NATO Speech: STOPWATCH 4 - The Transatlantic Link

NATO HQ

17 Apr . 2005

STOPWATCH 4
The Transatlantic Link

Special interactive video forum series with Jamie Shea

Multimedia
	Audio file .MP3/10873Kb
	Video forum

DR. JAMIE SHEA (Deputy Assistant Secretary General for External Relations): Well, hello everybody. And thanks once again for watching Stopwatch, our discussion program on NATO and security issues here at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

I'm Jamie Shea, and once again I'll be the moderator on today's Stopwatch.

But this is the last Stopwatch before the summer break and so to end in fine fashion, at least for this season, today we've chosen a particularly heavy subject: transatlantic relations.

Condoleezza Rice, who visited Europe just a few weeks back, was saying that we should stop analyzing transatlantic relations and start doing transatlantic relations.

Well, on today's Stopwatch we're going to try to do both, which is to analyze whether now we are going to see a durable improvement in the transatlantic dialogue and transatlantic security cooperation, and see in which areas that cooperation is going to be most feasible.

I'm very pleased for such a heavy topic to have such a weighty panel of experts with me today in the studio.

First, Ambassador Dan Speckhard, who is the Director of Policy Planning on the NATO international staff and an advisor to the NATO Secretary General; Jim Cloos, who is a key advisor to Javier Solana, and formerly occupies the position of Director of Transatlantic Relations, and Jim, many other things as well, but Transatlantic Relations, in particular, with the EU Council of Ministers; and Thomas Valasek, who is our independent voice today. Thomas is the director of the Brussels office for the Centre of Defence Information.

So, gentlemen, welcome and thank you very much for agreeing to participate.

Well, Dan, I'd like to turn to you first. After the Bush visit can we say that the improvements in transatlantic relations is going to be a durable one? Is there substance there? Or is it really simply a change in rhetoric, which for the time being is covering up the persistence of the old problems?

AMBASSADOR DANIEL SPECKHARD (Head of the Policy Planning Division for the Private Office of the Secretary General): If you look at the cooperation between the European allies and North America allies, over the last several years, you're going to find many, many instances of that success, including what we've been doing in the Balkans, including what we've done together in Afghanistan. We're now together, and perhaps very dramatically so, in terms of what NATO's doing in Iraq in the sense of our common purpose there, and all 26 allies working together.

And underneath that, we've been constantly working together in a common goal of promoting democracy for the broader region as a whole. So from my perspective, sitting here inside NATO, I see a cooperative relationship, that of course, has problem areas, and it's unfortunate that those problem areas get all the attention.

SHEA: Well, Jim, turning to you, and building on what Dan was saying, from the EU point of view, you've had some of the more difficult issues to deal with the U.S. on over the last few years; Iran, the proliferation issue, China, the arms embargo, Middle East policy and the rest. So do you believe that the solution of those issues has now become easier since the re-election of Bush and the new outreach to Europe?

JIM CLOOS (Director, Directorate IV Transatlantic Relations, Council of the EU): Thanks, Jamie. The answer is yes, I do believe it has become easier. Let me just make a few more general remarks. First of all, I very much agree with what Dan said about the solidity of the relationship. We have gone through a bad patch. We all know that. And the Iraq crisis was a real political crisis across the Atlantic.

This being said, there are several buts. The first but is that the fundamentals are still there. They're not going to change that quickly. If you look at the economic interdependence between the United States and Europe it is absolutely staggering. Mutual investment is $2.8 trillion. Mutual trade is $550 billion. Those are enormous figures.

Investment of the United States in Holland alone is ten times U.S. investment in China. Just let's keep those things in perspective. So that's very solid.

The second very solid element is that we do share core values. We do disagree on certain issues, the death penalty and other issues, but the core values, democracy, rule of law, human rights, we do share, and I think that's a very solid basis to work on.

Now, the other remark I'd like to make is that even in 2003 relations were not as bad as the press portrayed them. We had problems on Iraq, but we never stopped working together on Iran or the Middle East peace process, on the Balkans, which you've mentioned, on terrorism, on non-proliferation—let alone economics. So we have really never stopped working together.

Now, it is much better if the political... when the political rhetoric is tuned in to the reality on the ground. It will allow us to work much more constructively even, to take new initiatives, because obviously if you know that the political leadership uses positive language it's easier for people like us to make things move forward.

