Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Discussion

I would like to say a bit from a historical perspective about NATO. NATO was in the first place organised as a counterbalance for the expansion of the Soviets after the Second World War. The second reason that is rarely mentioned was to have under control Germany as a powerful force in Europe. This second reason remained after the Soviets disappeared. So this second half of the main task of the NATO, to ensure US influence in Europe, still remains and that is maybe why we have so many questions between the Russians and the European countries about the main task of the NATO and why it still remains and is still expanding, which the Russians cannot understand.

The Americans see military force and especially nuclear arms as the cornerstone of their influence in Europe and it is really so because the Europeans can never reach the American level of technology in the nuclear sphere, let alone in conventional weapons. Nevertheless, Europeans are trying to do their best in this field. But nuclear weapons are still out of the question and the Americans will be leading there. That is why we expect they will never give up such provisions in nuclear doctrine as the first use of nuclear weapons etc.

So, from this point of view, asking the Russians why they are not reducing their military arsenal, conventional or tactical nuclear forces or just strategic forces, does not give a complete picture of the question in comparison with NATO, because the USA is a leading force in this block. The Russians are reducing their weapons, we have ratified START II, and we ratified CTBT in comparison with the USA. We are proposing to reduce the nuclear strategic arsenal through START III to below 1,000 warheads. On this we have a contradiction from the USA, because it says it can only go on with this reduction if the Russians agree with the deployment of National Missile Defense in the USA. So it is clear that the Americans do not want to lose their leadership in the nuclear sphere. That is why they are trying to complicate all these questions instead of simply reducing them.

A remark first on the role of Nato’s nuclear weapons. In my time it was to prevent war and whenever NGO's said you should have a no first use declaration. NATO retorted we have a no first attack declaration so that is even more important than not using nuclear weapons first. This also involved NATO nuclear weapons for deterring biological and chemical weapons, I seem to recall, although maybe not formally.

The question is on NATO’s nuclear stance and a possible nuclear stance in European security and defence. What do both gentlemen think about that? At the moment we still have the United States' nuclear guarantee. Do you envisage an autonomous European security and defence identity with or without its own nuclear deterrence?

Mr. Sköld put a question to us, parliamentarians present at this meeting. I do not think he had any answer so far, so I would like to try to answer. He asked what we were going to do on the two priorities, which were underlined today on the implementation of the commitments which have been made, both with the vote on the UN resolution and the NATO Ministerial Meeting in April this year. I think the answer is we are going to try and carry on doing what we have been doing up till now and try and be more effective.

I would like to take a page from Mr. Savidge's book and our first priority is to actually put these questions on the agenda in order that there is a thorough debate, preferably before the December NATO meeting. It is not that simple to renew a sense of urgency both in the public opinion and therefore in the parliamentarians who reflect these concerns and I think Mr. Savidge's strategy seems to have been effective so I am going to try and copy it. When I say we will try to carry on doing what we have done up till now, the first thing is the challenge of transparency. This is of growing urgency and the mode in which these questions were debated ten years ago is no longer adequate and does not satisfy democratic imperatives and the need to inform public opinion. Therefore we have got to try and put transparency on a different level from the past and this is also part of those confidence and security building measures. It is how the Alliance intends to work and it is also how the Alliance should explain itself.

On the question, for example, of an area which is still shrouded in considerable ambiguity and roughly described as nuclear sharing. This source of ambiguity will prove ever more a problem in pushing forward the non-proliferation agenda. As an Italian parliamentarian I have run up against this obstacle of getting information, the obstacle and apparent contradiction of data being publicly available but not being officially sanctioned by our governments. One of the reasons for this resistance is not, as Mr. Koster says, bureaucratic resistance, it is political. And it is more on the European end than in the United States. This is my impression up till now. Italy is, as anyone who has read the reports from Congress knows, one of the countries that has tactical NATO nukes stored. How many at any point in time is of course always open to question. Nevertheless, we are one of the countries that are participating, as the Netherlands is. Now the reason that our government is reluctant to discuss this at great length is not just because of the fifties and sixties binding bilateral agreement but also because in the NATO expense sharing scheme of things Italy provides bases and nuclear storage facilities which, in the bookkeeping of NATO accounts, is a substantial contribution. So it enables my country to be a nuclear power at a very low cost. I think our defence budget and the size of defence budgets are very important political considerations and this is one of the blocking factors in more transparency and more public debate on this issue.

