No. 3. (27/02/2004)

Speech by Dominique Struye de Swielande, Representative of Belgium on the North Atlantic Council*

In a few hours the Belgian parliament is going to ratify the accession treaties to NATO and to the EU. Of course for Hungary is no more the case regarding ratification to the accession to NATO but to the EU its go your case. What is important in that event is that Belgian parliament is voting for the accession to both international institutions on the same day. This bears a great symbolic value because it means that in the eyes of Belgium you have to come into this institution at the same time, and the two institutions belonging to the Euro-Atlantic family it means that you will enter to this family. It is the two facets of the same coin for Belgium. It proves as your foreign minister has said already you can be a perfect member of the EU and a perfect member of NATO, there are no differences and they are a part of the same exercises and the symbolic value of that is a very great. Having ask me to speak about NATO's new missions the automatically added behind it NATO-EU relations. As soon as Belgium speaks they want to add NATO-EU relations it must be have a value to ask a Belgian ambassador to speak about it and I will try to concentrate on these aspects also.

The year of 2003, your foreign minister mentioned, was the year of the new missions. If you look at the different missions we undertook either as NATO or as the EU you find a lot of differences. In Irak we first had a mission in support of Turkey that was a classical NATO-mission, if however we look at the support of the Polish headquarters, it is not a classical mission because it is not a NATO mission as such. In Afghanistan it was originally not a NATO mission but you know it was handed over in the form of enhanced support of NATO, and now in fact it is a NATO led operation. If you look at FYROM members there you find a NATO-mission becoming an EU mission under the Berlin Plus Agreement.

Finally, this year we had the Artemis mission in the Congo and that is an EU mission. As soon as you speak about missions you always find the aspect NATO-EU. That is important to clarify why do we have this discussion? And what is behind this discussion? We have to accept that if we go through all these missions that was overtaken this year, each was characterized by some difficulties between NATO-EU. The basis of a good discussion is you have to be a bit more provocative and not always look at perfect consensus. Your minister only spoke about differences in opinion, I would go a bit further and say that it was a confrontation between trends and approaches, between NATO and EU on one side and between NATO and the USA on the other.

Which were the 2 main problems? On the one hand the US wants to enhance more clearly as previously made known demand for a more monopolistic or exclusive position in her everything related to world security as it was illustrated in the Iraq question. On the other hand, the EU continues its emancipation also in the defense area and it on its way to and in the perspective of the political union.

The whole exercise we are doing within EU is in the perspective of the political union and that was perfectly illustrated in the ongoing work in the IGC. First, lets take a glance at the US aspect and terrorism. We have to recognize that terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Already for several years we have had some attacks against certain American interests. But it reached a climax with the terrorist attack against the US and Washington on 11 September which outraged every American citizen, which I think we have to understand and maybe its an element which we have underestimated. I think that after a few hours this city - this parliament, or the old royal palace, or the cathedral - had been attacked, your emotions would have been very high.

We are still thinking of this event - as I always say - the lines of a Hollywood-movie. We have underestimated its impact on the American society. The consequence was declared that Americans clearly a war against terrorism. The use of the world "war" by US authorities underlines it and even the proof that US lives in an extreme stage of fear pushing into wars, I am quoting Brzezinski "a paranoid policy". Making everybody and everything which is not in full agreement with US, is suspicious. But we are not in a situation of war. But US has placed itself during the World War 2 in a situation of war. Where we are simply in a situation of fight against terrorism. The differences are absolutely crucial. So the consequence that US is at war, president Bush repeated constantly, secondly that attacking Iraq was the best way to show the world that it was extremely serious in this decision to combat terrorism wherever it was located.

The US attitude and attack on Iraq has many substantial consequences. By amplifying the motion of preventing strike it has put serious question on the prevailing roles of public international law. Second, it also questioned the cornerstone of the post World War 2 international security system by refusing the UN to play the final essential role in the research of political solution of a critical situation. And third, it favors a transformation of the Alliance at a speed and to an extent which is not always easy to follow. For an institution of collective defense it evolves at present into a main peacekeeping institution creating even the impression that it want to substitute itself in the certain way to the UN.

