Estonia and NATO Enlargement

Remarks by Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, at Columbia University, New York, March 31, 1997


Ladies and gentlemen,

Good evening and thank you for inviting me here to speak tonight.

In April 1950 the US National Security Council drafted a document that explicitly defined America's official Cold War strategy of containment. That document, which later became known as NSC-68, was a revolutionary document in many respects. Remarkably for its time, it correctly diagnosed the intrinsically authoritarian nature of the Soviet Union and its systematic internal shortcomings. It set for the US the task of preparing itself for a long twilight struggle in which Soviet military probes on the periphery would have to be "contained" by a clear demonstration of military force, all the while waiting stoically for the Soviet system to collapse under its own weight. As that document eloquently, and as it would turn out, prophetically stated,

It is only by practical affirmation, abroad as well as home, of our essential values, that we can preserve our own integrity, in which lies the real frustration of the Kremlin design.

Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, later noted that before NSC 68 "Never had a Great Power expressed objectives quite so demanding of its own resources without any expectation of reciprocity other than the dissemination of its national values."

These values, of self-determination, democracy, free-markets, the rights of the individual and the rule of law, shone as a beacon to the captive nations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. For the half-century of the Cold War, America provided the moral leadership to lead the Western world in opposing communism. For a half-century, Estonians, among others, really looked upon the US, to use Reagan's words, as a kind of "shining city on the hill."

In hindsight perhaps they were a little quick to overlook the imperfections of the American system, a little quick to eulogize a political system that, in the end, was designed and is operated by fallible human beings, but the fact remains that the contrast with the systematic terror, oppressive control and economic lunacy of the Soviet Union could not have been sharper.

When the collapse of the Soviet Union finally came, it occurred largely as those who drafted NSC 68 predicted it would. As we all know, the Soviet Union was not defeated in military conflict or forced to its knees by a nuclear ultimatum. Rather, it imploded, with more of a whimper than a bang, because of its inability to feed its inhabitants and keep its far-flung empire suppressed.

What many Americans don't realize is that the costly, and often difficult leadership role that the US took upon itself during the Cold War is highly respected and greatly appreciated in Eastern Europe. And now in the post-Cold War era, the peace dividend for leading the liberating forces, if you will, is a profound respect for American foreign policy and acknowledgement of the positive benefits of continued US involvement in Europe.

That involvement was given institutional form through NATO, through the trans-atlantic link with America's European NATO partners. In Estonia, we continue to believe that the US plays a positive and stabilizing role in Europe through NATO, among other institutions. I also believe, as an outside observer, that it is in the long term US interest to stay involved in European security issues, and that NATO is the institution through which that involvement should have its form.

That is why we support US efforts, as undertaken by President Clinton and implemented by Secretary of State Albright, to create a new NATO to fully reflect the undoubtedly more pleasant, though more complex, realities of the post-Cold War era. Part of that adaptation effort will involve internal reforms of NATO itself. Another part will be the negotiation of formal relationships between NATO and Russia and the Ukraine. Perhaps the most important part, however, will be the enlargement of NATO to admit one or more of the Eastern European applicant countries.

In the last few months, the press, both in North America and Europe, has fixated to some degree on the question of NATO enlargement. The opponents of NATO enlargement have tended to present the issue as a choice between needlessly irritating Russia and carrying on happily as we were. Ladies and gentlemen, quite simply, this is a false choice.

Let's break down this proposition into its component parts. The first question that must be asked then is: Is NATO enlargement needlessly antagonizing Russia? The answer is an unequivocal no.

The first point to note is that Russian popular opinion is not monolithically opposed to NATO enlargement. Countless opinion polls have shown that the average Russian is, perhaps not surprisingly, much more concerned with domestic economic issues than with ill-defined perceptions of threats from the West. Nor are Russian policymakers remotely unanimous in opposition to NATO enlargement. In general, the more reform minded, free-market oriented parliamentary groups are not opposed to NATO expansion. For example, no less a figure than Andrei Kozyrev, the former Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and a current member of the Duma, recently wrote in Newsweek that "the Russian people must be told the truth, and the truth is: NATO is not the enemy." His advice to Western NATO members is very simple. Recognize opposition to NATO enlargement as a Russian domestic policy crisis, and resist capitulation to the old guard. I think it would be foolhardy to ignore his advice and think that giving in to the demands of the hard-liners would reduce their influence.

