Zbigniew Brzezinski
Former National Security Advisor
Professor Of American Foreign Relations,
Johns Hopkins University
"After NATO Enlargement: What Next?"
December 16, 2002

Zbigniew Brzezinksi: On November 21^st, less than a month ago, in Prague a major NATO summit was held. And seven new states were admitted or invited to join NATO. That invitation fulfills the commitment made by President Bush to create a second in which Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea would be truly secure. It is a very momentous set of invitations.

And now of course as you all know, there will be the process of ratification within all current NATO member states to approve these invitations. And that process will probably last a year or so into 2004.

And then just a few days ago on December 13^th in Copenhagen, ten new countries…ten countries were invited to be new members of the European Union. That too is absolutely momentous in it’s scope. It is also very symbolic. December 13^th particularly for Poland has a very special meaning. Not only because a few days ago on December 13^th Poland was invited to be part of the European Union which ends a particular chapter in Polish history, namely Setting of Vulnerability between Russia and Germany. But it has symbolic significance in that twenty-one years ago on December 13^th, Marshall Law was declared in Poland suppressing the solidarity movement which aimed at the democratization of the Polish regime and eventually in taking Poland into Europe…restoring it’s links with Europe. Solidarity, as we all know, prevailed. The Soviet Block crumbled. But the date of December 13^th has a very special meaning.

These two summits…the Prague Summit and the Copenhagen Summit…in effect create a very significant geo-political overlap between NATO and the EU. When the process of ratification of the invitations of the candidate countries respectively for NATO and for the EU is completed sometime by the year 2004, NATO, which has…will have 26 members by then, will have 24 European members of which all but five will be members of the EU. Nineteen out of the twenty-four European members of NATO. And there is of course, Canada and the United States, in NATO…will be members of the EU.

Of the EU’s by then, twenty-five members, only six will not be members of NATO. In other words, in both cases, there will be nineteen and nineteen in both organizations overlapping. That creates a very significant new geo-political reality. And it is useful to step back for a minute and to reflect on the debates that took place in the United States over the last several years regarding this process of enlargement. I will not engage in a tedious recapitulation of some of the arguments that were made against enlargement. But the principal argument throughout was that the enlargement of NATO will stimulate a new conflict with Russia. And a number of very distinguished public figures in the United States and in the international affairs area or in scholarship argued vigorously that the enlargement of NATO was dangerous. One even said it…the worst mistake made in American foreign policy since the founding of NATO.

We now know that this is not so. That the enlargement of NATO has created a wider zone of stability and security…security not only objectively but very important psychologically…and it corresponds with enlargement of the EU. More recently arguments have been made that the enlargement of NATO dilutes the viability, the military cohesion of NATO. But you have to look at that argument critically and ask yourself and would it’s military viability and cohesion be greater if it didn’t enlarge? And against whom would it be greater? What sort of a military, militant and closely cohesive NATO do we need and against whom right now? Would in that setting without enlargement the new independent central Europe be secure? And last but not least, would it be good for international stability if the larger EU was 2/3 in NATO but 1/3 not in NATO in terms of territory. Would that be more stable?

In brief, I think what we have to recognize is that the expansion of NATO and paralleling it the expansion of EU reflects a very big transformation in the nature of the European order which has evolved as a consequence of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In that setting, NATO has changed and it had to change from primarily a military and a political alliance into primarily a political and also military alliance. That was inherent in the historical change that Europe was experiencing in the course of the last decade and in my view it has been a constructive and an enduring but unfinished response.

Looking at NATO historically, I would say that we can perceive three broad phases in the changing role and mission, historical purpose even of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. The first which lasted several decades was very clear and very focused. Namely the defense of Western Europe. We forget however that in those days, we used to call Western Europe, Europe. We forget how much our geographical terminology has changed over the last few years. But it was customary to say Europe when we just meant the Western European union. And the NATO was defending half of Europe…Western Europe…against real threats of aggression.

We now have...literally have the Warsaw Pact war plans. And we know they were offensive plans…only offensive plans. It was a pact…was not preparing itself for the contingency of a NATO invasion. There were no such maneuvers in the Warsaw Pact history and no war plans designed for defense. There are only offensive Warsaw Pact plans. We also know that they were very serious plans, which involved a massive assault including the use of nuclear weapons from day one. Just to give you an example, by the fifth day of the war, Hamburg would have been hit by nuclear war three…nuclear bombs three times. Just one city. Yeah, these were serious issues. And the defense of Western Europe was a necessity…successfully consummated with the eventual disintegration from within of the Soviet Block.

