The Mission, the Coalition, and the Alliance: Views from Washington

Stuart M. Seldowitz,
Deputy Political Officer, U.S. Mission to NATO


It is a great pleasure for me to be here this morning to discuss my government’s views on how we can renew the transatlantic partnership. This alliance, which brought more than a half century of peace, stability, and prosperity to Europe, Canada, and the United States was deeply shaken by disagreements over the war in Iraq and, more broadly, over how to effectively wage the war on terror. We are hopeful that the United States and our European Allies and partners have begun the “new era of transatlantic unity” that President Bush called for when he came to Europe six months ago.

The President has chosen to make strengthening and deepening the transatlantic strategic consensus a signature goal of his second term. Our joint efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to victims of the Asian Tsunami and the recent earthquake in Pakistan, Europe’s generous contribution to helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States, our shared need to build a stable, democratic Iraq, our collective support for democracy in Ukraine, and our common efforts to stabilize and strengthen Afghanistan’s fledgling institutions, demonstrate the range of our common agenda and how by working together we stand the best chance of advancing our individual interests.

President knows that when the great democracies of the world are united in defense of freedom and security, our number will grow and so will our strength and prosperity. So the first “view from Washington” is that the transatlantic relationship – based on our common belief in democracy, freedom, and the rights of the individual – has once again shown itself strong enough to withstand strong disagreements on individual issues. We must all resist the temptation to turn inward, ignore looming problems, or fight among ourselves.

The second point from Washington is that NATO remains the centerpiece for security aspects of the transatlantic partnership. NATO Headquarters is where Americans, Canadians, and Europeans sit all day long in virtually permanent session, talking to each about the challenges we all face, and the tools we have to meet them.

During its 56-year history, NATO has seen its share of trials, but it has always emerged stronger and more unified. This is because, while sovereign, democratic nations will sometimes disagree, all of us recognize the enduring value and relevance of this great Alliance. The great challenge that NATO was formed to meet – to provide a collective defense against Soviet aggression – has passed. But in today’s world Europe and North America still face diverse threats and challenges and our relationship must continue to adapt to meet them.

While the world has changed a great deal in the last sixty years, the threats we face remain remarkably the same: our struggle today against the forces of extremism and terror is, first and foremost, a modern-day version of the same fight against brutality, tyranny, and inhumanity that forged us together as Allies in the first place.

Some of these threats still emanate in the more traditional sense from belligerent states, and sometimes the struggle is brought home to our own territories and citizens – as in London, Madrid, New York, and Istanbul. But increasingly, the threats and the actors behind them are stateless, borderless, and shadowy.

These forces of terror and extremism feed on each other in our globally interconnected, 24/7 world -- bomber in London is inspired by the political fallout of a bombing in Madrid; a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan learns from a jihadist in Iraq, and the other way around; or a despot on one continent studies the tactics and posturing of another despot half a world away. Now, today, more than ever before, we can see how events across the globe – in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Gaza, or North Korea -- affect and influence the global climate and matter to us all.

Secretary Rice likes to say, it is not enough to secure our own territory, we also must work together to shape a global balance of power that favors freedom. The forces of self-government, pluralism, tolerance, and economic opportunity cannot be only for us, they need to be for all those who desire and aspire to them.

NATO understands this fact, which is why we spend so much of our time talking about places like Darfur, and Kandahar and our officer training center in ar Rustimiyah, Iraq -- places that 15 years ago few Transatlanticists -- Americans or Europeans, myself included -- could easily have found on a map.

So the third key point is that while NATO is the key to the transatlantic security relationship, we have a lot of work to do to complete the retooling of our Great Alliance for the 21st century and to cement the will of its members to stay strong and committed in the face of today’s threats. NATO is in the middle of transforming itself from a Cold War organization that was designed and equipped to deter a Soviet attack, and defeat it if deterrence failed, into a leaner, more agile organization that can defend its members and what they stand for from the threat of terrorism and extremism. All of us need to invest more to ensure our Alliance is funded, flexible, and forward for the 21st century.

