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UNITED STATES POLICY REGARDING NATO EXPANSION
House of Representatives,
Committee on National Security,
Washington, DC, Thursday, July 17, 1997.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:35 a.m. in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Floyd Spence (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will please come to order.
Today the committee convenes to consider the critically important issue of the expansion of the NATO alliance. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that NATO is the most successful alliance in history. However, NATO's success sometimes obscures how hard it is to forge an alliance that works. Napoleon once remarked that he preferred to fight against alliances because they could not maintain political solidarity.
NATO's success and its victory in the cold war is due in large part to two fundamental principles: First, NATO has sustained its focus on collective defense designed primarily to respond to the external threat to alliance members. Second, NATO has always been characterized by strong American leadership.
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In my judgment, deviating from these principles could place at risk both the alliance as we know it and perhaps in the long term even stability and security that prevails today in Europe. While I personally lean in favor of NATO expansion, I do so only if the fundamental character of the alliance and American leadership are preserved.
NATO's adherence to these fundamental principles not only has served the cause of security and stability in Europe, it has solidified American support for the alliance here at home. In the wake of the recent Madrid summit, many Americans are considering this idea of NATO expansion for the first time. This past April Mr. Dellums and I jointly wrote to the President to express our bipartisan concerns about the administration's plan for expanding NATO. We raised a number of fundamental and important questions on issues ranging from the role of NATO in U.S. national security strategy to new military force requirements and costs—questions that we believe need to be answered prior to initiating the expansion of NATO.
From this Nation's birth, matters of war and peace in Europe have had a profound effect on America. If NATO is to remain a valuable instrument not only of European security, but also of American security, the fundamental character of this alliance, even an expanded alliance, must remain the same.
Henry Kissinger has been one of the leaders in the drive to expand the alliance, but recently he concluded, ''I confess that had I known the price of NATO enlargement would be the gross dilution of NATO, I would have urged other means to achieve that objective.'' This is a sobering statement from a serious statesman that ought to give us all pause for thought.
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Accordingly, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. Our first panel will include the Honorable Walter Slocombe, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the Honorable John Kornblum, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. On the second panel we will hear from Peter Rodman, former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and Dr. Fred Ikle, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Spence can be found in the appendix on page 54.]
The CHAIRMAN. Before beginning, I would like to recognize the committee's ranking member, Mr. Dellums, for any remarks he would like to make.
STATEMENT OF HON. RONALD V. DELLUMS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
Mr. DELLUMS. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I join with you in welcoming our distinguished witnesses that have come before us this morning. They come before the committee to discuss an issue of enormous strategic importance. It is not an overstatement to suggest, I believe, that this may be one of the two or three most significant strategic issues we will face in the next several years. Because I believe that to be true, Mr. Chairman, I have cautioned the administration and my colleagues in the Congress against pressing for precipitous expansion, and I remain concerned that we are still moving too quickly in that regard.
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I have appreciated your willingness, Mr. Chairman, to work with me in our recent effort to prompt and promote the wide-ranging public dialog that such an important strategic development deserves. I believe that our joint letter to President Clinton and the reply it evoked enhanced substantially an important dialog between this committee and the administration on this important topic. Today's hearing should continue that dialog, and it should be viewed as a milestone on the roadway to establishing our ultimate policy with regard to expansion, not an end point.
As the more senior members of this committee are aware, it is because of my long-term and continued support of NATO that I have cautioned against a precipitous expansion. I believe that the NATO alliance and its doctrine, planning, and operations can be changed to accommodate the post-cold-war security environment in Europe, and it is my view that everything that we do in that regard should be calculated to achieve peace and stability in Europe and its environs.
Certainly NATO has contributed to the peace and stability that we have seen in the half century since the end of World War II, but it did so as a military alliance poised against a well-defined adversary. In the context of highly visible alignment on the continent, it may have been inevitable that a standoff was the best we could achieve. The fact that major war was averted on the continent is a blessing to us all. But in the context of this new security alignment, and notwithstanding instability and the uncertainty of reform in all the countries of Europe, especially Russia, I would argue that not establishing—not establishing—a new dividing line should be a central objective of any security architecture on the continent.
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So while all of us on this committee might view the enhancement of peace and stability as central goals and tenets of enlargement, I am not so certain that we would agree on how NATO enlargement might contribute to those goals. To understand that, we must understand the threats and opportunities for peace and stability in Europe. In the answer to that question rests as well the beginning of the understandings about the appropriate pace, timing, and scope of NATO expansion. The answer to those questions then can bring us to the logistics, costs, and business of expansion, the logical end point, rather than the beginning of our concerns.
I fear that what political dialog there has been on this issue over the past 4 years has not contributed usefully to the development and understanding of the answers to these questions. Instead, political leaders in this country of both parties have rushed to embrace a partial but prompt expansion of NATO without developing a national consensus on threat, opportunity, and strategy, much less those issues of lesser consequence, such as the nature of burden sharing and budgetary costs.
Now we are at the penultimate moment. The leaders of the NATO nations have agreed to partial expansion, but without true consensus on even its scope, and we now work, Mr. Chairman, to ripen our understanding of the issue in order to have a meaningful and orderly legislative determination of the value and appropriateness of enlargement.
It is my hope that this hearing can shed light on these issues. What is our long-term view of the relationship between NATO and Russia? How can expansion aid or hinder this relationship? Can we imagine further expansion without the generation of instability? Can we imagine Russia ultimately joining NATO, and, if not, why not? What will the other European non-NATO nations do in response to enlargement? Why is not the expansion of programs such as our very successful Partnership for Peace sufficient for the moment? What is the out-of-area reaction to the NATO expansion? How will the nations of the Middle East, North Africa, and China, for example, view this expansion? What are the nonmilitary dimensions of this enlargement? If they are as important as the military dimension, why are we not looking to forums such as the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe to contribute more to the stability and security architecture in Europe?
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I could go on Mr. Chairman, as you and I did at some length in our letter to the President. The point is, my colleagues, this is a really large issue, and it should be invested with all of the weight of its strategic importance. We will have to answer to our progeny for any superficiality that we bring to this analysis because the possible consequences of a failure of analysis are too horrible to imagine.
It is my hope that our distinguished panelists can answer these questions during their remarks today. To the extent they are not answered, Mr. Chairman, I will at the appropriate point submit them for the record and ask our witnesses to respond in writing.
With those remarks and your generosity, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The CHAIRMAN. The Chair thanks the gentleman for his remarks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dellums can be found in the appendix on page 60.]
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Slocombe, you can proceed as you like. Your prepared statement will be submitted for the record.
STATEMENT OF WALTER SLOCOMBE, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY
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Mr. SLOCOMBE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to appear here with my friend and colleague, John Kornblum, who is one of our country's leading experts on European affairs, to address the question of NATO enlargement. In a sense, this is the start of a dialog, not just between the executive branch and the legislative branch, but between the Government and the American people, about a very important foreign policy decision. The letter which you and Mr. Dellums sent to the President and the response which the President provided I think begin this process of addressing some of these very fundamental issues.
With the committee's permission, I would like to suggest that Ambassador Kornblum make a brief statement at the beginning covering in a sense what happened at Madrid, and then I will talk about some of the more general issues and particularly some of the issues which I think the committee will be most concerned with, based on your opening statements.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Slocombe can be found in the appendix on page 69.]
The CHAIRMAN. Let me thank you.
Yes, sir.
STATEMENT OF JOHN C. KORNBLUM, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EUROPEAN AND CANADIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. KORNBLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is also a great pleasure and honor for me to be here. I think many of the questions which have been raised are very legitimate. This is an historic step that has been taken, and it is one which deserves the fullest possible discussion and examination, and I am very pleased to be able to be here this morning with you to hopefully contribute to this.
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The decision at Madrid is both a simple and a complex one. It is simple in the sense that the alliance decided to begin access negotiations with three countries with a view of having these negotiations completed by the end of this year and by having, hopefully, the three countries admitted to NATO in 2 years. But it is also a complex one, because it is based on nearly 3 years of discussion and preparation, both within the alliance and with those 12 countries who expressed interest in joining, and it is also complex because it is only part of a broader strategy which the United States and the Western allies have structured to build, in fact, a broad structure of peace.
This structure includes the Partnership for Peace, which has been significantly strengthened this year by decisions taken at the December Ministerial, the NAC–D defense minister's meeting, and at the summit. It includes the establishment of a new organization, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which is for the first time tied directly to the Partnership for Peace so that our partner countries, both those who are candidates for members and perhaps equally those who are not candidates for members, who want to have an ongoing relationship with NATO, can have not only their individual partnership programs, but an ongoing consultative relationship with NATO. It includes, of course, the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council and the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which provides a very important structure and developing relationship with Russia. It also includes strong efforts led, if I may say so, by the United States to strengthen the organization for security and cooperation in Europe and build both its foundation role as the organization which has both broad membership and defines the standards for peace and cooperation in Europe, but also its very practical role, such as its role in Bosnia and such as its really very successful role in a difficult situation in Albania in the past couple of months.
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What will happen after Madrid is multifold. First the access negotiations will begin with the three countries, but equally important is that the door will remain open, and, in fact, very wide open. The United States was successful in making sure that the ongoing dialog with candidate countries will be structured, substantive and functioning on its own track; that is, that those countries who wish to enter NATO will not be subsumed in some broader dialog, but will each have their own individual dialogs to make sure that both their interests, but also the requirements for membership, can be worked through and understood clearly.
The Partnership for Peace will, of course, be developed further, and the number of exercises, the number of contacts, the number of consultations in the Partnership for Peace continues to be a very important aspect of what we are doing.
In other words, Madrid is by no means an end point of this process. It is very much in the spirit of the comments of Representative Dellums. It is part of an ongoing security strategy, a strategy which is determined to, on the one hand, strengthen the alliance with the addition of new members, but equally to build an interrelated structure, if you will, a family of structures around the core of a strong and expanding NATO, which can make sure that those countries who are not part of NATO can enjoy the projection of not only the alliance, but of the presence and leadership of the United States.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kornblum can be found in the appendix on page 82.]
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Mr. SLOCOMBE. Mr. Chairman, the enlargement of the alliance is important and in the interests of the United States because it will advance our very strong interest in security and stability in Europe. Nowhere are American concerns more vital than in Europe. We will maintain our military commitment to Europe in terms of troops on the ground, in terms of capacity to reinforce as needed, and will maintain our political engagement in seeking to resolve problems in Europe that affect our interests.
We make this commitment not as an act of charity, but because the security of Europe is vital to our own security, as two wars and a long cold war have shown in this century. Twice before, America had the opportunity at the end of a war to help build a system of European security. The first time, after World War I, we foolishly held back from the responsibilities that our interests required us to assume. The second time, after World War II, Western Europe and the United States were together able to choose a path of reconciliation and reconstruction through the Marshall Plan and NATO and together move from terrible destruction to unprecedented prosperity. But because of Stalin's paranoia and relentless expansionism, Eastern Europe and Russia were not able to participate in its system.
We now have a third chance, this time to build a security system for all of Europe, a system that will solidify the place of the newly free nations in a secure Europe linked to the United States; a system that will maintain United States leadership and engagement; a system that will follow growing European integration; and a system that will ensure that Russia will play a constructive role commensurate with its importance and weight in European affairs; and finally, a system that will preserve and strengthen NATO as the core instrument for military security in Europe.
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We need to continue to be concerned about security in Europe, because we face problems as well as good opportunities. The end of the Soviet threat, while it has immeasurably improved the security of all of us, has not, unfortunately, meant the end of threats. Threats to stability and to the economic opportunities, the opportunities for ordinary people, the opportunity for peaceful development, those threats to stability still arise from old national and ethnic hatreds, from homegrown and state-sponsored terrorism, from threats from unstable regions outside Europe, from the prospect of the spread of weapons of mass destruction. All these pose problems for security in the future that our own national interests require we address.
In the new European security system, the key instrument will be NATO. As you said in your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, NATO is not only the most successful, it is the only continuing effective multilateral military alliance in the world today. It has risen to the challenge of providing a critical instrument to promote peace in Bosnia. The best evidence of NATO's continued relevance is the eagerness of many countries to join it and the determination of its current members to do the things that are necessary to keep it strong and to reshape it so it is better able to respond to the new challenges and opportunities we face.
But the countries of Central Europe want to join NATO, and the current members want to maintain it, precisely because of what it is, a strong military alliance with strong U.S. leadership. It will remain so under enlargement.
NATO enlargement is the most publicized but not the only part of a much broader strategy to help create a peaceful, undivided and democratic Europe. Ambassador Kornblum, in his statement and oral remarks, has outlined those other elements. His statement also reviews the accomplishments of the Madrid summit and the further steps that will be necessary to move from the announcement of an invitation to begin access talks to the formal protocol on access.
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The question often is asked, why is enlargement in our interests? The answer, I think, is straightforward, but it has many elements. Enlargement will make it easier to foster stability throughout Europe. It will make NATO stronger by creating a larger circle of like-minded nations devoted to collective military defense, thereby enabling us better to maintain preparations to deal with whatever the future holds.
It will improve relations among the region states. In some ways the most remarkable accomplishment of NATO was not just that it played a critical role in deterring a Soviet attack on Western Europe, but that it played a critical role in damping down and resolving and, we believe, ending for all time divisions between, say, France and Germany that were as decisive as anything that we face in Central and Eastern Europe. It now has the opportunity to play that role again, and, indeed, already the prospect of membership has been very important for the historic reconciliation of Germany and the Czech Republic, for example, and Hungary and Romania.
Further enlargement will broaden burden-sharing within NATO for the simple reason that there will be more countries to carry the burden. There is a close link between military security and economic opportunity, and enlargement of NATO is a part of a broader strategy of solidifying European security and will create a better environment for trade, investment, and economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe and for their links to Western Europe, the United States, and indeed the rest of the world.
Further, the strong sense of security that a gradually enlarging NATO will provide, not only for its own members, its own current and new members, but for other countries that maintain a relationship with it, will help secure the historic gains of democracy by providing that security in which free societies can flourish and the hatred of the past be permanently buried.
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Finally, it will help all of Europe become a stronger partner for the United States in political, economic and security affairs. This will serve American interests and American principles, just as it will serve those of all of Europe, both old and new members, and states inside and outside the alliance.
Both of you in your opening statements have emphasized very rightly the significance of this step. It involves what President Clinton has called the most solemn security guarantees. Enlargement must not and will not dilute the alliance's military effectiveness or its political cohesion. The current members, through each of their parliaments, must agree that all are ready to accept these obligations. The broader context of European security, including the impact on Russia, on Ukraine, and nations that remain outside of NATO, must be taken into account.
