NATO Speech: 40th Anniversary of NATO

With our Atlantic Alliance being 40 years old today we celebrate not only an institution but much more a vision: that of peace in freedom. This is what NATO has given us: the longest period of general peace that Europe has enjoyed since the days of the Roman Empire. Our citizens have experienced these years not only as ones of security but also of prosperity and social progress. Protected by this Alliance - the most successful in history - they face the future not with fear but with confidence.

So assured does our peace today seem that it is hard for us to imagine that it could once have been otherwise. Yet if we look back for just one moment to the year of the signing of the Washington Treaty, 1949, we can measure how much has been achieved, and how quickly. Then our continent lay in ruins. Economic recovery proceeded at a snail's pace. The prevalent mood was one of exhaustion and discouragement. With democracy struggling to recover from the traumas of war and occupation, the field was open to political extremism of all kinds. The future looked bleak. The Soviet Union cast the shadow of its military power across the whole of Europe. Even the most optimistic observer could not guarantee that in such conditions Western Europe would not also become the same victim of Soviet expansionism and intimidation as its Eastern counterpart.

More than any other instance of post-war Western co-operation, NATO was responsible for Western Europe's moral and economic resurrection. Within ten years an apparently hopeless situation was transformed. The United States, emerging from World War II as a superpower, known before that period for its isolationism, had committed its destiny to the defence of our common freedoms. Pax Atlantica was born. Under its roof former European enemies were beginning a bold experiment in political and economic co-operation. Democracy had been revived. The Federal Republic of Germany had found a framework whereby it could anchor itself in the West. The threat of an alien ideology had receded from both within and without our borders. Marshall aid found a politically stable context where it could be used to full advantage. Pessimism turned to optimism as our citizens once more began to invest in their future.

Without NATO none of these things - let alone all of them - would have happened. The Alliance was from the outset more than just a security pact. It became the expression of a common purpose and a political vision, a community of values and destiny. Within its transatlantic framework of order, the West could carry out its two historic missions. First, to ensure the cohesion and solidarity of our liberal democracies, and second, to function beyond our borders as a stabilizing force in the wider world, providing for security and peaceful change in the interactions of states.

NATO does not lead by military force or by a messianic ideology, but by the attractiveness of its ideas and the force of its example. We know that our security depends ultimately on freedom, prosperity and social justice. This, in turn, is dependent on the maintenance of Alliance solidarity. We form the largest and most prosperous community that the world has ever seen. Our Third Dimension of co-operation in the fields of science and the environment helps us to lay the basis for future prosperity. Not only does this Third Dimension push the frontiers of science outwards, it ensures that new scientific knowledge and methods are shared among all the Allies. We recognize that only freedom and democracy release the creative energies that are inherent in mankind and which are the locomotive of all social progress. Being trading nations we need to compete as well as co-operate with each other. The resulting dynamism is the vehicle of progress, but its innovative force must be properly managed. The organizational genius of the Alliance ensures that this dynamism does not undermine, but reinforces, the system on which we all depend. As a result, the Atlantic has become the vital and unifying space across which advanced societies articulate their common interests and values.

Yet if our vitality comes from within, we must protect it from the threats from without, from challenges to our security from other systems which find our free and democratic way of life and living standards, and not our tanks, a threat to their own survival. For forty years we have faced such a challenge from the Soviet Union, notwithstanding the fact that our Alliance is purely defensive. Moreover our military forces have not and will not exceed the minimal level needed to ensure deterrence and guarantee our sovereignty.

The Alliance has done more, however, than keep the Soviet military threat at bay. We have succeeded in transforming a potentially explosive situation, based on an ideological hostility and a stark imbalance of conventional military power, into the most fail-safe security system that the world has ever seen. Our strategy proves our collective determination to resist aggression. We seek to share the risks as well as the benefits of deterrence as equitably as possible. No member of our Alliance is denied the protection afforded to the strongest. Above all, we have transformed the ultimate war-fighting weapon into the ultimate instrument of peace-keeping. Nuclear deterrence has not merely contained the risk of nuclear war; it has also contained the risk of all war. For this reason it is the bedrock of our security.

Our secure defence has been the key stabilizing force in East-West relations. It has enabled us to defuse all those tensions that in any earlier age could have quite easily led to war. Defence is not a brake on detente. It is the prerequisite of all productive East-West development. French section follows?.

