Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on May 17, 1999:
His Excellency Alexandr Vondra
Thank you very much for this excellent introduction. Thank you, Col. Mack, for inviting me here to speak. [This is not my first visit to] Los Angeles -- and not only Los Angeles, but also with this institution … first, when I accompanied President Havel in 1991, and when I accompanied Prime Minister Klaus, almost two years ago here. Those times I had to listen here, so now the change is that I have to speak. That is the bad news for me. The good news is that you prepared for me this fantastic audience, and I appreciate this a lot. [You have a] busy schedule -- just this week Tom Friedman is coming to promote his new book, to speak also, I guess, about the elections in Israel, which are taking place just today. The President of Mexico is [also important] especially here in California.
Other good news for me was that for the first time I could see a little bit of California out of the metropolitan area. Over the last three days I have been with my wife, traveling. So I had a really nice three days, although it created another problem, because I planned to be here back in time in the evening. But I underestimated this appetite of the Californians to enjoy a little bit of drinking and smoking and living perhaps in Las Vegas, and was returning back yesterday by Interstate 15. There was traffic already, you know, four hours away in the deep desert, so I came late last night to the city and only prepared some few notes, but I hope that I will not fall short of the expectation.
I was asked to speak on NATO, the current expedition of NATO in Kosovo, and as the representative of the new members in NATO. It is really an interesting experience. Many of you will remember the big celebration -- it was just in the middle of March approximately six, seven weeks ago when we were celebrating at the Truman Library in Independence Missouri, the entry of the Czech. Republic, Poland and Hungary into NATO. During the past six, seven weeks two very substantial things have happened: number one [is that] there was a NATO summit, which approved many documents. Perhaps the most important document is the new strategy concept, which for the first time has defined in a more precise way what are called the new missions of the alliance. And at the same time we are just in the [midst] of the first conflict, which [was part of] this new philosophy, the so-called "missions out of area" -- I mean our activity in Kosovo. And of course it is not easy, this kind of baptism in NATO. I think nobody in Warsaw, Prague or Budapest planned just this kind of baptism, and of course they took many people by surprise, not only here in the United States to follow the current discussion, but also, of course, in our country.
So to start my remarks I think it would be useful to return somewhere fifty years later because NATO was celebrating… its fiftieth anniversary during this summer in Washington and to commemorate NATO as such, the organization that is based on a collective defense system. Its general purpose was, is, and still will be to defend the common security. Of course, after the end of the Cold War and the loss of the visible, stable, and predictable enemy, the question about the purpose has appeared and for those who spent the last two years in the United States. I must tell you that I had to face a lot of disconcerting questions, especially from those who did not favor NATO enlargement. Tom Friedman, who will be here tomorrow, was definitely among them. So I think it [makes] certain sense to commemorate this situation and the basic [idea] -- of NATO, which was established in 1949.
Anyway, as an immediate reaction to what had been at the time in Prague --maybe some of you know that it was an immediate reaction to a Communist coup d’etat in Prague in February 1948. So at that time, of course, the mission number one was to contain the Communist and Soviet threats. But at the same time, it was not only a mission. Even at that time another very important mission was to avoid the domination by a single European power in European affairs, and it could be about Russia, but at the same time it could also be about Germany. It was based on the experience that, due to the domination of a single European power in European affairs, the major conflicts not only [affected] the European continent, but also the whole world.
The third mission that related to the second one was to keep the Transatlantic bond alive and to keep U.S. presence in Europe. I think it was based on the previous lessons of history in Europe in this century. Another mission was, to again interrelate with the previous one, to create something like favorable conditions in which European integration could flourish. I think the U.S. role, for example, in the drafting of the German constitution [as well as] the U.S. role in the Marshall Plan, is undoubted. And last but not least, there was another mission that was argued, especially in the last few years, but which has since [emerged] in a letter of the North Atlantic treaty: the concept of the safeguarding of democratic values. Of course, 50 years after, the situation has changed a lot, but one must say that NATO’s original mission has not been fully accomplished yet. Let me give you a few examples, and not speak about this last mission of safeguarding values, because this is the never-ending goal.
