Ambassador Discusses NATO Plans

U.S. Ambassador to NATO R. Nicholas Burns told an audience at the Charles Hotel yesterday that the organization’s role in the Middle East must be strengthened if it is to maintain European security.

“The greater part of the work we do in the future will be in the Middle East,” he said.

The expansion into the Middle East could include peacekeeping in Iraq and possibly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but not an extension of membership to Middle Eastern countries, he said, noting that NATO already has peacekeeping forces in Kabul.

“If you look ahead 18 months, you will see NATO spreading throughout Afghanistan beyond the major city,” he said.

New post-communist additions to the organization, he said, will reinforce NATO’s commitment to freedom. Forty percent of the current 26 NATO members lived under communist regimes.

“These countries lived through dictatorship and value freedom and are willing to pay the price that freedom requires [in other countries],” Burns said.

One obstacle to increased NATO military capability is the relative military weakness of all NATO countries compared to the U.S. Increasing military capability of other NATO countries, according to Burns, has the potential to increase security for all member nations.

Weaker member countries are also not spending enough money on research, development, or secure communications, according to Burns.

“We’ve told the allies it is not just defense spending, it is the transition from territorial defense to expeditionary peacekeeping or warfare,” he said.

The ambassador also emphasized the need for multilaterism in American diplomacy.

“I truly believe that the U.S. has to avoid unilaterism at all costs. Colin Powell and Condi Rice and Don Rumsfeld have put in a tremendous amount of time to create a strategic vision for a new NATO.”

The ambassador expressed dismay about the anti-French sentiment in the US in the months before and after the Iraq war.

“I hope we can get over the period of pouring perfectly good French wine down the drain and calling the French names on David Letterman,” he said.

“We have no better natural relationship than with the European democracies.”

The event was co-sponsored by the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and the Belfer Centre for Science and International Studies at the Kennedy School of Government.