A sincere aspiration on the part of the Central European countries is not enough to justify membership. We have established certain criteria which are outlined. We made a conscious decision that we would limit American support for enlargement at this stage to those countries that were most clearly ready, and that was the reason why the President decided that the United States would support only Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic for this first round. These were the states which had most clearly made the most progress and were most clearly ready and where there was the broadest consensus.
Nine other European states had already declared their desire to join NATO, and many of them, as we recognized, are making excellent progress in preparing themselves. We concluded, however, that the alliance should extend an invitation now only in the clearer cases. In is a highly important action. It carries heavy obligations. It is for all practical purposes irreversible.
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When there is reasonable doubt about whether a nation has yet made sufficient progress, the prudent course is to defer invitation; to defer, not to refuse them permanently. That approach is all the more important given that, as Ambassador Kornblum outlined in his statement, the NATO alliance has said very clearly that the door to membership will remain open so there will be ample opportunities to invite additional members.
I want to make the point that the countries that in some sense have the most reason to be disappointed, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic States, have all, of course, expressed their disappointment, but they have also indicated that far from abandoning the course of integration, NATO membership will remain a top foreign policy goal. They are committed to continuing and accelerating reforms, and they have expressed their intentions not only to continue to pursue membership, but to work to participate even more actively in the enhanced Partnership for Peace and in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.
There is a legitimate interest and concern on the Hill and in the country and in the administration with the cost of NATO enlargement. We have to acknowledge that enlargement will carry costs. Security is never free. It will not be free in this case.
The most important costs, like the most important benefits, are not financial ones. The United States and its allies will by and large extend solemn security guarantees to additional nations, and NATO members must provide the capability, along with that of new members, to back those guarantees.
The Madrid statement acknowledges the alliance's recognition that there will be a requirement for resources and a requirement to find those resources. In my statement I discuss in some detail the way we have analyzed this question of cost. Let me summarize it very briefly here. There are three categories of costs. Only one is really in a sense a direct incremental cost of enlargement, but I think all three categories need to be taken into account.
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The first category of cost is what will it cost the new members to be able to make an appropriate military contribution to the alliance? The second question is what will it cost the current members to be able to have the capacity to come to the defense of the new members if that should be necessary? The third category is what are the costs of the direct linkage between the new and the old members?
Strictly speaking, it is only that third category that is an incremental cost. The other two are costs which would have to be incurred anyway for the new members and the current members to be secure. But enlargement makes all three categories important, and that is why we have taken them into account.
In the statement, I review the analysis, what it is that the new members will have to do, the very strong indications that we have had that they recognize that these plans have to be made and have to be implemented. I outline what the current members are already committed to do, because it is very important to remember that the alliance has already changed its strategic concept. That was done back in 1991, before anybody was talking about NATO enlargement.
During the cold war, we knew who the enemy was going to be, we knew exactly what the problem was. We built in the alliance a positional defense across Central Europe, across the inter-German border essentially, to prepare to defend for an attack by the Red army across that border.
Already in 1991, the alliance recognized that that was no longer what would be needed for security in the future. What would be needed, rather, was the capacity to move forces rapidly and flexibly to areas of challenge. The European countries, because they had essentially oriented their forces toward the static defense of Europe, realized that that meant they were going to have to make major changes in how they structured their armed forces. Those changes are underway. They will be costly, they will take time, they will require fundamental changes in how European—NATO's current European members do their military business. But they are underway, and they will be equally applicable to the problems of potentially defending new members of the alliance.
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I should say because the United States already has the world's premier mobile power projection capability, this does not require any additional U.S. forces. We maintain forces able to go on a rapid and flexible basis to far more difficult, challenging places to get to than the new members of the alliance.
The new members will need to restructure their military. They have militaries which are essentially the inheritance of the Warsaw Pact. They have made some changes. They recognize they have a lot more to do. They understand what is expected of them. At Madrid, Secretary Cohen met with his counterparts, the defense ministers of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Each of them outlined in some detail what their plans are, the steps they have already taken to increase their defense budgets by modest percentages of their gross domestic product so they get roughly in line with the NATO average; what they will have to do in terms of reducing the excessive size of their forces.
They have actually on a per capita basis very much larger militaries than most of the current NATO members, but the result is that they spend almost all of their military budget simply on sustaining these forces. They are going to have to restructure, downsize those forces, modernize them, make them able to contribute to NATO's missions and to their own defense.
In both cases, both the current and new members, their leadership, their governments, their parliaments, understand that these are things they will have to do in any event if they are to be secure. It becomes more important, we have a greater interest in it because of NATO enlargement, but they understand these are costs which they would have to incur anyway.
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Then there are the direct costs, direct costs for things like establishing NATO headquarters; establishing communications systems; integrating these countries into NATO's common air defense, surveillance system; providing reception facilities so if NATO forces had to come into these countries, they would be able to be properly received and supported when they got there.
As you know, we have made the judgment militarily in the alliance that it is not necessary to station significant forces in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that become members of the alliance. That is under current circumstances.
The costs are manageable. In the case of the United States, the costs are modest indeed. We anticipate that the only direct cost for the United States associated with NATO enlargement will be the U.S. contribution to the so-called NATO common budgets. Some of the costs of integrating the new members into the alliance will be paid for—like comparable costs in the alliance today, will be paid for through the NATO common budgets to which the United States contributes about 25 percent. We estimate that those costs will be on the order of $150 to $200 million a year over the course of, say, the 10 years after formal access in 1999.
The only other direct cost we anticipate the United States paying is whatever the Congress decides it is appropriate to provide as support and assistance for the new members. To give a ballpark estimate of that, the United States now provides about $100 million a year in support for Partnership for Peace activities to all of the 27 members of the Partnership for Peace. Something under half of that goes to the three currently invited members of the alliance.
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With respect to the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, let's start with the countries in the current alliance, these improvements are programs they already have underway. In all of them it will be hard to finance, they are expensive and require changes, but the amounts involved are modest, only a couple of percent. Remember, the current members of NATO spend roughly $180 billion a year on defense collectively, so the kinds of costs we are talking about of, say, $10 million order of magnitude over a 10-year period is well within their capabilities.
Even for the new members, costs will be a manageable, although larger, percentage of their current budgets. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are already investing in modernizing and restructuring their forces, and the costs can be met by a combination of modest increases in the percentage of GDP devoted to defense to bring them in line with NATO averages; a growing economic base as growth advances, and these countries are all now beginning to hit the point of serious economic growth; and perhaps most important, a reduction in size of their manpower base so the forces are substantially smaller and more efficient.
It is important to understand that these estimates of the cost of enlargement relate to capabilities required in the European security environment that we, in fact, foresee. That is one in which nations need very seriously to have serious defense capabilities in which there is no cold war-style threat of a large-scale military conventional aggression, and where any such threat would take years to develop.
Of course, a fundamentally different and far more demanding set of defense requirements would arise if trends in Europe developed in such a way as to renew a direct territorial threat to NATO members. Such a threat does not exist today, there is no expectation that it will emerge, and we would have a long period of time before it could emerge.
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But there can be no question that if we had to meet such a threat, and it is not impossible that we will, we could do so more effectively and less expensively in an expanded alliance than in a Europe still divided along cold war lines. In such a circumstance, the added manpower, military capability, political support, and strategic depth afforded by NATO enlargement would amply justify whatever additional costs there would be in having additional members in the alliance.
Perhaps the most important point to be made about the costs of enlargement is there would be greater costs and risks to not enlarging. If we fail to seize this historic opportunity to help integrate, consolidate, and stabilize Central and Eastern Europe, we would risk a much higher price later. The most efficient and cost-effective way to guarantee stability in Europe is to do so collectively through NATO. Alliances save money. Collective defense is both cheaper and stronger than purely national defense, and it carries many fewer political risks.
In addition to enlargement, we have many other aspects to our approach to security. Partnership for Peace has been a greater success, I think, than any of us anticipated at the time it was started. The alliance has taken important decisions to deepen and make more practical and more concrete the work of the Partnership for Peace, and in particular to draw the members of the partnership, those who wish to do so, more closely into the NATO planning process.
Another important aspect of the alliance's own adaptation is the development of a European Security and Defense Identity within NATO. We have made in the years since the ESDI first began to be talked about in the early 1990's, a fundamental breakthrough, an acknowledgment, if I may say, even by the French that the only way to have an ESDI is in NATO. This is a tough issue. It raises a lot of political and military considerations.
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There is a lot more to be done, but the basic decision of the European Defense Identity is going to be within NATO has been made. I want to make the point that ESDI, even in the minds of its most fervent European advocates, is not ever likely to become a substitute for U.S. involvement in NATO and European security. This is so not simply because of all of the obstacles to European-only action against the full spectrum of security approximate, but because our own interests require that we continue to take the lead on European security questions as we have done.
Another very important aspect of what happened at Madrid was the NATO-Ukraine Charter. I believe in many ways the fundamental ultimate test of whether we have built a secure structure for Europe will be whether we are successful in sustaining and supporting the efforts to build a strong, sovereign, prosperous, democratic, independent Ukraine.
After the Madrid summit, one of the countries which Secretary Cohen visited was Ukraine. They have a lot of problems, very serious economic problems. They have not really begun, but begun, but only barely, the course of economic reform. They are determined to maintain their sovereignty, and this is important to be done, and the NATO-Ukraine Charter is an important step in that direction.
Finally, the NATO-Russia relationship. Both of you in your statements emphasized the importance of making sure we get this relationship right. There are two aspects to getting it right. The first is to make sure that we have sufficient hedges against things going wrong in Russia, and NATO enlargement is an important element of that hedging.
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The second element, and the element which we believe is the course we will actually pursue, is the course of building a strong security relationship with Russia, both bilaterally, between the United States and Russia, and multilaterally, between NATO and Russia.
Of course, the Russians continue to oppose NATO enlargement in principle. One could hardly expect them to do anything else. They have, however, accepted this stage. They have accepted and seem eager to participate in the process of consultation and discussion with NATO; not of participation in NATO's affairs because the Founding Act is entirely clear that NATO and Russia, for that matter, retain full independence of action, but to have a structure and a framework for consultation and cooperation where that is possible.
And it is possible. As somebody who spent a large part of my life working on security issues, it was a striking, even moving, experience a year ago to go to Bosnia where there is a Russian brigade serving with the NATO force in Bosnia, serving under the command of the American division commander, and to go out there at that time General Nash was the division commander, as he made his regular visit to his Russian brigade commander, just as he made periodic visits to his American brigade commanders, to the Polish and Nordic brigade commanders. There is an opportunity to work together. We hope that the Russians will choose the path of opportunity. We are prepared if they do not.
Mr. Chairman, I apologize for going on so long. There are a lot of aspects to this problem. The only thing I can say is it was at least shorter than if I had read the whole statement. Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, both of you.
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Mr. Dellums.
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Chairman, there are other members here, but there is one point that I would like to put out before you. If you listened to my opening remarks, what I was trying to suggest in my opening remarks was that it is not so much that the logistical issues, the cost issues, the business of enlargement are not important, but you logically get there at the end. You don't start at that point, you start dealing with much larger questions.
I believe that you have now embarked upon a significant strategic step, and that is the enlargement of NATO. We all agree that it is significant and important. My view is that you don't start off down a road this important unless you see the end point. Both of you agree with me that Madrid is not the end point, but what is the end point?
We can agree, and I said in my remarks we probably all here can agree that important goals and tenets of enlargement is peace and security. Where we may not agree is how enlargement gets us there. What is the end point?
We have spent a great deal of time negotiating with Russia so that we allay some of their anxieties, but why have we not addressed the issue of their membership up front? I think it is because we have not seen the end point. If we are going to start down the road toward enlargement, at what point is it large enough? At what point do you say that enlargement has achieved the objective?
I believe very strongly that a new line should not been drawn. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war ended, it seems to me we should not draw some new line in the sand. By expansion, you can potentially precipitate a new line in the sand, unless you ultimately have made a decision about where you want to see enlargement go. I have not heard that from anyone. Everyone keeps saying Madrid is not the end point, it is the start point. Well, what is the end point? Do all of the countries in Europe? I think one could argue very rationally and logically if you are going to pursue the strategy of enlargement to achieve the goal of peace and stability, that eventually NATO has to get its arms around all of the countries of Europe. You end up with everybody in NATO, including Russia.
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So the question that I put to you is do you see the end point? Because this is of such significance strategically that we should not be wandering down this road. It is much too vital. When I said that our children will rely very heavily on the accuracy of our analysis because an incorrect analysis can lead us to a new line in the sand that can have horrifying consequences as a result; therefore, we should not be wandering down this significant road. We ought to know where we are going and trying to end up.
My concern as a person that has supported NATO, spent my adult life believing in peace and stability and security, I am saying that I am not rejecting expansion. I am saying precipitous expansion, naive expansion, expansion that does not look all the way down the road and see the end potentially is very harmful.
So my question is if Madrid is the start point and is not the end point, what is the end point, and how does that embrace Russia, and why do we have to have some other countries in Europe with a different kind of understanding, with a different kind of alignment? If that is the case, you are moving toward drawing a new line in the sand, and I wonder how you rationalize that. Does my question make sense?
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I understand the question, sir. With respect to Russia, we have made a conscious decision that we will not rule Russia out for eventual NATO membership. I don't think it is going to happen at any time in the foreseeable future. The Russians, to put it mildly, have not the least interest in becoming members of the alliance. But we have not thought it was appropriate to draw a line that says that any European country, and Russia is a European country, that any European country is excluded as a matter of principle from membership.
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I think for the foreseeable future the issue is not going to be NATO membership for Russia, it is going to be creating a constructive relationship between NATO and Russia that will support European security. I believe the Founding Act, which sets a framework for such consultation and for such cooperation, is a manifestation of NATO's willingness to do this, and indeed Russia's agreement to it is a manifestation that Russia is also interested in a constructive relationship with NATO.
I don't think we moved precipitously. Rather, to my surprise, we found ourself in the position where when we started this out, it was the European countries that were very reluctant to change the club, to add new members. It was somewhat ironic, therefore, that at Madrid, it was at least some European countries, by no means all of them, but some European countries that were saying let's go faster, let's have more countries in in the first round, and the United States was saying we have to move cautiously, we have to be sure of where we are going before we put our foot on the road.
