No. 7. (26/03/2004)

Speech by Ambassador Gebhardt von Moltke, Former Representative of Germany on the North Atlantic Council*

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. I also have taken a different approach to the subjects, on the basis of my long 10-year-carreer at NATO since 1991, I have spent 10 years there in different functions. I will try to look at the question of on where we are in NATO, and what is the future of NATO? Lord Robertson who did an outstanding job as secretary general in the last 4 years recently has declared in Berlin that this is not daddy's is NATO anymore. He was right. At the same time he was confident that NATO was on a promising course and referred to Prague and the decisions taken in Prague in order to address the new challenges. In my remarks at the NATO Council in June I said I believed in this great Alliance and its future but not without some apprehension and a feeling of uncertainty. What gives me confidence?

On the one hand the only political military instrument capable to act decisive to defend our security interest. NATO is also based on a treaty. It is the only transatlantic treaty we have in our relationship and with the very strong Article 5 and the committment. NATO has changed radically and has adopted swiftly in the 90's and it will continue to do so as we have seen in Prague with regard to the transformation NRF. NATO left behind geographic borders and stepped outside Europe. It started in Rejkjavik after the 11 September attack where almost unremarked by the public our foreign ministers decided NATO would fight terrorism or the threat to our security by terrorism wherever it is required. If you look back at Washington in 1999 at a Summit Meeting where the Americans tried to convince Europeans that NATO should also get engaged outside Europe. There was strong opposition particularly from Germany because it was inconceivable at the time and one felt one was going into an uncertain future. But now it is on and Afganistan is the first NATO operation outside Europe.

To me it is quite astonishing not only how quickly Germany got engaged in the fight against terrorism in Enduring Freedom, where we are still engaged with a great number of forces. But also that Germany was the country that argued that NATO should take on the operation in Afganistan. And she now argued that NATO and NATO should not only stay in Kabul, but look beyond it. We have reasons to do so because we have more than 2500 soldiers in Afganistan and we remain committed to the political process, but that Germany took those initiatives is quite remarkable.

We have no alternative to NATO and the European Security and Defence Policy is not ment to be an alternative and also is not capable of being an alternative. NATO is here today and will still be here tomorrow this, at least is the approach we take in Europe, because we have no alternative. But does the US also takes this approach? I am not too sure and I will elaborate on this later. On the one hand NATO serves US interests, gives influence and US also called European power a forward base and there is a very strong headquarter in Stuttgart from where missions in about 19 countries are run and organized. Europeans are reliable trained partners to NATO and we share the same outlook, the same values so there are very strong arguments for US interest in NATO but the glue of the Cold War is gone. The US looks to where threat is.

If they would not make NATO in the concept of coalition of the willing the mission determines the coalition if they would not make NATO the first choice of such a coalition I think we'd go down away bad road. The environment and the tasks for NATO have changed. The important changes, or factors which we need to take into account are the fundamentally new security threats and terrorism and the weapons of mass desrtuction but the challenges, the unpredictibility of the attacks without playing with any rules where deterrence or prevention is not effective, the pure distruction aspect without any territorial gains or political influence and a huge psychological and ecomonic fallouts or impacts of the attack. Therefore security protection has become complex for our countries because it is not only the military that is at stake, but we also need to use a lot of other means, police, intelligence, economic and political means and for military defence planners in our capitals the challenges that home defence domestic security and national defence are not separable any more.

Military means can not achieve security alone. Another aspect is that the US is the only superpower with enormous investments into their defence and a drive towards innovation and transformation and its very difficult for the Europeans to keep up with all this but its inevitable for them to do so. At the same time some of our friends have experienced that it is very difficult to influence the military operations of the US as they are capable of going alone to war as we have seen in Afganistan and Irak, but they need allies for the aftermath i.e. for the nation building and the peacekeeping. The American interest in Europe might be reduced as they don't perceive a threat from Eurasian continent but rather focus on the threats from the greater Middle East. Europeans have the big problem finanacial and organization or one that their capabilities are far behind and there is a big risk of division of labour and becoming a secondary force which would erode considerably the transtalantic Alliance.

What does this mean for NATO and its member states? First it is our common European interest to keep NATO active, strong and relevant. Europe can not take care of its security without the US for a long time to come. Second, NATO is at present involved in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, Afgaisthan, but it has to avoid to be relegated to peacekeeping or nation building. Third, in order to be capable to go also into combat operations with US the Europeans need to restructure and transform their arm forces. And to require the military capabilities for rapid distant operations through NRF and other means and through network centric warfare which is a big challenge. Only at the moment UK and Sweeden among the Europeans have embarked on this network of centric warfare system the others will have a long way to go.

