THE BUCHAREST CONFERENCE - Article 5: How relevant is it and what does it mean Today?
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BABACAN: ... and, similarly, the imminence of threat seemed much
more severe in Turkey and Greece before 1952, when the two neighbor
countries joined NATO.
Of course, history cannot be replayed, but I believe that it will
not amount to speculation if I claim that it was this notion of
solidarity, this perseverance (ph) of allies throughout the Cold War,
which ensured the much-feared Soviet tanks never tested the Fulda Gap.
And so solidarity was based upon the trust that allies felt
towards one another. The incentive we felt to maintain the
second-biggest army at all costs in the alliance with the view to
bolstering NATO's southern flank against the longest border with the
Soviets was an item (ph) of this trust and feeling of mutual solidarity.
ASMUS: Mr. Minister, if I could just -- solidarity is a key
principle here.
BABACAN: Yes.
ASMUS: Do you in Turkey today feel that you have the solidarity
vis-a-vis the new threats in stability to the Middle East in the same
way that we had that solidarity during the Cold War?
BABACAN: Well, if we are talking about new kind of threats,
whether you call it global terrorism or, let's say, disruption of flow
of very precious resources, of course this has not been tested. We
don't really know what is going to happen if really the time comes.
But on the other hand, for more than 50 years, for more than half
a century, the NATO has proved to be a strong entity. And NATO went
through enlargement. NATO went through an expansion process.
Now, NATO has PFP arrangements with some countries. NATO has MAP
procedures for countries, in a way, involving more and more countries in
the neighborhood. And this is a valuable process, concept in itself.
ASMUS: President Ilves, Article 5 was a key reason why Estonia
wanted to join NATO. I think when you joined NATO, you didn't expect
perhaps that the first act of some kind of aggression you faced might be
a cyber attack.
It's a year after that. NATO has taken certain steps. Do you
have, in the Baltic states and Estonia in particular, what was the
impact of that cyber attack, in terms of your thinking and the thinking
of the region about Article 5 and what it means? And do you think NATO
would do a better job if you experienced another cyber attack next week
or next month?
ILVES: I think the issue really comes down to looking at the
treaty. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what your definition
of "armed" is. And I think that the -- I mean, we shouldn't look at the
tools -- the tools shouldn't matter or the weapons should not matter.
If you blow up a hospital or blow up an electricity plant using
dynamite or with a rocket, it has an effect. If you shut it down
through a distributed denial-of-service attack or DDOS attack from
botnets, but the effect is the same. And it is intentionally caused.
The problem that we face is that we're not dealing -- we've moved
out of the traditional paradigm, because Article 5 presumes a symmetry.
And NATO's strength comes from having symmetry plus a little more. That
is, you know what the other side has, and you just need some more tanks,
some more TLEs, if you will. You need a few more planes. And then
deterrence -- you know what your response will be and deterrence
presumably will work, and did.
When it comes to either cyber attacks, which I should mention have
not only occurred to Estonia, but have been directed against the
Pentagon, against the Fati Ministry (ph), the Ministry of Defense in
Germany, against the Defense Ministry in the U.K. And this issue was
raised by Mrs. Merkel in one of her visits abroad to the country she
thought had done it, that this not -- it's not strictly an Estonian case.
We need to sit down and figure out what we do about these things,
because it's not -- I mean, there is no symmetry in this. What is the
response to -- I mean, what is the response after being attacked?
We have determined in Estonia a number of defense mechanisms and,
in fact, the attack on Estonia went actually fairly -- was fairly light
because a month earlier we had, in fact, gamed -- or a month earlier, we
had elections where you could vote with a 128 binary key chip in the --
we have in our I.D. cards, which meant that we figured that, in a
country of 1.3 million, it would be every hacker's dream to get 17
million votes for one party.
And so we gamed all these things. And so when we didn't -- we got
some attacks, but nothing real, but it wasn't -- I mean, the hacking
world didn't go crazy over us. But because we gamed it, when these DDOS
attacks did come, we were prepared much better than most.
Well, I don't know what we have to -- I mean, there are a number
of things we can do. One of the things -- well, several things became
clear. One of them is that -- we noticed that we were attacked. But
there are presumably countries in NATO that might not even notice
they've been attacked. We just happened to be very digitized. But if
you don't have your banking system completely based on sort of digital
banking, then it doesn't matter.