The flagship of a transformed Alliance is the NATO Response Force – and it must be deployable, modern, and responsive. A strong and effective NRF will give this Alliance the capability and flexibility it needs to meet threats wherever and whenever they arise. The NRF has already shown a glimpse of its speed, agility, and potential – last year, it went to Afghanistan, to help secure the presidential election, and more recently, elements of the NRF helped transport European humanitarian assistance to Hurricane Katrina’s victims. But we have a lot more work to do to make it transformational for the Alliance.

The need to transform NATO’s military capabilities has opened up one of the major fault lines in our Alliance that if left unattended could have serious consequences. The large and growing military capability gap between the U.S. and our European allies must be closed. We should all be concerned that less than half of European Allies are seriously modernizing their armed forces and adapting to today’s requirements for greater mobility and agility. This has led to an even more critical “usability gap.” Of Europe’s 2.4 million men and woman in uniform, only about three percent can now be deployed on our priority missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The U.S., meanwhile, can deploy nearly 78% of our land forces.

The stakes could not be higher in Afghanistan, and we must work to ensure that NATO has the tools, the will, and the leadership to succeed as it prepares to expand its mission into the southern and eventually the eastern regions of the country. The U.S. is fully prepared to play a strong role in this NATO effort. In Iraq NATO’s training mission is helping to give the Iraqi armed forces the tools they need to defeat the insurgency and build a democratic future. In Darfur we are helping the African Union peacekeeping mission, and NATO continues to keep the peace in Kosovo and thereby allows the political process to continue.

NATO has become an organization with new missions, new relationships, and new capabilities. While still a military alliance, it has become much more a community of shared values including democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. From an organization of 16 North American and Western European states, it is now an organization of 26 Allies, almost 40 percent of whom were members of what used to be called the Warsaw Pact. More importantly, we have reached out to other states in Europe, Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine, and the broader Middle East, and built mutually beneficial relationships with many of them.

Just as important as developing the right military capabilities, however, is expanding and deepening the level of political dialogue within the Alliance. If the divisive debate over Iraq taught us one thing, it is that NATO must be a place where we talk about all the issues affecting our future – the Middle East, Iraq, North Korea, China, Iran, just to name a few. Because whether NATO is involved or not, the choices made in those parts of the world will have an impact on our quest for that global balance that favors freedom.

We are also convinced that our great Alliance is woefully under-funded. Too few Allies have met the call for a 2% floor in defense spending; meanwhile our level of ambition has never been greater. Over next year, the United States wants to work with Allies on creative new ideas including increased common funding and building more common assets to put struts of steel into NATO’s transformation and to make sure we can meet the commitments we have made.

We also need to think more creatively about how to use NATO’s considerable expertise to help our partners. One idea is to look at how we can better take advantage of NATO’s vast experience training its own, to make the Alliance the multilateral security trainer of first resort. Another avenue to explore is how NATO can strengthen its ability to partner with other committed democracies – like Japan and Australia – to pool our efforts and our resources to meet today’s challenges.

There is much work to be done to strengthen the transatlantic relationship beyond NATO as well. We need once and for all to break down the rivalries -- real or imagined -- between the EU and NATO. The United States wants and needs a strong and productive relationship with a thriving European Union. We see no contradiction between a strong NATO and a strong EU. Both have their role to play in advancing our common interests. Just a quick glance at our deepening relationship with the EU -- from practical counterterrorism cooperation to dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions to promoting democracy and economic reform in the broader Middle East -- conveys the vast scope of the common agenda we have.

Finally, allow me to reiterate what President Bush and Secretary Rice have said on numerous occasions. The United States remains committed to leading the transatlantic partnership into the 21st century. We have the responsibility to take this great and powerful partnership and turn its power outwards; to lead the rest of the world in offering a better future, one that embraces the core values of economic opportunity, pluralism, and democratic governance.

This can help establish perhaps the greatest deterrent to extremism and terrorism: stable, secure, and accountable governments.

Our ultimate goal – whether through NATO, or the US-EU partnership, or both houses together at 32 or as a global community of democracies – must be to ensure that more children – and generations to come – can live as ours do today, in freedom, promise, and security.