Speech by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer
GMF Brussels Forum
Brussels - 15 March 2008
"Beyond the Bucharest Summit"
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is the third year of the Brussels Forum and the third year in which
you have invited me as a speaker. I am glad to use this opportunity to
put NATO where it is and should be: at the centre of our efforts to
strengthen the transatlantic partnership, to protect our security and
uphold our values.
Before I begin, though, let me congratulate Craig Kennedy, Ron Asmus and
the German Marshall Fund more generally for having established the
Brussels Forum in such a short space of time as an unmissable event on
the transatlantic agenda. This said, I hope that Craig and Ron have not
totally used up their formidable reserves of energy and creativity on
this years Brussels Forum; because in just three weekstime they are
hosting another major GMF conference to coincide with our NATO Summit in
Bucharest. This will also be a very special part of the Summits public
diplomacy and as you can never have too much of a good thing I hope to
see a number of you at the GMF event in Bucharest as well.
It is partly for that reason that I will not talk about the Bucharest
Summit today. You either know what will be on the agenda already, or you
will hear about it soon enough. Rather, what I want to do today is to
look beyond Bucharest at our next Summit in 2009, and perhaps even
a bit further.
Any institution worth its grain of salt has to be able to deal not only
with what is urgent, but also what is important. We must tackle immediate
challenges, of course, but not lose sight of those issues which will
determine NATOs future.
As some of you may remember, about a year and a half ago, I called for
NATO to begin work on a new Strategic Concept. At that time many felt
that my call was premature. Today, I feel even more strongly that we do
need this document and that we need to start soon to prepare the ground.
There are many reasons why we need a new Strategic Concept. One reason is
that our current Concept dates back to 1999. And although it has proven
remarkably prescient, and thus has aged quite gracefully, it simply
doesnt take full account of what has happened since its publication:
9/11, Afghanistan, the bright and dark sights of globalisation, to name
just a few developments.
We also need a new Strategic Concept for public diplomacy reasons. Our
publics have found it difficult to keep track of NATO these last few
years. A new Strategic Concept will help in explaining where we are, and
where we are going. And why NATO remains essential for their
security.
Another reason is the US election cycle. Starting work on a new Strategic
Concept in 2009 will help to engage a new US Administration on NATO early
on in its tenure. And with so many issues competing for Washingtons
attention, both domestic and external, that is certainly a good
thing.
However, the key reason for reviewing our Strategic Concept is a
conceptual one. The burdens on NATO are greater today than ever before
and this makes it ever more urgent that we have a clear strategic vision,
clear priorities and above all a clear sense of the resources that we
need to be successful. In other words, we need to answer the question:
What kind of NATO do we want for the years to come?
If you look at NATO from a historical perspective, the answer should be
pretty straightforward: it must be an Alliance that provides us with both
immediate protection against immediate threats, and with an instrument to
shape the strategic environment in a way that is conducive to our
interests and values. NATO has always been able to do both. In the Cold
War, NATO offered us protection against Soviet military power, while at
the same time providing the umbrella for the political reconciliation and
even integration of Western Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, and to
this day, NATO has been a military insurance policy against any possible
convulsion in Europes transformation, and we employed NATO operationally
to address an immediate crisis in the Balkans. At the same time, NATO
turned out to be an excellent framework for managing Europes longer-term
transition, both through our partnership policies and the enlargement
process.
Can NATO continue to perform this twin role in the strategic environment
of the 21st century? Can it continue to provide immediate
protection against threats, and fulfil a broader requirement to help
shape a new international order? I believe that the answer to these
questions is yes, provided that we base our policies on a sound
evaluation of what is required. We need to be clear about the security
environment we are going to be living in. And we need to be equally clear
and honest about the limits to what can sensibly be achieved by our
Alliance.
A few words on the strategic environment. Clearly, that environment will
be characterised by a number of features that are quite different from
those that determined NATOs past. Globalisation will continue to change
the security dynamics in many ways. Climate change will put many of our
key resources like food, water and land under considerable stress. The
global competition for energy and natural resources will re-define the
relationship between security and economics. Our growing reliance on
information technology will make our societies more vulnerable to
electronic warfare. Proliferation of WMD technology and know-how raises
the spectre of terrorist non-state actors acquiring means of mass
destruction. At the same time, collective defence, NATOs core function,
will and mus remain a precious commodity.
