A New Russian Revolution Partnership withNATO

[pauline_kaczanow]

"A New Russian Revolution:
Partnership with NATO"
by NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson
Royal Society of Edinburgh - 13 December 2002


Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have just returned this week from Moscow, where I opened a NATO-Russia
conference on combating terrorism - the second one of this year. While I was
there, I also held talks with President Putin - the fifth time we have met
in the past fourteen months.

What is striking about these meetings is precisely that they were not
striking. No drama. No fuss. No shoes being banged on tables. Instead,
pragmatic discussions, in a friendly and workmanlike atmosphere. In fact,
our thinking on certain issues has grown so close that a Russian newspaper,
Izvestia, speculated that the Russian Defence Minister and I might share the
same speechwriter - which I assure you is not the case.

As revolutions go, it has been a quiet one. But it has been a revolution
nonetheless. To my mind, the partnership between NATO and Russia today marks
the end of a dark century for Europe - a century which, in a very real
sense, began with the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917, and ended with
the collapse of the World Trade Center in September 2001.

The First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution triggered Russia's mutation
into the Soviet Union. The Second World War allowed Russia and the West to
join forces - temporarily - in the face of a common threat, but failed to
resolve basic differences in values and strategic philosophies.

After the war, the Iron Curtain fell across Eastern Europe, as Winston
Churchill described so vividly. The Cold War divided the continent, and
indeed the world, into two massive armed camps: one threatening to export
its repressive model through intrigue or violence; the other a group of
democracies determined to protect their security and their values.

The damage done to European security during those long years was massive.
The threat of World War III was a lens which distorted our whole view of the
world, and allowed many of the security challenges we face today to fester
and grow, while our energies were diverted by the compelling task of
avoiding mutual annihilation.

Most dialogue between Russia and the West took place at the occasional
high-pressure and adversarial Summit meeting. And of course, there was no
question of sharing the benefits of democracy and growing prosperity with
the countries of the Warsaw Pact - including with the Soviet Union and
Russia herself.

The end of the Cold War opened something of a Pandora's box. The fall of the
Berlin Wall unleashed a flood of security challenges that we were, frankly,
largely unprepared to face. But it also released a great opportunity - to
unify Europe in security, democracy and prosperity. And, as an essential
part of that mission, to bring Russia in from the Cold, and into the
European family of nations.

Few people would have guessed, in 1990, how integral a role NATO would play
in this process. After all, NATO was certainly seen by Russia as a threat,
if not the enemy. How could we possibly envisage not only a trusting
dialogue between NATO and Russia, but cooperation? Even partnership? A
decade ago, this would have seemed to most observers like Mission
Impossible.

In fact, the NATO-Russia relationship did begin almost exactly 10 years ago
- in NATO headquarters in Brussels, on the evening of December 20th 1991.
And it was a rather dramatic moment.

It took place at the first meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation
Council. NATO created this body, usually called the NAC-C, almost as soon as
the Berlin Wall came down. The NAC-C brought together all the newly
liberated countries in Europe, together with the Soviet Union, to sit around
the same table with NATO nations. It was an unprecedented gathering. It gave
a first political voice to peoples who for so long had not had one. And it
gave a first hint of the role NATO would play, in the coming years, in
guiding Euro-Atlantic integration.

For all those reasons, that first NAC-C meeting was full of drama and
history. But it soon got more interesting yet.

At a certain point in the evening, a messenger came into the room and
whispered in the ear of the representative of the Soviet Union. He excused
himself and left the room. A few minutes later, he returned. He took his
chair, and asked for the microphone. He announced that he could no longer
speak for the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Union had, in the past few
minutes, dissolved. He would henceforth represent only Russia.

As you might imagine, the meeting's agenda was derailed. But that moment
opened up the possibility of creating something new in Europe. Where Russia
was no longer feared by its European neighbours, but trusted. Where mutual
mistrust and recrimination could be replaced by regular dialogue and frank
exchanges. And where Russia and NATO could cooperate in solving mutual
security challenges, rather than simply challenging each other.

That was the beginning of the revolution in NATO-Russia relations. And
throughout the 1990s, our practical cooperation slowly deepened. First, in
the Balkans, where Russian soldiers worked alongside NATO soldiers in Bosnia
to help keep the peace, after the war came to an end in 1995.

This, alone, was an almost unbelievable event. I still remember a photograph
of a young American NATO soldier shaking hands with a young Russian soldier
in Sarajevo, as that mission began. It illustrated the massive potential for
peace, if NATO and Russia could only work together towards that common goal.

Practical cooperation set the stage for political relations. In 1997, we
signed the Founding Act on relations between NATO and Russia, and
established the Permanent Joint Council. In the Permanent Joint Council or
PJC, Russia met with all the countries of NATO to discuss common security
concerns, and to work towards mutual understanding and, where possible,
cooperation.

This, too, was an historic development. For the first time, a permanent,
organic relationship between Russia and her Western partners was
established. And like our cooperation on the ground, it offered the
potential for so much better cooperation in future.

But this potential was not realised immediately. On the contrary. Too many
Russian generals had targeted NATO for too long to accept that the Alliance
had now changed. For them, and for many Russians still mired in Cold War
prejudices, NATO was still an enemy, to be watched, and perhaps grudgingly
worked with, but not trusted. And, to be honest, there were some sitting
around the NATO table whose views were a mirror image, based on decades of
mistrust.

To these people, whether on the Russia side or in NATO, security in Europe
was still what we call a "zero-sum" game. Any gain in security for one
country had to mean a commensurate loss of security for another country.
Which is why Russia protested so bitterly against one of the most positive
developments in modern European history: NATO's enlargement.

To Alliance members, and to the aspirant countries, NATO enlargement has
always had one simple purpose: to deepen and broaden Euro-Atlantic security
through integration amongst democracies. From our perspective, increased
stability and deepening democracy in Europe is of net benefit, even to those
countries not in the Alliance.

But those Russians who still clung to the "zero-sum" perspective had a
different word for enlargement: "encirclement". Even President Yeltsin - who
played such a key role in bringing the Soviet era to an end