First and foremost… Russia is still an unpredictable factor, not only in European, but also in world politics. In concurrent development’s, [these are] the changes in the government, the debate of impeachment, and the draft letters of the impeachment process. Second, European integration is somewhere in the middle of its process and it’s a very open-ended process. First of all, the single currency is the project which was just kicked off at the beginning of this year, and, of course, this is the time when all those members, all those participants, have a lot of incentive to fulfill the criteria. Either by real, or by this so-called creative, accounting, the sustainability of the project will be shown in a time of the first major crisis, when either people or money will have to move from one area to another. Again, another example of this European integration process is the sign as the middle way. There is neither any single foreign nor defense or segregated policy yet, so there is still urgent need for U.S. leadership… I can give you one small example: we were together drafting a role for UN to condemn the situation humoring Cuba. We were discussing this [in the] European Union, and it was even difficult for the European Union to take one single position on human rights in Cuba.
So now let me briefly summarize what is the central European interest in NATO: no doubt it is to reaffirm the common defense, a core mission of the Atlantic alliance, what is inscribed in Article 5 of the original treaty, and at the same time keep the Transatlantic link strong. That is especially, in my eyes, important for those countries like the Czech Republic or Poland, which are located in the center of Europe, with all of their experience. But at the same time, we must understand that the reality now is much more complicated, in a certain sense, than it was decades ago. First of all, NATO perhaps is the most powerful alliance in the world and there is not any actual change to its territory, and the question of [its] purpose is coming again and again on the table.
The word territory is being often [used] in the discussion, [as are] the words interests, values, or common purpose. Even those opposed to the idealism in the U.S. foreign policy, like Henry Kissinger, are speaking a lot [about] common purpose and common interest. Number two, NATO was and still is a kind of certain trade-off. America invests in European security and, at the same time, Europe tolerates U.S. leadership in world affairs, both in its positive expression as well as in its strange expression. But with the process of European integration, there is sometimes less European enthusiasm to do that, and less U.S. willingness to pay the same amount of the bill. Especially [when] America raises the question that if it is not going to lose in this business, [it is in] the U.S. interest to expand the origin of the NATO role beyond the Article Five mission and take care of those regions where the United States has their vital interests. [Interests] like the Far East, Asia, China, Korea, or the Middle East. It was mainly in the U.S. interest to open the discussion about the Article 5 mission as a way of forming the new situation and to keep this trade-off between the U.S. and Europe strong. At the same time, after the end of the Cold War, there was a growing disorder in Europe, in the NATO territory, especially in the Southeast and Eastern Europe. This disorder is not a direct threat to NATO territory, or at least now it is not, but it creates the threats first for the creation of alliance. Views can differ, especially about the internal security of the many current NATO members especially in Europe.
It is also the European imperative, not a question but really imperative to stabilize the periphery of NATO to contain and to hopefully solve entire emerging crises. So what was called many times in a debate "crisis management" and "crisis response concept," and a combination of the U.S. interest and the European interest, this concept of non-Article 5 missions appeared. Of course, it is also the center of European interest and in the clear interest of the countries like Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary, this basic interest to keep the common defense. The interest is to differ a lot, our ability to project stability out of an area, especially in our eyes in the direct neighborhood, but of course various problems have emerged.
Number one problem, that was just discussed in Washington and solved with some compromise, was the legal mandate for the operation. The Czech view on that was practically the same as that on the compromise: in other words, the UN Security Council resolution is good, but it isn’t necessary. The other problem is that if we are going to operate out of the area, there is not any clear commitment inside a treaty. So, if we are going to build a self-defense, there is a clear commitment inside the treaty, so all the member countries are obliged to do that. If we are going to agree on an action outside the area, that is not any type of commitment. It is, rather, in fact, about a coalition of the willing and if you have those that are not willing, the risk of certain split is much higher. At the same time, perhaps the biggest problem is that we are trying to examine the application of non-Article 5 mission on the example of Kosovo, which is a unique one. While in the past, the main [focus] in foreign policy was something like defense of the territory, the resources and so on, now it’s purely the human being. It’s an easy justification on the one hand, but it’s a very difficult justification on the other hand. To examine the difference, one can take into mind this famous statement by Bismarck in the last century: "Kosovo is the grassland for Albanian goats, which does not deserve the sacrifice of a single German soldier." Now with all of our experience with the Holocaust and World War II, and all other experiences of sufferings this century, I think one cannot repeat this sentence again.