The other thing that I think we must work hard on is to maintain the system of treaties which is the guarantee of nuclear non-proliferation so we have to try and ensure that there is no challenge to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in its original form and to put the NPT in the inner context of the family of treaties and in this respect the debate on the nuclear missile shield is very important. I think it is very important that the House of Commons brought it into the open and made such explicit recommendations and I think it would have been good if other parliaments in Europe had followed suit. I think the way to do it is that we actually continue our commitment to what is a system of treaties and to pushing this system forward. That is my attempt to answer Mr. Sköld's question.

I have a question for Mr. Krueger concerning the Non-Proliferation Treaty and nuclear sharing. With the debate around the NPT Review Conference in the Dutch parliament as well as the Belgian parliament there came up a contradiction concerning the interpretation of the NPT by different governments. The Dutch minister of foreign affairs stated that the NPT was valid in wartime and that Dutch pilots were under NATO command for wartime operations, meaning that no nuclear weapons are transferred (which would violate the NPT), while the Belgian minister of foreign affairs said the NPT was not valid in wartime, hence Belgian pilots could take control of the nuclear weapons. After this discussion he also gave a more extensive explanation that in my view allows Iraq to carry out its nuclear program because it was in a state of war all this time. My question is what is the NATO interpretation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? How does NATO qualify the NPT and nuclear sharing?

There were indeed so many questions that it gives me a choice as to which I want to answer and which not. First of all I heard from several speakers including Otfried Nassauer the sense of urgency, that there is a window of opportunity here and the present speed of NATO is not adequate. That is one of the relatively few points where I would disagree with Otfried. I have tried to explain in my introduction that NATO has indeed changed quite substantially and in some cases dramatically. This has to be seen over time and I think that NATO has not stopped doing that now.

What we tend to do when looking at issues like that is that we tend to see the present situation. There is no progress, there is nothing going on. I think a lot is going on and I am quite confident and quite hopeful that START, CTBT and the FMCT treaties will all be brought to a conclusion and will be implemented.

Another point which I found very interesting is this constant reference to transparency and that is indeed a very crucial point which, especially in the context of confidence and security building measures, we have been trying and will continue trying to take up with the Russians. Confidence and security building measures are especially necessary and useful when we can agree on them with the Russians.

Transparency is also very interesting when organisations like yours in meetings and conferences like these invite people like Ted Whiteside and myself, and I hope I am allowed to speak for him as well. Because that is also helping transparency. NATO has for much too long a time been too secretive about these things and has not come forward and explained its position.

Another question I would like to respond to is the question on the European role of ESDI, the European forces. Could we ever see those under let us say a European nuclear umbrella? I would be tempted to respond to that in a very personal manner. First of all, I think the European process of a common defence and a common foreign and security policy is a very long-term one. Perhaps by that time we will think about nuclear weapons in a totally different way than we do today. So I would not necessarily see the role for nuclear weapons and nuclear forces that we have today in the same context. But to answer your question more specifically: I think even the French would agree that these forces, as long as we have a nuclear role, as a deterrent against war, make only sense under the American nuclear umbrella and nobody really, I think, would consider replacing that with a French and British nuclear umbrella. Even the two countries concerned would not support that and I think the Europeans would not want that.

Nuclear sharing was one of the other major points brought up. I think nuclear sharing is not making Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and the others nuclear powers at low cost. I think that encapsulating the sense of risk and burden sharing is what NATO is all about. The idea is to have the risk for nuclear deterrence not only resting with the nuclear powers but resting with a much larger number of NATO member states. Not only those states on whose territory US nuclear weapons are stationed contribute to that. The entire community of NATO does that. All NATO members do that, they all subscribe to this kind of policy.

Therefore, just in passing, I would like to dampen the hopes of those who think that this review process would end in a major revision or a dramatic review of Nato’s nuclear policy. I would say definitely not now, because NATO governments, NATO heads of state and governments have, not even two years ago, agreed to this Strategic Concept and its nuclear elements and I think they are not prepared and willing to put that on the table again. So I am saying when we talk about a revision of NATO nuclear policy that again would be a long-term prospect.

First point on Russia. I think Russia is in the process of, rhetorically, widening the role of nuclear weapons and de facto trying to keep enough conventional forces to keep the country together. This means that the capability of the conventional forces to fight conflicts in the Caucasus or in Central Asia might be more important than keeping the strategic balance numberwise with the United States, from the current government's point of view. If you do so you automatically have to adopt a first use policy. That is the logic of thinking that way. So if that is the main course of action in Russia there are two things to consider.