Fourth, an active and relevant NATO is dependent on a strong confident transatlantic partnership. Therefore we have to avoid drifting apart or getting alienated by past differences. We should realise that although for different reasons but we still need each other. This was part of the problem heated debate we had in February which left strong feelings on the American side. But this stabilization and the democratic transformation of Irak can't fail. All of us we'd have to bear the consequences therefore we need to work together leaving the past differences behind and work for a safe future of Irak on the basis of free decisions by the Iraki people under the UN's umbrella. US leadership is indispensable, nothing happens at NATO without US leadership. But among democratic partners leadership means consulting and convincing trust and confidence we need to go back to early and thorough consultations in NATO as well as bilaterally between the US and EU. We need to share intelligence and aim at joint conclusions and decisions.

The EU process we've to realise is very complex. Therefore it is a challenge on the European side to keep US sufficiently informed at all times of the EU decision making process. The US need to continue to support EU integration process. The work is to go forward and it is part of the concept of the EU. Next year 19 out of 26 NATO countries will also be EU members and the American fear that ESDP could develop into a counterweight against the US, is not realistic. Because Europe doesn't want it, and it is lacking the military capabilities.

Fifth, through an intensive consultation process in NATO we need to develop joint approaches for the problems in the greater Middle East. We seem to have one in Afganistan. The other hand NATO leaders need to be careful not to be drown too easily into too many operations at the same time. We are engaged in the Balkans, in Afganistan, there is only one operation we have started in the last 10 years the one in FYROM which has come to closure and we risk becoming overeached and overstretched if we get engaged in more and more operations which will have a direct impact an our recruiting capabilities in our national armed forces.

Sixth, within the UN's framework we need to address in the light of assimetric threats some very difficult questions of international law. I am convinced we need to address Article 51 of the UN Charter and the question of the imminence of an attack: at what point can a state act in selfdefence. This is a new question. It shows also that international law is not cast in iron, and we also need to address the concept of the US of pre-emptive defence. With the threats we face which are sudden and unprepared we can't rule out preemption. But we have to define under what conditions and with what limits this can be acceptable.

Seventh, in order to act quickly through the NRF NATO needs to reconsider the decision making process at 26. We had long discussions when I was at NATO Council on how to restructure or streamline the decision making process. There was consensus that we want and need to maintain the consensus as the basic rule. But at the same time, countries shouldn't block the concensus but rather use the means of a footnote to spell out reservations. If we have long, difficult debates on the NRF deployment we will fail to use the NRF which will cost dearly to all of our countries in the most reasonable way.

The national process in parliaments needs to be shortened in order not to hold up the NATO decision making process and in Germany there is a discussion about legislation to shorten the procedures. Countries should also be allowed to opt out of the implementation phase but then the difficult question arises what happens to their nationals in the alliance's structures in the HQ's. They have to stay, otherwise we would weaken the NRF. If not all participate those who do should use NATO assets and capabilities on the same scheme as we allow in the EU through a Berlin + to make use of NATO assets and capabilities. And we also need to find a solution to allow SACEUR some contingency planning. If it has to be able to act within 5 days it also needs to be prepared. But this is a very delicate question, because it means that we would allow a military to address political issues and assumptions and in past debates where we discussed terms of references and rules of engagement we always had a very sensitive discussion between the NATO Council and the military, on the other side about how far the military allow to go in predetermining political issues.

I don't see a possibility to use NRF in the limits that have been set if we don't find a way to overcome this. Maybe we have to set up a committee of reduced numbers of rotating participation at NATO around the Secretary General to look into those issues of contingency planning. To find solutions to all these questions our governments will be challenged in the forthcoming years, months. The complexity may explain the apprehension and the feeling of uncertainty. I think Berlin + is a good agreement, but it took as too long to negotiate it. It took us 2 years because of Turkey and other issues that shock a bit out of the drive in the political process. The Agreement works and SACEUR is satisfied with regard to Concordia which is coming to an end in Macedonia and we are looking towards taking on SFOR next year. As everything goes in the right direction so the EU is likely to run SFOR.

As for the EU, we have to realize it is a difficult learning process. Despite the long history of defence ambitions the EU set up in Brussels, it has been working only for 3 years on those issues and therefore the EU seems to be assertive in its decisions. The US seems to me too suspicious. For Germany the whole development in the EU is ment to go in the direction of European pillar in NATO but we are also strongly defending the autonomous capabilities which have been agreed among the EU in Colon, and Helsinki and translated into an operation in the Kongo. The argument goes that NATO should have been approached to, prior to the autonomous Kongó operations in order to see whether NATO would choose the right of first refusal. When the issue came up one could have thought to bring it to NATO but in NATO nobody thought of going to Africa. The reaction to the EU planning cell on 29 April the timing was not good, therefore the political reaction was unpleasant but the overall reaction is totaly out of proportion.

The talks which are about to be concluded within the next weeks among the EU member countries will find a solution. We also would go ahead with more structured cooperation which was the other proposal of the 29 April the main aspect is that its open to all those able to contribute to such a structured cooperation. I don't see that we can achieve meaningful results without for the structured cooperation pulling of resources pulling of forces join together and using the means within the EU context in order to be able to match the US develeopments, and to be an equal partner across the Atlantic. Thank you.

* 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.