There are new conditions. There is the role of media and the CNN factor, which does not allow what was allowed in the past. There is also the development of the humanitarian legal system, which can justify the humanistic intervention. And is very different to compare the situation in the international law 50 years ago. There is also this combination of the U.S. leadership, based on a certain idealism, with some kind of European skepticism, which was somehow modified with the new government in Europe.
At the same time, there are the serious risks. First of all, despite NATO’s military power, "the West has high capacity to kill, but very low capacity to die," to quote my friend Jack Rupnick [sic]. And it means that the political will to participate on those humanitarian missions is rather limited. Number two, if you are in Serb defense to reach the political consensus is quite easy, because that is the matter of our life. In those humanitarian missions, it’s much more difficult and there are the various individual interests in the various individual states in the game. And, in fact, it’s almost a miracle the consensus inside the alliance -- seven, eight weeks after the bombing.
But now, I think it is important to stress the uniqueness of Kosovo, which any way is not for the first time. We are experiencing a mission like that. The mission, number one, where NATO was not involved as the organization but was involved in the logistics, and all those key members as well as the invited, like the Czech Republic or Poland, were involved, physically, with the war in the Gulf, which was, in fact, also an out-of-area mission. This was very clear, because there was a country, Iraq, which you could fight, with another country, Kuwait, as the justification. There was the justification in economics sense, the oil and those resources. And last but not least, it was when the international conditions were quite favorable ones. So the Soviet Union, at that time still the Soviet Union, at least in the beginning, was very cooperative. So that was an example of an easy mission. And even the geography, the flight in the desert, was easy to operate.
The second example of the non-Article 5 mission was the Bosnia War -- or the NATO involvement in that war. It was again relatively easy. First of all, the sides of the conflict were tired. Even more, they achieved their basic goals, both Serbs and Croats. And the U.S. leadership just jumped into the situation in certain very favorable moments. It was not as the very beginning but as some kind of last resort. And it was again relatively easy, because both sides were internationally recognized entities.
Kosovo is a very different example. First of all, Belgrade takes this as a matter of its national pride and existence, so it’s not like Bosnia. Second, the sides did not achieve their minimum goals. Perhaps the only minimum goals were achieved by the KLA, because they had a plan more than a year ago to get NATO into the conflict. And they succeeded. So now we are in situation which some tend to interpret as to be in the slump or rut. How do we get out? I think that we must repeat again and again the sentence quoted by the famous German Carl Bart, "In the storm you must continue, there is no other way." So what is the conclusion of the current situation and what is the way out? First, I think that we must win this battle. Otherwise, we can lose the overall struggle for the new concept.
What is at stake is not only Kosovo but also NATO itself. I have tried to describe how this is important for us, to keep NATO not only alive but to keep it strong so to win the battle or to declare at least to declare a victory in a credible way. Second, how to achieve that. There is a lot of talk about ground troops. I think it is too late. If we would have had a large planning of the operation before the bombing, I think the projection of the power in the region was the dispensable part of that. And to have ground troops before the bombing as a result of the negotiations between the countries in the neighborhood, beginning with Hungary and ending with Macedonia and Greece, could create favorable conditions. But it did not happen, so now I guess that we would face this substantial opposition from almost all of the neighboring countries, with the exception of Albania. To operate this only from Albania -- from somebody who knows the geography and the mountains that are dividing -- it will be rather through the negotiated settlement, I would bet on that. Number three, when we win we shouldn’t overestimate this victory. We cannot operate as a global organization, we need to carefully select the next targets, and I do not mean now, the targets, but the targets in a broader sense, to define our priority, where the Europeans and the U.S. are able to meet. Then [we need] to prepare this really in advance.
I think what is also important in those non-Article 5 missions, is to try to avoid potential conflict between the north and the south. For example, in the call for operation, there was a good experience to include countries from the Middle East like Jordan and others. Jordan may not be the best example but Syria, Egypt and so on, or Argentina or the others. Last but not least, to be able to survive also the times of the problems. Let me conclude, there is a very long way ahead of us and we will have to face much more situations like today in Kosovo. NATO must survive it, and I have no doubt that it will.