That ushered in the second phase in NATO’s role and historical purpose. Namely, the reunification of Europe…that is to say the recognition that what we called Europe until 1990 was at best one half, maybe even one third of Europe. And then there was now a larger portion of Europe which is no longer integrated into the Soviet Block, no longer dominated by the Soviet Union but which yearned to be part of that larger, new, emerging Europe. And to repeat what I have already said, on November 21^st of this year, and on December 13^th of this year, that process took a giant step forward. We are entering what I call the third phase of NATO’s changing historical role.

Namely the evolution of the alliance into wider regional undertaking which at the same time reinforces the bonds between America and Europe with a sense of a larger international security role in mind. That is the alliance as a new task in terms of the American-European relationship. And concomitant with it also, a new opportunity to build a wider relationship with Russia in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Block and the re-integration of Central Europe into what we call Europe now in a larger perspective.

In that setting, looking specifically now ahead, I see six broad consequences or implications or undertakings that are important in thinking about the future of NATO in this larger setting of the American-European relationship and also to some extent of the relationship of the West with Russia. The first of these is a very simple, straightforward but nonetheless, very important point. It is that obligations assumed must become obligations fulfilled. That is very important. When NATO was enlarged last time and three new members were added, in the process of the negotiations pointing toward the invitation, the three assumed certain obligations that they would perform as members. In some cases they were defined by specifically in some cases more vaguely. But in all three cases there was a set of obligations that were undertaken as a condition of participation in the alliance and as a testimonial of the new member’s willingness to assume not only the benefits of the alliance but possibly the obligations of the alliance. In effect that they would not be just consumers of security but contributors to collective security.

We have now issued invitations to seven additional states. Unlike the past, this time everyone of the seven in the process of being considered for membership was encouraged and required to develop a so called membership action plan specifically designed for that specific country identifying in considerable detail what needs to be done for that particular country to qualify for member ship. And these obligations are both specific and wide ranging at the same time. They are political, very economic, they are social and of course, very specifically they are military. Including budgetary. And every nation in effect in accepting the invitation indeed, in seeking the invitation has entered into a defacto contractual relationship with the alliance. And that is with the members of the alliance.

The last time when the three were invited, in the euphoria in the end of the Soviet Block, the big debate regarding their admission was before the invitations were issued. It was such a novel step to be inviting former Soviet Block members that the debate in this country was whether it should be done. And as I already reminded you, some very respectable people said no, that is a very dangerous and unwise step. But once the rublicon was crossed, the ratification process in most countries was fairly routine. And in the United States Senate while intense, it really did not involve detailed probing. And eventually as many of you recall, the vote was overwhelming…81-18 in favor. One senator was in the airport and couldn’t vote. He would have been for it.

This time, my prediction is the ratification process particularly with senate is not going to involve a debate whether we should enlarge or not but it is going to involve very close scrutiny of the performance of the individual states. Are they actually in the process of truly implementing their respective maps? And if there is hesitation, or lagging, it could affect ratification. So it is important that obligations assumed become obligations fulfilled. It is not going to be a free ride.

Secondly, I think it is important that NATO Alliance, given it’s new balance between it’s political and it’s military role, gradually assume a greater capability for significant military reaction in areas strategically important to Europe…next to Europe. After all the Alliance is no longer focused on the threat to Europe itself. For Russia is no longer an imminent or a likely military threat in the foreseeable future.

But Europe is in a region in which instability can affect adversely European security or even in some areas of Europe that can be the case. NATO thus waged a war in the case of possible to stabilize one particular area of Europe. But there could be security problems near Europe. And for that reason, NATO needs an ability to react, to react promptly. And to do so in a setting that consolidates the unity of NATO both within the organization itself and on a transatlantic basis that is to say between America and Europe.

Steps in that direction are underway and it is important that they be implemented. One is the so called NATO Response Force initiated by the United States recently which when implemented…and I believe it will be implemented in the not too distant future…will number 21,000 troops for a truly rapid, forceful, military reaction within four weeks of a decision to move. NATO doesn’t have such a force right now because NATO over the years was designed to be essentially a European oriented defensive system against the Warsaw Pact attack.

That leads me to the third point which is that also before too long, NATO will have to be willing to engage in peacekeeping in areas near Europe and strategically important to Europe. At the NATO summit in Prague, I made a keynote address in which I argued that at some point, NATO should be prepared to enforce or re-enforce, for example, a peace settlement in the Middle East. The Middle East region is a region of enormous and immediate importance to Europe, even more so than to us. And if there is to be peace in the Middle East, some form of international guarantees and reassurances for the peace settlement will clearly be needed. It is highly unlikely that you can have a peace in the foreseeable future…in the next several years between Israel and Palestine without some external presence to provide security guarantees for both sides given the likely complicated and painful territorial accommodations that will have to be undertaken if there is peace.