But I agree. The question of where the ultimate path is going is an important one. Our vision is that as the nations of Europe develop their democracy and their capacity to contribute to NATO's purposes, they will become members of the alliance and indeed of other European institutions like the European Union in a steady, but gradual process that reflects that development and reflects that NATO has to be able to assimilate new members without weakening its military effectiveness and the process should not threaten European security as a whole.
Exactly how far that process will go in terms of which countries will become members and when, I think we cannot say at this point. We can say that is the course we expect to go on, but how long that process will take is something that at this point we cannot say with confidence, because we can't tell for sure how the process of that internal development in those countries will proceed.
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If you had asked 10 years ago what is Europe going to look like even in 10 years, I think you would have found very few people who in 1987 would have given you an accurate picture of what Europe was going to look like in 10 years.
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Chairman, just one quick thing. When I used the term precipitous, I meant that if you start down the road and you are not clear about where you are going, I still listened carefully to your answer, but I am still not clear about where we are trying to go. I make a difference between methodology, how, what time, how long. That is a different issue. I am talking about ultimately what is the goal.
Now, through my sources, I have heard on a number of occasions people saying Russians are not interested in membership in NATO. Through my sources I heard that it is really that that public response was really a testosterone response which said we don't think you folks are really serious about having us as members anyway, so instead of having you reject us, we reject you. We all understand that game because we have all played it at one point or another.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member?
Mr. DELLUMS. No. The point is if people don't think you are serious about their membership, then maybe they say we don't want you because we don't think you are serious about it.
It is one thing to say as a matter of principle we keep the door open, as opposed to saying our ultimate vision is all of the countries in Europe being a part of NATO, including Russia. That is a very different statement than saying as a matter of principle we keep the door open. That is one statement. But to say to Russia, we would ultimately view the future of NATO including you, that is a different statement, because that means you have made some judgment about where you see the end pointed.
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This is going to be a long-term strategic discussion. We are having a dialog here and in the country. But I lay those cards on the table because I really don't think those points have been effectively answered at this moment.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I think the best answer that I can give is that we believe that for the foreseeable future, the issue is a constructive relationship between NATO and Russia, not built on the prospect of Russian membership in NATO, but we do not rule that out in principle at some very ultimate stage.
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Kornblum.
Mr. KORNBLUM. I will just add two words. I think we have, in fact, thought very carefully about the direction and the implications that we are going in. What we can't do, Mr. Slocombe said it, I think, quite well. We can't, of course, predict what all the variables are going to be in the future. Ten years ago, as he said, we never would have thought we would be sitting here today talking about this.
We start with a point which you made and the Chairman made at the beginning that we want to have a functioning alliance. The biggest contribution that NATO has made has been twofold. One, American presence and leadership. Second, it is a functioning military structure. It is the only one in the world. And it is an immeasurable contribution to peace and to confidence in Europe to have this. And its strength is shown by the fact that everybody wants to be a member of it.
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It would not be wise for anyone to say since NATO is so good, it will be 50 times better if it has 50 more members. I think we all would agree that is not right. At the same time, I think we would all agree that NATO's projection as the core of a system of relationships can be very important.
So what we have tried to do is build the core of NATO, expanding it, I think, very judiciously, while at the same time not drawing a line. The United States has been really in the forefront of those that said there shall be no line. Even Russia is not behind that line. And if things develop in a way where the core function of NATO can be preserved with the membership of Russia, then we are in favor of it, and I think the President, the Secretary of State, have said that.
Some of our European allies, by the way, don't say that. They say we can't imagine that. Let's draw the line right now. Russia never comes in. We have never said that. I think what we all have to do is first discuss it the way we are, but also then work on what we have begun. We have planted the seeds of a structure which includes the EU, NATO-Russia, NATO-Ukraine, Partnership for Peace, a number of other structures, and see how they can best be used to build what we really want, which is a democratic, prosperous and open Europe.
And I think that the role of NATO in this right now is going to be the core functions alliance, judiciously expanded, to make sure it is not just, if I may say so, one of the reasons I am so much in favor of NATO expansion is it is no longer a western club. It is now a club of Europe, with central Europeans and western Europeans, and that is very important. From there I think we simply will have to make sure that we do it in the right way.
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Mr. DELLUMS. I thank both of you gentlemen. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses. Before I make my comments or ask any questions, I want to make mention of the fact that I have read the memorandum that was prepared for us by staff in connection with this hearing, and I wanted to commend the authors of that memorandum. It is one of the most coherent, meaningful, and I think helpful documents of its kind that I have seen in a long, long time, and the authors indeed ought to be commended for it and it ought to be required reading for everybody.
Let me say at the outset that I began as an ardent advocate of NATO expansion. I am not now an opponent of NATO expansion or enlargement, but I am becoming more skeptical than I was rather than more of an advocate and more confident of what we are doing.
We are simplistically saying as the basis for why we ought to expand and are going forward to expand that European stability, and stability is important to us and our security, and that is a uncontrovertible truth. Collective security is the best way to achieve that objective, which is, again, paramount to us.
But it is something of a stretch to say that because that is true, we must expand NATO, because I am not sure that there is a logical requirement of having the United States maintain an interest in the stability and security of Europe and collective security within the existing context of the NATO alliance.
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I am also concerned about the fact that NATO as an alliance operates on a consensus basis. There are now, what, 16 member states. I suspect some of the sessions of the North Atlantic Council have been extremely stormy before you got to a consensus result even among the existing 16 nations. If you are going to enlarge that number, now by 3, later by more, what are you doing in terms of the difficulties of getting consensus and how much is the risk of being relatively paralyzed and doing less than is adequate because you can't develop a consensus as you expand the number of people who have all got to be unanimously in agreement?
Do you see signs of some stress within the existing alliance, and, of course, all of us know that our French allies can be very trying. What I read and what I sense is the atmosphere at Madrid vis-a-vis France and the decisions as to who would be admitted and the reaction thereafter to the decision as to participation in the cost and the fact that France is not a part of the integrated military structure of NATO and was expected to become so, but now appears to be unlikely to do so. These are things that pointed to areas of some concern.
You have spoken of the Partnership for Peace and the expanded Partnership for Peace, and we are already expending considerable financial resources, and we are doing a great deal in terms of stretching our dwindling forces because the Partnership for Peace exercises, and I am not opposed to them, but we are straining our forces because of the reduced end strength and the reduced defense budgets and the reduced capabilities. I don't know how you are going to expand those exercises, participate more robustly in them, and not finance them. I don't think we are doing that.
You spoke, Secretary Slocombe, of NATO's necessity for restructuring its military forces, and that was underway. Unless there is something I don't know about, and that is very likely the case, I am not sure that our NATO allies are increasing their defense budgets anymore than we are increasing our defense budget, and that certainly I don't know how the new members of NATO and the potentially new members of NATO are going to be expected to do the kind of downsizing, modernizing, and generation of equipment and interoperability capabilities that are within a budget that they are likely to be willing to expand, and certainly we can't budget adequately for our military forces. I don't think the Congress is going to be inclined to budget for the military forces of others.
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The last point I will make is if you take it as a given that NATO ought to expand, I have yet to hear what I regard as anything approaching a significant, meaningful question as to why Slovenia in particular and Romania, given this is a military alliance and the geopolitical, strategic location of those countries, and the fact that by any measure they meet all the criteria that anybody else that is being asked or invited to become a member have met, and yet they were rejected. That is a mystery to me and something that I think was a very unfortunate decision on the part of the administration, and apparently one made contrary to the best military thinking on the part of our own military.
Any comments you may choose to make, I would be happy to hear.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. If I could, Mr. Bateman, first on the very last point, whatever else one may say about the decision about Slovenia and Romania, it was not made contrary to military advice, and indeed the specific issue was raised and analyzed very carefully by our military, and they came to the conclusion that there was no military requirement, particularly with respect to Slovenia, because if you look at a map, it looks attractive to have a land bridge to Hungary, that there was not a military requirement for that.
You raise a number of important and significant questions. Let me begin with what I think is the fundamental one, the one with which you began.
If you agree, as I take it we do, that the United States has an interest in security and stability in Europe and specifically in the security and sovereignty and democracy and all the associated characteristics of the countries of Central Europe, then it seems to me that you have to ask the question what is the best way to advance that interest, to protect that interest if a threat arises.
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Now, at the moment there is no great particular threat, but we recognize there is the possibility of threats. And our analysis has been that as long as the countries in question are able to make a contribution, that we intend to apply a pretty strict standard to whether they can make that contribution, and we will be better able to protect our own interests in their stability and in the stability of the region as a whole if they are inside a system of collective security, of collective defense, rather than outside it and somehow have to be, we have to carry out that support for their security.
Let's assume hypothetically that there was a military threat to Poland. There isn't and we don't expect one. Let's assume hypothetically there was. I think one of the lessons of the history of this century is that we do far better in protecting those interests if we do it on a collective basis, which there are military reasons for that which are straightforward. There are even political reasons. The whole idea of NATO was that it meant that an attack on one is an attack on all, so that the countries which are most exposed and would have the greatest difficulty defending themselves if they had to do so all alone were able to be defended, and an attack on them deterred by the realization there would be a joint effort to defend them.
I think it is useful to kind of go through the mental exercises. Suppose you imagine a threat to one of these countries in Central Europe. There are countries in the world where if there is an external threat to them we regard it as unfortunate and we apply diplomatic, economic efforts and so on to try to resolve the problem, but they are not sufficient concerns that we think it requires that our interests are enough involved that we are prepared to use military force. You may make that judgment about various places, including conceivably even places in Europe. I don't personally, but one might.
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But if you say, no, our security, our interests in the stability of Europe would be affected, wouldn't we be better off if those countries were in the alliance rather than outside the alliance if we had to meet that threat? I think the answer is clearly, yes.
Now, you have to make sure that the countries are prepared to make a contribution to their own defense. They have to be sufficiently, solidly on the road to democracy. They have to have made sufficient progress and be sufficiently convinced that they can play a part in contributing instead of simply consuming security. I think if you make that judgment, that is the basic rational for enlargement.
With respect to the question of the French and French integration, there it is certainly the case that the French supported the admission of Romania and somewhat less enthusiastically of Slovenia, but I don't think that the fact that the alliance could not reach a consensus on Romania and Slovenia is the reason the French have decided to defer a decision on whether or not to come into the integrated military structure. That has much more to do with internal issues within the alliance and, in particular, we have taken the position that we are prepared to do a good deal to increase European visibility and the European role in the alliance.
We are not prepared to at this point in time accede to the French desire that the AFSOUTH commander should be a European. We are prepared to review that issue at some point in the future, but not concede it at this point. That is the reason, quite frankly, that the French have not been willing to do what we hope they will eventually decide to do, which is to come back fully into the integrated military structure.
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Maybe Ambassador Kornblum would want to comment on either that or some of the other issues you raised.
Mr. KORNBLUM. You covered it well. I would only add one point which actually Mr. Slocombe made earlier in his remarks. That is if we start from the premise that, as I said earlier, an integrated defense and American leadership are necessary for the future security of Europe, and I think you said that also, Mr. Bateman, that what we have been thinking about very carefully over the past years is how best to organize this. And as Mr. Slocombe said earlier, one of the truly significant contributions of NATO over the years has been to build unity among its members, or, to put it another way, to erase truly historical rivalries and confrontations which existed.
Germany and France for two centuries said they had an historic enmity which would never be overcome. NATO is not the only reason this was overcome, but NATO played an extremely important role in do doing so. Central Europe has been burdened by even more historic enmities than Western Europe has, and by bringing the core countries of Central Europe into the tent, if you will, you accomplish a number of things. Strengthening NATO's defense, I think, is one of them. But you also build this foundation of integration and cooperation which has been so successful in Western Europe, and, as I argued before, truly end the division of Europe and make NATO an organization which spans the artificial divide, which was created at the end of World War II, and I am speaking very personally now, I truly believe we will contribute to ending the historic enmities which still do, let's be honest about it, still do exist in this part of the world, too.
So I think NATO has turned out to be something much more than a military alliance, even though that is its main vocation and it has done that brilliantly. But it also has this broader function which can easily be associated with its core function and can easily help or contribute, I will not say easily, can contribute very much to the kind of democratic stability we are looking for.
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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome you gentlemen. I really don't have any questions. I will tell the members, I was very honored to be in Madrid at this very historic moment. Unlike my colleague from Virginia, I started off years ago in the Northern Atlantic Assembly saying the Partnership for Peace is crazy. This is a really idiotic idea.
After 5 years, I think it is about 5 years now, of serving on this and having the Russians and Romanians and Bulgarians, and it was very strange at the beginning of the time, they play a part right in this.
Mr. Secretary, there is one thing you said about the collective security. It is also, I found out, somewhat of an economic security, too. Investments can go in a country. We should never lose that, it is an economic thing.
The one thing that I learned there, and it was brought up by my colleagues, is about American leadership. And I can attest to the fact that it was American leadership in Madrid. I was very proud of our President there. He was really leading. Not just to force the will of the United States, but I could see the other world leaders, how they grouped around him, and this is a wonderful thing to see.
It is wonderful for the American leadership of the body politic, for the President, but also to see General Joulwan, who, by the way, Mr. Chairman, is retiring tomorrow after 36 years of glorious service, and to see the leadership, and to let him tell you about the value of NATO, and how he was thrilled to have on his staff as his deputy a three-star Russian general. What a different world that we live in.
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I think, for my colleague from California, I think just by that we can almost see the end. We know where we can begin, but, of course, how it is going to end is something else. But I think it is important that all of these things take place. I, again, was not the greatest fan, but now I am. I think it is important from a collective security thing and also from an economic standpoint, and I thank you for being here. I have no questions.
The only thing that I see is sooner or later, this committee, we do not ratify, of course, on the treaty, but we do have to ratify sooner or later the amount of money being spent. You reported and the figure I was accustomed to is $100 to $200 million a year, or $2 billion. Of course, there are other figures floating around. I think we ought to, by the budget next year, should have that locked in on what we are doing.
Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Weldon.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to add to the thanks to our witnesses for being here.
I have been a cautious supporter of the President in the expansion of NATO and understand the reasons why we are moving in the direction we are going. I do have some concerns about the cost implications, especially in the outyears, and whether or not it is going to be a significant burden placed on our already very difficult budget process. But let me get to the real heart of my concern.
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It is not so much that I think the Russian leadership is necessarily itself against NATO. What bothers me is the average Russian citizen has not yet tuned into NATO expansion.
My concern is that if Russia doesn't get stabilization, especially in helping to create a middle class in Russia, which is not now existing in that country, it is going to be a matter of a few short months, because Yeltsin has got, as we all know, health problems and he cannot last forever, and you are going to see people like Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky and perhaps Selyeznev, and General Lebed is already out there making comments, that are basically going to call attention to the public at large that NATO is now on our borders and create that nationalist fervor that scares me.
