Speech By Nato Secretary General Willy Claes To The National Press Club Washington D.C.
WASHINGTON D.C., WEDNESDAY, 4 OCTOBER 1995
ADDRESS BY MR. WILLY CLAES,
SECRETARY GENERAL OF NATO
AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C.
SECRETARY GENERAL CLAES: ""There will be no peace in
Bosnia and the Balkans, and perhaps no stability in the
wider Europe if NATO and its leading member, the United
States, are not prepared to do their part in making this
a reality.""
WASHINGTON DC: The Secretary General of NATA,
Mr. Willy Claes, said on Wednesday that ""if we want to
translate our success in Operation Deliberate Force into
a permanent achievement, if we want to see both a secure
and independent Bosnia and stability throughout the
Balkans, we will need a NATO peace implementation force
ON THE GROUND to make a settlement secure"". Speaking on
the National Press Club during a visit to the United
States, he appealed for American participation in a
NATO-led peace implementation force, while assuring his
audience that ""NATO troops will NOT be asked to fight a
war in the Balkans on behalf of one side against another
...we will go in only if the Bosnian Government is
satisfied with the peace settlement and wants us to be
there, and only if all the parties have signed and
pledged to respect the agreement as well"".
Mr. Claes also underlined that ""this will be a
NATO-led operation, under NATO command and with robust
rules of engagement ... we will be prepared to deal
swiftly and effectively with any local stances of
non-compliance to the agreement ... Indeed, it is better
to go in with adequate force or not at all"". The
Secretary General also pointed out that ""we will have an
exit strategy ... This will NOT be an open-ended
commitment"". He acknowledged that ""many Americans are
asking why it is necessary for the United States to
participate on the ground in such an operation"" but
stressed that ""there will NOT be an independent Bosnia
unless NATO does the job of securing the peace"". He also
affirmed that the United States' European Allies ""will
do their share on the ground, at sea and in the air, as
they have been doing for over three years now"". Mr.
Claes believed that ""the United States cannot fail to
participate in such an operation without doing real
damage to NATO and to American's position in Europe ...
This Alliance simply cannot but be affected if its
leading member does not play a substantial role in an
operation of such critical importance to the peace and
stability of Europe, and share equally in the burden of
risks and responsibilities . This Alliance is too
important to America's global role and strategic
interests to allow it to be damaged ... You may yet need
a strong NATO in a world of so much uncertainty and
instability"".
The Secretary General also addressed the
future enlargement of the Alliance, calling this ""an
exercise not in charity but in enlightened
self-interest"" as he believed that NATO enlargement
would both ""reduce the future risks to our own security""
as well as ""over time increase significantly the
resources and capabilities available to NATO's
collective defence and new missions, thus sharing
burdens more broadly"". However, he warned his audience
that ""to state firmly the principle of enlargement is
not to imply that it can happen immediately or going to
make a net contribution to our common defence as well as
new missions; in short they must also be providers of
security"". At the same time, Mr. Claes stressed that
""NATO's recently completed study on enlargement had
underlined the costs and changes NATO will have to face
internally. In particular ""the extension of an empty or
half-hearted security guarantee will not only do nothing
for Central and Eastern Europe: it will also mean the
end of NATO, for once one Ally's security is no longer
the same as another's, the trust and solidarity on which
NATO is based would soon crumble"". Consequently, ""there
is no cost free enlargement option ... It is in the
interest of both to join NATO - that we do not rush
prematurely into decisions on the ""who"" and ""when"" of
NATO enlargement. This is a process which must be
handled gradually and deliberately"".
Finally, the Secretary General emphasized
NATO's earnestness in seeking closer cooperation with
Russia. He said that ""our offer of partnership with
Russia is not intended as a consolation prize; it is a
genuine offer which fully takes account of Russia's
weight and seize in European security and which gives
Russia concrete benefits - the benefits of a unique
special relationship with NATO, of information exchange,
consultations, and concrete cooperation with us"". Mr.
