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TRANSCRIPT OF MEETING WITH MEMBERS
OF THE
WEU ASSEMBLY DEFENCE COMMITTEE AND
INTERPARLIAMENTARY EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE ASSEMBLY
JUNE 29, 2005 9:00-11:00 am
at the Stewart Mott House in Washington, D.C.
On 29 June, BASIC hosted Members of the
WEU Assembly Defence Committee and Interparliamentary European
Security and Defence Assembly and two guest experts. BASIC
staff in Washington and guests discussed a range of transatlantic
security topics. The Members, who are parliamentarians in
their home European countries, were on a fact finding mission
in the United States. The following is a transcript of the
entire meeting.
Introduction
Dr. Chantal de Jonge
Oudraat, Center for Transatlantic Relations: NATO, UN
and peace operations
Alistair
Millar, Fourth Freedom Forum: tactical nuclear weapons
and transatlantic security
Matt Martin,
BASIC: missile defense, nuclear security
David Isenberg,
BASIC: biological weapons security
Discussion, including WEU Assembly Defence
Committee
Select
Reports, Assembly of the WEU/The Interparliamentary European
Security and Defence Assembly
Chris Lindborg: Hello,
I'm Chris Lindborg, an Analyst with the British American Security
Information Council's Washington office. I would like to welcome
all of you to what I hope will be an enjoyable and fruitful
discussion. Thank you to all of you for coming. I especially
want to thank Paulo Brito of the WEU [Western European Union] for
helping to organize this visit.
I want to point out that we have some special
guest experts with us. First we have Dr. Chantal de Jonge
Oudraat with the Center
for Transatlantic Relations and she is also Vice President
of Women in International Security. She is
with several other important international security organizations
here in Washington, DC, and there is more information on those
organizations and brief biographies in your packets. We also
have Alistair Millar with us, who is Vice President and Director
of the Fourth Freedom
Forum's Washington office.
We have two BASIC Board Members with us in the
back, Dr. Joanna Spear and Ambassador James Leonard. All of
our BASIC Washington staff are here with us today. We have
BASIC's Deputy Director and Senior Analyst, Matt Martin, and
David Isenberg who also is a Senior Analyst with our office,
and our two summer interns, Ola Torson Lindberg and Wilson
Co. All of the people I mentioned have really helped with
this program, so I would like to thank all of them. Also if
you would like more information on our Washington participants,
again, please see the list of brief biographies in your packets.
Next I would like to give you a little bit of background on
BASIC.
As many of you know, BASIC is an independent,
non-profit, research organization with offices in Washington,
of course, but also in London. BASIC, for almost two decades,
has had a broad remit. BASIC has covered nuclear, biological
and conventional weapons control issues, missile defense and
multilateral institutions as they pertain to preventing conflict
and more general security issues. BASIC's mission is to bring
awareness to the public, policymakers and the media about
critical security issues. Our goal is to develop new ideas
for policymakers to adopt more effective foreign policies
that will hopefully lead to more peaceful international relations.
BASIC's Executive Director is Dr. Ian Davis
and he is based out of our London office. BASIC's recent funders
include the Ploughshares
Fund, the Joseph Rowntrees
Charitable Trust, Scurrah Wainwright, the Kirsch Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, and the Canadian
Government. I want to make sure all of them get credit because
they help make this work possible.
We will have two of our BASIC staff give presentations
today as well as our two expert guests. They will all speak
for about five to ten minutes. First we will have Dr. Chantal
de Jonge Oudraat discuss NATO and UN relations, particularly
as they pertain to peacekeeping operations. Then, we will
have Alistair Millar discuss tactical nuclear weapons. Third,
Matt Martin will talk about missile defense and he may want
to talk about nuclear security more broadly. David Isenberg
will discuss biological weapons security issues. Then, after
that briefing session, we will open up the session to questions
and interventions from everyone. So I would like to get started.
Thank you for your time here. Chantal, I will allow you to
start.
