Rome 8 May 2000

NATO and South-Eastern Europe Secretary General's Remarks at the Conference of the CeSPI/IAI-East West Institute on "Prospects for Stability and Security in South-Eastern Europe" Mister Prime Minister, Mister President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me begin by thanking you for this very kind invitation to address you here today. As you can imagine, I spend a good percentage of my waking hours dealing with issues relating to South-Eastern Europe, and I think that this conference has covered many of the most important aspects. Over the course of this day, you have discussed many of the issues relating to the economic and political dimensions of South-Eastern Europe from various angles. Allow me, therefore, to offer some general reflections on the security dimension. In the early 1980s, a prominent peace researcher published an assessment of Europe's most secure states. The front runner: Switzerland. Hardly a surprise, I guess. By contrast, his choice of second and third place seemed rather peculiar: Yugoslavia and Albania. But there was a distinct logic to this. In the view of this analyst, the military alliances, NATO and Warsaw Pact, were clearly the most dangerous places, as they would almost certainly go to war with one another. Consequently, those countries farthest removed from the "blocs" would fare best. Today, the former Yugoslavia has disintegrated in a series of the bloodiest wars this continent has seen in half a century. A NATO-led coalition is picking up the pieces, creating a framework for long-term stability and reconciliation. Albania, which barely escaped internal collapse just a few years ago, is eager to join the Alliance. And even Switzerland -- the champion of European security -- is now actively cooperating with NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace initiative. I am not telling this story here in order to make fun of academia. Clearly, everyone has his or her share of false predictions. What makes the above analysis so unique -- and so uniquely tragic -- is its total neglect of domestic factors. Had our analyst focused on these, he probably would have realised the fragile nature of the Yugoslav state. Clearly , the country was secure from external aggression. But it was not "safe". Because it was on the brink of war with itself. A closer look at Enver Hoxha's Albania would have yielded similar results: a country that was secure from outside military aggression, but clearly not stable. If there is any solace for our hapless analyst, it lies in the fact that the entire Western community shared his mistakes to some extent. Let's face it: for decades, our security thinking revolved almost exclusively on NATO and the Warsaw Pact. And, once the latter filed for bankruptcy, we kept our focus in that direction, by working on the challenge of drawing the new Central and Eastern European democracies closer to Euro-Atlantic institutions. Because of these priorities, we failed to acknowledge the Yugoslav break-up in all its dimensions. True, in the early 90's, the international community became engaged in the Balkans, but it was a limited engagement. We focused on delivering aid, to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. But this approach left other fundamental issues unresolved. We simply did not focus on the basic issues relating to South Eastern European security, nor did we look at South-Eastern Europe as a region, in its entirety. We were addressing the symptoms, but not the fundamental problems. The results are well known. For years, our engagement amounted to a series of half-measures rather than to a comprehensive strategy. Instead of comprehensive and continuous engagement, Western policy towards the Balkans lurched, throughout most of the 1990s, from one crisis to another -- reactive, ad-hoc, and too focused on immediate crises to look at the bigger picture, or to develop long-term goals. Those days are finally over. A change of thinking about security is taking place. The notion that we can ignore regional conflicts because they bear no relevance to our own security is being put to rest. The clearest lesson we have learned from the Balkan conflicts is that, in the age of globalisation and ever-growing interdependence, all of our nations are affected by what is going on elsewhere. A regional conflict that spins out of control; a refugee crisis that destabilises wider regions; or an economic downturn leading to major political crises -- all of these can and do affect our security in many ways, even without ever threatening our territorial integrity. Nor are environmental disasters known to care about borders. In short, in the post-Cold War world, security is no longer a zero-sum game. If one country is more secure, we all gain. And if one region suffers, none of us can escape the insecurity that flows from it. We have learned these lessons -- and we have applied them. Today, we realise that security must aim wider than it did in the past. We cannot just build walls to keep problems out, because walls don't work. We cannot simply ignore problems until they go away -- because they don't, as Bosnia demonstrated so tragically. So we need a new approach. Rather than simply shielding ourselves from instability, we must actively create the conditions for stability. We must remain engaged, and focused on our long-term goals of building lasting peace in a region that has suffered too much from its absence. NATO's engagement in Bosnia was the first clear manifestation of that change of thinking. NATO's air strikes helped end the war itself, by backing diplomacy with measured military pressure. But that was not the end of NATO's involvement -- because the Alliance was growing to understand that there could be no lasting peace without patient engagement. That is why, after a peace agreement was signed, the Alliance also took on a major responsibility to implement it -- including, of course, Italy, which has maintained a large and robust force in Bosnia, which has played a key role in keeping and building the peace there. Though we are still a long way from a truly self-sustaining peace in Bosnia, we have created the conditions for the people there to work towards reconstruction and reconciliation - if they and their political leaders really want to choose this path. But NATO and its Partners achieved even more: In rallying all major powers, including Russia, behind a common political strategy and even into a common military operation, NATO also broke the fateful cycle of great powers siding with their traditional client states in the Balkans. In making a commitment to the re-building of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a viable multi-ethnic state, and by supporting the work of other institutions to achieve this aim, NATO demonstrated convincingly to the entire Euro-Atlantic community that engagement is better than indifference. In the 19th century, Bismarck could argue that the Balkans were "not worth the healthy bones of one Pomeranian grenadier". But NATO demonstrated that this notion