Next Steps: NATO’s Partnerships in the Globalized Era Speech delivered by Richard G. Olson, Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO. Brussels, Belgium

We are here to talk about Strategic Partnerships. Partnership is very much how we in NATO see the future of the Alliance and what we – the U.S. – see as the future of relations with our friends in Europe, and Asia, and indeed the Middle East, Africa and around the world. The U.S. has for many years had treaty alliances that cross the Atlantic and Pacific, and our long tradition of cooperation with allies in Europe and the Pacific forms a strong foundation for even closer ties in the future.

Our Transatlantic Alliance never fired a shot during the Cold War. Now we are conducting five operations on three continents, including countering an insurgency in Afghanistan, 4,000 kilometers from the eastern edge of alliance territory with 40,000 troops, 26 Allies (21 of whom are also members of the EU), and 11 additional global partners, along with the EU, the UN and other institutions. This critically important work cannot be accomplished without a global partnership.

As the EU grows stronger and more capable, our Alliance should increasingly seek a common approach to common problems based on common interests and shared values. Today’s EU brings development aid, human rights standards, anti-corruption programs, police trainers, election monitors, cadre building skills and most importantly, the capacity to bring all these things together in the right combination to meet the challenges of the moment – witness the EU’s mission in Bosnia which is multi-faceted; its role in East Timor; the role the EU played in galvanizing Europeans in both security and development in Lebanon.

Japan is also growing closer to NATO. Japanese-funded humanitarian projects continue to help the people of Afghanistan. Over $400,000 in projects has already been funded to address health issues, vocational training, and education for girls in the Samangan and Ghor Provinces.

But – as we are fond of saying – we can always do more, especially in Afghanistan. And we need our global partners to help us do more.

Global partners

At last year’s Riga Summit, Allies recognized that NATO’s policy of partnerships, dialogue, and cooperation is essential. NATO’s partnerships have an enduring value and contribute to stability and security across the Euro-Atlantic area and beyond. So at Riga, the Alliance launched an effort to further strengthen and expand our ability to work in partnership with non-NATO countries. This effort – that we call “global partnerships” – reflects what in reality was already taking place on the ground in our various operations, especially in Afghanistan and the Balkans. Global partnerships ensure that NATO is able to work easily and effectively with nations that share our interests and want to work together to address our common concerns. I would emphasize that the U.S. does not seek a global NATO, but rather a NATO with global partners.

As I said earlier, we seek a common approach to common problems based on common interests and shared values. This founding principle of NATO – so important to our Trans-Atlantic community in 1949 – is even more crucial in today’s increasingly complex and dangerous world. Today we are threatened not only by terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, but also must manage our relationship with a Kremlin that has tightened its grip on state power, and engage with a China that has serious choices to make about its own global role, and we have to think about the risks posed by our collective hydrocarbon dependence. We must address poverty, corruption and AIDS that affects too much of the developing world.

On September 11, 2001 and thereafter – in London, Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, Sharm el-Sheikh – we learned the hard way that what happens in one place impacts security around the world. Failed states have become breeding grounds for terror, weapons of mass destruction and drugs, and they are not limited to the neighborhoods where they are born. They threaten our way of life, our security, our prosperity – all of those things that too many of us came to take for granted with the end of the Cold War.

The 1990s foreign policy argument that NATO is “out of area or out or business” was settled decisively in favor of joint action where the threats are, so that they do not come to us.

And in today’s NATO, this doesn’t just mean Afghanistan. Over the past six years the nations of the Alliance have launched a full time anti-terrorist patrolling mission in the Mediterranean; we’ve trained Iraqi military officers, some 5,000 officers at NATO’s training mission outside Baghdad; we’ve trained the African Union in Darfur and in Addis Ababa; we’ve flown humanitarian aid to Pakistan after the earthquake and to the American Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. We’ve strengthened our collective capacity to get to the fight with the NATO Response Force and with transport aircraft; we’ve built new capabilities against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons and to counter improvised explosive devices both in the field and at home; and we’ve deployed almost 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo.

Perhaps most importantly, we’ve taken that round table in Brussels where NATO members sit – where we once sat to count Soviet warheads and planned where to put our own – and we’ve turned it into a full-time forum for consultation on the global challenges facing Trans-Atlantic democracies – from Afghanistan to energy security to the challenge of a more assertive Russia, even as we’ve also found areas where in the NATO-Russia Council we can work together.

NATO remains the only full-time Trans-Atlantic consultative body where North Americans and Europeans work together to identify and solve collective security challenges.

The 2006 NATO Summit in Riga celebrated an Alliance that is delivering 21^st century security and which defends our community of values. We expanded what we call the NATO table for political dialogue and our forum for discussing Iraq, North Korea, energy security, missile defense, in a variety of flexible formats. We also launched global partnerships reflecting a reality already achieved on the ground – particularly in Afghanistan, the Balkans and other places of mutual concern around the world.

In Afghanistan, the 26 NATO Allies are joined by 11 other countries – from our partnership programs with Albania, Finland and Sweden, to countries like Australia and New Zealand that share NATO’s concern about the threat from international terrorism. Morocco has joined us in Kosovo. We are also working with the UN and African Union to bring stability to Sudan.

Meanwhile, we’ve launched the NATO Training Cooperation Initiative to help train the militaries of our partner countries in the Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. We’re planning a Middle East faculty at the NATO Defense College in Rome and have discussed establishing a dedicated training facility in the Middle East.

There has been progress in the Intensified Dialogues with Georgia and the Ukraine. The NATO-Russia Council is meeting regularly to discuss topics such as Missile Defense and Kosovo.

The Allies invited Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia to participate in the Partnership for Peace, and gave a clear signal to Membership Action Plan countries Albania, Croatia and Macedonia that the “Alliance intends to extend further invitations to those countries who meet NATO’s performance-based standards and are able to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security.”

NATO Allies have agreed to develop our relations with Contact Countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan by making consultations more focused, and flexible. We are opening our “tool box” of exercises, training, courses and seminars and look forward to continued operations with our partners so that we can learn from each other while strengthening our individual capacities as well as heighten our interoperability.

Japan

With respect to Japan, our strong alliance endures. Japan is a key ally in Asia, and we recognize and applaud Japan’s willingness to invest in a partnership with NATO. Japan’s generous contributions to the efforts in Afghanistan are critical. Japan has provided over $1.4 billion in redevelopment assistance for road, agriculture and airport projects. Japan has helped disband and reintegrate illegal armed groups in Afghanistan and is generously contributing $20 million to humanitarian projects over the next few years.

We appreciate Japan’s contribution to the Coalition, including the fuel resupply mission and hope that the mission can be resumed as soon as possible.

As Prime Minister Fukada has said, “terrorism is a challenge to free and open societies and the fight against terror is a matter of Japan’s own national interest.” Indeed. What affects Japan affects the U.S., affects Europe, affects all 26 NATO Allies, our partners in Afghanistan, and our many friends around the globe.

Global partners share our belief that it is crucial to work together in order to bring stability to unstable hot spots around the world. Instability in remote regions of the world threatens us all – and we have begun to work together to address it.

Increasingly NATO is providing a forum for the democracies of the world to meet in partnership to defend their common security interests and as such becoming the core of a global democratic security community.

Thank you.