So what does all this mean for NATOs evolution, and for a new Strategic
Concept? Let me give you my preliminary conclusions:
First, we need to take a deeper look at the meaning of collective
defence and Allied solidarity in the new security environment. In the
Cold War, collective defence was all about repelling a Soviet invasion.
After 9/11, we applied this collective defence obligation to an attack by
a terrorist non-state actor. I believe that our work on a new Strategic
Concept should be the opportunity for a broader discussion. Since 9/11,
the world has not stood still. If you are an Estonian, you are clearly
worried about the recurrence of massive cyber attacks; if you are a
Norwegian, you wonder what the consequences of global warming and the
competition for energy resources will be on activities in the high north;
if you are a Briton, a Spaniard or a Turk and have witnessed a major
terrorist incident in one of your cities, you obviously wonder what is
coming next; and if you come from a country with a high degree of energy
dependency, you obviously wonder how you are going to cope if supplies
are disrupted.
Many of these these challenges will not trigger a classical military
response. But they will require Allies to support each other politically,
economically, and perhaps also militarily. Our security is indivisible:
and to my mind that means that we cannot deal collectively with some
issues such as global terrorism but then leave some of our member
countries to cope all alone with cyber attacks, energy blackmail, or
nuclear threats.
Of course, we are already looking at what NATO could do. Right now, in
the run-up to Bucharest, Allies are discussing what added valueNATO could
offer in these areas. But I predict that, sooner or later, the debate
will have to go beyond mere added valuewithin our existing
capabilities. We will also need at look at which additional
capabilities we will need to protect our populations against missile
proliferation or threats to our critical energy infrastructure. And what
may currently look like the preoccupation of only a few Allies may soon
affect all of them. Thats why a debate about the meaning of collective
defence, and about Allied solidarity, has become inevitable.
This brings me straight to my second point: A new Strategic
Concept must firmly embedthe logic of the so-called Comprehensive
Approach. Afghanistan and the Balkans are showing it today; our response
to cyber attacks, or to attacks on our energy supplies, might well show
it tomorrow: in order to be successful, we must increasingly coordinate
with other civilian actors. The Bucharest Summit will hopefully send a
strong signal in that regard. Many representatives from major
international institutions, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon,
will attend our meeting on Afghanistan in Bucharest. And this is
certainly a good start.
But we need to move much further than holding occasional meetings. And we
cannot just rely on a talented international figure, such as Kai Eide, to
pull all the strings together in theatre. At the very least, this type of
coordination without a firm framework runs the risk to squander valuable
time and resources. We need structured cooperation with the UN and the EU
on the strategic level. And we need to coordinate much more closely on
the tactical level as well, including with NGOs. There is still a
substantial gap between the military and the civilian aspects of crisis
management. As a result, we risk duplication or, worse, working at cross
purposes. A new Strategic Concept should make the point squarely and
forcefully: in todays security environment, NATO is no longer a
solo-player. The Alliance works best when it is working with others. It
has neither the means nor the ambition to do tackle each and every
challenge on its own.
This brings me to my third point: as we start work on a Strategic
Concept, it should be clear that we will increasingly need to act with
global partners. Let me be clear: I am not talking about global members,
or a NATO that aspires to be a global policeman. But I would like NATOs
global partnerships to be better structured and not just linked to the
participation of these partners in our ISAF mission. If NATO is to be
capable of acting anywhere in the world, we will need this network of
global partners. That is why I am very much in favour of expanding our
contacts to cover issues of common concern, such as terrorism and
proliferation. I also believe that we need to exchange lessons learned
from our participation in peace support operations, and that we need to
work on nuts and bolts issues such as improving our interoperability and
our communications. I therefore hope that our cooperation in Afghanistan
will serve as a model for the way in which we can combine our efforts to
solve other pressing security challenges as well.
My fourth point: Even in a globalised world, NATOs mission of
consolidating Europe will continue. Thankfully, a Strategic Concept does
not have to deal with timetables, waiting roomsor fast tracks. But it
will have to deal with the principle of the open door. Of course, we all
know about the power of enlargement to strengthen our Euro-Atlantic
community. But the new Strategic Concept will have to make clear how to
put that open doorprinciple into practice, as Europes easternmost
countries start knocking at NATOs door. And if our governments and public
opinions are to be confident in the continuation of NATO enlargement, the
Strategic Concept may also have to say something about the conditions
that have to be met before more countries are admitted in the
future.