Does Russia have anything to fear from NATO enlargement? I think that an objective observer would have to conclude that it doesn't.

Russia's strategic position will not change appreciably due to NATO enlargement. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe do not themselves realistically pose a threat to Russia. NATO has already stated that it has "no plan, no need and no intention" to station nuclear weapons on the territory of new members, and promised that conventional forces will not be deployed in a way that could be seen as threatening Russia. Remember also that Russia and NATO already share a border in Norway.

That same objective observer would also have to acknowledge that NATO is hardly behaving like a hostile aggressor. NATO was founded as a purely defensive alliance and it has does nothing in almost fifty years to suggest that it is anything but. At present, NATO forces and Russian forces are working cooperatively, soldier next to soldier, under a single command structure to secure the peace in Bosnia. NATO has made it amply clear that it views Russia as a partner, not as an opponent, by offering to negotiate a special NATO-Russia charter. Finally, NATO has demonstrated its willingness to reduce the levels of conventional weapons in Europe by re-negotiating the Conventional Forces in Europe Agreement.

Russia, in turn, should welcome enlargement. Russia suffered to a greater degree than almost any European country during the two world wars of this century, wars that had their origins in Eastern and Central Europe, and it should welcome the creation of a zone of stability on its Western borders. The offer of increased Russian participation in NATO will provide new opportunities to integrate Russia into Euro-Atlantic structures and to participate in the management of security.

The second main question to be examined then is to ask ourselves: why can't we just carrying on happily as we were? Why can't enlargement wait?

The answer is that the status quo is simply not an available option. The last few years have been an unusual period in the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe as our countries were focused inwards on domestic reforms. This period is coming to an end, as is only natural, and countries have begun to look at ways of protecting their security.

If NATO decided not to enlarge, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be forced to look to each other and to other arrangements to protect their security. The result could only be a renationalization of foreign and defense policy, a result which European history should have taught us by now is a dangerous route indeed.

As British Foreign Secretary Rifkind has said, those who argue that NATO should not enlarge now are in fact saying that outdated, Cold War dividing lines deserve to exist, that the iron curtain should not be torn down, but rather rustproofed and repainted. Why should we acknowledge barriers that no longer exist? Now is the time to extend the stability that Western Europe has enjoyed for a half-century to the entire continent, to finally erase the residual lines in the sand left by the raising of that same iron curtain.

In contrast, there are several concrete reasons that NATO should enlarge. First, every one of the 11 current applicant countries is a sovereign, independent state that should be free to choose its own security arrangements, and join collective security organizations as it sees fit. The US is not forcing anyone to join anything--our countries have voluntarily decided that joining NATO is in our national interests.

It would be unconscionable to ignore the stated wishes of the 100 million inhabitants of the applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe over the purported perceptions of 150 million Russians. When we take into account the fact that Ukraine, with a population of 55 million, also supports NATO enlargement, then it is clear that this is not a question of catering to some kind of regional interest group. This is the will of Eastern and Central Europe, democratically expressed, and it should not be blithely dismissed.

Why do the applicant countries want to join NATO in the absence of a clear external military threat? The simple answer is that we want in for the same reasons that other countries stay in. We want to join for the same reasons that Britain, Denmark and the US stay in after the end of the Cold War. We want to join because we see the military benefits of collective security and the political benefits of the stability that NATO offers.

NATO's success in deterring aggression for almost 50 years has proven the value of collective security. By guaranteeing to treat every armed attack on a NATO member state as an attack against all member states, any such attacks can be prevented from occurring in the first place. By allowing the pooling of resources, collective security is also less expensive for each member than going it alone.