SHEA: Jim, thank you. But Thomas, turning to Iraq, which was the issue which really did get all of the attention, as Jim pointed out, and which really did split the transatlantic allies two years ago, do you see now that there's sort of a willingness to sort of turn the page and can you see the Europeans, whether it be on the NATO side, or the EU side, now really getting involved in reconstruction in Iraq?

THOMAS VALASEK (Centre of Defence Information): The question, when we rewind to 2003, was... it was obvious to all of us we're in trouble, the relationship was in trouble. The question was: Is the relationship plastic or elastic? Are we going to snap back to the good relations we had before when the conflict is over? Or will it have been changed forever?

I think the answer is, it has been changed. I think it's important to acknowledge we have a strong relationship, but it's a different one from the one that it was before the Iraq war.

It's not just because of Iraq. I see the key difference in the emergence, frankly, of the European Union as a security actor. The Iraq war in that sense was a catalyst. It has simply put things into motion and accelerated certain developments within the European Union, such as the writing of the security strategy, the creation of the planning headquarters within the EU. But I think it's important to realize that now that the dust is settling we are looking at a different dynamic. Different actors even, on the European side. So it will be a different relationship. That's not to say it'll be better or worse, but it will be different.

SHEA: But what about Iraq, the question I asked you? Can you see the Europeans getting more involved with troops, with money, with police or whatever, to help with the reconstruction? Or do you really believe the U.S. is still out there on its own there in Baghdad?

VALASEK: I'm not staying away from the issue of Iraq deliberately. Well, the fact is, too much attention, too much focus has been put on Iraq. I think so much water has been under the bridge. Iraq has simply created so much bad blood, if you will, that I think we're well-advised to simply focus and move on to other issues.

I would like to see more robust European contribution in Iraq. I think it would be... it will be counterproductive to press for more military presence of European Union countries, or European Union formally, in Iraq simply because the political realities in the key member states are what they are, but there are ways, and there are already projects under way in which the European Union is helping train the Iraqi security apparatus, and I think that's about what it's going to be in the long run.

SHEA: But Jim, you wanted to come back in there.

CLOOS: Yes, I just wanted to point out that within a few weeks the EU and the U.S. are going to organize jointly, together, a conference on Iraq. I think that's a very nice signal that we have turned a corner.

SHEA: Thank you.

Dan, I'd like to ask you something on this whole business of the relevance of NATO to the U.S. A few years ago people in NATO were somewhat depressed to hear lines from Washington that it's the mission that determines the coalition; it's not the coalition that determines the mission. There was a sense that NATO was less valuable to these ad hoc arrangements; that maybe NATO was too bureaucratic for the U.S. and it was war by committee.

Do you believe beyond the rhetoric, the U.S. administration now really has revalued the importance of NATO, is seeing new advantages to it, is really going to use NATO more in the future? Not just saying nice things about it, but actually use it? An evidence there from your perspective?

SPECKHARD: Well, absolutely. I've seen that the U.S., from sitting inside of NATO, is coming more and more to NATO as a tool for multilateral effective engagements in world crises. And a recent example is Darfur, where the U.S. has said they would like to see a more active NATO role here because they think we have the capabilities that can be brought to bear very quickly on that issue.

Of course, there have been some challenges in the past, as you've said, as the administration has developed its thinking on this. But I think there is an understanding that you cannot create a coalition every time, that there's some inefficiencies in that, and if you have a standing institution like NATO, that has an integrated military structure, that works together well with the allies, that it's the first choice for use in international crisis management. That doesn't mean it's always the choice, because you have to have political unity to be effective in that, and that's not always going to be the case in today's complicated world.

SHEA: But how about the European military capabilities? Do you feel that the U.S. may consider that NATO has lost its value because the Europeans just don't have the capabilities to really help the U.S. to share the burden?

For example, we did have problems with finding just a few helicopters in Afghanistan not such a long time ago.

SPECKHARD: Yeah, I think that's more of a sense of frustration over political will, and where that is being evidenced. NATO's aware of that. The Secretary General has been working on that. In particular I think we still have to modernize this institution in some ways to look at things like common funding. Partly where you can't find helicopters because it's a lot more expensive to send them to Afghanistan and maintain them there then it was to the Balkans. And small countries have a real challenge in doing that on short notice with we all know what are fairly long budget cycles sometimes. That's an issue that can be addressed and solved and the U.S. knows that, and is working constructive to find solutions to that.

