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| EAST MEETS WEST
DECEMBER 11, 1996TRANSCRIPT |
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NATO leaders are meeting in Brussels to chart the future of the 47-year-old military alliance. Charles Krause traces the NATO's history and looks at issues the organization will have to address in the next century.
NewsHour Links:
A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available.
Richard Holbrooke and Paul Nitze School of the Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University debate the pros and cons of NATO expansion.
November 15, 1996:
In a Newsmaker interview, Defense Secretary William Perry talks about the future role of NATO.
July 8, 1996:
Poland's President Kwasniewski comes to the NewsHour and explains why he is pushing for Polish NATO membership.
Related Link:Material by and about NATO operations worldwide.
CHARLES KRAUSE: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed at the height of the Cold War in 1949. Under the NATO umbrella, the United States committed its conventional and nuclear forces to protect Western Europe from Soviet expansion. In addition to the United States and Canada, NATO is composed of 14 of Western Europe's largest countries, stretching from Iceland in the West to Turkey in the Southeast. To counter NATO, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact, along with its Central European satellites, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.
For 40 years, Europe remained divided, and the two Cold War alliances spent hundreds of billions of dollars on troops and weaponry that had it been used would have assured mass destruction.
But then in 1989, the Berlin Wall suddenly came crashing down. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved and Russian control over Central Europe came to an abrupt and unexpected end. At the time, it seemed as if NATO might no longer be necessary, and the former satellites might become neutral. But led by Poland, the Czech republic, and Hungary, the former Warsaw Pact countries soon made it known that even though the Cold War was over, they wanted to joint NATO and the West. Speaking for Poland, Polish Ambassador to Washington Jerzy Kozminski ticks off the reasons why.
JERZY KOZMINSKI, Polish Ambassador to U.S.: Firstly, there is a conviction that Poland historically belongs to the West. It's sharing the same values, the same patrons which do prevail in the West. Secondly, we regard NATO as an important vehicle of Poland's integration of the Euro-Atlantic community of free and democratic nations. Thirdly, NATO enlargement would eliminate the security vacuum which does exist in Central Europe, and, as we know, in real life, a security vacuum cannot be maintained always. There is a question who is going to fill it, when and what with, and we think that the elimination of such a security vacuum would be very positive for America, for European security.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Faced with growing pressure from the former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO, but not wanting to antagonize Russia, President Clinton traveled to NATO headquarters in Brussels two years ago. There, in January 1994, the President and the other NATO leaders announced a program they called the Partnership for Peace.
The idea was to allow prospective NATO members, Poland, for example, to begin training and revamping their military forces along western lines. But there was no commitment to a specific timetable for NATO membership. So far, more than two dozen countries, including Russia, have joined the Partnership for Peace. Among the new members are even several newly independent countries--Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the Baltic nations, reflecting the new post-Cold War geography in Central and Eastern Europe.
In addition to the firsthand field experience they've had in Bosnia, there have also been a series of large-scale military exercises. The most recent, code-named Cooperative Osprey, took place just last August at Camp Le Jeune in North Carolina. But for Poland and many of the other Central European countries, the Partnership for Peace initiative was never viewed as a substitute for full NATO membership. Meanwhile, in the U.S., public opinion polls showed support for NATO expansion. And last October, during a campaign speech in Detroit, President Clinton promised ethnic voters in the Midwest that NATO would, indeed, be expanded if he were re-elected.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Today I want to state American's goal. By 1999, NATO's 50th anniversary and 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first group of countries we invite to join should be full-fledged members of NATO.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are expected to be the first former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO, but the road to their full membership could still prove difficult. In Brussels today, Russian Foreign Minister Primakov said Russia was ready to negotiate closer ties to NATO for itself but warned that Moscow is still opposed to expanding NATO to include Poland or any of the other former satellite countries. The final decision is expected to be made at yet another NATO meeting scheduled for next July in Madrid.
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