was outdated. Engagement can influence European security dynamics for the better. NATO's Kosovo campaign last year followed that same logic: engagement, not indifference. This was not a campaign fought for NATO's own sake, as some revisionists now claim. There was much more at stake than NATO's credibility. The security of the region was at stake. Indeed, it is worth taking a moment to contemplate the implications of not taking action against Milosevic and his thugs. We would have undermined security in South-East Europe for years, if not decades. One million refugees would have been stranded in neighbouring countries; the conflict would have simmered, and likely spread; and the entire region would have suffered economically and politically. That is why this conflict did, indeed, matter to our interests, as well as our values. Kosovo is a small place, but it sits at a very strategic point -- between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Just south of Kosovo are two NATO allies, Greece and Turkey; to the north, new NATO members in Central Europe. And all around Kosovo there are small countries struggling with the transition to democracy and market economy. Kosovo is a small place -- but this crisis had major implications for our long-term security interests. It also had real implications for our values. If we had allowed this ethnic cleansing to go unanswered, we would have fatally undermined the Euro-Atlantic community we are trying to build, as we enter the 21st century. After all these decades of working towards ethnic tolerance in our own countries, how could we stand aside and allow a million people to be terrorized and expelled from their country in trains, for no other reason than their ethnicity? Ultimately, the significance of Kosovo went beyond the Balkans themselves. It became a question of what direction Europe at large was going to take: would it be a Europe that stands up for its values or would it be a Europe that simply acquiesces in ethnic intolerance and xenophobia? We gave our answer. Loud and clear. And, as a result, the organised, state-sponsored violence has stopped, and over a million refugees have returned to Kosovo, with more on their way. This is already a major victory. And it goes without saying that much of the credit must go to Italy. Your country was absolutely essential to the success of this operation. From the use of your airbases, to the troops you now have in KFOR, - let me recall Italy is today the first KFOR contributor -, to the Carabinieri helping to police the region, Italy has been a key member of this Alliance throughout this crisis. Let me just say -- congratulations. In so many ways, this success is your success. It is also a victory for all of South-Eastern Europe -- because for the first time, the entire region has displayed a sense of common purpose and direction that many had not believed possible even a few years ago. Some observers were using the Kosovo crisis to re-hash old myths about the Balkans being condemned to permanent instability. But the countries of the region have given a very different message. Through their support for NATO's operations, they have very clearly said: we want to be part of the European mainstream. And they have done more than just make nice speeches -- they demonstrated their determination through active, and often risky support for the Alliance, at one of the most crucial moments in its history. Let me be very clear -- through their actions throughout the Kosovo crisis, the countries of the region have shown that they are determined to become part of the European mainstream. Together with the countries of the region, our ambition is to address the problems of South-Eastern Europe in a comprehensive way. To this end, we must involve all major institutions as well as the nations in the region. Needless to say, economic assistance will be paramount. Hence the crucial importance of the European Union's initiative to create a Stability Pact, about which you have already heard quite a bit over the course of the day. But the Stability Pact also has a security focus because, quite simply, security and economics are linked. This logic was manifest in the twin project of the Marshall Plan and NATO in the late 1940s, which together helped Western Europe get back on its feet after devastating conflict, and become an area of rock-solid security and strong prosperity. This same logic also proved crucially important in the years following the end of the Cold War, when the EU's association agreements and NATO's Partnership activities provided the first bridges to overcome Europe's divisions. As a result, the Central and Eastern European countries are well on their way to enjoying the stability and prosperity that Western Europe now takes for granted. We are now taking part in another formative phase in Europe's evolution -- the transformation of "the Balkans" into South Eastern Europe. And once again, the close connection between security and economics is essential. That is why the Alliance has developed a variety of means to support the Stability Pact, in NATO's area of comparative advantage -- military security. Let's face it -- in the Balkans, hard security matters, and NATO has a variety of means at its disposal to help build it. For example, NATO has created a consultative forum on security matters with the nations neighbouring Yugoslavia. We are also building on the existing mechanisms of the Partnership for Peace and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council to give substance to our promise of assistance. We are setting up targeted NATO security co-operation programmes for the countries in the region. We will give our Partnership for Peace (PfP) activities and exercises a stronger regional focus. We will use our Membership Action Plan to help aspirant countries from South-Eastern Europe to prepare their candidacies for NATO membership. And we will maintain the long-term goal of membership in EAPC and PfP for Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and, ultimately, for a democratic Yugoslavia. Ladies and Gentlemen, In the 40 years of the Cold War the Atlantic community created a stable and prosperous Western Europe. In the decade that followed this community extended its reach to embrace Central and Eastern Europe. This decade, the first of our new century, should be the decade in which we embrace South-Eastern Europe. Of course, it is a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming project. But the success of Slovenia, of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia , and most recently of Croatia in shedding their past and preparing for the future show us we are on the right track. With patient engagement, and a determination to stay the course, NATO will succeed in achieving the long-term goal of the international community -- helping the Balkans become South-Eastern Europe for the welfare, safety and stability of the whole Euro-Atlantic area in the years to come.   Footnote: Turkey recognises the Republic of Macedonia with its constitutional name.