At the NATO/GMFUS Conference Brussels, 3 October 2002

Welcome and Introductory Remarks by Bill Drozdiak, Director of the Transatlantic Center Good morning and welcome to the Conference on the future of NATO sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Transatlantic Center. My name is Bill Drozdiek, and I'm the Director of the Center. We have been in operation for 10 months. This was created under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund with the idea of encouraging and promoting better Transatlantic relations during the 21st century. In the post Cold War era we've seen Europe and the United States start to grope for a new and closer partnership, yet without the cement provided by a common threat that was embodied by the Soviet Union, it has caused some strains in the relationship, and made it difficult to agree on a new agenda. I think that we would all agree that this is a particularly momentous time for the Alliance as it struggles to deal with so many issues, ranging from the defence capabilities question, the gap in technology between Europe and the United States, new threats from outside NATO's traditional areas such as the Middle East and Iraq and of course, since 11 September last year, the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. I think since we began here last December we have already felt in our work the enormous impact on American sensibilities and the way it has been felt in Europe about the risk of terrorism. We recently conducted a survey of public attitudes in Europe and the United States which was the most comprehensive poll ever taken of public attitudes towards foreign policy. More than 9,000 respondents, more than 6,000 of them in Europe spread across 6 countries and 3,200 Americans, and what we found were some conclusions that were quite striking when compared with what you may be reading among the pundits in the press, and even what you may be hearing from some government statements and as a journalist for the Washington Post for 20 years I cannot be accused of being anti-press by any means because I very much believe in its role as educating public opinion, and I am all in favour of greater transparency between governments and the people. But what we found in this survey was that there was a remarkable convergence of attitudes on the part of the public in both Europe and the United States. That indeed in the United States there was a much keener sense of vulnerability to the outside world and for the first time in more than four decades of taking these kinds of opinion polls, we found that foreign policy issues predominated among the public's concerns. Notably there was terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and Iraq as the top three issues. But surprisingly we found in interviewing the European public that some of these issues were also of great concern to them, so when one speaks about the yawning gap across the Atlantic, it is important I think to keep in mind that there are a lot of shared values and a lot of shared perceptions in public opinion. In our questioning on NATO we also found some rather interesting conclusions. 61% of Americans and 63% of Europeans think that NATO is an essential institution but that it needs to be strengthened. We found that there were strong majorities that still regard NATO as crucial to helping their security, although interestingly there was a drop in the past 4 years of support in the United States from 65% to 56% of public opinion, yet this was matched by a feeling among Americans - and this was 70% of those we interviewed - who said that the most important lesson from the events of 11 September was that the United States must work more closely with its NATO allies in dealing with the threats of the future, so that was a rather reassuring conclusion. When we discussed the issue of enlargement, we also found there was very strong popular support for moving ahead with a big bang enlargement of the 7 candidate countries, and even to some surprise with Russia. 60% of Europeans favoured the early entry of Russia into NATO, and 68% of Americans favoured this, so this is a rather remarkable transformation as we have already been seeing with the recent creation of the NATO at 20 of Russia’s relationship with the Alliance. I hope during the course of this day we will be able to go into all of these issues, public opinion, the new threats facing NATO such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and of course the momentous Summit that will take place next month in Prague when we could see the next big wave of NATO enlargement. We are pleased to start the Conference with addresses by two distinguished leaders of the Alliance. Of course Lord Robertson, the Secretary General of NATO, and Kristin Krohn Devold, the Minister of Defence from Norway. Lord Robertson, of course, I got to know him during my days as a journalist for the Washington Post covering the Kosovo air war, and every day in the NATO press room we would cluster around the video screen to watch a pugnacious Defence Minister in London put the fear of the Lord in Slobodan Milosevic and we have been gratified to have him come to Brussels and in the three years he has been here he's I think invigorated the organisation, and he has embarked on a very important reform which we hope we will see the fruits of at the Prague Summit. So it is my pleasure to introduce Lord Robertson of Port Ellen as our first speaker, and co-host of this day's Conference.