Post-WW II European history has shown that NATO membership is a positive force for stability. NATO membership helped France and Germany reconcile in the immediate aftermath of the war, promoted the re-integration of Spain and Italy into Europe and stabilized the relationship between Greece and Turkey. Just the aspiration to NATO membership alone has produced positive moves in Eastern and Central Europe today as Poland and Lithuania, Hungary and Romania, and the Czech Republic and Germany, to name a few, have all taken steps to improve bilateral relations.

Under Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, NATO commits itself to remaining an open organization willing to admit any other European State "in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area." NATO has enlarged three times before and now, a half-decade after the end of the Cold War, it is time that it should do so again.

The central principle of NATO enlargement must be the indivisibility of security; an increase in security for some states cannot mean a decrease in security for others. The creation of new lines of divisions and grey zones of insecurity should be avoided at all costs. The mantras that "the door will remain open" and the "first will not be the last" must remain credible come July, and their meaning must be explicitly defined.

If those oft-repeated statements do not remain credible, there is the risk of causing what in other contexts I have referred to as the "Dean Acheson effect" after the U.S. Secretary of State who, rightly or wrongly, was accused of precipitating the Korean conflict by neglecting to explicitly mention South Korea among the countries the U.S. would defend. We can in fact distinguish a weak and a strong form of the Acheson effect. The strong form is fairly dire and one would hope for all of us, unlikely; to whit, that by taking in a small number of applicant countries, and then shutting the door, NATO says in effect, that those countries not taken in are on their own.

There is also a weak form of the Acheson effect, and that is economic. It is clear that whichever countries are chosen for the first round of NATO enlargement will benefit economically far out of proportion to the progress they have made in moving toward a market economy. It is simply a fact that foreign investors will be more willing to invest in an East European NATO member than a non-member. What greater security can you have for the safety of your investment than Article V?

The NATO enlargement process should not be conducted in a way that is completely incomprehensible to outsiders. NATO enlargement decision making must be transparent to all aspirant countries, and it must be transparent to Russia; in addition, the negotiation of the NATO charter with Russia must be transparent to all the other Partner Countries.

Membership has its privileges, but it also has costs and responsibilities, a fact which is not lost on the applicant states. Developing our armed forces to NATO standards of interoperability is not easy, nor is it fiscally painless during a period of continued domestic economic restructuring. But it is undoubtedly cheaper than having to build up our armed forces outside of a collective security organization, and it is a necessary step if we are to make a real contribution to protecting European security.

The Partnership for Peace, a program often misunderstood on this side of the Atlantic as a kind of junior varsity version of NATO, has been the primary means by which the countries of Eastern Europe, and the traditionally non-aligned countries of Western Europe, have joined together with NATO to work for European security and stability. The Partnership for Peace has already become the most extensive military co-operation program in European history. For example, both the IFOR and the SFOR peacekeeping forces in Bosnia drew on NATO and PfP troops, and it is interesting to note that there are now troops from more Partnership for Peace countries in Bosnia than NATO member countries.

As part of Estonia's preparation for eventual NATO membership, we have been active participants in both the Partnership for Peace program and our own Intensified Dialogue with NATO. The Partnership for Peace has been a tremendous positive learning experience for both NATO and the armed forces of all PfP states. The Estonian officer corps have benefited greatly from the opportunity to learn the skills essential to modern soldiering during joint PfP exercises. NATO has made great strides in learning how to combine the defence forces of a staggeringly large number of nations into a cohesive whole, an organizational skill that is likely to be only more important in the future.

Estonia, for example, has sent peacekeeping troops to Croatia, IFOR and IFOR in Bosnia, and most recently, to Lebanon. While our contribution is not large in comparison to that of the US, it must be remembered that Estonia is a small country. I think that the important point is that we have begun to demonstrate that as a NATO member Estonia plans to be not only be a security consumer, but also a security provider.

Estonia strongly supports NATO's efforts to negotiate a special document with Russia. It is clear that Russia is one of the world's great military powers and it is entirely logical that some mechanism exist for Russian consultation and co-operation with NATO. Russia should not be isolated.