So my sense is they see this as an institution worth investing in, and I'll give you one last example: the NATO Response Force, which is a high-end response force to be able to be used to deploy troops on short notice to crises places. That's really primarily European-supported inside of NATO. It's not heavily dominated by the U.S. It's mostly European. The U.S. understands the value of that and is seeing that as a very valuable tool for future crisis response.

SHEA: Thanks. Thomas, a few months ago in Munich Chancellor Schröder made a speech which gained a lot of attention, where he seemed to suggest that... or say that NATO was no longer the primary forum for discussion of the key transatlantic issues.

How do you interpret what he was saying? Was he suggesting that these issues should be brought back into NATO? Or that NATO was dead and that we should find somewhere else where we could have those transatlantic discussions?

VALASEK: Well, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? Everybody agrees on the diagnosis, I think. We all realize that NATO is not doing what it could do on the political front. And clearly there are movements under way currently. We had recently a NATO meeting in Vilnius where there were attempts made to bring NATO into more of a political fold; to turn, in particular, the North Atlantic Council into more of a body where larger strategic questions are being debated.

But there is another interpretation of what Chancellor Schröder was suggesting; namely that... and there's an awful lot of truth to that, with the emergence of the European Union and with the European Union increasingly taking a larger portion of responsibility for the security... coordinating and implementing the security and foreign policies of the individual EU member states, we do have to find a way for the EU to coexist alongside NATO, within NATO.

Nineteen out of the twenty-six NATO allies are also members of the EU. So I think the challenge for the next 10, 20 years really will be a sort of a soft landing for the... where we can have an increasingly stronger EU, but also retain and effective NATO. The challenge will be to find a role for the EU within NATO workings, and find a mechanism that will allow us to engage the opinion more effectively and more constructively.

SHEA: I suppose that for most of our viewers the real problem here is that we've got these two big organizations, which both have a stake in the transatlantic relationship—NATO and the EU; so how do we sort of divide up the work between them?

For example, I was at a lunch with Henry Kissinger here in Brussels a few days ago, and I asked him this question, and he said quite clearly, NATO should handle all of the defence-related strategic issues, and the EU should handle more the transatlantic trade issues or social issues.

Jim, from your perspective, would that be a division of labour that you would accept?

CLOOS: I hate to say that on that one I disagree with Henry Kissinger. He's someone I read with great pleasure and all that, but I have a slight disagreement. Let me take this from a slightly different angle.

If you look at transatlantic relations after the Second World War, they were made up of three major elements. The first element: NATO. Central. Security. Soviet threat. You have to defend yourselves with the U.S. umbrella.

Second element: traditional bilateral relations between the U.K. and the United States, France and the United States, Luxembourg and the United States.

And the third, sort of budding, emerging element, was relations between what was then called the European Community and the U.S.; mainly at the time limited to trade and economics and internal market efforts.

Now, there are three elements which have changed the scenery. The first one is, of course, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. It changes the whole situation. NATO has to adapt. The EU has to adapt.

The second one is 2001, 9/11. I think it also introduced an entirely new element.

And the third one is, of course, something which is internal to the EU. The European Community is transforming into a European Union and is adding a foreign policy aspect; justice and home affairs, internal security, asylum immigration aspect.

So that means that the transatlantic relationship, you will keep all those three elements. NATO remains important, but has to adapt. That's not my subject, but it's yours.

The bilateral relations will not go away. The British will always have a special relationship with the United States. Actually most of our... all our 25 member countries want to have a special relationship with the United States and that's perfectly okay.

But the element which is actually developing faster, as documented also by President Bush's visit, is the EU. Why? Because the EU is doing things it didn't do ten years ago. And if you want to fight terrorism, for instance, of course you sometimes need military power. You need intelligence, you need police, you need education, you need external assistance. You need all those kinds of things.

And if you look at an actor which across the board can bring something, it is the EU.

So I think in that sense the EU is becoming important. But as I said, NATO remains very important; bilateral relations will always be important.

SHEA: Well, Dan, Jim's point is well taken, that, of course, the EU now has functions well beyond the economic parameters of the early days, particularly on terrorism, where it makes presumably more sense for the U.S. to talk to the European Union. Perhaps even more than to talk to individual nation states.

