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| CHRISTOPHER PATTEN | |
 September 24, 1999 
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CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Nice to be here. |
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| What is Europe's intervention policy? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Among the troops we just saw in East Timor on their way are member states of the European Union soldiers, British, Italian, French, and Portuguese soldiers, and European soldiers are in Kosovo too. Why? Why are member states risking the lives of their soldiers in these places?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Patten, in your job, you have the lead responsibility for human rights policy, do you not? CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Yes, I do. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Does this mean that you will be helping to develop the policies for when and where to intervene? CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Yes, it does. Sometimes I think it's fairly clear cut, and I don't think anybody seriously believes that we were wrong to try to intervene and to intervene successfully in Kosovo, as we've intervened previously in the Balkans, which is, as it were in our backyard; it's part of our moral community in Europe. Talking about intervening beyond that, well, it depends a certain amount on how effectively we can do it and what our historical obligations and commercial and social obligations, historical obligations are to a place. And East Timor obviously has very strong connections with one of the member states of the European Union. But it's worth remembering that Europe is the biggest trading block in the world; it's the biggest single market; it runs the biggest development and humanitarian playground, and I think it's important that we have a voice in foreign affairs and are able to make that voice into something more than just rhetoric from time to time.
CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Well, we've had our capability as part of NATO, and we don't want to do anything we shouldn't, other than under the NATO umbrella. It's very important to get that clear, but we do think that Europe should be prepared to do more in the context of NATO to stand up for our own interest, and we also think that there are particular areas where Europe can make a contribution in conflict prevention, in peacekeeping operations, and so on. But we've obviously got some difficult issues to resolve on this matter because some of the members of the European Union aren't members of NATO, and there are some members of NATO, like Turkey, which aren't members of the European Union, so we've got to do this sensibly, taking account of individual countries' interests, but, above all, the message is a clear one -- that Europe has to be prepared to punch its weight. The United States has been pressing us, rightly, to do that for years and now we've got the chance to show that we're listening to the message. |
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| Europe's military capability | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What kind of military capability are you talking about? CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Well, one of the things that was -- I think -- pretty clear during the Balkans crisis was despite the fact that we spend a lot of money on defending ourselves, we don't actually have the technological ability to sustain overseas operations for the length of time and with the effectiveness that the United States enjoys, so it raises serious questions about the way we spend money, about the amount we spend, and about how much value we get for our spending. I think that's a serious question which the new NATO secretary general, George Robertson, was raising in a speech in Ottawa the other day or in Canada. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And do you think Europeans are willing to pay for this? This is will be expensive, right, because haven't the European military, as a whole, been drawn down significantly since the Cold War?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Commissioner Patten, as you know, this week, the President, President Clinton, and also Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the U.N., addressed the question of when and where and why to intervene when there are mass humanitarian violations. You've touched on this a little bit. How are you going to make those decisions? CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Well, I think that the speeches of Kofi Annan and President Clinton opened up an extremely important and interesting debate. And there were some responses to that. The Chinese foreign minister, for example, seemed to imply that the nation state was absolutely sacrosanct and you could never do anything which involved interfering in somebody else's country, whatever that government was doing. Now, it's a neat reversal, because, of course, it used to be the Marxist notion that national governments didn't matter, that the revolutionary working class should dominate and run everything. Now, what we're saying and what a lot of countries are saying is look, there are issues which arouse the conscience of the world, and you can't limit what countries do, according to one country's ability to veto things in the Security Council. You have to find some basis for operating where you can be effective and where it is clearly justified by the scale of the atrocity being perpetrated. I spent some years as a development minister for my own country. And what was terribly frustrating was we became much more successful, much more professional at being able to deliver assistance, to help people who were the -- who were the victims of political failure. We were much less effective in preventing the political failure in the first place. And that's something we've got to address. |
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| The definition of sovereignty | ||||||||||||||||||||
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CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Well, I think state sovereignty is being redefined by a lot of things. It's being redefined by information technology. One reason why people have been so concerned about what happened in East Timor, not just people in Australia, not far away, but people in Europe and people in North America, is they can see what happened on the television, and it's undoubtedly the case that communications today focus international anxiety far more on humanitarian issues. Now, we have to be very careful; we have to be very careful that we don't just behave in a given way internationally because one television crew has been on the spot. There are lots of places where humanitarian abuses are committed where there aren't any television crews on the spot. But, nevertheless, I think we have to face the fact that there are consequences for the conduct of foreign policy of that globalization, globalization which has had such spectacular economic effect and globalization, which has helped to shape and educate opinion in individual national countries.
CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Well, what we're starting to do is to consider what needs to be done to enhance the capability, which we already have under the umbrella of NATO. And I repeat nothing is going to be done which in any way undermines NATO because NATO has done a fantastic job and will continue to do a terrific job. So everything we're doing is under the NATO umbrella. But I think an area where we can... where we can be innovative and imaginative is in the area I mentioned earlier, of conflict prevention, of managing crises, of developing peacekeeping in a more effective and flexible way. And I think we... I hope we'll be starting to do that fairly rapidly. It's what's called in the European jargon, the Petersburg task, the task we identified as one of the main focuses for our development of a common foreign and security policy but the NATO link is absolutely sacrosanct and it's very important that the spokesman for European foreign ministers who will be starting work in a few weeks' time is Javier Solana, who is, of course, the Secretary General of NATO. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. Thank you very much for being with us. CHRISTOPHER PATTEN: Thanks very much indeed. |
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ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: The European Union, made up of 15 countries from Finland
in the North to Greece in the South is primarily an economic and trading
block, but it is also trying to develop its own foreign and security
policies, and in the wake of Kosovo, its own military capabilities.
The E.U.'s Commissioner for External Relations is Christopher Patten.
He's a former member of the British Parliament and is Britain's last
governor in Hong Kong.
CHRISTOPHER
PATTEN: Well, there are two general reasons: First of all, where there
is intolerable abuse of people's human rights, I think particularly
when it's within our own or on the borders of our own community, it's
right for us to want to intervene, and that's what our publics want.
Secondly, where we can do that effectively, it's right for us to do
it. Now, there are particular arguments involving East Timor. For years,
the rest of the world, Europe, North America, have pressed the Indonesian
government to give the people of East Timor the right of self determination.
We underpinned the U.N. mission when they were doing that, and when
it led -- because they'd voted for independence -- to appalling violence,
I think there was a real moral importance for us in getting involved
in East Timor, and that's what we've done.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Is that why you want your own military capability for the
European Union?
CHRISTOPHER
PATTEN: Well, I think everybody's made some adjustment in their military
spending since the end of the Cold War. It isn't necessarily always
a matter of spending more. It's a matter of spending money effectively.
George Robertson, who I referred to a moment or two ago, was saying
recently that it had taken us a great deal of time and effort to put
-- to get 2 percent of our forces into Kosovo. And it raised questions
about how effectively we were using the other 98 percent. And that's
a question which all of us have to address. But for Europe, it's not
just a question of being able to deploy military capacity; it's also
a question of effective development assistance, of helping with reconstruction,
of helping, which will be a problem in East Timor, as it is in Kosovo,
in helping establish civil administration, because there isn't any in
East Timor, just as there wasn't any in Kosovo.
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Do you think we're in the midst of a historic redefinition
of state sovereignty?
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: And Commissioner Patten, how long will it take before the
European Union has its own military capability of the sort that you're
talking about now?