However, Russia should also not isolate itself. Nor should Russia attempt to isolate others. No attempts should be made to prevent Estonia, or any other country for that matter, from joining legitimate collective defence organizations, such as NATO. This is not irrational or aggressive behaviour on our part, but rather well reasoned action with peaceful intent. Under the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, of which both Estonia and Russia are members, every state has the inherent right to choose the means to ensure its own security. We are pleased that both the Russian and U.S. presidents reiterated their support of this principle in a joint statement at the recent Helsinki summit.

Estonia welcomes the progress made in Helsinki; despite the agreement to disagree on the issue of NATO enlargement, the joint commitment to address common security challenges through cooperation among all the states of the Euro-Atlantic area was a positive step. We welcome the headway made in advancing the cause of disarmament, in both nuclear and conventional weapons, and the open spirit of the meeting.

In all likelihood discussions in the coming months will lead to an enhanced version of the Partnership for Peace, or PfP Plus, which will provide new opportunities for all PfP members on a military operational level. The enhanced PfP will probably include among other new features increased input for partners into the planning of future Combined Joint Task Force missions (such as IFOR), partner offices in regional headquarters, and NATO offices in partner countries. Estonia believes that the PfP should be enhanced to just short of the point of a security guarantee such as that contained within Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Estonia has also put forward a "self-differentiation" proposal to take into account the fact that not all current members of the PfP seek to join NATO as full members. Estonia has suggested that NATO offer some form of political recognition to PfP members who "self-differentiate" themselves on the basis of 1)sharing the common values of the Alliance and 2)willingness to join the Alliance. We have proposed that these countries be officially defined as "Applicant Partners"

While discussing Estonia's place in the new European architecture, it should be noted that at roughly the same time as the Madrid summit is taking place the European Union will in all likelihood be concluding its Intergovernmental Conference, and that European Union enlargement is scheduled to follow six months after that. Estonia is one of the ten applicant countries to the European Union and we believe that based on our rapid reforms we are legitimate candidates to be included in the first group of enlargement, however that ultimately takes shape.

We firmly believe that the EU enlargement decision must be based on objective criteria, such as the progress of economic and political reform, not geopolitical criteria, such as who is whose neighbour or who is considered to be far away. In my recent visits to European Union member states, I am pleased to report that I heard only support for the principle of enlargement on the basis of objective criteria.

I have also heard, however, vague murmurings in the media din that Estonia may be accepted in the first round of European Union enlargement as a consolation prize for being excluded from the first round of NATO enlargement. Ladies and gentlemen, let me be perfectly clear in saying that Estonia seeks EU membership because of what the European Union is in and of itself and because of what it offers and demands of its constituent states. We realise that although NATO and the EU are in some ways complementary, they are not connected. When the European Union makes its enlargement decision, all that Estonia asks for is a fair chance. A fair chance to be evaluated on the success of our reforms.

In conclusion,

Ladies and gentlemen,

With all the heated public debate over NATO's decision to enlarge, one could be forgiven for thinking that the process will be resolved this summer in Madrid. We should remember, however, that the Madrid Summit must be the formal beginning of a process, rather than the climatic ending of one. It must be ensured that the particular position of those countries who have clearly stated their desire to join NATO is explicitly respected. Any enlargement which leaves the impression of rejecting democratic applicant countries will deny the principle of indivisibility of security.

As President Clinton has said, "Freedom's boundaries should now be defined by new behaviour, not old history." Together we should be working to abolish dividing lines in Europe. New dividing lines, whether between NATO and its partners or within the group of applicant partners, cannot be accepted.

If there is one thought that I would like the you to take away from my address it is this: despite the current media focus on the lead-up to the Madrid conference, we must starting turning our minds and our intellectual energy towards what will happen after Madrid. We need to start seriously considering what will happen to those countries that continue to seek membership after the first round of enlargement, when the next round of enlargement will take place, and what the enhanced PfP should look like. It is in both NATO and the applicant countries' interest that these issues be carefully thought through and prudently planned out. It will be a risky state of affairs indeed if the world wakes up on July 10th, rubs its eyes and has to blankly wonder "What next?".

Thank you.