But you know, NATO is in Afghanistan. We now have a role in Iraq. You mentioned Darfur a few moments ago. There's talk about NATO also perhaps one day implementing an agreement in the Middle East. Does that also not suggest that some of the issues that are spoken about in the European Union at the moment, like Iran, the proliferation problem, China, the arms embargo problem, the Middle East peace process, shouldn't we start talking about those issues in NATO as well, to balance out the more developed dialogue in the EU format?

SPECKHARD: I don't think it's a question of balancing it out, but I do think it's a natural progression for NATO and the modernization that was talked about here. And it's actually happening.

When Secretary Rice made her first visit to NATO for a ministerial in February, she wanted to talk about the Middle East peace process, and she did that inside a ministerial construct here at NATO. And it's a natural thing. We're a security organization. It's hugely important and as the world security challenges have gone global, you have to be talking about these issues if you're relevant to security of the Atlantic space. So that's a natural thing.

Iran came up when President Bush visited during his summit meeting in February. A normal thing. But part of this process, the transformation of NATO, has to be an understanding that when these issues are discussed, political issues, in that format at NATO, in the North Atlantic Council, it doesn't mean that there's a military action, or a military response, or a NATO action that is following that.

We are just... not only are we a military organization, but we're a home for transatlantic dialogue and consultation on security challenges and issues. And that is enough in that particular area, and for these issues you're talking about, which are important to security, it's natural that they'd come up in a discussion. But it doesn't necessarily mean that NATO should have a role in addressing it.

SHEA: But wouldn't the journalists all write stories about NATO being in crisis, or NATO being in disarray if we discussed those issues and didn't come to an immediate agreement? Isn't that the danger?

SPECKHARD: That's the danger the first few things, but when they see it happening and they see that we are actually discussing it as a natural home to do that, I think that'll get over very quickly.

SHEA: Tell us, from your perspective, do you feel that NATO should be discussing all of these weighty, global issues, or isn't there a danger of strategic overload, that NATO comes across as the global policeman, and tries to take on everything, whether it can make a contribution or not?

VALASEK: No, it takes two to really... to run into that sort of a danger. The fact is, we can only discuss things if both European allies and the United States, and of course, all the other non-EU allies, Norway, Turkey and others, agree on it. So I completely agree with Daniel. I think it's important to have NATO as the forum where we discuss strategy, where we discuss some of the larger issues.

There are some political realities, and let's be honest. There was a reluctance on the U.S. side to engage NATO in that forum initially, or in the 2001/2002. Some for good reasons. NATO was seen as not contributing much to what has become all of a sudden literally overnight the overriding problem on the United States agenda, the fight against terrorism.

I would argue that the situation has changed on the European Union and on European end. We see much more commitment, much more focus on terrorism now. There is a very lively debate, and very lively cooperation that is taking place. But the fact is, it took a while for the realities on the European end to catch up to the United States' priorities.

And on the European end there was also, and there still is to this day, some reluctance to turn NATO into that sort of a forum. I think that... and things really go back to Iraq. Iraq has caused a lot of popular resentment. While we had a majority of support in the EU for the Iraq war, and it's important to be honest about it, most of the governments were on the side of the United States, the public were not necessarily very enthusiastic. There were large demonstrations. And it is still too tempting, I think, for some of the leaders to simply use the lingering resentment over the Iraq war for scoring political points. And I think that also means paying less attention to NATO, reluctance to vest NATO with this sort of responsibility, because NATO, for better or worse, is still seen as the tool of U.S. influence in Europe.

SHEA: Jim, we have had our difficulties, I think, we've mentioned this openly with the transatlantic relationship in the Alliance over the last few years, but in the European Union too. I mean, you had two annual summits. They were reduced to just one annual summit. There was a sense that maybe these summits didn't produce very much substance. But as somebody who's been in Washington recently preparing the next summit, do you believe, again, that you're now putting more flesh on the bones there?

CLOOS: Yes, I definitely do think. And it's linked to what I said before. It's very much linked to the internal transformation of the EU. If you, nowadays, want to talk about proliferation, about terrorism, you have to talk to the EU, whether you like it or not, because many of the issues which you want to tackle, are being tackled at the EU level.

I hasten to add that I don't see this in terms of competition. I think we all have a lot to do. Take Sudan. I mean, NATO is now looking at possibly helping the AU, the African Union. We are helping the African Union. In many ways there is a lot of scope to do so. I mean, we have actually financed about 80 percent of the AMIS mission by the African Union. I am quite sure that there is enough scope for everybody to help.