Claes expressed the hope that ""as our cooperation with
Russia begins to develop, this great nation will
overcome its somewhat irrational suspicions of the
Alliance and understand better the true and profound
nature of NATO's transformation over the past six years.
Certainly in treating Russia like a genuine partner and
consulting openly and frequently with her, NATO will do
all it can to accelerate this evolution. But the price
of a close NATO-Russia relationship cannot be a Russian
veto or ""droit de regard"" over our internal
decision-making.""
--------------------------------------------------------------
SPEECH BY NATO SECRETARY GENERAL WILLY CLAES
TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
WASHINGTON D.C., 4TH OCTOBER 1995
Throughout its history, NATO has often been
deemed to be in crisis, and even sometimes, to quote
Mark Twain, reported prematurely to be dead or dying.
This ought not be surprising: an Alliance of 16
sovereign and independent nations, each free to pursue
its own, and sometimes selfish, interests, is going to
find it constantly challenging to agree on difficult
issues and maintain a sense of common purpose. What is
surprising - and indeed without parallel in history - is
that NATO member nations have always pulled together and
reached agreement on the tough decisions, including
during the worst days of the Cold War when fear of a
formidable adversary sometimes threatened to drive us
apart as often as it brought us together.
Ironically, the end of the Cold War led some
critics to question whether NATO still had a future.
Some claimed that we were searching artificially for new
missions, such as peacekeeping and partnership with the
countries to NATO's east. Others complained that we
were not performing these new missions well -- hence the
slogans directed at NATO, such as: ""Out of Area or Out
of Business"", and ""Bosnia Alive or NATO Dead"".
Well, I am here today to tell you that NATO is
very much in business in ways that would have been
unthinkable even just two years ago. For the first
time in our involvement in former Yugoslavia, we have
finally had the opportunity to show that NATO could make
a difference, and now Sarajevo is free from shelling,
and Bosnia, we hope, may be on the road to a peace
settlement which NATO may be asked to help implement.
At the same time, we are moving forward to
extend the blessings of peace and stability which NATO
members have enjoyed for the past half century to the
eastern part of Europe, both through the Partnership for
Peace and through the eventual enlargement of the
Alliance to new members.
But I am also here today to tell you that the
next steps we will soon be taking on Bosnia, as well as
the next steps we will be facing in the enlargement
process, will not be easy; they will force us to move
beyond the slogans and, as the American expression goes,
to put our money where our mouth is. And that is
because you can never buy peace and security on the
cheap. The question, as ever, is whether we are willing
to make the necessary investments in peace now which can
save us from having to make far more difficult choices
and sacrifices down the road.
In Bosnia, there is at last a glimmer of hope
that this conflict which we have been able to contain
for four years can now be brought to an end. Of course,
it has not been easy to arrive at this point -- it took
a prolonged enforcement of the economic embargo at sea
in order to persuade the leadership in Belgrade last
year to accept the Contact Group's peace plan and, in
effect, to sue for peace. And it took even longer to
persuade the intransigent Serbs of Bosnia, who plainly
believed that the international community lacked the
unity and will to use force decisively. And there was
surely some reason for their attitude, given that United
Nations forces in Bosnia were deployed strictly for
humanitarian and peacekeeping purposes, and were
vulnerable to hostage-taking and retaliation in the
event of NATO action from the air. Indeed, their
vulnerability produced the system of the double-key,
which severely limited the scope for the effective
application of NATO air power.
Even in the midst of these difficulties,
however, we were learning important lessons for future
crisis-management operations: the folly of deploying
neutral peacekeepers in a civil war, where there was no
peace to keep; the impossibility of combining a
peacekeeping effort on the ground with a peace
enforcement mission in the air; the need for a clear and
attainable mandate from the UN, as well as a sounder
relationship between our two organisations; and the need
for unity of command.