At the same time questions have been raised about the traditional institution of the Alliance. The preference has been given to coalitions of the willing and to a toolbox NATO to a certain degree. Many partners in NATO have the impression that NATO is in a certain degree recuperated for the exclusive advantage of US policy. There are feelings which a lot of members resent at the moment. In one word do yes more and more required an exclusive and monopolistic place in the field of maintaining and restoring world peace and order. In the eyes of the US government only the US is able and capable of fighting terrorism and the states that support it. This implies that all other countries and institutions have to place themselves in the position of subordination, which for the European specialist is in many cases exactly the opposite of what we in the European frazeology are subsidiarity. Including that subordination toward EU and its defense policy and efforts. The way the US has tackled the problem of terrorism, especially attacking Iraq before it was proved the weapons of mass destruction or clear links to Al-Kaida crystallized into a bone of contention within some European countries in February this year. It explains why this country face the problem first in supporting Turkey but in fact with the idea of an attack against Iraq with an indirect NATO implication. The US couldn't understand this attitude and have been critical of these European countries who were not prepared to follow the US and to show to solidarity. We find - between the NATO and EU - different threat perception which is important in the way we have been approaching it. We have underestimated the impact of the 11 September attack. Between ourselves we have some difficulties, which are basically in some different opinion we have to recognize it, and not saying it is good or bad, we have to be honest to recognize that there is a different perception at the moment of what terrorism is and the way we have to react to it.

Europe had a whole movement also about investing or interesting itself more and more about defense. I have to go back to a 1948 when we signed the Brussels Treaty, the initiative of the European defense communities in 54. It is important to find out that it is not yesterday when Europe discovered a European defense dimension. It is false to say on 29 April a bloody group of countries suddenly came out with a new idea. Idea of defense are going back in Europe in 1948 I can even tell you that when we signed the Treaty of Brussels in 48 President Truman read it and said: "wouldn't it be better to do that within a global transatlantic framework?" the initiative of the European defense were taken in Europe and it was broader then the NATO, one year later Checzslovakia also got under communist regime. What Europe did all in defense in the Maastricht Treaty? Written in the Treaty of Amsterdam; write in St. Malo, in Colon, in Helsinki. Defense is an element of European policy since many years. We have an event on the 29 April, when the group of the four. What went wrong there? It was only a miner element of creating a headquarter, the element is trying to stimulate the debate on defense. Because always in the idea of Belgium that we are a politically union in the make we need also to accept in the political union there is a defense aspect. The importance of that initiative is not the tiny part of the initiative; it is a global idea of stimulating the evernes among Europeans that we need to do more. It is easy to understand, the Belgian, Luxemburg, French, German did is comparable with what we did the monetary field.

An identity of approach which is very brave. First you find out what is the right objective the monetary union was a right objective so we took it, and later on we developed an idea if we have a monetary union we need a common economic policy. The Belgian Prime Minister has chosen purposely to try to make also a defense and I will come back to the defense as an integrated part of a NATO in order to develop a common foreign and security policy. The idea is to crystallize the debate within defense in order to facilitate the discussion on a foreign and common security policy. Americans suddenly discovered a breach of faith towards NATO, and their interpretation is wrong. Because in the meantime we had also an important moment: 27 March. 19 February was the drama of supporting NATO towards Turkey, 27 March was the date we signed the Berlin Plus Agreement, 29 April was the initiative of the four to develop the idea of European defense. So there was a meeting point between NATO and EU, when we signed the Berlin Plus Agreement.

The Berlin Plus Agreement is a typical produce of British diplomacy. It is a masterpiece of diplomacy but in fact nobody understood fully what was the part of the agreement. The British went to tell the Americans if you sign the Berlin Plus Agreement you will have solved your problem with a European Union. It is a final point. Where British told the Europeans, please sign it, but it is written down that you have autonomous operation. That moment was when we had an agreement but there was a different interpretation. We clearly accept NATO as a cornerstone of our defense and it will remain so and it will be totally ridiculous to think that EU will be able to compete with US or NATO. Few days ago Solana once again said: "please, Europe is never competing, you can not compete somebody with hundred times stronger as yourself, you have to be realistic." The NATO operation remains for us the basis of everything under that we have the possibility to have Berlin Plus Agreement and operations mean Europe having not enough assets and capabilities and ask NATO help it and under that we have a possibility of have autonomous operation.

In sum we have to accept that Europe is making a failure by not understanding the Americans enough and failing to grasp the feeling they have since the terrorist attack. So Europe should invest more in fighting against terrorism, the US however should understand that you can not say Europe is not entitled to invest in its own defense policy. If we are to make a political union we have to have a defense element in our foreign policy globally. At the end, we have to work within a NATO where there is clearly a North American pillar and on the other side a European pillar. Both have to grow together and to create a more balanced NATO. Which doesn't mean that Europe wants to take over and separate itself from NATO. The future of NATO is bright, we are all believing in NATO and will remain good members of NATO, but our expectations are also that we are allowed to create a stronger European pillar to reinforce and balance NATO as the main defense institution for our western value. Thank you very much.

* The 8^th annual autumn NATO conference was held in Budapest on 27 November 2003, organized by the Parliament's Office for Foreign Relations. The title of the conference was The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance in the Age of Global Threats.