We should not constantly see this in terms of a thing. We should see it in terms of efficiency. What do we want to deliver? We pursue the same aims. We want democracy, we want freedom, we want rule of law, we want the respect of human rights. That's what we work for, both in NATO and the EU. So we can be perfectly complementary.

Now, on the summit, I think that what is important is to have substantial summits. The last summit in Dromoland Castle last year, in Ireland, the west of Ireland, was actually a very substantial one. If you look at it you can look up at the website, you have seven quite substantial declarations on Middle East peace process, on the broader Middle East, on proliferation, on terrorism, on Sudan. It's quite substantial.

We're now preparing the next one and we are going to have... if you look at the elements, the agenda, you know, we'll have three major clusters, you know. It really covers the meat you're talking about. It covers economic cooperation, obviously. It covers security issues; terrorism, justice and home affairs as we call it, or Homeland Security, as the Americans call it. Non-proliferation, very important. And of course, it covers the spread of democracy, of rule of law, of human rights, which is new.

SHEA: Let me just... let me just come in here. One of the things that journalists often say is that the U.S. is now the revolutionary power in the world. President Bush is today in Georgia giving a major speech in favour of freedom there. He's been in the Baltic states. The U.S. has been tough recently on human rights in Belarus, in calling for change. Do you sense that it's fair to say that the EU is now the status quo power in Europe? And it's the U.S. that really is in the driving seat to bring about these changes, such as we saw in Ukraine recently? Would that be a fairly comment?

CLOOS: Well, let's start from the facts. As... you mention Belarus. Two weeks ago Condie Rice and Javier Solana together received the Belarus opposition, together. You mentioned Ukraine. I think... who was sitting at the table with the Polish president, the Lithuanian president, was Javier Solana for the EU.

So I don't think that you could say that the European Union is not fighting for democracy. Of course it is. It is... I mean, the very existence of the EU is based on democracy and freedom.

And so we are... it depends on what you call the status quo power? If you look at an EU, which has gone from six member countries to twenty-five, now almost twenty-seven, and there'll be more, that's not the status quo. That's acquired and soft and lasting and sustainable revolution. That's what I call the whole enlargement process.

So, we are maybe a status quo point in the sense that we believe in spreading democracy, the rule of law, multilateral effectiveness, that's what we're trying to do. But I think if you look at the end result of what the EU is all about, it is not about the status quo.

Last remark I'd like to make in that respect, we are talking a lot about Middle East and all that; well, we launched the Barcelona process, which is a process of sitting around the table, the Mediterranean countries south and north and the whole European Union, to talk about democracy, to talk about human rights and all that, to get them. It's one of the only official fora where you have Israelis and Arabs sitting around the table and discussing those issues.

SHEA: Jim, I hope you didn't mind me teasing you a little bit with that provocative question. Dan, please.

SPECKHARD: I'd just like to add in on this point, that I think it is very relevant to note what an important, attractive driving force the European Union is for promoting democracy in the Euro-Atlantic area—and still is—for those countries who are not part of the European Union.

And if you talk about Ukraine, if you talk about Georgia, if you talk about the rest of the Caucasus, the Balkan countries, this is absolutely the primary driver for that.

Of course the United States is out there as showing an important... and providing lots of resources, and encouragement to this, but it really is a cooperative effort.

SHEA: Well, I think there is one aspect we still do need to discuss. If we are agreed that there is now an improved transatlantic relationship in the Alliance, there is an improved relationship between the EU and the United States, how can we join these processes up if we don't have also a good strategic relationship between the EU as an institution, and NATO? So the results in one forum can be passed on as appropriate to the other.

Dan, why don't we... why have we not joined up this sort of third line in the triangle so far? What do you think the prospects are for an improved EU-NATO relationship?

SPECKHARD: Well the reason we haven't yet caught up with that wave is in part the speed with which the European Union has been growing, and the speed at which NATO has been growing. An enormous enlargement has taken place, and we now have to digest that institutionally, and figure out these arrangements so that the institutional arrangements fit.

But that doesn't mean there's an absence of the strategic dialogue between our organizations. The Secretary General of NATO, the High Representative of the EU are in almost daily contact on issues of security and international affairs issues. We are working together on the ground in the Balkans. We are involved in Darfur together. We are consulting with each other on what each other is doing in Iraq. We are working together on Afghanistan. Operationally we work in the field in terms of some of our program activity.

