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Updated: 16-Dec-2003 NATO Speeches

NATO HQ

15 Dec. 2003

NATO as a peacekeeper

Q&A following the video lecture by Jamie Shea,
Deputy Assistant Secretary General for External Relations
and acting NATO Spokesman

Q: It's often said that the EU provides the mediation, NATO provides the military, and the UN provides the money. But now that the EU is - at least thinking - of also providing the military, how do you see this evolving with NATO in the future?

Jamie Shea: Well, with the European Union, I think the key thing is to be partners. We both have sort of different advantages. NATO, of course, the link to the United States, the ability to work with Russia, with so many partners in a security arrangement. And NATO too, as you know, as the integrated military command structures and the forces.

The European Union, of course, has all of its economic assets as well, and expertise in the civilian field, such as human rights, elections, police training and the rest. But of course, one interesting new development is that over this past year, the European Union has begun to develop its own military structures. And it has taken on its first military mission, Operation Concordia, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1), and in fact a mission which is finishing this week, having been very successful.

So, where I see the relationship is that both of us should in fact try to engage together, but in different ways. In Macedonia, the EU has been doing the military role, which it took over from NATO, but NATO has not disappeared. We have been instead able to concentrate on the Partnership for Peace, on military reform, on helping the Macedonians build up democratic defence institutions.

Similarly, if you look at Bosnia, NATO has been doing the military implementation and the EU has been doing the police training.

Now, next year, there are plans for the European Union to take over NATO's SFOR mission with a civil military mission of its own that remains to be defined. We largely support that idea.

But NATO will not disappear because we then hope to set up an office in Sarajevo to do the kind of the things we are doing in Macedonia in terms of the democratic institution building.

So, I think that those two examples show how we can work together, but not duplicate each other, rather sort of use our advantages in a coherent, co-ordinated way. And there's no reason why that approach could not apply to Afghanistan or to any other place where we engage in the future.

Q: But this is something else. You mentioned at a certain moment that you have the out-of-area operations. But how far can you go? There's about 120 armed conflicts going on today in the world and we look at Georgia, Aphasia to have things nearer, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya. What's... these also form potential threats to both Europe and the Alliance. What's... what's your idea on that?

Jamie Shea: Obviously, NATO can't look after every conflict in the world, but because you can't do all of them doesn't mean that you should do none of them.
If you look at the map of security... major security challenges today, at least in geographic terms -- because terrorism of course is something that does not respect any geography -- but in geographic terms, you'll say, well the biggest challenges are Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, finishing the job in the Balkans or policing against possible threats from terrorism in Europe, for example in the Mediterranean.

Now, NATO is involved in all of those in different ways. We have nearly 6,000 troops in Kabul, in Afghanistan, and we are going to expand on that. We have in the Balkans, as I was saying in this lecture, still today about 30,000 plus troops, although that number will be going down. And we are helping currently the Polish-led multinational division in Iraq. So, NATO is doing something in Iraq.

And in our ministers' meeting last week, foreign ministers, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, put on the table the idea that NATO should do more next year and nobody, none of the ministers dissented. So, clearly, that is a discussion we will have. And there are various options for how NATO could play a greater role.

Now, we have to obviously not become the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. We have to be careful at biting off more than we can chew. We don't want to fail at two missions; we'd rather succeed at one clearly.

So, I think the view here is that we have to get Afghanistan right first in terms of expanding the mission beyond Kabul and introducing security into the provinces, making sure that the warlords are disarmed, making sure that the authority of the government of President Karzai in Afghanistan extends throughout the country. We have to do that first before we can see what more we can do in Iraq. But as I mentioned, it's not always the case that we just start new missions without bringing the existing ones to a close.

The progress in Bosnia does show that there is a good chance the NATO's SFOR mission there can stop in 2004. And I agree that a good success story will increase international support for NATO doing more missions in the future.

Q: Then... a question from Brussels. You mentioned, Jamie, the fact that in some cases, the threat of the use of force is a very important instrument in resolving conflicts. What would you say is the test or the criteria for justified use of force? At which point can we say that diplomacy has failed and there is no other resort but the use of force? What are the tests that the international community should apply?

Jamie Shea: This is a good question. There will always be those who will say that diplomacy is not fouled, that you should try one final, final talk mission to Belgrade or to any other place where a dictator may be in residence.

And so, yes, it has to be a somewhat subjective judgement. But there are nonetheless I think criteria which are increasingly universally recognized.

The first one, of course, is force has to be seen as a last resort. So certainly, you have first of all to try to solve a conflict through diplomacy or peaceful means. You have to give people a chance to back down. You have to give them a way out and not push them into a corner; that's clear.

The second thing, of course, is that you have to have what would be called a legitimate objective. In the case of Kosovo, NATO's objective was not to conquer Yugoslavia, of course not, nor to bring about the fall of the Milosevich regime -- not as a direct aim -- but it was the humanitarian aim of stopping the ethnic cleansing by obliging the Serb forces that were conducting that ethnic cleansing to leave Kosovo.

So you have to have an aim which is legitimate, which basically people accept as being necessary. You need a basis in international law, that's another important condition.
Now, in Kosovo that was controversial. Everybody remembers this. NATO was not able to have a resolution from the UN Security Council. But that was not because NATO did not try to get one. You know, some people believe that we just ignored the UN: Nonsense. Five NATO allies are always on the UN Security Council, either as permanent members or non-permanent members.

In fact, we tried very hard but it was not possible because of the attitude taken by Russia then to get that resolution. But we still ensured that we had legal... a legal basis. Several NATO parliaments like the German Bundestag voted explicitly to authorise that action. And so, that is very important as well.

And finally, you've got to have a military strategy which has a reasonable chance of success and which can guarantee that you are able to achieve your objective with a minimum amount of destruction.

This goes back to the Middle Ages with the doctrine of proportionality, you remember the so-called Just War Theory, which is making a bit of a comeback in the modern age as we are increasingly focusing on humanitarian interventions, the notion that the good that the conflict produces has to outweigh the harm that you inflict, that you discriminate between military targets and civilian targets, that any damage to civilians is of course purely accidental and not deliberate; which is certainly not the case for ethnic cleansing where it was deliberate and the sense that you use only the minimum amount of force to secure your objective.

Well, if there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you very much indeed for listening to this second lecture, and hope that you will still have the tenacity and the perseverance, the key qualities to be there for the third one in a month's time.

But for today, from NATO Headquarters, thank you.

  1. Turkey recognises the Republic of Macedonia with its constitutional name.

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