The average Russian person has not yet seen the benefits of a democratization process. It is not hitting them. I have supported the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. I am involved in supporting a number of other initiatives with Russia and am over there on a regular basis helping out. But that is not getting out certainly beyond the beltway in Moscow to the average Russian in the hinterlands. They don't yet feel any positive impact. If anything, they are seeing their pensions not being properly funded, they are seeing military personnel not being paid.
General Lebed predicted when we were there 6 weeks ago there would be marches on Moscow. We are seeing that first march now, with the atomic energy workers from the nuclear power industry. We are going to see additional marches this fall.
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My point is that we have to be careful that we don't allow NATO expansion to become the major political tool used by those who would simply see the political expediency of NATO expansion as a method to turn back the reforms in Russia.
Now, what do we do about that? I think we have to do more to help Russia create a middle class. I think, Mr. Slocombe, you are familiar with the work of Charles Taylor, which I strongly supported to propose to Ambassador Morningstar and Strobe Talbott and the administration that we work to help Russia establish a housing finance program for low interest mortgages for their people.
While NATO moves forward, we have got to make sure that other things happen to stabilize the creation of a middle class in that country, or we are going to see a situation occur, in perhaps a matter of months or years, that causes NATO expansion to be the primary political argument that leads to more recognition for people like those that I have mentioned, the Zhirinovskys and the Zyuganovs and that class of people.
One only has to look at the writings and pronouncements of some of the Russian leaders to see exactly this happen. I put this document in the public record a number of times, but I will mention it again, a document prepared by Mr. Surikov, the Surikov document from the defense studies when he briefed then Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and Boris Yeltsin.
Very specifically, he outlines, this document is now October 1995, he predicts exactly what is happening. He tells the Russian leadership, Western policy with respect to NATO's future is seen as an attempt to isolate Russia and ultimately oust it from Europe. An eastward expansion of the NATO bloc obviously is inevitable and is planned in several stages. In the first stage, over 2 or 3 years, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary will be accepted in.
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He goes on to explain and outline exactly what is occurring now. And the problem is there are those, as you know, in Russia who basically are saying now we told you so. But that yet has not resonated with the Russian people. But let me tell you, you get a few demagogic Russian leaders over there who see the chance to gain some political support, and they are going to run with this issue.
What we have got to do at the same time as expanding NATO, in my opinion, is work aggressively to help Russia stabilize itself, and I don't think we are doing enough in that area now.
I am not saying I am not aware of the CTR programs and the efforts with nuclear waste and environmental assistance, but that is not what I am talking about, because none of that is hitting the middle income or the potential for creating a middle-income class in Russia. That is where I think our focus has to be.
I know that is not purely a defense issue, but I think if we don't do something about that, then these leaders, these more irrational leaders, will use NATO expansion as a way to create fervor and unrest, and that only would cause upheaval that could lead to civil war.
When you listen to General Lebed as I did 6 weeks ago for an hour and a half talking about what he sees being the feeling of the Russian people, it is very scary. It is scary because he doesn't see any change affecting the average Russian citizen. Yes, there is an upper class developing. You have Fortune 500 lists, or the world's most richest 100 people showing 3 Russians. But the bulk of the Russian population is not yet benefiting.
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So I would say equally important to this effort has got to be working to create that middle class. I thank you both for being here.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Pickett.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our witnesses this morning. Since the Supreme Allied Command Atlantic is headquartered in my district in Norfolk, VA, I have a great interest in NATO. A couple of loose ends that maybe you can tie together for me. We have talked about the Partnership for Peace a little bit this morning. I think that was generally understood, at least I understood it this way, that it was sort of a finishing school to see whether or not you are going to be able to get into NATO at some point in the future. It is beginning to unfold that way.
We look at the NATO as a security arrangement, or we talk about it in terms of a security arrangement, which implies military security, and yet we see the French have been very visible in the organization, yet they are not a part of the integrated military structure, as you have already observed this morning. You talk about the core function of NATO and the fact that the strategy has changed beginning in 1991, and I take it that the change in the strategy also precipitated a change in the core function.
Maybe you can help us better understand where we are headed with that component. It appears that perhaps NATO is taking on something more than just a military security aspect and that perhaps as we have recognized in this country that there is at least two components to national security, and that is military security and economic security, and perhaps NATO is moving more toward economic security in the way it is being viewed now than just in the way of a military security arrangement.
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Could you comment on those points for me, please?
Mr. SLOCOMBE. Sure. With respect to the latter point, NATO's core function, what NATO is ultimately about is military security. It is a military alliance. That is what makes it unique.
What providing military security is going to entail in the coming years is going to be quite different from what it was when it was an issue of creating a positional defense across the inter-German border. That is what the change in the strategic concept in 1991 was all about, that is recognizing that the alliance could no longer meet its military requirement simply by having a capacity for a positional defense, that it had to be more mobile, more flexible, more capable of reaching out to areas where there were military threats.
So I don't think it is a change in the core function, but it is a recognition that meeting that core function is going to take different capabilities.
I think there is a close linkage between military security and economic prosperity. I think Mr. Sisisky made that point in his remarks. I don't see NATO in any direct sense getting involved in economic issues as the EEU does, for example, but I think there is a very close connection between the economic progress, developing trade, building market economies in these countries, real privatization, and the very big U.S. interest in trade with Europe and having solid economic security.
You made a point about the PFP. I suppose in some sense some people would like to wish to see it mostly as a—less a finishing school than a preparatory school, I think, for NATO membership, and for some that is its function and that is what it will do.
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There are other countries who are quite happy to see it as the institution that they are able to work with NATO—an institution in which they are able to work with NATO at their own pace and within their own constraints. Take as an example Switzerland. Switzerland is a country with a very serious defense establishment and a very serious tradition of caring about its own defense, but also a profound and deep tradition of neutrality.
They, like Sweden, Austria, Finland, the other sort of traditional European neutrals with serious defense efforts, have been able through the Partnership for Peace to work with NATO without having to compromise their internal political views about being in alliances. So in that sense it has been extremely useful. It has also made a contribution for other countries that either are not in Central or Eastern Europe, some of the central Asian republics and so on, that have an interest in a relationship with NATO, but either have no interest at all in membership, but are a long way from being anywhere near ready to think about it seriously.
So I think it will continue to be an important instrument in European security.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. Let me for purposes of discussion make the point that at least from one view enlarging NATO in terms of promoting our national security is exactly the wrong thing to do. Let us note that Russia continues aggressively developing the capability for biological weapons. They are using Nunn-Lugar money to take down obsolete warheads while using their money to replace them with modern warheads. They are launching more submarines than we are, and arguably their newest submarines are as good or better than anything that we will put in the water in the foreseeable future. That hardly matters, because now at their whim they bring their submarines as close to our coast as they wish, keep them there as long as they wish, and unless they come up or run faster, we cannot now detect them.
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The Moscow deep rail system connecting with a number of very deep command and control centers is recently being expanded. They have some command and control centers, I understand, that will withstand 25 sequential nuclear bursts.
I do not think we have one that will assuredly withstand even one direct nuclear hit.
They have spent about $4 billion on Yamantau Mountain. We have yet to determine why they have a city, really two cities totaling 60,000 people, with swimming pools and tennis courts, amenities you see only for the richest Russians. We don't know what goes on at Yamantau Mountain.
They are developing weapons for enhanced EMP effects. All of this, I am assured, they are doing because of paranoia.
If that is true, and with the current situation in the world and NATO, they are so paranoid as to aggressively pursue all of these aggressive behaviors, and the expansion of NATO not simply fuels their paranoia, but drives them to more fervent efforts in these areas, and thus imperil our national security.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. In an open hearing it is not possible for me to respond on a good many of the factual points that you make. I just want to make the observation that there is a good deal to be said on all of those points.
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Even assuming that the Russians are paranoid, the way to deal with paranoids who attack your interests is not—is to do things which you are capable—make you more capable of protecting those interests.
I think we have been very conscious of the danger that NATO enlargement will be seen by the Russians as a threat. It certainly will be seen by the Russians as something they would rather didn't happen. But we have, through the negotiations for the founding act, for the establishment of the permanent joint council, through our cooperation with them in Bosnia, through the programs that Mr. Weldon referred to both on the direct security and on the Lugar side and on the broader economic assistance, we have worked very hard to try to reinforce the forces in Russia that are trying to make reforms, and the task is a very difficult one. Russia is a huge country whose economy and in some sense even whose society has been ravaged by 70 or 80 years of communism. So it is a huge task.
I don't dispute that the Russians do a lot of things in the military field that require that we keep our powder dry and watch very carefully and understand what they are doing. I don't dispute that at all. That is one of the things that the Defense Department works on. But I think it is also important, first, that we continue to do the positive things, of the kind that Congressman Weldon referred to, and, indeed, to follow up on innovative ideas of ways to do more; and, second, that the way to deal with these problems is—we are in a situation where there are things which will advance our security interests.
In dealing with the Russians, we need to accentuate the positive things we can do with them, the constructive relationships we can build, not avoid doing things that are in our security interests for fear it will in some sense aggravate Russian nationalism or Russian paranoia.
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Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. I think your answer made the point that if we had money to spend, we might better spend it on doing the positive things that Congressman Weldon spoke about, rather than doing things which they consider provocative, like expanding NATO. Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett. Ms. Harman.
Ms. HARMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to note at the outset that I agree totally with the comments and the questions made by our colleague, Mr. Dellums. He is always good; he is always capable. Today he was exceptional, I thought.
Welcome to the witnesses. Let me make an observation and ask a few questions. First of all, I think we fortunately learned from our children and our friends, and until my second child, a daughter, Hillary, who graduated from Princeton this year, happened to write her senior thesis on NATO expansion, and as a good mom, I was carefully reading this, and I was impressed with how smart she is, of course, but I was very impressed by the fact that there was such strong disagreement among experts about whether or not NATO expansion was a good idea.
Some of those senior experts, of course, include George Cannon of Princeton and Paul Nitsa, who are strongly against expansion, but some in the next tier are appearing today, my friends and colleagues from law school, Mr. Slocombe and Mr. Rodman. We have all known each other for more than a quarter of a century. And you two strongly disagree.
And as I was reflecting on this, it occurred to me that the experts have been discussing this in a vacuum, because public opinion is basically nonexistent, because there has been no conversation with the public on this until after some of this course has been set. So my first question is why did this not start with the public? Why is the administration so late in reaching out to explain the basis of the decision?
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The second question, on cost. I thought Mr. Slocombe did a good job of setting out U.S. cost implications, but having recently been in Europe, I was struck by comments in the European press by our allies and fellow NATO members that they will not increase their share of NATO costs, very flat statements. So I wonder whether in this integration aspect that you said might involve some increased costs, whether the United States will be required to go alone and whether that might change some of the estimates. I think everyone here is very interested in the cost issue.
The third point, Mr. Dellums raised in one of his questions at the outset the question of what do people not in Europe and not in the United States have to say about this? And I recently was with the Israeli Minister of Defense who was expressing his concern, and I certainly share it and I believe you do, too, about Russian missile proliferation to Iran, and the suggestion was made that maybe some of this, and we know that some of this is not occurring at the direction of the Russian Government, but is occurring by nongovernmental entities who are in dire financial straits, but nonetheless maybe some of this activity is occurring with the at least tacit approval of the Russian Government because Russia is trying to rebuild relationships in the Middle East as a hedge against what might go wrong with NATO expansion.
So let me just pose those three questions, why no public involvement, what about cost if the Europeans refuse to participate in the integration costs, and what about perceptions from the Middle East about Russian motivations?
Thank you.
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Mr. SLOCOMBE. Let me take those in order briefly and then ask Ambassador Kornblum to comment if he wants to.
It is certainly the case that on this, as on most foreign policy issues, the public has not been terribly involved or terribly interested. It is important to make the point that this is not some kind of a surprise. The course toward NATO enlargement was laid out at the previous NATO summit in Brussels in 1994.
We have in the administration been talking about this issue in a good deal of detail. Secretary Cohen and Secretary Perry before both made a good many speeches about this, talked about this in press interviews. Secretary Albright has made a particularly active effort to reach out and try to explain, really in a sense to try to get to the more core issue of why is foreign policy important to not just NATO enlargement, but the whole range of issues, why is that important to the ordinary American? There is no question that we have not done all that needs to be done and we will have to do better to explain this and a whole range of other foreign policy decisions to the American public.
It is, I think, the case that most ordinary people, perhaps sensibly, spend most of their time worrying about things other than NATO policy, but when you have an important national decision to make, that is a problem and we have to find a way to explain our case and do it effectively.
With respect to costs, as far as I know, the only country which has made a statement along the lines that you described is the French. The French have their own reasons for making the statements that they make at various times in the course of the intra-alliance dialog about various issues. The French, in fact, pay, in spite of not being in the military structure, they pay a percentage of the NATO budget. The United States pays a percentage.
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No one is talking about changing those relative percentages. I think we will have a problem with meeting the necessary requirements for NATO enlargement if we don't also look at what is—the amounts are quite large as a percentage of the current NATO common budgets. The way to solve that is to deal with some of the things which are in the NATO common budgets that are of lower priority. But I think it is true that we will need to have more money for the NATO common budgets, not differently distributed in percentages, but a bigger total. That is one of the issues that we are going to be discussing with the allies in the coming months.
NATO has—now that we know what are the three countries that will actually be the new members if it is approved, it is possible they will be much more precise about what the costs will be. Because it is not an abstraction. One of the costs is, for example, to improve the communications system. Well, you can kind of say notionally a communications system improvement costs so much, but if you are talking about the check system, you go look at the check system and figure what changes have to be made. So it will be possible to be much more precise.
With respect to the issue of the Israeli concern about Russian assistance to the missile program, that is a subject of real concern. It is a subject that we have been trying to resolve with the Russians for a long time. I agree with you that at least to some degree it is lack of an effective system of export controls. There are a number of reasons for what the Russians are doing. I think annoyance at NATO enlargement is way, way down the list, and that we would have exactly the same problem if for some reason or another we decided not to expand NATO.
The motivations of the Russian Government, the Russian Government as a government is anxious to build its relations in the Middle East, to rebuild its relations in the Middle East, with China and in some other areas. I don't think the prospect of NATO enlargement is a very important driver for that.
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John.