Dr. Chantal
de Jonge Oudraat: Thank you Chris. We talk a lot about
NATO and the EU, we also talk a lot about the EU and the UN,
but I think there is a more interesting relationship, namely
the one between NATO and the UN. I think there is a great
future for NATO/UN relations, actually a greater future than
for NATO-EU relations or EU-UN relations.
The relationship between NATO and the UN has
seen considerable change and one could say it has transformed
in a fundamental way since the end of the Cold War.
During the Cold War, NATO and the UN mostly
ignored each other. Within the UN, NATO was considered a dirty
word. Similarly within NATO, the UN was considered an evil
institution-a hotbed of Soviet spies-with whom it was better
not to engage.
Since the end of the Cold War, both NATO and
the UN have taken on new conflict management, conflict resolution
and peacekeeping tasks. NATO's scope of operations has also
become more global. Since their security tasks and areas of
intervention increasingly overlap, it was inevitable and natural
that NATO and the UN would start working more closely together.
And after a rocky start in the early 1990s they do so very
well, particularly in the field.
The problem with the NATO-UN relationship is
that these organizations have not yet developed the regular
institutional ties that reflect this reality and that would
facilitate inter-organizational cooperation. The reason why
the NATO-UN relationship remains under-- or undeveloped has
to do with the fact that there is no consensus on the role
and the future of NATO.
In very schematic terms, I would argue that
there are three schools of thought with respect to the future
of NATO.
First there is the Realist, or the "NATO will
disappear" school of thought. Second, there is the Maximalist
or the "NATO should go global" school of thought and third
there is the Minimalist or the "NATO should focus on its core
mission" school of thought.
The Realists argue that the end of the Cold
War has fundamentally changed the strategic landscape; that
the US and Europe no longer face shared threats to their survival
and therefore they no longer need to stick together. They
also argue that the US and Europe have increasingly divergent
interest and different ways of looking at the world.
The Maximalists or the Globalists agree that
the strategic landscape has changed, but they contend the
US and Europe still face many common security threats. They
point to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
terrorism and failing states. For NATO to continue to be relevant
it needs to respond to these challenges. Globalists insist
that NATO is and should continue to be the centerpiece of
US-European relations. They see NATO as a collective security
type of security organization and point to the 2004 expansion
as proof of the vitality of the institution. This school has
one mantra: "out of area or out of business."
Finally, the Minimalists argue that threats
to European security may resurface. They consider the relationship
with Russia uncertain. Many new NATO members in particular
value the collective defense aspect of NATO. They believe
in the importance of keeping the US engaged in Europe as an
offshore balancer against a possible resurgent Russia or as
a balancer against a too domineering set of old Europe countries.
They believe that NATO should focus on its core functions
and should not get entangled in global crisis management operations
outside of Europe. Many of these operations do not involve
vital interests and hence will not enjoy large and active
support. NATO should be careful not to raise expectations
and make promises that it cannot deliver. Undeliverable promises
will affect NATO's credibility.
I think that all three of these schools are
slightly off-target. I agree with the Minimalists that Europe
continues to need US engagement for many of the reasons that
the Minimalist put forward, but politically it is very difficult
to make this case and hence it is difficult to muster support
for the organization. In sum, minimalism is too weak a foundation
to keep NATO alive.
Realists are correct in saying that NATO has
lost its raison d'être with the end of the Cold War
but I think they underestimate the continuing European security
problems and they overstate the diverging interests between
Europe and the US.
Maximalists and Globalists point to the 2004
expansion as proof of the vitality of NATO. Yet they fail
to admit that the attraction of NATO in Central and Eastern
Europe is based on old 'balance of power' type of reasons
and not because of NATO's success in tackling new global security
problems. Globalists also fail to recognize the collective
action type of problems that are raised by the global 'out-of-Europe'
threats and that many of these new threats, such as the proliferation
of WMD and terrorism are actually best fought with non-military
instruments. NATO's role in fighting WMD is limited to consequence
management. Preventive or preemptive action either in terms
of intelligence sharing or in terms of military operations
are very difficult to undertake in a multilateral [setting],
including within NATO. As to NATO's contribution to the fight
against terrorism-again its contribution is minimal. The brunt
of the effort here has to come from police and other law enforcement
cooperation efforts.