As you know, I have often warned against enlargement fatigue. As long as
there is a gap between where countries are and where they want to be, the
unification of Europe will not be complete. This, of course, is as
relevant for the EU as it is for NATO. As long as some countries feel
that they are not entirely masters of their own future, not least because
others try to deny them their free choice, Europe is not the common space
that we want it to be. Retaining this vocation to enlarge the European
democratic space and acting upon it will remain a crucial part of NATOs
raison detre.
My last point. As a political-military organisation, NATO must
become more effective. And a new Strategic Concept should be crystal
clear about this. If NATO is to remain our prime venue for transatlantic
security policy in a rapidly changing world, then this organisation must
transform not only its policies, but also its structure. Given the
increasing demands upon us, our activities must all be less
process-oriented and more results-oriented. Our resources have to better
match our priorities; and you cannot reconcile forever more performance
with a zero-growth budget. Let me be clearer: I think that NATO nations
are soon going to have to increase NATOs budget, to match a growing list
of responsibilities.
We also need a defence planning system that is more responsive to
nationsneeds. We need a force generation process that is more predictable
and delivers faster results. We need to exploit the opportunities of
common capabilities strategic airlift, logistics far more energetically.
And we must take a hard look at the way we fund our operations, so that
all Allies are motivated rather than discouraged to put their
capabilities forward.
I believe that taking NATO reform seriously means also to look for more
synergies with the European Union. I would like to see much more pooling
of our capabilities, especially in areas such as vital enablers,
transport and helicopters, or in research and development, or in
harmonising our force structures and training methods. After all we only
have one common set of national defence budgets and national military
forces. So it is absolutely critical that all of the capabilities that we
are able to generate from this pool of forces are equally available to
both NATO and the EU. If we duplicate, or go off in different directions,
we will both fail. That is why our Finance Ministers should want closer
NATO-EU cooperation just as much as our Foreign and Defence Ministers. It
is why a new Strategic Concept should be unequivocal about the need for
more NATO-EU cooperation. And it is why the elaboration of a new
Strategic Concept for NATO should take account of the EUs efforts to
update its own European Security Strategy and vice versa.
I have one more particular concern and I have raised it from the start of
my tenure: We must deepen and broaden the scope of our political
consultations. The challenges today are multi-faceted, interlinked and
can arise from anywhere in the world. So we need to do a better job of
scanning the strategic horizon. We cannot just be reactive: discovering
the strategic significance of a region only after putting NATO forces on
the ground there; or waiting for Estonia to be cyber attacked before we
wake up to the dimensions of information warfare; or waiting for another
major terrorist attack before we step up our activities against
terrorism. When it comes to proliferation, energy security, the
consequences of climate change or of failing states, we need to
anticipate these dangers and do more preventively to mitigate their
effects. This can only be achieved through more and better transatlantic
dialogue.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As things now stand, I hope and expect that work on a new Strategic
Concept will commence at our next Summit in 2009, NATOs 60th
Anniversary. Anniversaries in NATO are not just about past achievements.
They are first and foremost about the future. With a new US
Administration in office, a new French approach vis-Ã -vis NATO, and a new
dynamic in the European integration process, I believe that our 2009
Summit should produce a short but powerful document that reaffirms the
enduring fundamentals of transatlantic security cooperation, and lay down
some parameters for a new Strategic Concept. For want of a better term,
let me call this document an Atlantic Charter.
Such an Atlantic Charter should be devoid of any technicalities. Just as
the Washington Treaty was written in a language so clear and simple that,
in the words of one drafter, even a milkman in Omaha could understand it,
so a new Atlantic Charter should reiterate in clear and simple terms what
this Alliance is all about: a community of values that seeks to promote
these values but also will defend them when they are under
threat.
I am perfectly aware that neither an Atlantic Charter nor a new Strategic
Concept will provide us with perfect answers to all the questions
that I have raised here today. But this exercise will, I am sure, provide
us with better answers. By revisiting the basic policies of our
Alliance both documents will help to strengthen our sense of common
purpose. And I am convinced that they will bring home and make clear to
our publics NATOs tremendous potential to shape the strategic environment
in ways that the founders of this Alliance never dared to dream of.
Thank you.