The second thing is what became very clear to us is that there are
-- that the law is a very powerful weapon. And, in fact, only the
United States actually has a robust set of laws to deal with cyber
terrorism. France and the U.K. are also pretty good.
But since almost by definition cyber crime, cyber terrorism is
cross-border -- it would be kind of dumb to do it in your own country,
because you just find out who's doing it -- that what we need within
NATO and the European Union and more broadly are a common series of
laws, a convention that would mean that countries that harbor cyber
criminals will be forced to extradite them.
But we still have not answered the question of, what do we do if
we are attacked? Who do we attack back? How do you respond?
ASMUS: General Ralston, you used to be in chair at SACEUR of
thinking about how we respond as NATO to attacks. You spent your career
worrying a lot about a huge single attack, which was a huge challenge.
But when we look at the spectrum of very different kind of threats and
attacks, if you were back in your old job at SACEUR advising the SACEURs
of the future, what would your advice be for this bigger NATO with more
members that has to organize itself for a much different spectrum of
issues? How do we do it?
RALSTON: Well, first of all, I'd like to make the point that we
as human beings do a horrible job of predicting what our next attack is
going to be. How many people predicted the events in 1988 of 1989? How
many people in 1997 thought that we would be going -- NATO would be
going to war against Serbia in 1999?
How many people in 2000 would have ever predicted that, within a
year, NATO would have invoked Article 5 based on an armed attack -- and
I agree with the president -- the attack of 9/11 wasn't done with bombs,
wasn't done with guns. It was an airliner flying into a skyscraper.
So, first of all, the unpredictability of the threat, that says
that you have got to have a toolbox that can respond with actions across
the spectrum, whether it's cyber attack that the president has talked
about. What about if it's an attack against your economic system by
turning off the energy supply? What do you do about that, in addition
to the conventional armed attacks that we think about?
And I believe this should be the primary work of Allied Command
Transformation. They are tasked with trying to project threats of the
future. What are appropriate responses?
First of all, you've got to -- I think NATO countries need to
increase their defenses against cyber attack, for example. And then
there are a series of things that you can have in the offensive toolbox,
as well, that are proportionate. But I think the thought process needs
to be taking place now.
ASMUS: At the previous conference we did on the eve of Riga, we
had Senator Richard Lugar do the keynote. And he in that speech, which
some people in the audience may remember, said that energy security was
the Article 5 threat of the future and that NATO should consider actions
like cutting off energy supplies to be the equivalent of an Article 5
threat.
Now, that hasn't necessarily been picked up in that form by the
alliance, although energy security is an issue at the summit. If you
had to prepare for that kind of -- help us think through what a
proportionate spectrum of responses might be for something like that.
Obviously, Turkey is an important energy hub, wants to be an even more
important energy hub.
How do we do this kind of planning? And, Tom, you talk about,
"Well, the defense against cyber attack is also legal measures." Do we
discuss those in NATO? Do we agree on those in NATO? How do we --
what's the new -- let's think through how this new paradigm might emerge
and what may be at the GMF conference or the next NATO summit, what kind
of issues we should be addressing directly.
ILVES: Well, NATO has common standards for vetting personnel, for
security of communications. I don't see -- I mean, it's not -- I don't
see why we can't agree among NATO members to adopt sort of a common set
of legislation on doing these things.
On energy security, I think I would just make one sort of brief
comment here, which is that we shouldn't merely think in terms of
someone shutting off gas, because, I mean, that is a possibility. It
has been used. And Keith Smith of CSIS will point out that, at least
last year, there have been 41 instances of Russia -- I mean, the Soviet
Union or its legal successor state using energy for political ends.
And, in fact, if you look at the Russian Federation's homepage in
English, you can read there that energy is a foreign policy tool in the
views of the -- but I would -- but we shouldn't think about shutting
energy off. I think a lot of political decisions are being made in
Europe today not -- I mean, indirectly, because -- well, let's make this
kind of decision, because actually this means that we will have a better
energy mix or maybe it will be a little cheaper.
And so we see this -- the energy security issue I think is more
refined. It's not simply someone, Gazprom, saying, "You're not getting
anything." It has to do with manipulating policy within NATO and the
European Union member states.