Last month's Operation Deliberate Force
demonstrated that we had indeed learned these lessons
well. It was preceded by redeployments of UN forces to
more secure positions, and the introduction, for the
first time in the conflict, of combat-equipped and
trained troops on the ground in the framework of the
French/British/Dutch Rapid Reaction Force. And it was
planned by UN and NATO military commanders working
together not so much with a double key as with a single
purpose.
The result was a textbook demonstration of the
use of limited force in the service of diplomacy -
Clausewitz would have been pleased -and the first
significant and sustained military operation in the
history of the North Atlantic Alliance. I would argue
that no other organisation in the world could have used
force so effectively and discriminately. We proved that
NATO is not a blunt Cold War instrument, but that it can
indeed be used flexibly on behalf of tightly controlled
political objectives in the profoundly different and
more complex security environment of the post-Cold War
era.
However, this is not the moment for patting
ourselves on the back. If the history of NATO since
1949 teaches us one thing, it is that we can go from
crisis to success and yet still find ourselves tested
yet again. We have managed to underpin Ambassador
Holbrooke's negotiating efforts, and help persuade the
Bosnian Serbs to accept the territorial arrangements and
principle of an independent Bosnia as envisaged by the
Contact Group. For the first time, peace is on the
horizon, and success is within reach. But there will be
no peace in Bosnia and the Balkans, and perhaps no
stability in the wider Europe, if NATO, and its leading
member, the United States, are not prepared to do their
part in making this a reality. And it is simply a fact
of life that NATO only functions well when the United
States and Europe are together - as we demonstrated
throughout the Cold War, the Gulf War and during the
recent air campaign in Bosnia.
There were, of course, understandable reasons
why we were not together at the start of this conflict.
The American people were certainly not in the mood for
another adventure just as the Gulf War came to a close,
and so the United States gladly welcomed the Europeans'
desire to take the lead. More fundamentally, neither
Americans nor Europeans wanted to send ground forces to
intervene in or to halt the conflict which followed the
breakup of former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, we failed
to recognize the fact that former Yugoslavia was not
some side-show but rather the main arena in which the
rules of the game for the post-Cold War security order
were being established.
And so we went our separate ways, each side
according to its own national perspectives shaped by
historical experience. At the risk of
oversimplification, for the European Allies the haunting
memory of the Balkans as the powderkeg of Europe was
paramount - hence the emphasis on humanitarian
assistance and peacekeeping, and the desire to avoid an
intervention on one side which might fan rather than
douse the flames of conflict. For the Americans, the
emphasis was on the moral aspect and the desire to
assist the victims of aggression or, through lifting the
arms embargo, enable them to defend themselves.
For three years, Europeans and Americans
talked past each other. While the United States pressed
for decisive action from the air, the European Allies
pointed to the dangers this would expose their
peacekeepers to on the ground, who indeed were taking
casualties. The gap was only bridged this summer when
all Allies concluded that, before withdrawing and
leaving the Balkan region to its fate, it was necessary
to try robust action.
But the current division of labour, with
Europeans on the ground and Americans only in the air,
is not something we can sustain. If we want to
translate our success in Operation Deliberate Force into
a permanent achievement, if we want to see both a secure
and independent Bosnia and stability throughout the
Balkans, we will need a NATO peace implementation force
on the ground to make a settlement secure.
I wish I could say that there were some
easier, painless or cost-free way to reach our
objectives, but there is none. For example, if we were
simply to lift the arms embargo without sending a peace
force, all the arms in the world would not enable the
Bosnians to prevail against their more powerful and
populous neighbours, and it would certainly not bring
the conflict to an end - quite the contrary. Nor can we
avoid our responsibilities because we think a given
peace agreement is less than perfect: we cannot allow
perfection to become the enemy of the good. Our
standard must rather be a peace agreement that is signed
in good faith by all three parties and which provides
for an independent, defensible and viable Bosnian state,
within which the separate communities feel they can
pursue their destinies safely and at peace with each
other.