Mr. KORNBLUM. Two points. First, on the question of the public discussion, it is accurate to say that there hasn't been sufficient public discussion of the issue. I do, however, if I may say so, believe it is not accurate to say that the administration has not sought this discussion. I have been one of the persons who has been both doing it and trying to organize it. We now have a special assistant to the Secretary of State who is working on that.
There has, in fact, been a very active discussion in the specialist community that has, as you pointed out, divided them sometimes rather emotionally from each other. But that discussion has not broken out into the general public. So I think what we are dealing with here is not so much the question of the lack of will, but the need, and I think we take this task very seriously, to define what is going on in a way which is relevant to the interests of our public, because obviously we believe it is very relevant. And I think now that there is something to talk about, shall we say, it often has been not only my own personal experience, but it is a lesson which public policy researchers tell us, that if there isn't actually something to focus on, it is very hard to have a debate in the abstract.
Well, we now have a decision. Something is now going to happen. There needs to be a ratification vote in the Senate. I think that will make a very big difference in focusing the public debate. I can certainly speak for everyone I work for, we are all ready to do it.
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As for the Russian side, I would support what Mr. Slocombe said. We are even perhaps overestimating ourselves. If we imagine the decision which is this important, which is taken for very good reasons, is a thing which is going to somehow determine entire Russian behavior, that is a major country with, as we all know, a history of problems, perspectives, which go far, far beyond anything that NATO could expect to influence.
I think there will be people who might use it. Mr. Weldon mentioned that. I think there might be people who might use it. But it will not in any way, I strongly believe, be a thing which determines Russian behavior, even in the defense field. They have their own interests, they have their own concerns, and certainly I have had many, many contacts with them, and NATO expansion is not the main thing which is driving them.
Ms. HARMAN. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, if there are junior members who have not asked questions, I will yield to them at this time.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McHale.
Mr. MCHALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Skelton. That was very kind of you. Gentlemen, I have basically two questions. The first has to do with a summary overview of the French relationship to NATO, and the second has to deal with the reexamination of the strategic military purpose of NATO.
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Specifically, on the first question, what I would like to hear from you is an overview of the French position regarding the future command of NATO, most especially the Southern Command in Naples; the willingness of the French to share in the costs of NATO expansion, and the possibility that French international commercial interests may call into question the reliability of the French as an ally in the defense of the United States vital national security interests.
What prompts that question is I have been concerned by recent statements attributed either accurately or inaccurately to President Chirac praising the Chinese, actively pursuing expanded commercial and political overtures to the Chinese. If quoted accurately, some very abrasive criticisms of the United States, and specifically President Clinton. President Chirac's insistence on an expanded European role in the command of NATO, yet a refusal to share in the costs of NATO expansion.
Now, as I ask these questions, and this was implicit, I think, in the demeanor of one of Mr. Slocombe's earlier statements, I don't mean to attribute to him more than was there, but this has almost become a stereotype in terms of our expectations regarding French rhetoric. I think matters of this type, we need to treat such statements seriously by the French, even though a lighter treatment may be consistent with the stereotype that goes back to the days of President De Gaulle.
If the French have been trying to catch our attention, they have certainly caught mine. I have been disturbed by the overtures that were excessively warm with regard to the pursuit of improved political and particularly commercial relations with the Chinese. These statements were clearly designed to be critical of the United States, and insistence on an expanded role in NATO Command, a refusal to pay more in support of that role. So my bottom line question, I guess, to you is, can France be relied upon as a dependable ally in the defense of vital national security interests important to the United States?
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Mr. SLOCOMBE. Mr. McHale, I don't mean to make light either of the French relationship or the problems we have with them. I was only making the point that the French do have certain cultural ways of dealing with issues, and their initial, as with a lot of other people, their initial statement on a subject ought not always to be taken as their final and absolute position after we have worked the issue for a while.
This is an open hearing. How shall I put this?
Mr. MCHALE. Tactfully.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. The French are important allies. They are quite literally our oldest ally. They are occasionally an extraordinarily difficult ally. They also have their set of criticisms about how we behave.
That said, and I will come to your specific concerns in a minute. It is important to remember that the French, with the British and in a somewhat difference the Germans, have by far the biggest military commitment in the alliance. I think one of the reasons that the French are often so difficult on issues of international security is in contrast to some Europeans, they take them very seriously. They have a small, relative to ours, but very large relative to everybody else in the world except the British, capacity to project power. They regard themselves as having interests around the world. Sometimes those interests are not identical to ours, but often they are. Not identical, but highly parallel to ours.
In some ways it is easier to get support from a country which regards itself as having concerns in an area than from a country which says that is a long ways away and our relationships are strictly commercial.
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As a practical matter, the French make an important contribution to alliance efforts. They have, I will look it up, they have either the second or third largest—they are either second or third to us with the British in terms of their contributions in Bosnia. They made a significant contribution during the gulf war. Now, that contribution was reduced in its effectiveness because not having been members in the integrated military structure of the alliance, they didn't have the experience and the doctrine and the practice of working. But in terms of sending forces out there, they maintained small, but politically very important and military constructive contributions to the no-flight zone enforcement in Iraq.
We had very close relations with them on a variety of issues within NATO and within European security. So all I am saying is the picture is not entirely negative by any means with the French.
Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Slocombe, I didn't mean to portray it that way, nor did I mean to attribute to your demeanor more than was there. Frankly, some of the recent statements have been outrageous. The point I am trying to make is I take their word seriously. They should as well, and there are consequences that flow from words that are mercurial and abrasive, and that we have reached the point in terms of serious national security interests where those words coming from the French Government at the highest level are counterproductive.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I agree. With respect to the particular issue of AFSOUTH and the future command arrangements, it is I think significant that the French position on that point is not supported by a single European country. This is not an European-American dispute; this is a position that the French have taken which is not supported by a single European country.
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Mr. MCHALE. I thank you, Mr. Slocombe. Do I have time for a second very brief question?
Mr. BATEMAN [presiding]. If Mr. Abercrombie will indulge you, that can be done.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Go right ahead.
Mr. MCHALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Abercrombie.
Gentlemen, my second question is related to the first. In the wake of the end of the cold war, I think it is appropriate to reexamine the strategic military purpose of NATO. So the question I place to you, and obviously in the limited time we have you are not going to be able to fully answer every element of the question, perhaps a later statement would be appropriate, but let me simply place before you the question, with the end of the cold war, is NATO an organization of military defense dedicated solely to the interests and the stability of Western Europe, which is principally what it has been for the past half century, or in light of the end of the cold war, has NATO evolved into or should it evolve into more broadly a military defense of western democracies?
So as we look at the cost of expanding NATO, which will run to billions of dollars in terms of the U.S. investment, my question really is, for instance, is NATO relevant to U.S. national security interests and emerging threats in the Pacific? Do we have an expanded strategic vision for the future of NATO, or will NATO remain and should we conclude as we examine the possible investment, will NATO remain principally, perhaps even exclusively focused, on the stability and national security interests in Western Europe?
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I, frankly, believe that the threats are emerging in the Pacific, and I am wondering as we invest in this military alliance, does it have an international strategic relevance to the Pacific rim?
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I think there is no question, not because of NATO enlargement, but because of changes in the world, NATO has to expand its range of concern beyond simply the defense of the current Western European members of the alliance. Obviously, the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and we expect over not a great long time in the future, the inclusion of other Central European countries in the alliance, will mean it will be focused not just on Western Europe, but will have a broader focus.
I think it is also true that you and the other members know that for a long time we had a debate within the alliance about the so-called out-of-area issue. That is, did NATO have any concern, any role, with issues outside the strict territorial limits of its members? That question has already been clearly answered by the recognition that the conflict in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia was a threat to the stability of Europe as a whole and something NATO had to step up to.
As you would expect, the range of concerns will be highest in the areas that are closest and most directly related to European concerns. For example, one of the things which was an important, but virtually unnoticed in this country, not in Mediterranean countries, the thing that was done at Madrid was an expansion of NATO's dialogue with countries in the Mediterranean basin generally. From a European perspective, you look across the Mediterranean and see an area of very serious political instability, real economic problems, some of the most dangerous rogue regimes in the world, and yet certain countries like Morocco and Tunisia, where they are very anxious to maintain stability and progress. That is a dialogue that will go on.
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It is certainly our view that NATO has concerns about Southwest Asia, about the threat from Iraq as a practical matter, the international contributions to Desert Shield and Desert Storm were centrally on the NATO framework. It was essentially countries that had developed a practice of working together militarily through NATO that made it as effective as it was. That is something that is going to have to be continued in the moment.
The CHAIRMAN. I think in fairness we have to extend and go to Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Slocombe, I thank you for your comments. I have been the beneficiary of extraordinary patience on the part of the Chairman. Our willingness to invest in NATO, I think, will require a more mature international strategic understanding of NATO that goes beyond its past more limited mission. If we are going to put money into it, I think there has to be a stronger international strategic framework.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. BATEMAN. Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for your courtesy and responsiveness this morning. I want to just read back to you, if I could, a couple of remarks and then put a question to you, if I might, for context. Mr. Slocombe, I was intrigued by your emphasis in one of your answers about this is first and foremost a military alliance which makes it unique.
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Mr. Kornblum, in your testimony, without going into the whole of it, just reading in brief, to you, by enlarging NATO, we strengthen NATO and we strengthen security and stability for all of Europe. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will not just be security consumers, consumers, but security producers. They will radiate stability beyond their borders and work with the others to cement enormous progress. They will reap the benefits, but bear the responsibilities and costs of membership in NATO.
Further, we will erase forever the dividing line that separated Europe for 50 years. By enlarging NATO, we will ensure this new NATO will continue to be the most effective military alliance in history. A new NATO for a new century.
Now, this echoes the administration's report to the Congress which was produced in February prior to the actual, I am not going to say implementation, but the actual circumstances of the expansion as manifested in the President's trip. It describes, I am quoting, paraphrasing a bit here from it, in the broader strategy in the post-cold war security environment, it says that as it expands, there will be a willingness to conduct what they call out of area peacekeeping-type arrangements.
My questions are to what degree are perspective NATO members willing and able to participate in prospective peacekeeping operations, including those out of area. I am not precisely sure what that means, ''out of area.'' And I am not sure about the ''able'' part. The willing may be there, at least verbally. But I just have been reading, for example, of very great strains in the Czech Republic, economic picture.
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I am not sure about the ''able'' part. If that ''able'' part is in question, does the United States intend to seek significant participation in such operations by these new member states, and is this participation going to be seen as not a substitute for American involvement, but to be the first line of involvement as opposed to American involvement?
If you could respond to that, I have a second connected question with respect to exactly what article 5 means with respect to involvement.
Mr. BATEMAN. Mr. Slocombe, let me interject for a moment. I want to remind everyone that we do have another panel. We need to get our questions more focused and the wisdom of the witnesses distilled in fairness to the second panel.
Mr. SLOCOMBE. The short answer to the question is that the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all have a significant contribution in Bosnia, which indicates that they are, in fact, able as well as willing to make a contribution to this kind of really rather complex and difficult peacekeeping operation.
Out of area in the NATO jargon means outside the territory of a NATO member. So I think the answer is that they do understand that one of the things that they will be expected to do is to be able to have forces able to contribute in all of them and other Central European locations a well and focus their efforts on getting units available that can be used for peacekeeping operations.
I could say more, but under the Chairman's wise advice, I will stop there.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Kornblum, do you have a comment?
Mr. KORNBLUM. No. I would say that as we have said earlier, I think in the discussion with Mr. Dellums' statements, that production of security, you quoted from my remarks, means a number of things. It means being able to participate in peacekeeping operations. It means by integrating into a structure these countries will themselves become more secure and contribute to security. It means also, for example, that the prospect of NATO membership has caused a number of countries in Central Europe to work much harder on dealing with the kinds of historic rivalries that I mentioned earlier than most probably would have been the case.
There have been a number of both border treaties and treaties on ethnic minorities, Hungary, Romania, Hungary-Slovakia, things like that, that I can't say might not have taken place, but were certainly stimulated by the prospect of being a member of this organization. Security in the new age we are in means a lot of things. Ultimately it means democratic stability. I think by being a member of NATO, these countries will help contribute to democratic stability in a very important way.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. OK. That is all good on the surface of it, but I am still concerned about exactly what the Americans are going to be expected to do. Mr. Chairman, I will not pursue it further other than to say that I believe that Mr. Spence's and Mr. Dellums' questions with respect to article 5, that is to say the agreement by all the parties that they will act individually and in concert with each other, take such action as is deemed necessary, including the use of armed force.
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I am not quite sure how that is going to be interpreted and defined in this expanded NATO. I think we need to have that before we can proceed with any confidence on the committee.
Thank you.
Mr. BATEMAN. I think the point is well taken. Mr. Blagojevich.
Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is ''Bagojevich,'' and that is not uncommon, by the way.
Let me just be very brief. I just want to say that while I recognize and I certainly encourage the experts in this area to implement the specifics in terms of integrating the military and so forth with regard to the new countries that are entering NATO, I just want to applaud the fact that we are actually allowing and welcoming Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into the NATO collective security arrangement.
When you are considering the history of Central Europe, when you consider the fact that Poland in particular, but the Czech Republic and Hungary as well, have always sort of been the central places where major European wars have developed, when you consider the fact that Poland, for example, in the 20th century, the armies of Hitler invaded Poland; in the 19th century, Napoleon's armies invaded Poland; in the 18th century the armies of Catherine the Great invaded Poland; when you consider the 17th century, Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus invaded Poland; when you consider the fact that Poland has been so vulnerable to the other forces of Europe, there is a reason for that, and that is because it is in a central place and geopolitical place that calls for the need to discourage powers in Europe from seeking to continue to invade Poland's integrity and territory.
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I think this is frankly part of the whole concept of collective security and balance of power and geopolitics. I think we are doing a great thing in welcoming Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic. I am going to leave it to the experts to integrate the very complex issues that you have to face.
I have no questions, just a statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Blagojevich can be found in the appendix on page 67.]
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you. Mr. Boyd.
Mr. BOYD. No questions.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Snyder.
Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Slocombe, as you look ahead in the future, and I read your statement and I think I agree with most of what is there, it seems like during the cold war the United States and the communist part of the world kind of divided up the world in geopolitical fashion and paid attention to Third World countries as it fit into some kind of scheme of confrontation and a large geopolitical basis.
It would seem to be one of the downsides of our focus once again on this NATO relationship, which is going to occupy our focus for years to come as we anticipate other countries wanting to come in. We will go through these issues again in the future, the expenses. You will be spending a lot of time here on the Hill talking about expenses and further justifications for moving ahead as you will be spending time in discussions with countries overseas.
