Article first published in Krasnaya Zvezda, a newspaper published by the Russian Ministry of Defence, on 10 Oct. 2002 [Russian] [English]

A Time for Action Breathing Life into the NATO-Russia Partnership by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Chairman of the NATO-Russia Council Last month, the world marked the first anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. At NATO Headquarters, I had several messages to the many people gathered at a ceremony to mark that sombre event. I told them that NATO commemorated and welcomed the coming together of the international community, first of all in common outrage and grief, then in solidarity against terrorists and their backers. I noted the successes of the international coalition against terror over the past year. I also reminded those present that we have not yet won this war, and that the civilised world must now follow the example of previous generations in their battles against totalitarianism and be prepared for a long haul. We at NATO were not alone in expressing these sentiments. In an open letter to President Bush on September 11, President Putin noted that “the September events constituted a watershed after which followed the world community’s deep rethinking of approaches to many global processes of today. All who not in words, but in actions cherish peace and stability demonstrated an unprecedented degree of solidarity, and united in the ranks of the antiterrorist coalition.” Much has happened in the world in the past year, and much of it has changed the world for the better. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been replaced by a fledgling democracy; the international community has closed ranks to deny the terrorists this and other bases of operations; NATO Allies have engaged in a thorough analysis of the threats to their security in the modern age, and of the capabilities, measures and cooperative relationships that will be necessary to defeat those threats; and, not least, NATO member states and Russia finally have understood that partnership needs to be more than just a word. We can either succeed together in meeting the security challenges of today and tomorrow, or we can fail separately. Looking back over the past year, it is fair to say that September 11 forced us to find answers to many of the questions that have dominated the debate about NATO’s institutional transformation and its future role in the world. Where NATO Allies once felt themselves under threat from the tank divisions and nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union, they now face a different, less predictable kind of threat, which emanates, in the first instance, from outside the Euro-Atlantic area, but can strike anywhere, at any time, with little to no warning. Thousands of people who showed up for work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, felt secure because they lived in a prosperous, militarily powerful society. Yet they were under the gravest and most immediate threat. We must not allow their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of thousands more victims of terrorist attacks – in the U.S., in Europe, in Russia and elsewhere – to be in vain. We must be prepared for the threats of tomorrow. If we wait, as we did in the past, for them to come to us, we may be too late. At our upcoming Summit meeting in Prague, Allies will seek to identify such new security threats and challenges – not just terrorism, but the broad range of contemporary threats, from proliferation dangers to regional instability and trafficking in arms, narcotics and human beings – and new strategies for dealing with them. This will involve new approaches, new capabilities and, yes, new members for the Alliance. It will also involve continued intensification of our relationships with Partners outside the Alliance. And none of these relationships is more important, or offers more potential for a true enhancement of the security of all, than the relationship between NATO and Russia. As I write this, NATO-Russia cooperation has become the rule rather than the exception, and the new character of our relationship can be seen right here in Moscow. Within the past year, the Alliance has staffed its Information Office, designed to serve as a source of accurate, timely information about the Alliance, and opened a Military Liaison Mission, charged with facilitating communication and co-operation between the Alliance and the Ministry of Defence. Last February, Defence Minister Ivanov and I hosted a high-level seminar in Rome on the role of the military in combating terrorism, an event we will follow up here in Moscow in December. While discussing our differences of views – such as those over certain aspects of Russia’s military campaign in Chechnya – frankly, we have made clear that an effective struggle against terrorism and criminality, in which well-disciplined military forces are part of a broader political and economic strategy that safeguards the rights of our own citizens and avoids fomenting instability in neighbouring states, is a goal we all share. We have pooled our intelligence to craft a joint assessment of the terrorist threat faced by our SFOR and KFOR peacekeepers, and turned this document over to appropriate military authorities so that it can be put into practice. We have begun sharing our experiences on defence and military reform, which will be the subject of another high-level NATO-Russia seminar