I fully realize that in appealing for American
participation in a peace implementation force - and I am
making this appeal today - it will be necessary to
provide answers to a number of vital questions posed by
the American Congress. And the first one of these is
the most important: NATO troops will not be asked to go
fight a war in the Balkans on behalf of one side against
another. We will go in only if the Bosnian Government
is satisfied with the peace settlement and wants us
there, and only if all the parties have signed and
pledged to respect the agreement as well.
That is a sine qua non of the operation. But
it is not the only one. Let me be clear: this will be a
NATO-led operation, under NATO
command and with robust rules of engagement. We will
not go in on behalf of one side, or with the idea that
any party is our enemy. But we will be prepared to deal
swiftly and effectively with any local instances of
non-compliance to the agreement. Indeed, it is better
to go in with adequate force or not go in at all.
Finally, we will have an exit strategy. This
will not be an open-ended commitment. This will not be
intervention in a civil war - as in Vietnam; it will not
be an exercise in nation-building - as in Somalia. Our
mission will be limited in scope and duration.
Essentially, we will oversee the pull-back of forces to
agreed demarcation lines and monitor the resulting zones
of separation. We will give confidence and security to
all the parties as they implement their new
constitutional relationships and restore their economic
ties to each other, and as international reconstruction
efforts begin to go forward. And then we will leave.
Again, I do not say that there will not be
risks or costs to this operation, or that success is
guaranteed. Indeed, I know that many Americans are
asking why it is necessary for the United States to
participate on the ground in such an operation. The
answer, first of all, is that there will not be an
independent Bosnia unless NATO does the job of securing
the peace. And the war in Bosnia may spread and
confront us with greater dangers if we do not bring it
to an end now. Second, the European Allies do not have
the resources, capabilities and manpower to do the job
alone, but neither will the US be asked to go it alone -
the Allies will do their share on the ground, at sea and
in the air, as they have been doing for over three years
now. And third, the United States cannot fail to
participate in such an operation without doing real
damage to NATO and to America's position in Europe.
This Alliance simply cannot but be affected if its
leading member does not play a substantial role in an
operation of such critical importance to the peace and
stability of Europe, and share equally in the burden of
risks and responsibilities. And, I would argue, this
Alliance is too important to America's global role and
strategic interests to allow it to be damaged. You may
yet need a strong NATO in a world of so much uncertainty
and instability.
* * * * *
As I stated at the beginning of my remarks, we
are now facing some tough decisions, not only on Bosnia
but also in relation to our democratic partners in
Central and Eastern Europe, and to Russia.
It is one thing to proclaim the need to expand
NATO membership, but it is something else altogether to
assume the consequences.
I believe, however, that we have an historic
obligation to stabilize the area to NATO's east which
for generations has been treated as a ""no man's land"" -
a region where great powers clashed in their quest for
influence and where local disputes often erupted into
wider wars. If we can succeed in bringing the new
democracies of Central and Eastern Europe into NATO's
security community, we will achieve a double benefit:
first we will reduce future risks to our own security
and second we will over time increase significantly the
resources and capabilities available to NATO's
collective defence and new missions - thus sharing the
burdens more broadly. In other words, the enlargement
of NATO is an exercise not in charity but in enlightened
self-interest.
But to state firmly the principle of
enlargement is not to imply that it can happen
immediately, or even easily. Enlargement only makes
sense if new members are going to make a net
contribution to our common defence as well as to NATO's
new missions; in short, they must also be providers of
security. At the same time, NATO enlargement must not
draw new dividing lines in Europe or be a means of
giving security to some while others are left out in the
cold. That is why the Partnership for Peace will even
grow in importance after enlargement, because it will
constitute the broadest possible security community for
NATO members and non-members alike. And that is why we
undertook a study on enlargement, whose results were
presented to our Cooperation Partners in Brussels last
week.