ASMUS: Mr. Babacan, are there things that you would like to see
NATO do that it's not doing today? I mean, you mentioned the word
solidarity. And I think we all know, at the end of the day, that the
core of Article 5 is not just those words I quoted before, but the
quality of your relationships with your allies.
And are there things that Turkey would like to see NATO do? You
are, in many ways, among the most exposed countries in the alliance to
all the kinds of new threats we're talking about, living on the edge of
the Middle East, being a key country in energy security.
I'm not sure sometimes whether Turkey wants to hold on to the old
definition of Article 5 for fear of it changing and degrading Turkish
security or whether Turkey is one of those countries that, as President
Ilves put it, wants, sees (ph) NATO to move to a new paradigm, because
you are actually exposed to all these new threats we're talking about.
BABACAN: Well, actually, in 1999, a document called Strategic
Concept was drafted. And I just would like to read only one sentence
out of it: "Alliance security interests can be affected by other risks
of a wider nature, including acts of terrorism, sabotage, organized
crimes, and by the disruption of the flow of vital resources."
And this was in 1999, two years before 9/11 and about a decade
before the energy security actually came to the agenda for all of us.
So, actually, all of these threats were probably being considered,
talked about. But then when we actually faced the reality probably, we
start to pay more attention to this.
At the core of the concept of solidarity, especially for NATO, the
understanding is we are ready to help our allies in case they are in
difficulty. We get prepared for that. We spend resources on that. And
we do it because, if one day, if we're faced with difficulties, then we
will receive the same kind of help and understanding and a sense of urgency.
So this is at the core of this concept. Is NATO doing it enough?
Is Turkey happy? Well, maybe on the global terrorism issue, NATO could
do more, because terror has no region, no ethnicity, no religion. And
terror has no nation. It could hit anywhere, everywhere.
So what we would very much like to see is to see a closer, more
cooperation in that field. We are, for example, facing with the
terrorist organization called PKK. It exists in many countries, but
they have organizations, but they are hitting us especially, causing
civilian and some non-civilian deaths.
Or, as you suggested, the question of energy, and especially it's
going to be more and more of a vital issue, not just pipelines, but also
key energy routes, key energy sources. This is also something which
should be probably more high up in the agenda of NATO.
ASMUS: General Ralston, you heard the minister talk about
terrorism. Congressman Tauscher was here last night and asked, what was
the threat that should keep America and Europe together in the future?
She also said radical Islam, terrorism.
Imagine the following scenario, that there was a major terrorist
incident in Europe, a major European city, and the intelligence you read
the next morning showed it could be traced back to the Taliban who were
responding to NATO's ISAF mission and successes we had had, perhaps, in
defeating the Taliban on the battlefield, the issue we were talking
about just a few hours ago here.
Imagine going to the NAC. Imagine at SACEUR going to the NATO
Council, the military committee, and thinking about how we should
respond. What would your advice be? Do you think we are set up to deal
with these kinds of threats or do we need to be thinking much more
ambitiously about -- is it just a question of political solidarity or is
there structural changes we should be thinking about?
Imagine if this had happened on your watch. What would you have done?
RALSTON: Well, I think there are several things. And it's not
just a matter of solidarity. There are things that the military needs
to change, they need to be better prepared to implement.
One of the things that the alliance has done recently is in
special operations, at least getting a special operations coordinator.
That's a tiny step. I personally believe much more needs to be done, in
terms of fielding the appropriate forces to deal with terrorism. We're
not where we need to be as an alliance. So that's one concrete thing
that militarily we need to focus more on.
You, again, without getting into the hypotheticals, because we
could spend all day here, but, yes, you need to have different force
packages, force levels. And to use your example that you just started,
OK, maybe you need to have a much, much more robust package in
Afghanistan. If this is really terrorism emanating from there into the
cities of Europe, OK, it's time to go to war.
The alliance is not at war today. We have an operation. The
military is at war in Afghanistan. But the nations and the people of
the alliance, they're not at war. It's business as usual going on in
your countries.
ASMUS: President Ilves...