Tout au long de ces quarante dernières années, l'OTAN a suivi avec vigilance ce qu'elle a créé, havre de paix et de prospérité dans un monde troublé et divisé. Nous n'avons cependant jamais eu pour vocation de nous replier sur nous-mêmes, dans l'espoir fallacieux de nous protéger de l'injustice et de l'oppression environnantes. La stabilité a pour but de fournir le cadre d'une évolution pacifique. Nos "pères fondateurs" nous ont fait la promesse que notre persévérance à combiner la défense et le dialogue dans nos relations avec l'Est serait finalement payée de retour, que le régime totalitaire communiste finirait par s'adoucir. En de très nombreuses occasions, l'armement soviétique a été la seule réponse à nos invitations au dialogue, mais nous n'avons jamais perdu courage.

Le changement que nous avons toujours recherché vient enfin de s'amorcer. Nos valeurs et nos idées ont toujours constitué un défi sérieux pour l'Est, or, maintenant, nous les voyons aussi déterminer le rythme et le cours des événements. L'Est se tourne vers l'Ouest. L'Histoire est de notre côté, quelles que soient les affirmations de ceux qui disent incarner les lois de l'Histoire. Les régimes communistes qui, naguère, fondaient leur légitimité sur la dénonciation de nos valeurs occidentales, cherchent maintenant à y adhérer.

L'OTAN entre aujourd'hui dans sa cinquième décennie. Nous savons ce qu'a été l'Alliance dans le passé. Mais que sera-t-elle à l'avenir? Certains disent qu'avec l'affaiblissement de la menace soviétique, l'Alliance a rempli sa mission historique et qu'il lui faut, soit changer, soit disparaître de la scène. Laissez-moi vous dire qu'ils ont tort. Dans un monde en mouvement, notre Alliance n'est pas devenue soudain moins importante: elle a, au contraire, gagné en importance. L'évolution pacifique de l'Ouest comme de l'Est dépend aujourd'hui, plus que jamais, de l'aptitude de l'OTAN à agir comme un pôle magnétique de stabilité et de tranquillité sur lequel les forces nouvelles de changement peuvent venir s'ancrer; mais aussi comme l'instigatrice du changement, en encourageant, appuyant et aidant activement les forces qui, à l'Est, travaillent à la transformation de la société dans le sens de nos objectifs.

Dans le monde de demain, l'OTAN sera de plus en plus un instrument de changement. Notre but est d'obtenir pour tous les Etats de l'Europe un ordre politique juste, qui garantira la paix et le droit des peuples à décider de leur propre évolution politique et sociale. Nous nous efforcerons de bâtir une Europe nouvelle, enracinée dans la communauté de démocraties libres: une Europe où la liberté et le pluralisme politique s'épanouiront, où les forces militaires n'auront pas d'autres rôles que celui de garantir la souveraineté des Etats, permettant ainsi à tous les pays - grands ou petits - de jouir d'une même sécurité. Une Europe, enfin, qui sur la base de l'autodétermination de tous ses peuples sera capable de dépasser les divisions artificielles et celle del'Allemagne.

Les racines du déclin du communisme sont morales et spirituelles, aussi bien qu'économiques. Dans le vide laissé à l'Est par l'échec historique du communisme, nous pouvons et nous voulons insérer notre propre programme pour l'avenir. Nous avons une occasion exceptionnelle de remodeler les rela-tions Est-Ouest et de favoriser et d'influencer pacifiquement le changement en Europe de l'Est et en Union soviétique par une coopération active. Nous devons exploiter les nouvelles énergies historiques et les mobiliser pour atteindre des objectifs précis, qui feront d'une paix plus juste et durable en Europe un processus irréversible. Enfin, nous devons amener l'Est à s'engager dans des voies nouvelles communes pour aborder les grandes questions du monde.

Sans l'Alliance, cette vision ne serait rien d'autre qu'un rêve coupé de toute réalité. Mais avec l'Alliance, c'est un objectif tout à fait à notre portée. Au cours de cette cinquième décennie, l'OTAN restera l'instrument essentiel pour promouvoir les intérêts occidentaux dans une phase de transition historique. Elle est le catalyseur de la volonté politique du plus grand nombre de démocraties occidentales. Elle seule permet de réunir l'Amérique du Nord et l'Europe occidentale dans l'association transatlantique dont dépend tout progrès substantiel. En effet, ni l'Amérique du Nord ni l'Europe occidentale ne pourraient, isolément, espérer accomplir cette tâche historique. Ce n'est que par le biais de cette Alliance que chacun de nos Etats membres peut espérer apporter sa pleine contribution à ce processus de changement pacifique. Et ce n'est que grâce à cette Alliance que chacun peut se garantir contre les revers ou les échecs éventuels que l'on ne saurait exclure en période de bouleversement historique.