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While this discussion has been going on in the last couple of years, we have had terrible setbacks in Cambodia, in Sierra Leone. The question I am asking is how do you see the rest of this world fitting into this? Are we going to concentrate so much effort on this expanding NATO relationship that some other parts of the world are going to suffer either in terms of resources or the attention of this Congress and this country?
Mr. SLOCOMBE. I think the short answer to that is certainly not, and indeed by taking measures to promote security in Europe, that will leave us with more ability to devote attention to areas that are more active problem areas, like the ones you mentioned. It is not an either/or choice. There are only so many hours in a day, but there are a lot of people to work on these issues. It may be that the media can only focus on one issue at a time. But that is not how the U.S. Government works. It is, I know, not how the Congress works. It is not how the U.S. military works.
We have the capacity to chew gum and walk at the same time, and we will continue to do that.
Mr. TURNER. Just in closing, I would say I have had a lot more discussions in my 6 months here about NATO enlargement—we had Mikhail Gorbachev in this very room—than I have had about any pending problems in Cambodia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BATEMAN. I thank our witnesses, and I think at this point we will, with our thanks, excuse them and invite the next witnesses to the table.
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Our next panel consists of Dr. Fred Ikle, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and former Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Peter Rodman, former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. We are pleased to have both of you and have you provide us with your insights on this very significant issue.
With that, Dr. Ikle, we look forward to hearing from you.
STATEMENT OF FRED IKLE, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY, FORMER DIRECTOR, U.S. ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY
Mr. IKLE. Thank you very much. I am honored to be invited to this committee. At last, a serious debate is beginning to take place in Congress about the proposed expansion of NATO, and I think this committee deserves a great deal of credit for having raised the right questions, and particularly the recent letter by Chairman Spence and you, Mr. Dellums, to the President, where it raised significant questions, in my view.
I cannot recall a national security issue in the last half century that has so strangely cut across all political alignments. This NATO issue divides both the Republicans and Democrats among themselves; it divides the two of us, it divides hawks and doves; it divides conservatives as well as liberals.
Like the picture seen through a rotating kaleidoscope, the case for expanding NATO keeps changing, both the case made by the administration and that made by outside advocates. If one points out that the Soviet military threat against which the Atlantic alliance was created has disappeared, one is being told that NATO must now move eastward to consolidate new democracies.
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If one points out that there are other more appropriate organizations to foster democracy, one is being told that only NATO, with its long successful tradition, can protect the peace in Europe. And that leads to the question Mr. Dellums has emphasized so well, where does Europe end in the East and what is supposed to happen beyond that line?
I should try to impose a little order on these varied and changing arguments for expansion and align them with some countervailing points. Let me start with the military issue, since NATO has been truly successful as a military alliance.
In our planning for military protection, we must ask ourselves, from which threat? Both those in favor of expansion and those opposed certainly are able to agree on at least one thing, that for the Eurasian Continent, the United States must consider more than one type of military contingency.
The first type that comes to mind in connection with NATO, given its history, is a westward attack by Russia's Armed Forces. It is only natural that people in Eastern Europe, given the history that they must remember, should be worried about how massive Russian forces might be used for incursion. You remember 1948, Czechoslovakia, where Stalin's Armed Forces that weren't even in Czechoslovakia at the time but surrounded it, were used to bring about the destruction of the Czech democracy.
Today, however, the situation is totally different. Communism is discredited throughout Europe. Unlike in 1948, there are no Russian armies stationed in Poland, East Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Russian army is in a pitiful state compared with the Soviet Armed Forces at the end of World War II.
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So all serious proponents of NATO expansion concede that for the foreseeable future, as Mr. Slocombe had said this morning, one need not fear a new version of the Red Army marching westward. And our French and British allies clearly agree.
With admirable frankness, President Chirac said France does not intend to raise its contribution to NATO because of the cost of enlargement, and, with a tad more delicacy, the British Government made the same statement.
Agreeing with something Mr. Bateman earlier said, I would expect the same sentiment will prevail here in the U.S. Congress, despite some possible lobbying by American defense industries. It seems unlikely to me that Congress would appropriate significant moneys to equip the new allies for fighting a reapparition of Stalin's ghost.
The NATO-Russian relationship, however, is significant for three other types of military contingencies. There is the risk of another war in the Persian Gulf, with perhaps Iran or Iraq as the aggressor, and that looms large, as members of this committee know too well, in Pentagon planning.
If our forces had to fight such a war in the gulf, Russia's neutrality would be of immense advantage to us, as it was in the last gulf war. Would NATO expansion make this Russian neutrality more or less likely? That is one of the most central questions that ought to be considered. Astonishingly, those that favor NATO expansion are silent on it.
Then there is, as indicated by a question earlier this morning by one of the members, there is Russia's role in Asia. All too frequently, advocates of NATO expansion look at the issue as if the United States and Russia had a military relationship only in Europe. Our military planners in the Defense Department know better. They consider the risk of a North Korean attack as one of the most important major military contingencies.
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Now, in such an attack, should North Korea threaten to use or use nuclear weapons, a cooperative role of Russia's nuclear strategic forces would instantly be one of the most important issues to us.
Other risks in Asia that we ought to consider concern China and its possible use of force against Taiwan, Chinese military expansion against the south or military threats against Japan. Has the Clinton administration given thought to Russia's role in such conflicts and how this role might be affected by NATO expansion?
We certainly do not want a 21st century version of a Stalin-Hitler pact. When the Russia-Chinese Friendship Pact was signed in Beijing a few months ago, some Russians wanted to give us a whiff of this possibility. It would be responsibly complacent to disregard this danger simply by counting on Russia's current differences with China, which are strong, to prevent in the long-term future a temporarily Moscow-Bejing contract in all contingencies.
In the 1930's, the British assumed that Stalin and Hitler, being that they were such archenemies, would never gang up against the West.
Another type of contingency concerns the nuclear dangers from Russia. I need not take up your time in this committee to elaborate the inherent danger in the thousands of weapons scattered throughout Russia, the nuclear materials and so on, the hair trigger alert posture. We have been briefed on all of this. While it is hard to estimate with precision these dangers, they do present the greatest threat to our security, which indeed could suddenly become a threat to our very survival.
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Now, some critics of NATO expansion have said that it aggravates these new clear dangers by impeding the Duma's ratification of START or by making Russia's military more hostile. I would put it differently. I would stress that the management of NATO's enlargement diverts us from these much higher priority nuclear issues. To explain and arrange Russia's relationship to NATO enlargement preoccupies our summit meetings, and there is only so much time in a summit with multiple agendas, and the nuclear issues that require Russian action, we cannot solve it over there ourselves. It requires Russian action, are so much important, that we must focus on them all our leverage and influence with Moscow, all the carrots and sticks, and sticks indeed, that we can command for this priority.
Now, let me very quickly return to the assertion that NATO's expansion is needed to extend the zone of democracy. Those who make this case are unwittingly, I am sure, calling for a transformation of our foremost military alliance into, shall we say, a health maintenance organization for fragile democracies.
During its successful first 40 years, it has never been one of NATO's principal missions to preserve democratic governments among its members. Portugal, a charter member of NATO, had a nondemocratic government for 25 years. Greece has been a member of the alliance in good standing 15 years, when the military coup led to 7 years of military rule.
NATO, as an HMO for democracies, would soon become detached from the territorial exigencies of military defense. The alliance would invite new members that are cut off from logistic supply links and without the necessary sea lanes or land routes to come to their assistance. It is remarkable that it has barely been noticed that Hungary, now invited, cannot be reached from the rest of NATO territory, and, as if to undermine the irrelevance of the strategic rationale or military defensibility of new members, Secretary of State Albright recently asserted that no European democracy will be excluded because of its position on the map.
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Vaclav Havel, who was one of the principal early promoters of expansion, left no doubt that NATO must undergo a metamorphosis. ''The alliance must urgently remind itself,'' he wrote, ''that it is first and foremost an instrument for democracy.'' That is not what many supporters of expansion say here. It was once seen as a pact of nations against a more or less obvious enemy.
It has now been noted, both by proponents and opponents of NATO expansion, that the way this expansion is being implemented will perhaps dilute some of the common defense functions of the alliance and replace it with a more less-focused collective security concept.
Dr. Henry Kissinger, in a very lucid analysis, has pointed out that the founding act with Russia, as he put it, ''seems to graft a system of collective security on top of alliance system.'' I think Dr. Kissinger is too optimistic. As the expansion of NATO rolls forward, there will be no alliance system left in the old sense except on paper. In fact, I would suspect the new structure will be akin to say the organization of American States, useful perhaps as is the OAS in supporting democracy.
I think it would be wrong, as some people do, to blame the founding act for this outcome. One should not underestimate that the expansion process has unleashed its own dynamic, and I think President Clinton's efforts to patch up some agreement with Yeltsin was necessary not so much to appease Russia, as some have complained, but to accommodate the Europeans, in particular the new prospective members. I have heard many senior officials from Poland and Hungary stress that while they ardently desire to join the Atlantic alliance, they do not want to antagonize Russia.
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Vaclav Havel put it very clearly. The East European countries have all agreed we would be willing to join the alliance only against the backdrop of a strategic partnership with Russia. So here you have one of these contradictions.
Mr. Chairman, I want to close now and leave time for other discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ikle can be found in the appendix on page 86.]
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Rodman.
STATEMENT OF PETER RODMAN, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS
Mr. RODMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the committee for, and the Chairman for his courtesy and its patience. I have a prepared statement to which I believe you have, which I would like to submit for the record.
Mr. BATEMAN. It will be made a part of the record.
Mr. RODMAN. Thank you very much. I would like to zero in on what I think is the core argument for NATO enlargement. There are many different issues that will come up, many arguments that have been made. To me, the central issue is the strategic argument, what I call a structural argument, based on the lessons of history and the facts of geography.
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In Europe, from early in the century, from the Versailles conference, from the breakup of empires in Europe, what we have had in Europe is a belt of small, weak, vulnerable states in the heart of Europe. They have been a classical power vacuum for the entire 20th century. This has been the weak part of the structure of peace in Europe.
As I think Mr. Slocombe said earlier, three times in this century, the structure of peace of the continent as a whole broke down because of the weakness of this part of Europe. It has been either the subject of Russian-German competition or Russian-German collusion, but three times in this century the United States has been forced to involve itself with its troops to restore stability because of the structural weakness of this part of Europe. We have learned this the hard way three times.
Now, the idea that stability today is automatic just because communism is gone, because we have some arms control treaties, I think this is a historical, I think it is an illusion, and I think it is ultimately a dangerous notion. I think the laws of history and geopolitics have not yet been repealed.
So what we are talking about today is a western security guarantee which is meant to foreclose once and for all future ambiguities, future power vacuums, future competition, future partitions, any kind of future ambiguity about the status of this part of Europe, to put an end to an ambiguity which has been unhealthy for the peace of Europe so often in the past.
NATO enlargement is a way to make clear that what happened in 1989 is irreversible; namely, the liberation of these countries, their reemergence as independent, sovereign states, and I think also 1991, to some extent. It is the West declaring that those events, those happy events, are irreversible.
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NATO enlargement, to me, is a form of crisis prevention with respect to Central Europe. The way NATO's creation was crisis prevention with respect to Western Europe.
Now, in 1989, we all cheered when the wall came down and we celebrated the Velvet Revolution in Prague and solidarity in Poland. These countries have been through a half century of pure hell. From about 1938 until 1989, they have been brutalized by both the Nazis and the Soviets. So now they come to us, some of them have come to us, to say, well, are you prepared to guarantee the new happy status quo since 1989?
Do you value the happy events of 1989 enough to be willing to make it irreversible? Is the new status quo sufficiently attractive to the West that you are willing to incur a certain modest risk and cost to defend it and make it, as I say, irreversible?
So we have to answer yes or no. Maybe it would have been more convenient if the question had not arisen, because I think all of us agree, there is no immediate threat of Russian invasion. It is an unusually benign situation in the center of Europe right now. But I think a little bit of historical memory, particularly on the part of the Central Europeans, guarantee that they would raise the question.
They are serious countries, they are democracies, they have to have some defense policy. What is the theory under which their new found independence is guaranteed over the long term? Obviously, their first answer is to get some allies. But I think the question was bound to come up, and we have to answer it.
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And I think the second point I would make is the consequence of not doing it. Because I think the failure to do it, or for the West to say, no, would have enormous consequences. We can't just walk away if the present situation stays in its benign form. For us to say, no, is a political act that itself would have, I think, profoundly destabilizing consequences.
The Russians, of course, are saying no way, don't do this, you are taking away our buffer zone. That is exactly how the former Defense Minister Rodionov described this. He said in December you are taking away our buffer zone. So for the West to say, no, to the Central Europeans is to say sorry, sure we were delighted by what happened in 1989, it was all very nice, but don't expect us to guarantee it. You may have thought you were free and independent, but really you are in Russia's buffer zone, and we are afraid to take any risks. That is what the West would be saying.
Now, if the West says, no, various things will happen. First of all, it is the worst possible message to send to the hardliners in Moscow. It is bound to reopen temptations and reopen questions in Moscow that we should be happy to have not reopened. The Duma, I don't have to speculate, the Duma is still with people who have not reconciled themselves yet to the loss of the empire.
If Mr. Yeltsin were to fall in his bathtub tomorrow and there were a new presidential election, General Lebed might be the leading candidate. The Russian politics is totally unpredictable. I think the best message we can send to the Russians is just to foreclose once and for all the question of Central Europe.
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I think if the West said, no, I think the Central Europeans would drift back into the Russian's sphere of influence, just because of the gravitational pull of Russia, which is still a disproportionately large power in that part of the continent. I think this would be a tragedy. It would represent the partial reversal of what happened in 1989. I, for one, consider that an appalling outcome.
Maybe it is a moral argument as well as a strategic argument. I think these countries want to rejoin European civilization from which they were cruelly cut off for so long. For us to say, no, is to say sorry, because we don't want to draw any new lines; we are going to stick to the old line, which is the 1945 line, the Yalta line, and you have bad luck. You are on the wrong side of it. I think that is the wrong outcome.
I think there is no threat to Russia. The Russians know this. There is no offensive capability. We have given the Russians many reassurances, many of which I agree with. I happen to think we may have gone a little too far in some cases, but obviously we should have a dialog with the Russians so that the relationship with Russia depends on the issues of the future.
I think NATO enlargement is the unfinished business of 1989. It should be part of the last phase of the old relationship with Russia. It should not determine, and there is no reason for it to determine, the future of our relations with Russia which should be determined by other issues, issues on which we have every chance of being cooperative.