The study points to the obligations that new
members will have to assume in terms, for instance, of
respecting democratic norms, providing adequate armed
forces at NATO standard levels for the common defence
and also achieving civilian control over those armed
forces. At the same time the study underlines the costs
and changes that NATO will face internally. NATO's
Article 5, the security guarantee, applies equally to
all Allies. So if we extend that guarantee we have to
mean it. The extension of an empty or half-hearted
security guarantee will not only do nothing for Central
and Eastern Europe: it will also mean the end of NATO,
for once one Ally's security is no longer the same as
another's, the trust and solidarity on which NATO is
based would soon crumble. So there is no cost-free
enlargement option. We are right in asking prospective
future members to prove their credentials by making
efforts to meet certain standards; but we must be
prepared to match their efforts with extra resources of
our own.
It is thus in the interest of both sides - the
existing sixteen allies as well as those that wish to
join NATO - that we do not rush prematurely into
decisions on the ""who"" and ""when"" of NATO enlargement.
This is a process which must be handled gradually and
deliberately. Our Cooperation Partners who are
interested as much as we in a strong, functioning NATO
must take the time to analyse our enlargement study. In
the next few days we will be sending a NATO team to
discuss the study in depth with them in their capitals.
The results of those briefings will then be considered
by NATO Foreign Ministers in December who will have to
decide on the way ahead.
The enlargement of NATO, however valuable in
its own right, is not in itself a panacea for a secure
Europe. It makes no sense to extend protection for
some, if at the same time one is simply alienating
others or making them into potential adversaries. That
is why NATO has developed a parallel, equally important
policy track to complement its eventual enlargement:
namely partnership with Russia. Our offer of
partnership with Russia is not intended as a consolation
prize; it is a genuine offer which fully takes account
of Russia's weight and size in European security and
which gives Russia concrete benefits - the benefits of a
unique special relationship with NATO, of information
exchange, consultations, and concrete cooperation with
us. I recognise that the political climate for the
positive development of NATO-Russia relations has not
been good in recent weeks. Nonetheless, I truly
believe that Russia has nothing to gain from isolating
itself; neither has it anything to fear from NATO
enlargement which is not directed against Russia.
Indeed, a stable democratic Central and Eastern Europe,
whose defence and security policies are not nationally
oriented but rather firmly anchored in NATO's
multinational integrated structures, is the best
environment for Russia's own political and market
economic reforms to succeed.
And so I hope that as our cooperation with
Russia begins to develop, this great nation will
overcome its somewhat irrational suspicions of the
Alliance and understand better the true and profound
nature of NATO's transformation over the past six years.
Certainly in treating Russia like a genuine partner and
consulting openly and frequently with her, NATO will do
all it can to accelerate this evolution. But the price
of a close NATO-Russia relationship cannot be a Russian
veto or ""droit de regard"" over our internal
decision-making.
Achieving both NATO's evolutionary enlargement
and a strong NATO-Russia relationship simultaneously
will not be easy. But there is no alternative to this
dual track policy and the prize is great indeed: a
European security order built not on a fragile balance
of power but on democratic values and durable
cooperation.
We have a unique opportunity to begin building
this security order now. It cannot be built without
NATO, and that means it cannot be built without the
active participation of the United States. After all,
NATO is the embodiment of America's commitment to
preserving the peace in Europe - to preventing a
recurrence of the horrible world wars which blighted the
first half of this century. And, I might add, NATO is
essential to the security of the United States, since it
provides you with loyal and capable Allies willing to
share in the burdens of international peace, as well as
the infrastructure for military operations in Europe and
beyond, including the Middle East.
So therefore let us start now, in Bosnia, by
bringing this conflict to an end. Let us do so with
American and European Allies standing shoulder to
shoulder, as we have done all throughout the second half
of this century. And let us do so with the help of our
Central and East European partners, who want to
contribute to a peace operation and demonstrate their
commitment to our security community, and with the
cooperation of Russia, so that we can show that it is
indeed possible for NATO and Russia to develop an equal
partnership in the service of peace in Europe.
All of this can be done, provided that we have
the wisdom and the will to face the tough decisions, as
we have done so often in NATO's history. And I am
confident that we will once again.
Thank you very much.
"