What role for NATO? I would like to argue for
a fourth approach, and that is the Instrumentalist approach
or the "NATO as a toolbox is okay" approach. NATO is no longer
the strategic forum where the US and Europe decide on key
strategic issues. That function ended with the end of the
Cold War. Many people have recognized this, including the
current Secretary General and the German Chancellor.
The U.S. and Europe no longer have one single
forum to discuss political-strategic issues. What they have
is an interlocking set of bi-lateral relations and competing
fora such as the UN, the G-8, and the EU-U.S. summits in which
they can discuss these issues. The disappearance of the strategic
political dimension of NATO doesn't mean that NATO becomes
irrelevant or has to disappear. It means that the organization
needs to change and become a different type of organization.
NATO is and will increasingly become a more technical and
functional organization, a toolbox if you like, and there
is nothing wrong with being a good toolbox.
Now if we look what is inside that NATO toolbox,
there is one set of tools that NATO has developed and made
effective. NATO has proven to be an excellent peacekeeper
and a provider of stability. Since the early 1990s, NATO has
steadily developed this capacity and has taken on new tasks
in conflict management and conflict resolution and it has
been very effective. That said, NATO needs a partner. It cannot
do these types of operations alone. The UN is a very good
partner for NATO in these types of operations and I would
argue NATO's best partner. NATO and the UN are natural allies
in this domain and there is a natural division of labor between
these two organizations. Unlike the EU-UN relationship, there
is no inter-institutional security dilemma between NATO and
the UN. Unlike the EU-UN relationship, there is no competition
over competencies and capabilities.
It is very important to recognize that both
the UN and NATO are toolboxes. International organizations
like the UN and NATO are not cathedrals or houses of worship.
The Romanian Minister of Defense, Ioan Pascu, once put it
very nicely when he observed that: "international organizations
are the plastic we play with." Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the
current Secretary General of NATO, made his debut at the UN
Security Council in November 2004, and I hope that this will
become the beginning of a more robust institutional relationship.
I would urge you parliamentarians to support these efforts.
More specifically, I have four recommendations:
·
-
First, NATO should focus on what it does
best, and it should focus on peace and conflict operations.
The development of the NATO Response Force
or the development of stabilization forces will be critical
as will the partnership with the UN.
-
Second, NATO and the UN should develop
a robust institutional relationship. They should establish
liaison offices in Brussels and New York. They should
also establish working groups on specific issues such
as command and control; planning; and intelligence sharing.
Right now NATO has one person sitting in the Department
of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. The UN in Brussels
has a bigger office, but it's mostly focused on the EU.
I think the UN is gradually realizing that the more interesting
relationship is with NATO and I would suspect that they
are very open to expanding this relationship.
-
Thirdly, I would urge member states to
entrust NATO and the UN with the implementation of the
G-8 African peacekeeping initiative. The UN and NATO should
become the coordinator of peacekeeping training activities
around the world. The fact that NATO is starting to get
involved in Sudan is a positive development, but it is
a very tiny development that should be developed. ·
-
Fourthly, it is very important when NATO
and the UN strengthen their operational and institutional
ties, that they do this in a transparent way. This relationship
needs to be open to participation of others-it needs to
be inclusive. NATO has been very inclusive in many of
its peace operations. It includes many non-NATO members
and it should continue on this path. Within the UN a large
part of the membership, particularly the developing countries,
feel excluded from the decision-making process. The development
of the NATO-UN relationship should not strengthen this
feeling. And so openness and transparency are going to
be extremely important.
Chris Lindborg: Thank you Chantal. Alistair,
I'll have you go next.
Next:
Alistair
Millar, Fourth Freedom Forum: tactical nuclear weapons
and transatlantic security
Matt Martin,
BASIC: missile defense, nuclear security
David Isenberg,
BASIC: biological weapons security
Discussion, including WEU Assembly Defence
Committee
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