So I think when the question is asked to us, when the Central Europeans come to us and say is the West prepared to guarantee the present situation, the independence and freedom and security of Central Europe, I think the right answer is, yes.
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Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodman can be found in the appendix on page 92.]
The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Thank you. Mr. Dellums.
Mr. DELLUMS. Thank you very much. Mr. Rodman, let me begin with you. I listened very carefully to your comments, but what do you perceive to be the end point? What ultimately is your definition of Europe? What ultimately is your definition of NATO?
As I said earlier, and you were here when I said it, I understand your argument. My concern is that I remain convinced that we have started down a path that will derive consequences that we cannot fully comprehend nor understand at this particular moment. Remain concerned that as we move away from the old paradigm of seeing NATO in its cold war context, to seeing NATO in the context of post-cold war future needs, that we have not thought all that through as yet.
Your argument about the three countries in Central Europe, I understand, but I am not absolutely convinced that that is the basis upon which this decision has been made. I think we have started off down the road, wandering to some extent. The three countries that we are now saying can come in, that developed a political life of its own, and I understand that. I am an adult guy. I have been around here a long time. And we can put all the diplomatic faces on it that we want, but I understand the political implications of that decision.
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What I am suggesting is that should not be the sole basis. If we are going to expand, we ought to understand to what end we are trying to expand, not just starting off down the road on political grounds and then hoping some way it all works out. Because I am not sure that the risks are modest. Because when we hear voices inside Russia saying that if you bring in Baltic States, that this puts us in a war framework, that that is not modest risk. I have to assume that there is some seriousness about these kinds of matters.
Mr. RODMAN. I think it is an absolutely fair question to ask, of course, but my answer is as follows: First of all, voting on the three does not prejudge who else gets in. I think when the Senate and the Congress considers the three, it should not be afraid that it is signing on to some unlimited agenda, because it, in fact, is not.
But my other answer is it is hard to give an answer to the end point, because the answers to so many intermediate questions are not available, and the most important of which is Russia's internal evolution. If Russia evolves into a sort of normal country, a normal country like other European countries, I think 5 years from now or 10 years from now we would have the same discussion in a different context.
On the other hand, if you look now at the jungle that is Russian politics and the Russian economy, it is hard to be sure about this. I am willing, I think we should not prejudge it. We should not tell the Russian people that we have given up hope that they might evolve into a more normal country, nor should we assume that is the right outcome. And that affects not only the abstract question of Russia's possible membership, but even how we deal with the Baltic States.
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If Russia is a pussy cat over the next 5 years, that would affect the context in which we discuss a couple of years from now the issue of Baltic membership. And I happen to be personally sympathetic to the Baltics, but obviously it is more delicate, and many things could happen. The Russians could get used to the idea of these really independent countries. That is my ideal outcome, the Russians get used to the idea that these are independent, sovereign states, and not part of its domain.
But as I said, this can cook a little while longer, and so much depends on Russia's internal evolution.
The issue has been raised, including by Dr. Ikle, of China. I think the China factor is very interesting in the sense that Russia has more reason to be worried about China than we do. I could see China 5 or 10 years from now as one of the factors pushing Russia closer to the West and making the Russians feel they have an incentive to be close to the West, which I would welcome. But part of the price that I would ask from the Russians for that is peace and quiet in Europe.
I would like to say to the Russians sure, some day we may find ourselves very close, but the price for it is peace and quiet in Europe. No more bullying of your neighbors. So I think we can ask something of the Russians in this context, too.
But the China factor is one of the reasons why in the long run it is entirely possible that we and the Russians will have a very benign relationship determined by the issues of that time, not, you know, determined by, well, the fact that their former allies would rather be part of the West than part of their sphere of influence. I would like to put 1989, put that behind us. I think they have lost their sphere of influence in Central Europe, because it was illegitimate. It was maintained by coercion and it was illegitimate.
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With the Baltics, again, not to prejudge them, but for us to rule out a priori that the Baltics might come into NATO is to the say that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is the guiding light of our policy, which is not acceptable to me. That is why I am saying I don't know the future and I am willing to let it cook longer and we can see.
Mr. DELLUMS. Just one last question. Dr. Ikle, how would you respond to the argument that ultimately bringing Russia into NATO would be one of the single most significant moves toward world peace and world stability that could be made in the next several years?
Mr. IKLE. My view, Mr. Dellums, would be that this would mean a richer version of the Partnership for Peace, since NATO is really directed against an outside enemy, unlike the Organization of American States or other useful organizations. Once Russia entered NATO, then would this mean that we are defending, committed to defend Russia against China? I guess, yes. So that would really be the decision.
Now, to me, a Chinese-Russian conflict emerges with a seriousness that we would want to try to invert it by including Russia in NATO. That would be what the decision would be about.
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Rodman, any comment on that?
Mr. RODMAN. About Russia's future admission into NATO? Well, I am skeptical, because I think the purpose of the alliance is geopolitical, and the fear of the Central Europeans is Russian dominance. I think it is a little awkward, it is hard to conceive of Russia coming in at this point. But I don't see why the U.S. Government as a government has to prejudge any of these questions. I understand why they want to leave it open and it is partly tactical and a way of showing the Russians that this is not hostility to them.
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Mr. DELLUMS. My concern in that area, and I will yield back, Mr. Chairman, my concern in this area is very straightforward. Once the cold war ended, I am concerned that we don't draw a new line in the sand, because I think this is a moment pregnant with great potential, and if we blow this moment because of yesterday's fears and cautions, then I think we have not served the future very well. That is the fundamental basis for the kinds of questions that I am posing.
Mr. RODMAN. As I say, I hope the relationship with Russia will be determined by future issues, and Bosnia is a good example where we had some differences, but we ended up working together. So I would hope the future issues will be of that kind. But a lot depends on Russian behavior. If they bully the Baltic States, if they throw their weight around, I think that complicates it. It increases the incentive on our side to expand NATO and so forth.
So I think that is open, and a positive relationship with Russia is open to me in a fundamental sense.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There seems to me to be so many inconsistencies in the debate and the discussion about this issue of expanding or not expanding or how much to expand NATO. All of the discussion focuses upon the goal of security and stability in Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe. There is absolutely no disagreement of that being a desirable goal.
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We are saying that NATO should be expanded because it serves that interest, and yet if you look at the greater risk of insecurity and instability vis-a-vis the historical context of several centuries and the geography and the geopolitics associated with it, the first countries that ought to be brought into an enlarged NATO on the basis of providing security and stability would be the Ukraine and the Baltics. Yet hardly anyone, Mr. Rodman is throwing out the probability, the possibility, depending upon the delicacies of the Russians, that they could be brought in. Yet logic says if stability and security are the objectives, there is more reason to extend the umbrella of NATO security to them than to anyone else.
We are talking about security and stability. We are talking about Russia as being the cardinal issue in terms of whether we will have it or not have it. And we want to expand NATO to provide largely a security against a Russian enterprise in Eastern or Central Europe, yet at the same time we don't want to bring in those that might make Russia so sensitive that it desensitizes their system, puts us all at a risk of a resurgence of Russian nationalism, that becomes the dominant factor in their foreign policy.
It seems to me we have bundles of contradictions here. And the thing I find disturbing is I recall Justice Homes' statement that an ounce of history is worth a pound of logic, and I don't disagree with it, yet I would like to find a little more logic in all of this than I am finding.
Mr. RODMAN. Let me answer that first. The first point I would make is these countries, the Baltics and Ukraine, even though they have known for a long time they would not be in—they had no chance of being in the first round, nevertheless favored, strongly favored the process of NATO enlargement, because they felt that as NATO enlarged and came closer to their borders, they would be made more secure by that fact. Ukraine feels a lot more secure and Poland would be in, and the Baltics favor this process even if they are not in right away. Because I think partly they see themselves, or at least the Ukrainians do, as Sweden or a neutral company does.
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At the moment now they are not aligned, but as Sweden always felt very secure because there was a balance of power, because NATO was there right next door. So at a minimum, they gained from that. And NATO's strength and the strength of the American position in Europe, I think, gives them some reassurance, and NATO, again, especially if NATO comes a little closer to them.
So they don't feel that they are abandoned or they are worse off by what has just happened at Madrid. They obviously would like, particularly the Baltics, would like to keep open the possibility of getting in, getting the complete guarantee. The Ukrainians haven't decided yet, but the Ukrainians want to certainly keep open that option, too. They do not feel that they are worse off by NATO's enlargement. I think they feel that the strengthening of Western Europe, the American role, this is all to the good.
Some day they may get a full article 5 guarantee or they may not, but I think they do not accept the arguments of many of the American academic critics of NATO enlargement, which is somehow they are made worse off by what is happening.
Mr. IKLE. I think a partial answer at least to your question, Mr. Bateman, is the following: The argument for enlargement, while it doesn't insight present danger of Soviet military invasion, in the back of the mind is the idea that the Russian forces reconstituted might coerce or even invade one of these countries.
Then, it is assumed that at that time, when we see clearly what is threatening, we would be paralyzed. We couldn't add these countries at that time.
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That, I think, is nonsense. If we are so weak at that time that then the enlargement of NATO will not be much protection. Historically, we added Greece and Turkey in the coldest year of the cold war, and we were serious about it. We pumped billions of dollars in military assistance into Greece and Turkey. So that was a serious measure to avert a threat to Greek and Turkey in the Mediterranean.
If you can't do that when a tanker is clear, then our paper extension of NATO will not mean much in such a contingency in the future.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. The bottom line for each of you, would you please assume on the one hand you have a crystal ball; assume on the other hand you have a magic wand; and you have the decision to choose as to whether the three new NATO members should have been chosen and whether Slovenia, Romania, and the Baltic States should be chosen, and why.
Dr. Ikle, I will ask you first.
Mr. IKLE. Given the steps taken toward the first three members, I would, if asked by the Senate, be very hesitant to recommend turning them down, because this would have political consequences on the other hand, and I think somebody suggested it here. I very strongly recommend leaving well enough alone and stopping there, and extending other guarantees, like I just alluded to, to anyone of the other countries and using other ways of deterring a not yet existing Russian threat to the Baltics, to the Ukraine. If and when a threat arises, let's mobilize and do something about it.
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I am not sure that is responsive to your question.
Mr. RODMAN. I think Slovenia and Romania are good candidates for membership. I think the administration, my guess is the administration's position was really tactical, that they agreed that Slovenia and Romania were good candidates, and wanted to make it more likely there would be a second round. That is my guess; I certainly can't prove it. And I supported that reasoning. I think there should be a second round, Slovenia and Romania should certainly be in it and maybe others. Austria may declare interest in it.
The Baltic States are delicate, and I understand that. I personally am sympathetic to their aspiration. I think over a period of a few years, I think we need to get the Russians accustomed to the idea that these are independent states who have a right to make their own decision. I think some of the Scandinavian countries are also interested in joining NATO. Finland, it is not impossible that Sweden may want to join. I think we need to talk to the Scandinavian countries and other Baltic States who are in NATO like Germany and Poland and think hard about the Baltic States and how one can defend them. But, as I say, I am sympathetic to their eventual membership.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. The suggestion has been made that maybe if Russia was admitted to NATO, that we would have a more blissful future for Europe. To assure even a more blissful future, shouldn't we then join the Warsaw Pact? You see, if Russia joins NATO, then it is no longer NATO, because NATO was set up to provide a mutual defense against Soviet expansionism. We now recognize, I think, almost everybody, that the conventional forces in Russia are in considerable disarray.
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The only part of their military that they have maintained, and they have maintained it quite well, is their strategic forces. If there is going to be a Russian move, it is probably not going to be with conventional forces because they have essentially abandoned the maintenance of their conventional forces. It is going to be with nuclear forces. The countries that we are considering adding to NATO will be of no use to us in terms of use of strategic forces, because they have none. If NATO is envisioned as playing nursemaid or an HMO for struggling democracies, would we not better serve our purposes by not calling this alliance NATO, which expansion is viewed as very threatening by Russia?
I think one can make an argument that treaties or alliances with some of these Eastern European bloc countries could serve the purposes of peace. I think you could also make the point that this alliance ought not be called NATO because of the perception of Russia that the expansion of NATO is threatening to them. If, indeed, alliances that we are now talking about as being achieved by NATO would advance these good purposes, would they not be better advanced if we gave them another name, rather than antagonizing Russia by enlarging NATO?
Mr. IKLE. Mr. Bartlett, I agree with the thrust of your point, and I would think that the name ''NATO'' will change its meaning, as I indicated in my opening remarks. It will increasingly, and I regret it, be seen as not a defensive alliance, but something like the Organization of American States, and its proud and effective role in the cold war will recede into history. In some ways that is sad.
I also very much agree, and made the point earlier, with the importance of the nuclear aspect. The real present and continuing danger to the security of all of us, deadly danger, and ''deadly'' is an understatement, is that nuclear slag heap, the Dreyfus of all these nuclear things in Russia, and they are adding all the northern Baltics. It doesn't tell. It may be even a hinderance. I wouldn't emphasize a hinderance so much, except it diverts us from what we ought to focus on.
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Mr. RODMAN. I disagree. I think the strategic missions of NATO are still important. And in my prepared statement I elaborate on this. I think it is still to maintain the balance of power. It is still to integrate Germany into the security structure of Europe. Otherwise Germany's economic dominance would have all sorts of implications in Western Europe.
The reason Germany's economic dominance does not have security implications is because it is tied to this security structure. So I think the alliance has its function and its reasons for continuing.
If you broadened it and changed its name and made it into a social club or something that would look like the OSCE, it would be diluted, and we have institutions like OSCE and so on and mechanisms with Russia, including the new one that the Clinton administration has invented. But NATO was never a threat to Russia. We should not accept the premise. NATO never posed an offensive threat, and now it is even less conceivable that it could pose an offensive threat.
NATO was always a defensive coalition. And now if you look, two-thirds of American troops are home from Europe. We are all lamenting the fact that nobody from Europe wants to spend a lot of money on defense. There is no threat to Russia from this. What there is is a kind of resentment, but I think the resentment comes from what already happened. I think in 1989 they lost their sphere of influence. This kind of rubs their noses in it a little bit, because their former satellites want to join the West. But I am not sure what we can do about it.
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I mean, their sphere of influence was founded on fundamental illegitimacy. I am not prepared to give them Central Europe back to make them feel better. So I think the sooner we get all this past us, the better. I think NATO has a function. It can be a benign balance of power in Europe, which I anticipate. This also presupposes some dialogue with Russia about arms limitation.