So in my mind don't let those newspaper headlines kid you into thinking that there isn't a relationship here that's actually pretty deep and pretty extensive. But yes, we now have to go on and develop the institutional arrangements to make that work.

SHEA: But Thomas, that is the case and of course Dan is right to point out the underlying realities, but it's still the case that NATO and the EU don't seem to have high level ministerial meetings very often. I don't believe there's been a summit between the two organizations so far. And there is a sense that really they should be more joined up.

From your independent perspective, would you agree?

VALASEK: I would agree, and I think again, it's important to be realistic. There is very little cooperation between NATO and the EU. Far less than there should be, given the urgency of a lot of the tasks on the security agenda. Whether it's non-proliferation, whether it's a fight against terrorism.

Reasons? Really, I think they're part of a... the guilt lies on both sides. On the United States side there was a reluctance for a while to engage the European Union as a full actor. I think that has changed. One of the thing we have seen from the second administration in the few months that we have had a second Bush administration, was a very clear, forthright statement. The United States is ready to work with the European Union as an actor.

That put to rest a lot of the theories that the United States may be trying to seek to divide and conquer, to play off some of the European allies against each other. I see very little evidence for that. I see all the evidence against that, in fact. I do think the U.S. position has been very clear over the last few months. It is ready to work with the EU as an actor.

The appointment of, for instance, the Homeland Security attaché to the EU specifically is one of the very reasonable signs of that.

On the European side, again, it's important to be realistic. The European Union is a body of 25 countries. It can only proceed on a consensus. We have very different views within the European Union on what the transatlantic relationship should look like, on the role of NATO within it. We need for the European Union to really constructively engage with NATO. It first needs to make up its mind, and it hasn't. Such other political realities, the Iraq war has brought it really to the forefront. I don't think those divisions have fully healed; the divisions within Europe. And let's face it, the enlargement has made it more difficult.

We have a new set of countries within the European Union that have a very strong point of view on the role of the United States and the centrality of NATO and their security image.

SHEA: Jim, on this one, you're obviously concerned at the moment, particularly with the French referendum just a for example, days ago, to see the Constitution ratified. Do you think that the acceptance of the Constitution will give the EU mechanisms which ultimately will make cooperation with an organization like our one here in NATO easier?

CLOOS: I think the Constitution, if it enters into force, will make our foreign policy generally much easier, be it in relations with the United States or with other third countries, China, Russia, very important relationship, or with NATO. I think because we will have more unity, we will have a foreign Minister who will be at the same time the vice president of the Commission. He will have a new joint diplomatic service, and we will have EU delegations across the world. I think that is a major, major change.

Just one quick word on NATO and the EU. I mean, if you look at the Balkans, you mentioned this, I mean, the cooperation there is splendid. I mean, we've just taken over an operation which was run by NATO, which is now run by the EU. The handover worked brilliantly well. I think developments on the ground are positive. We have special arrangements to do this. We should work more on those, but I'm fairly confident.

SHEA: Well, Dan, we only have a few seconds left. If the U.S. is going to remain engaged in NATO, does the EU, do the Europeans have to become a little more like Mars and a little bit less like Venus? Or do you think that this is a kind of, again, a division of labour that ultimately is inevitable and makes sense? What do the Europeans have to do to satisfy the Americans?

SPECKHARD: I think it's going to happen regardless of what the Europeans do. NATO is here to stay. NATO is a place that will continue to attract both the Europeans and the North Americans, to have this kind of dialogue and security and to cooperate together. This is the only place where you have an integrated military structure that trains together, works together, that brings North Americans and Europeans together to address crises in real time, and you don't have to recreate that. And to try to recreate something like that in some new type of format is really not realistic.

So I think that from the perspective, which to go back to the beginning of this, I think Jim mentioned it, that the fundamental values are there. And the basis and the foundation is solid and of course, we have to work out some of the differences and the country specific issues and so forth, but it's not going to change the fundamentals.

SHEA: Well, Dan, thanks for giving me the best conclusion that I could have thought of to sum up. So we've run out of time. Thank you, once again, for following this Stopwatch and please tune in to the next one after the summer break. But from NATO headquarters here in Brussels, bye for now and thanks again to my three guests today.