En exploitant toutes les occasions de changement pacifique, l'Alliance restera un garant de la sécurité, un fondement de la stabilité mondiale et une forme d'assurance contre les risques de troubles, de crise et de guerre: l'OTAN demeurera irremplaçable à l'avenir. Prévenir les guerres et sauvegarder la paix, protéger et défendre la liberté resteront ses tâches les plus nobles et les plus importantes. Mais les périodes de changement rapide sont également des périodes de grande incertitude. Il nous a fallu quarante ans pour convaincre l'Est que l'intimidation politique ne peut réussir. Ne donnons pas aux dirigeants soviétiques soumis à diverses tensions l'impression que cela pourrait encore réussir, car nous avons baissé notre garde. Quelle que soit l'équipe au pouvoir en Union soviétique et quelles que soient ses intentions, nous aurons besoin d'un dispositif de défense crédible, qui ne laisse aucune place a l'aventurisme militaire. Là encore, cet objectif ne pourra être atteint que par une alliance transatlantique.

Even if we succeed in transforming the East-West confrontation into peaceful competition, the Soviet Union will remain a huge power, a mighty military force and an important factor in Europe. So we need NATO as a framework to organize and maintain the transatlantic commitment to our collective security on which so much depends.

And I see yet another function of NATO which will be as important in the future as today and as it was in the past: to serve as a forum to balance and reconcile different European and American interests, be it in the political or economic fields. In particular, we will need our Atlantic Alliance to protect the emergence of a Western European identity and to serve as a platform for the redefinition of the respective responsibilities and burdens of Europe and the United States in the global environment of the next decades.

So, without this Alliance, there will be neither stability nor peaceful change. NATO remains the backbone and lighthouse of mankind's future in freedom and peace.

Today the future looks more promising than ever before. The opportunities now outweigh the risks. We have these opportunities because we willed them, and we are not afraid to take advantage of them. But even if the wind of history is blowing in our favour, progress will not be automatic; there will be setbacks and disappointments. So as we look to shape the future, let us remember the five lessons of our past that have served us so well.

That we must adapt our policies to new tasks. Our political strategy of defence and detente and our military strategy both remain valid. But the means we use to implement them will require readjustment from time to time. We will be working towards a stronger Western Europe that can play its full part in the defence of this Alliance as well as in our common Western global responsibilities. We are already taking a fresh look at how we can best use our precious resources and share our respective roles and burdens equitably. But let us not exaggerate these challenges; they are no greater than those we have faced successfully in the past. Indeed they are the consequence of the success of this Alliance.

That we maintain our political solidarity and cohesion. As long as we stand together, there is no force in this world stronger than this Alliance. United we will remain masters of our destiny. Divided we shall become victims of historical developments decided by others.

That we must maintain a credible deterrent. For the foreseeable future this will require both a nuclear and conventional component. We only want the minimum number of weapons necessary for purely defensive purposes, but this minimum has to be kept up to date.

That we must continue to have the active support of our publics. Like all democratic institutions the Alliance is ultimately for their benefit. Our publics overwhelmingly wish NATO to continue; that much is certain. But voters in parliamentary democracies all too frequently support the ends of policy while being reluctant to provide the necessary means. It is our task to convince them that in reality they are asked to pay only the smallest price for the greatest of all human benefits - peace in freedom.

That we maintain principled, conceptual leadership. It is not for us to match the unilateral reductions of the Warsaw Pact, which enjoys the fruits of overarming for decades. But we are providing the conceptual leadership in disarmament negotiations aiming at greater military stability and, in particular, more equal ceilings and at lower levels than we both have today. We are the moving force behind progress in human rights. We have the one valid vision for a just and lasting peace in Europe. And we have the concepts to make that vision possible.

Our security seems so natural that we sometimes fail to realise just how many men and women in all of our sixteen countries are involved in upholding it. Whether soldiers, airmen and sailors maintaining their permanent vigil or civilians ensuring that our Alliance functions efficiently: there is a whole NATO family of people, past and present, who have selflessly dedicated themselves to our cause. They are the architects of peace in freedom and all of them deserve our thanks and gratitude, as does also the government and people of Belgium for providing such a welcoming home to our Alliance institutions for more than two decades now.

All of us who are associated with this great vision today have a necessary part to play in achieving it in the future. Forty years ago our founding fathers demonstrated that with courage and conviction visions can indeed become realities. Today, in much more favourable historical circumstances, let us also have a similar vision and purpose. It is we who are privileged to have this task - and this opportunity - to achieve a just and lasting peace in a Europe freed forever from the harness of dogma and the shadow of the gun.