By Jim Anderson
April 22, 1999
Washington -- Even before the planes began arriving in Washington with more than 40 national leaders for the 50th anniversary summit of NATO, some potentially nasty disputes among the participants have punctured the myth of total unity.
And that doesn't even include the Russians, who disagree so sharply with NATO on the use of force against the Serbs that they are not even showing up for the summit to which they were invited. Some of the disagreements came to the surface this week at a hearing of a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate.
It had been agreed before the Kosovo crisis turned violent, that the summit would produce a new Strategic Concept, a blueprint for what NATO should be now that the Cold War is over and a series of ugly ethnic clashes in the Balkans threaten to mar the peace and redraw the maps in the southeastern corner of the continent.
Senator John Warner, influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, roiled the apparently placid surface of the NATO planning session by arguing that any thought of a strategic concept is premature. Warner, joined by some other influential senators from both sides of the aisle, says that it will take at least six months to absorb the lessons of Kosovo and apply them to an uncertain future in Europe.
President Bill Clinton, replying to a request by Warner for a delay in putting out any sweeping policy statements, flatly turned it down. In a letter to Warner, Clinton wrote, "I am convinced that the right course is to proceed with a revised Strategic Concept that will make NATO even more effective in addressing regional and ethnic conflict of this very sort."
U.S. officials explained that Clinton didn't want to lose the opportunity to line up the Europeans behind his ideas for dealing with future threats. He fears that a postponement could go on indefinitely, giving the dangerous impression that NATO leaders can't agree to act, even on putting together a written statement.
Then, there's the growing feeling among American officials that some Europeans are trying to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe. The code word for that argument is the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), put forward most energetically by the French government.
Under ESDI, the European nations, led by Germany and France, would take primary responsibility for dealing with problems in the heartland of Europe. The United States would take primary responsibility for "global" issues, such as Kosovo.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has already tried to quash the initiative, saying that it would split the alliance. Senator Gordon Smith, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Europe, goes further.
He laid down a sharp warning to the Europeans that they may be playing into the hands of American isolationists. Smith said, at a meeting of the subcommittee on Wednesday, "For those who seek to use ESDI to set up a competititon with the United States, I say this: there are many in the U.S. Congress who would welcome the opportunity to shed European security obligations - especially now," an oblique reference to Kosovo.
Smith also said, "I am worried about a new form of isolationism emerging in Europe. It manifests itself in the excessive, passive reliance upon international law and international institutions such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to provide the sole defence of our common interests and values."
Senator Richard Lugar, an avowed "Europeanist" who has been a leading voice in the debate about NATO's future, said that he's worried, too. But his concerns go to the European willingness to let the United States take the brunt of any military tasks.
He notes that the United States represents about 20 per cent of the military manpower of the NATO countries. But, he adds, the United States supplies 80 per cent of the "power projection abilities" of NATO - the aircraft, the naval vessels, the armoured vehicles and the artillery.
That disparity in military contributions will also have to be taken up at the summit, in something called the Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI). But with sluggish economies and high unemployment rates, the key European countries will not be eager to take on new financial responsibilities, especially when NATO leaders are still trying to define what exactly the alliance is supposed to do. dpa ja ma