First: how to proceed with NATO enlargement. Let me present an alternative. I think the next round of NATO enlargement should, if possible give NATO-Russia relations a pause to recover. Another round of alienation similar to the first, but with a strong debate in Russia, is not productive. The best thing NATO could do would be to limit the next round of enlargement to the south-east, to the Balkans, where NATO has engaged to create stability and NATO membership must be in the perspective of that stability and I think that is more important than trying to get the first former CIS country or the first former part of the Soviet territory into NATO. It could also help to really develop NATO-Russia co-operation in a much more productive manner than in the past.

I now come back to the comment on no first use in the seventies when the answer was always 'no first attack'. If you look at the same question from a Russian perspective this has lost a lot of credibility after Kosovo. This argument is no longer a good argument, even with humanitarian justifications.

My final point concerns the function of nuclear sharing. Indeed yes, NATO has always argued that NATO nuclear sharing is the three R's: shared risk, roles and responsibilities. However after the end of the Cold War this does not necessarily have to be so. European countries much earlier faced the threat of biological, chemical or, via proliferation, nuclear attack. A situation of confrontation with Russia as the big nuclear power is not imaginable. So I think if the Europeans say they are willing to share the risk without nuclear sharing the function of nuclear sharing can be fulfilled in the post Cold War world.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is impossible to summarise all the substantive points. It was a very broad field, which we debated about this afternoon and I think I would like in these few minutes to put the emphasis on the process. The process is really important. What was lacking to some extent, I think, was the synergy of the different actors from different angles with different responsibilities coming together. This is quite a unique meeting where a number of international NGO's have brought together an interesting mix of officials from NATO, non-governmental organisations, and members of parliament. Quite a mixed bag but I think a very interesting crowd. I think this process should be continued.

Very briefly, I see six categories of issues I think need to be maintained on the agenda.

First: non-proliferation, which has a wider perspective than just arms control. Israel was mentioned, for example, India, Pakistan.

Secondly: arms control and military policies. This ranges from NMD to nuclear arms reductions; it is the very broad field of classical arms control.

Thirdly, the CSBM’s, confidence and security building measures, are very interesting. This is also a broad field, including transparency etc.

The fourth issue is, I think, a very vital one: Alliance policies. NATO policies of course are to be reviewed and controlled by parliament. I will come to the role of that, but an international debate on NATO and Alliance policy has been lacking there. This is also true for the paragraph 32 process and other issues like no first use. It is important to have this international debate and we all look forward to this with expectations, but moderate expectations. I listened to Mr. Krueger very carefully on the outcome of the paragraph 32 process. It is not a revision, it is a review. It will not be the end of the story and it is important to keep the public eye on this.

Fifth point is the parliamentary debate and parliamentary control. We are dealing here essentially with intergovernmental policies and those are policies which are difficult to control, unlike the European Parliament for instance, which has control over the Brussels policies which are not intergovernmental. Here we have different responsibilities. National parliaments, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly which was mentioned by some and I see some familiar faces from the Assembly, and I think PGA has a role in this respect and there are maybe other parliamentary bodies. I was very much touched by the interesting remarks by Mr. Savidge at the beginning of this afternoon on the All-Party Group. I think this is an example worth looking at, in trying to get these discussions to other parliaments. In the Netherlands parliament, and I have some hesitation in making this remark without our colleagues being present, this is very much a monopoly by a handful of parliamentarians from a small group of parties and I would like to see the debate broadened to all major parties. Maybe that will also be applicable to other parliaments. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NPA) certainly has a role to play. In two weeks’ time we have the Berlin session and I am the general rapporteur of the NPA Security Committee so I will certainly have a try in getting arms control and NPT matters on the NPA’s agenda, which is very important because it involves the US Congress and those are very essential players in this whole discussion.

Sixth, last but not least, the indispensable role of NGO’s in this debate. It seems to me that they have always been very active in this field. So even without these meetings they will continue to do their very useful work.

So these six issues should remain, left or right, one way or another, on the international agenda. This sort of coalition between NGO’s, officials and members of parliament is worth having another round in the future, either in the Netherlands, or in Belgium. I am very pleased with the very strong Belgian presence here and with the renewed debate in Belgium on these issues. Maybe we will meet somewhere next spring or autumn. Finally, I should thank very much the three main organisers: the IPPNW, I have already mentioned my colleague and friend Bert Koenders, the PENN, Mr. Karel Koster, who has been very active as always on this issue, and, last but not least, the PGA.