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Eerste Kamer der Staten-Generaal 1 Vergaderjaar 2009–2010 32 123 V Vaststelling van de begrotingsstaten van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (V) voor het jaar 2010 H VERSLAG VAN HET SYMPOSIUM «NATO AT 60 – THE FUTURE AHEAD» Friday 23 October 2009 Senate of the Netherlands Chair: Mr. Fred de Graaf 1. Official opening OPENING ADDRESS BY MR. FRED DE GRAAF Chairman of the standing committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Development Cooperation of the Senate Mr. de Graaf: Good morning everybody! Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to welcome you on behalf of the standing committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Development Cooperation to the Senate of the States General and to this symposium on NATO’s future. Let me start with a few housekeeping announcements. First, please turn off any mobile devices and secondly, I would like to remind you that this is a public symposium. A verbatim transcript of this event will be produced and may be made publicly available. Ladies and gentlemen, NATO’s 60th anniversary is an occasion to take stock of its past and reflect on its future. As an organisation with 28 members and no shortage of candidates to join, NATO does not appear to have lost much of the appeal or vitality that helped it come into existence in 1949. But aging is a process that inevitably sparks existential questions and NATO is not immune to them. For nearly twenty years now, since the end of the cold war, the Alliance has been struggling to re-define itself. The question of what NATO’s mission is, how it is changing and how its members should respond is related to but goes beyond the operational issues facing NATO forces in the field. In other words, new headlines about the counter strategy in Afghanistan or NATO’s expanding member- KST141766 ISSN 0921 - 7363 Sdu Uitgevers ’s-Gravenhage 2010 Eerste Kamer, vergaderjaar 2009–2010, 32 123 V, H 1 ship towards the East ultimately boil down to fundamental questions of strategy and direction. These are contained in the NATO Strategic Concept. As you are of course aware, the process of review of this document has started this year. It is due to be presented by Secretary-General Rasmussen early next year. As Julian Lindley-French will further elaborate on, the new strategic concept must account of the way in which security challenges have evolved, such as the new emphasis on proliferation, failed states, piracy, energy supplies, terrorism and climate change. In other words, the central ques- tion is to what extent NATO as an organisation should focus on compre- hensive security, directing its attention more towards non-traditional security areas like non-proliferation, energy security and cyber defence or, taking a step back and re-aligning itself with a more traditional interpreta- tion of collective defence. The new strategic concept will also need to give specific guidance to NATO governments on how they need to further transform their own national defence structures and capabilities in order to be successful in meeting NATO’s core tasks in the 21st century. As an alliance of member states the ultimate success of NATO requires a convergence in national threat perceptions and foreign policies. Now that national defence budgets may likely dwindle as a result of the global financial crisis, such unity of purpose has become all the more pressing. Hugo Klijn will address this interaction between NATO and its members, focussing on The Netherlands in particular. Ladies and gentlemen, relations with Russia are of course pivotal to NATO’s strategic orientation, irrespective of the vision one may hold about the scope of the Alliance mission. On a practical level, cooperation between NATO and Russia on strategically important issues such as Afghanistan and Iran offers mutual benefits to both parties. On the level of pan-European security architecture Russian, European and Atlantic inter- ests need to be articulated, discussed and reconciled. We are honoured to welcome Konstantin Kosachev to share his views on this relationship. Today’s speakers, at least to some extent, represent different strategic cultures in wider Europe. I am grateful for their efforts to share their perspectives with us today. Public participation to the discussion leading up to the renewed strategic concept is paramount to its long term cred- ibility and success. I am very pleased to see so many familiar faces here, of people who have for long been following NATO and the wider interna- tional security architecture, be it as politicians, civil servants, analysts or members of various social and religious organisations. I trust that your varying views on the future of the transatlantic alliance will make a living and sound discussion, much like the debate we value in this House. I am particularly pleased to introduce our first speaker of today, Mr. Konstantin Kosachev. He will share a Russian perspective on NATO’s development and future. Mr. Kosachev currently serves as chairman of the Duma committee on International Affairs. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 2004. Before being elected to the State Duma in 1999, Mr. Kosachev had a successful career as a diplomat, serving in various Russian diplomatic missions abroad. May I invite you, Mr. Kosachev? Eerste Kamer, vergaderjaar 2009–2010, 32 123 V, H 2 KEY NOTE ADDRESS BY MR. KONSTANTIN KOSACHEV Chairman of the standing committee on International Relations of the Russian Duma Mr. Kosachev: Dear ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to thank Mr. de Graaf for arranging this conference and inviting me as one of the key note speakers though Russia does not belong to NATO. But as you absolutely correctly pointed out the relations between NATO and Russia are definitely of significant importance for both sides of this cooperation. I believe that my contribution may also be of some importance in terms of discussions, which are ongoing right now about the new strategic concept of NATO. I would also like to thank my friend Mr. Tiny Kox for initiating my participation in this conference. We are not just friends by also neigh- bours, sitting together in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I would also like to thank Mr. René van der Linden, the newly elected president of the Senate. He is now absent but he wrote me a very warm letter and I believe that we will have many other occasions to meet, here in The Hague or elsewhere in the world. I am going to speak about «NATO at 60 – the future ahead» in three dimensions. I will speak about NATO as an outsider with you, insiders, I will speak about Russia as an insider with you, outsiders and I will speak about our common Europe, where we all are insiders but where the problem is the number of outsiders, which is much larger and much more than we could have had. My first remark is about NATO at 60. If you would analyse these 60 years I would like to put four benchmarks with 20 years’ steps. The first one is quite natural, in 1949 when the Washington Treaty was signed. At that moment the enemy was quite clear and obvious: the Soviet Union. The strategy at that moment in 1949 was based on two concepts: deterrence and defence. I believe that this strategy has proved to be successful, at least for NATO. Five years later – maybe some people here do not remember that – the Soviet Union immediately after the death of Joseph Stalin asked for membership in NATO but was refused, rejected. Again, one year later the Warsaw Pact was established and the war re-started as the Cold War between the two blocks and not just the two systems. The second benchmark is 20 years later, 1969, when NATO approved a new strategy, and adding a third concept of détente to the first two concepts of deterrence and defence. At that moment, the word was not famous but I believe it was a very important strategic decision by NATO, not just opposing the countries of the opposite block but trying to involve some of these countries in a dialogue, countries which were placed some- where between NATO and the Soviet Union. I believe that this second strategy from 1969 also was a success story, at least for NATO but also for other parts of Europe. In some years’ time different developments started and they later on developed into something like Perestroika, the end of the Iron Curtain-area. Then we come to the third bench mark which is exactly 20 years later, in 1989. All of us now celebrate the 20 years of the end of that era. We all bear in mind the period of two years later, 1991, when another strategy of NATO was approved. But at that moment, 1989, 1990 and 1991 NATO faced several options and maybe for the first time. One of these options already at that moment was to push the so-called reset button, to start over, just like starting over the way John Lennon put it 10 years before at the time. But that option was denied by NATO and Eerste Kamer, vergaderjaar 2009–2010, 32 123 V, H 3 this is the first unsuccessful decision by NATO. The choice was done in favour of continuity. «NATO forever», though there was no enemy any longer. This experience is really less successful because the years after showed all of us that maybe NATO succeeded to win at least some Eastern Europe countries. Today, Defence ministers of NATO have the privilege of having their meetings in Bratislava, in a new member state of NATO.