I also supported reopening CFE, making some adjustments in that on a reciprocal basis. I support the START, making sure the START process continues, just so there is no—the last thing we need is an offensive strategic missile buildup on both sides. That is not what we want to spend our money on. All these things are attainable. I am not even worried so much about the Duma. I think START III, I predict if I have a crystal ball, I predict we will end up with START III.
There is not the slightest possibility that the arms reductions are going to be lost. I think both sides have such an obvious interest in preserving this arms control regime that I think we will do so, even if START II gets—just as SALT II never got ratified, but the United States never exceeded the limits of SALT II.
So even if the Duma is recalcitrant, I am confident the strategic arms reduction regime will survive this easily.
So I think there is a benign relationship with Russia that is totally possible. But I don't think we should accept the premise that NATO is hostile to them.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. If, in fact, NATO is not an offensive threat, then why would we want to make it appear so to the Russians by enlarging it? Does that not defeat the purpose of European stability, and cannot our goals of assuring the independence of those countries be better achieved by other means?
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I think that is the real question. I am pleased that this is now becoming a dialog across America. I have great confidence in wisdom outside the beltway. This dialog goes on long enough, I think we will probably do the right thing in the end.
Thank you very much.
Mr. IKLE. It causes unusual alliances. Peter and I agree on everything else in foreign and defense policy.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Ikle, am I pronouncing your name correctly?
Mr. IKLE. Surely.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much. In some of the materials we have before us, briefing materials, estimates are given on the costs of the NATO enlargement. This is probably a follow-up on Mr. Bartlett's point about dialog taking place. The dialog is wonderful when it is in the abstract and conversational stage.
When it comes to money and the division of resources in the Congress under what we spend our money, suddenly it tags on a different focus. We have Congressional Budget Office estimates, we have RAND Corp. estimates. They run in right from $60 billion to $124 billion, depending on the various scenarios. The U.S. share running between about $5 billion and $19 or $20 billion, which could amount to, say, a low end of $300,000 to $870 million over 15 years.
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So these figures, they are quite a broad range. But nonetheless they are significant numbers, significant numbers. In that context, then, I was impressed by your citation of President Havel, let me make sure—I think I picked up the wrong—here it is. The alliance should—what you call a metamorphosis, which I think is a good designation—this is quoting, I believe President Havel: ''The alliance should urgently remind itself that it is first and foremost an instrument of democracy. It must not see itself as a pact of nations against a more or less obvious enemy, but a guarantor of Euro-American civilization, and thus a pillar of global security.''
I took from that and the rest of your testimony, we were talking about a cultural realignment. Is that a fair summary of not just President Havel's view, but of your testimony? Because I must confess at the end of your testimony, I wasn't quite sure exactly what to conclude.
You, in fact, said you were going to start out trying to summarize in your testimony the spectrum, and I think you did that in a very good way. But then I wasn't quite sure at the end what I should conclude from that, other than that this would be a cultural realignment, and if that is the case, we are having enough trouble, and I don't mean to be facetious, funding the National Endowment for the Arts, let alone to come up with the funds to culturally realign what NATO is or is not with respect to its previous history of being a military alliance.
Mr. IKLE. No, I agree with you, I didn't elaborate or make this quite that clear. But I wanted to show here the concept of what the enlargement is about differs a great deal among those proposing it. Very important people proposing it are the distinguished and rightly admired President of the Czech Republic, Havel, who started the idea. He has a culture alignment idea of the European-American culture. I think somebody else mentioned that, too.
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Slightly facetiously I added a sentence that I skipped that it is perhaps just as well that Havel has not spent much time at American universities; otherwise he would have been admonished that American civilization is passe in the United States and has been replaced by a more worldly, less Eurocentric view.
Perhaps in some ways it is a delicate issue, but in Eastern Europe and also in Western Europe, there is a conception of this being a particularly European, culture European alliance. I don't think that fits in what the American people have in mind for the future, that precisely, because we have other alliances in Asia, in this hemisphere, with different cultures. That is very understandable, if you are in Prague, a wonderful city with European culture. But it is a rationale which doesn't dovetail at all with points made by those who are concerned about the Russians in other European countries, expansion or pressure toward Eastern Europe and so on.
What I wanted to point out, in short, is the confusion and founding of a big enterprise like this on so much confusion is not a good way to start it.
By contrast, the old NATO, were very clear what it was about.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes. In this context also, just looking today, I find it very interesting. It is in the world news section of the Washington Post. It is not on the front page, Mr. Yeltsin indicating that there will be a drawdown of between 500,000 and 1.5 million troops. It will be a troop reduction amounting to 30 percent of the Russian forces.
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Now, how that divides out, I am not sufficiently familiar yet. I presume this committee will look into that, Mr. Chairman, parenthetically. But obviously there has been, and it has been alluded to already in today's hearing, that there is considerable consternation at this, including members of Mr. Yeltsin's own party, even to the point of some members, I believe people, uniformed officers, urging military personnel to meet on this and to publicly get into confrontation and contention over this kind of thing.
In your testimony you indicate that President Havel in this cultural realignment, if you will, was at great pains to say he did not want the Russians to feel that they were being confronted by an expansion of this alignment. So I would be interested in, and I think it would be useful for us to know what you think, and Mr. Rodman, your perception of what will be the result or what can we expect now if, in fact, the additional members of the NATO expansion are at pains to try to assure Russia it doesn't appear to be—I am not going to say working—but it doesn't appear to be giving much of a sense of comfort to Russia.
All of this may have to do, as I think Mr. Rodman pointed out, with the total discombobulation of the Russians over the events taking place from the time of the fall of the wall and everything taking place internally in Russia. There may be nothing that can be done about it. But it certainly becomes a point for those who are fanning discontent or responding to discontent or feeling discontent in Russia that the NATO expansion idea gives them something to point very directly to.
Mr. IKLE. I would agree with what you said largely, but also here I agree with Peter Rodman, that expansion of NATO is not a serious threat for Russia. People may blow it up as such for political reasons. And my concern there is that it leaves undone a very important security business we have to do with the Russian military regarding our global security interests. Our military security interests really have sources of dangers that have very little to do with Eastern Europe.
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Mr. RODMAN. If I may, the Russians seem to have three kinds of concerns about NATO enlargement, two of which I consider illegitimate; the third of which I think is legitimate. One is that they may harbor some interest in reclaiming dominion over their sphere of influence. That, I have problems with.
Second, they may be afraid of some offensive threat, which I think certainly is false. The third is a more historical and cultural point, which I think you were wise to raise.
Historically, Russia has always had an ambiguous relationship with the rest of Europe. It has been on the edge of Europe. It didn't share in all of the intellectual and philosophical currents that swept Europe, the enlightenment and the reformation. It has always been kind of on the edge.
If you read your Dostoyevsky, you realize the Russians are sometimes happy they didn't share in all of these currents, that they are conscious of having their own identity. They are partly Asiatic, they are Orthodox, they have their own cultural identity.
But there has always been a certain resentment on their part that they weren't treated by the Western Europeans as real Europeans. And the Russians have certainly contributed enormously to Western culture. But they have always had this resentment about how they have been treated by the rest of Europe. And I think we have touched that nerve in all of this. But I have to say, what I am willing to do to try to compensate is to say let's get this thing behind us.
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Let's get 1989 and all of this, the unfinished business behind us. We will consolidate Central Europe. The future is open and there are other ways for the West and Russia to interact, and the future relationship between Russia and the West, as I said, will be determined by other things which could well be positive things, and Russia's economic relations with the West, other constant political dialogs with the West, preserving the arms control regimes. The future agenda could be a positive agenda.
I don't know how to heal the wounds they must feel from what happened in 1989, because it is a repudiation of them, and they obviously have an ambiguous relationship to their own history. I think something in the Russians tell them their own history needs to be repudiated. It is interesting to me that Boris Yeltsin, the issue of Lenin's tomb is very symbolic. If they put Lenin back in St. Petersburg with his mother, that will be an important psychological break. Recognizing that their own history needs to be repudiated, but obviously not everybody in Russia is prepared to make the break.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, the phrase ''United Nations'' has not been uttered once this morning, and I don't think I find it anywhere in the testimony. Now is not the time to be asking our guests about it, but I suggest, Mr. Chairman, at some point you might want to consider a hearing or a briefing where we take up the question, and perhaps our guests would be appropriate for that, where we see whether or not the United Nations could play a role rather than NATO, which might be more progressive for all concerned. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
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Mr. McHale.
Mr. MCHALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, let me say at the outset that I support the initial expansion of NATO, including Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and I am very sympathetic to a later expansion that would include at least Romania and Slovenia, so I am someone who believes that the composition and role of NATO should expand in the next few years.
Having said that, as somebody who wants to remain deeply engaged in European affairs, I think we will achieve relatively little if Europe becomes a relatively secure region in an increasingly unstable world. I raise that point when the first panel was testifying before us when I said in the wake of the end of the cold war, should NATO be perceived as a military alliance dedicated principally or even exclusively to the defense of Western Europe, or should we now reexamine the strategic mission of NATO in a post-cold war era, where that mission ultimately is really the defense of western democracies, not simply or exclusively Western Europe.
So the questions I have for you follow up on that theme, and that is should not our resources, meaning the United States resources, be tailored and proportioned to the perceived emerging threat? Does it make sense to pledge United States resources to the defense of Western Europe against any threat to peace in that region of the world without a corresponding expectation of European support of United States interests in other regions of the world, particularly the Pacific rim?
And last, should the United States, the most powerful military alliance, NATO, be oriented exclusively toward a region of secondary military threat?
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NATO was our principal defense against a possible Soviet attack during the cold war. That was vital. That was preeminent in terms of our national security interests. As we in the Congress consider a multibillion-dollar investment in a new NATO composed of additional nations pledged to support western democratic principles, should we not have that alliance exist, be funded and trained in an international security context, where, frankly, I believe the major threats to United States vital national security interests are more likely to occur in other regions of the world, principally the Pacific? Is NATO irrelevant to the United States international security posture?
Mr. IKLE. I agree with your emphasis on the other threats being more important. One of these more important threats, I think, NATO is relevant to—that is the gulf, as we saw in the Gulf war, while not officially involved, NATO was supportive. That is what I would like to see protected, as well as having that contingency, Russia's neutrality. For the Asian threat, NATO, after all, this is the Atlantic, and we have the United States, Japanese, and South Korean alliances, and that we have to emphasize, too. I would not try to swing NATO into the other hemisphere.
Mr. RODMAN. I think Europe remains a vital interest, and I think we can manage the problem of the European balance of power at a modest cost. With two-thirds of American troops already home, I see NATO and NATO enlargement as an insurance policy to prevent future crisis in a region which is unusually prone to disaster looking at the history of this century. So I think there is a reason to do this.
I also think out-of-area problems have always been difficult for the alliance, because we often disagree. In fact, the Middle East, I certainly agree with Dr. Ikle, the Gulf war was a good example, but the Middle East where we and the Europeans have as often as not disagreed over policy.
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Out-of-area issues, from a very early period, sometimes the United States would say, wait a minute, we are not bound by the alliance, as at Suez, Secretary Dulles said this is out of area. We are not obligated to support the British and French. Then the allies reciprocated during the Vietnam period. So I think it is always delicate and we should not assume too much, because they are independent states and the Western Europeans have a lot of international experience, and I think it is good if we can agree and work together in, say, the gulf. But I won't push it too far.
In the Pacific, I think we have always had free hand. We have had our own policy in the Pacific going back 100 years, and our own alliances in the Pacific.
One thing we can talk to the Europeans about is I think controls over exports. I would like to get some restraint on the French and the other Europeans and in, say, arms sales to China or high-tech exports. COCOM is gone. I would like to see something like that revived. I wouldn't mind getting the Europeans into that. This is a generic, but an out-of-area kind of effort, that would be quite relevant to the Chinese problem.
Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Rodman, my red light just came on and I don't want to abuse the time allocated to me or you in providing an answer. I am not arguing for disengagement from Europe. Europe remains vitally important to the United States and I support, for instance, a continuing troop commitment in Europe and strong United States leadership in NATO. But I leave you with the thought that there is a certain disconnection between resources and threat when the major, most powerful military alliance in which the United States participates is oriented toward a region of the world that largely, because of past NATO succession, now reflects a secondary military threat.
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And I think that NATO in the wake of the end of the cold war must evolve into an international security organization that reflects the vital national security interests of western democracies and does not focus narrowly or anachronistically on those security concerns that are unique, though important, to Western Europe.
The United States has interests that go far beyond Western Europe, and I think that we, the western democracies, need to have more of an international perspective while remaining fully engaged and committed to the security of Western Europe.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Gentlemen, we have about come to the end of things. I have been sitting back with a question in my mind all along that has been gnawing at me for a good while and other people, too. Talking about out of area relative to NATO and article 5, I guess it is, and the fact it is a defensive alliance, and we talked about that it was a defensive alliance and not offensive and that kind of thing. But what about our presence in Bosnia, NATO's presence in Bosnia. Is that not out of area and how could that be justified legally under the NATO charter?
Mr. IKLE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, Bosnia is out of area. Bosnia has never been a formal responsibility of NATO. But we had a lot of discussions. I participated in those myself as Under Secretary in the eighties, trying to engage the alliance in the immediately neighboring threats, the gulf and now Bosnia. And there is some justification to that because of the logistics, its terrifically good logistics base that the NATO alliance provides for this area as distinct from Asia.
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Mr. RODMAN. If I may, my sense is when an article 5 challenge exists to the survival of an alliance member, then a certain obligation kicks in. Other things are electives. I think Bosnia was a case where the alliance stayed out of it at first, and then came together thinking this was an important issue and is there something we could do. And we still had the option to stay out. But I think so far, because, of course, we cross our fingers, NATO proved to be effective.
I, for one, hope and pray we don't have a lot of future Bosnias, but I think it was something that we chose to do because we thought we could do it, and I think we have done something constructive. But it certainly was optional from the point of view of the treaty obligation.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, again, I appreciate your contribution. Even though our attendance has fallen off here, people had other arrangements and things they had to do, you contributed a whole lot to our discussion. We appreciate it, and we are sorry to have kept you waiting so long through the other panel. But we do appreciate it.
Mr. Dellums, do you have anything else?
Mr. DELLUMS. No, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to compliment our two distinguished witnesses for their contribution and thank you for what I think is an important beginning point for a significant dialogue in the Congress and in the country.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. If there is no further business, the meeting will be adjourned.
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[Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
"The Official Committee record contains additional material here."