on 10 October in Rome. We are having good progress in our discussions on potential cooperation in the area of Theater Missile Defence. We have worked to intensify our combined efforts in preventing and responding to civil emergencies. In fact, we have just completed a large-scale exercise, designed to enhance our combined ability to deal with the consequences for a civilian population of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, together in Noginsk, at the invitation of EMERCOM. Our partnership is real, and it is growing. The NATO-Russia Council, itself created by our heads of state and government in Rome just four months ago, already held its first meeting in Defence Ministerial session last June, and Defence Minister Ivanov joined me and his NATO counterparts just last week in Warsaw for another informal meeting of the “twenty.” Where we once repeated fixed positions in “19-plus-1” format (a structure our more cynical Russian colleagues often dismissed as “19-versus-1”), we now come together as twenty equal partners to seek common approaches to common threats. NATO Allies now have the benefit of Russian analytical and political perspectives from the very beginning of these discussions, and Russia’s voice is heard and taken into account before key decisions are made. NRC Ambassadors have met three times, and created four new working groups – on terrorism, proliferation, theatre missile defence and airspace management cooperation. In an unprecedented step, they agreed last month on political modalities for future NATO-Russia peacekeeping operations. They have made substantial progress toward a comprehensive joint assessment of the terrorist threat to the Euro-Atlantic area. Beyond this, they have instructed experts in a broad range of areas to explore ways in which the “twenty” can further intensify their practical co-operation. Hardly a day goes by in Brussels without a meeting “at twenty” in some form. Of course, practical co-operation is by no means new to NATO Allies and Russia. For seven years, our men and women in uniform have served side-by-side, advancing a common mission of bringing peace and stability to the Balkans. Military professionals the world over are renowned for their ability to find a “common language” when faced with a common mission, and our forces have been no exception. The first several years of our partnership were very much driven from the bottom up, by the tens of thousands of officers and soldiers who have rotated through IFOR, SFOR and KFOR. Their service, sacrifice and co-operation should serve as a model for us all, for it has remained exemplary, even at the most difficult moments (such as during the 1999 Kosovo crisis), when those of us at the political level found it difficult to find our own “common language.” Today, our unity of political will is also clear, and we understand that far more unites than divides us. In the words of the Rome Declaration, “we live in a new, closely interrelated world, in which unprecedented new threats and challenges demand increasingly united responses.” Our political leaders decided to seek those responses when, in creating the NATO-Russia Council, they decided to “open a new page in our relations, aimed at enhancing our ability to work together in areas of common interest and to stand together against common threats and risks to our security” and reaffirmed their “determination to build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security and the principle that the security of all states in the Euro-Atlantic community is indivisible.” The promise of Rome is a bright one, but ensuring its continued transformation into reality will require sustained effort on all sides. We need to shed old prejudices and stereotypes, to see each other as true partners, and not just in those isolated cases where circumstances force us to work together. The co-operative habits we have forged through our common experience in the Balkans, and which are now spreading to a wide variety of expert work, from combating terrorism to assessing proliferation dangers, from defusing regional crises to planning for civil emergencies, must be our first instinct, not our last resort. Hard work alone cannot make this happen. We also need to learn more about each other, to understand each other’s motives and concerns. This is why, as Secretary General of NATO and Chairman of the NATO-Russia Council, I am pleased to introduce this column of the “twenty.” Over the coming months, you will hear from a variety of NATO experts and working group chairmen, who will inform you about the breadth and depth of work underway in the NATO-Russia Council. You will learn about the work our experts have already begun, and the ideas we are exploring to deepen our co-operation even further. And you will have the opportunity, in these pages and through your own ministries and institutions, to provide your own input into this process. The readers of Krasnaya Zvezda represent many of Russia’s most experienced and best informed defence and security policy professionals. You carry the heavy burden of ensuring that Russia, too, adapts her security structures and co-operative relationships to the threats of today and tomorrow. We in NATO are committed to sharing our own experiences and doing all we can to find co-operative solutions to common security challenges. But we need your help as well to ensure that the NATO-Russia Council lives up to its full potential.