One has to think also, fourth, of the larger map of Europe. We used to call Western Europe, Europe. We used to call everything East of that Eastern Europe even though for example, Prague was and is situated more west than Berlin. But we used to call everything East of the Alps, Eastern Europe. In the course of the last decade, we have become aware of the fact that there is a central Europe. And now Western Europe and Central Europe are about to become both members of NATO and of the enlarging EU.

But there is now an Eastern Europe which is truly is in the East. And for the first time, the words Eastern Europe correspond accurately to geographical reality. And that of course, is the Eastern Europe that includes Russia, that includes also Belarus, it includes Ukraine, it includes Georgia, and Azerbaijan, and Armenia. And that Eastern Europe soon will be bordering across the line both on NATO and on the EU. That is a new geographical reality. It is also a dynamic reality in the sense that international transformations never come to a neat stop, but they continue evolving. And it is a fact that several countries in that Eastern Europe which is now truly the Eastern Europe of Europe wish to be members eventually both of NATO and of the EU.

And that brings me, fifth, to the obvious next question, namely, the relationship with Russia. One thing has to be made very clear. And it is part of the record. Russia has not indicated any serious interest in membership in NATO. And I think the reasons are quite obvious. At this stage in it’s history, Russia is neither ready to be in NATO nor wishes to be included in an organization who just important elements of supra-national military control. NATO is an integrated military alliance. An integrated military alliance. NATO is an integrated military alliance traditionally commanded by American generals. Russia is simply not prepared to be a part of that.

Meeting the political, social and military criteria of membership in NATO would be difficult for Russia both objectively and subjectively. It is difficult to imagine NATO commissions going to the Russian Defense Ministry examining the files, looking at the paperwork, checking the figures, particularly financial figures or developing programs for the organization of weaponry, integration of intelligence systems, vetting of officers, and last but not least, even imposing standards of military conduct that meets the standards of the laws of war. There have been military incidents involving Georgia. Russia air bombardment of the frontier area on the grounds that Chechen Rebels had been using them as refuge sites. There the ongoing war in Chechnya, which is reminiscent for example of the French War in Algeria. It is difficult to enter contemporary Europe…a democratic Europe with imperial baggage.

Over time I am confident Russia will shed it because more and more Russians realize what Yeltsin said ten years ago, that the imperial era has come to an end and it was not a blessing for the Russian people. It imposed burdens and sacrifices on them and slowed down their own evolution and transformation. And thus it will come. But anyway they have to have a sense of perspective.

And finally and last, sixth point; the issue of Iraq is in some respects an important test of the American-European relationships by implication of the US-EU security cooperation. And thus, therefore, also potentially of NATO’s own role. Much depends on the outcome. And outcome which is achieved by solitary and unilateral US military power in all probability will create great strains between the United States and the EU and in all probability also within NATO. Some NATO members will go with us.

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Even if we go alone and unilaterally outside of the UN framework. But some will not. And in any case, that outcome will create tensions and it will inhibit at least in the foreseeable future, the evolution of NATO into an institution capable of a strategically significant participation in areas of strategic significance to the European Zone. But if the outcome in the Iraq crisis either peaceful or by the use of military coercion occurs under the aegis of the UN Security Council, and that is part of a collective response of the international community, a major step thereby will have been taken towards and enhancement of NATO’s own potential role in regionally significant and strategically important security activities.

For a collective response, either peaceful outcome at the end or military power being used at the end, will enhance European-American collaboration and will make it easier even for NATO in some fashion to agree to participate if need be in the military activity in the military action and will make it easier for Europe and America to participate in the aftermath which will require a political and a financial as well as an ongoing military commitment. So at stake here is also an immediate issue that bears on what next. Indeed in bears on what next potentially even in a global perspective. For if there is a successful either political or military resolution of the Iraq issue under the UN flag, we will also be establishing a very important precedent for dealing with another problem that is emerging in another part of the world, namely North Korea.

If we have to deal with Iraq on our own, our ability to deal with North Korea is not going to be increased but diminished because of the disagreements it will generate. If we deal with it collectively and successfully, we will have a precedent also for dealing with North Korea.

So to conclude, the third phase that confronts NATO is also broad in it’s historical scope. It involves a wide security architecture. And it defines politically the continued significance of NATO as an important core alliance that is critical to larger, increasingly widening international security, potentially with a global range.