Finally, the United States sought and achieved stronger commitments to flexible global partnerships with nations such as Australia, New Zealand and South Korea that are not geographically linked to NATO but nonetheless participate meaningfully in global missions.
For more information on U.S. policy, see The United States and NATO.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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