ILVES: Thinking a little bit more about these issues, I think
that what we really do need to -- I mean, as we have these new threats
that are really very new, either -- I mean, specifically in the area of
cyber attacks and energy, that we have to then -- we have to change our
metaphors and get out of the war metaphor, I mean, because things -- in
fact, you can suffer tremendously or suffer tremendous damage and it's
not the result of bombs, which means that the response may have to come
from a different field or a different area.
And we cannot therefore -- we should get away from the idea that,
well, if the response is legal, it's not a NATO issue, that, in fact, if
it's physically damaging to us, but the way to deal with it is enforcing
the -- in the case of gas, maybe the -- I mean, the response really to
dealing with energy insecurity is to implement the unbundling of the gas
supply and the routes, because, after all, if you make Microsoft do it,
but you don't want Gazprom to do it, we're not following our own laws.
But, in fact, that is one way of increasing our energy security
dramatically. And this completely illegal ownership of means of supply
and the supply under E.U. rules should be ended.
But we can't say, "Oh, that's not a NATO issue," because we're not
dealing with triggers and tanks. In fact, it is a NATO issue because it
affects our security.
ASMUS: OK. I'm going to turn to the audience in a minute, but
there's one more part of the Article 5 debate we haven't touched on
yet. It's the slightly impolite part. It's about Russia.
And I was hoping that Minister Sikorski will join us. I think
he's coming soon.
In Poland -- and I think in some other parts of Central and
Eastern Europe -- let's be honest. We enlarged NATO. We did so in the
hope of pulling Russia closer to us at the same time. You heard about
this from Wolfgang Ischinger this morning. And we basically decided at
that point Russia was not a military threat and we would do no Article 5
defense planning against Russia as a confidence-building measure.
I don't know if that has changed. I suspect it hasn't. So since
1997, I do not believe NATO has done a single staff, command or major
exercise directed against Russia.
You see and you hear -- and will hear today -- concern in Central
and Eastern Europe about Russian political behavior. Now, no one's
saying Russia is coming back as a military threat, although the Russians
have conducted several exercises over the last decade.
Is it time that we should think about Article 5 defense planning
vis-a-vis a more politically assertive and potentially aggressive
Russia? Or is that something that remains off the table?
On queue, Minister Sikorski arrives. Thank you very much.
I used your name in vain a few minutes ago, Radek, as I was
talking about the debate in Central and Eastern Europe about whether the
Article 5 commitment you enjoy today is sufficiently robust, if it's
hollow, the way it impacts on missile defense and the desire to have
more American -- how many do we have, six American soldiers in Poland,
seven?
SIKORSKI: I think it's doubled to 12.
ASMUS: I think it's up to 12 now. OK. Looking back, the debate
we have today, not just in Poland, but across the region, on Article 5
in Central and East Europe, in part triggered by a Russia that is seen
as politically aggressive, in part triggered by the lack of an American
military presence that some countries want, is this an issue that, when
NATO looks ahead toward re-writing the Strategic Concept that Minister
Babacan quoted before, is this an issue that's coming up and one we
should tackle?
I'm going to ask this to President Ilves just to let you get
acclimatized for a second, but I'm sure you might want to jump in on
that issue, as well.
ILVES: Well, I think we do a disservice to Russia because we
failed to take it seriously. I mean, they last year threatened to
target their missiles against European capitals. What was the
response? They, as I understand, threatened to re-target their missions
on Ukraine if it gets the membership action plan.
And we just say, "Oh, we need a strategic partnership with a
country that every time it wants to change our behavior threatens to
target us." I won't even mention about Operation Return (ph) several
years ago, which involved a massive simulation of a return to the Baltic
countries, which stopped right at our border. I think we should take
Russia much more seriously.
ASMUS: OK.
Radek, hollow commitments, Article 5, the Polish debate? You and
I were on a TV debate some months ago, prior to your coming back as
foreign minister, in which you spoke, in my recollection, quite
eloquently and forcefully about how some of your countrymen were having
doubts about Article 5.
And if you look at the public opinion polls, Poland, a country
that you would imagine to be strongly pro-American, pro-NATO, public
support for NATO in Poland is going down dramatically, say the GMF polls.
Is this a real debate? How important is this debate in Poland and
in your view and the region more generally, and why?
SIKORSKI: (OFF-MIKE)
ASMUS: Mike?
SIKORSKI: (OFF-MIKE)
ASMUS: You're talking about Article 5?
(UNKNOWN): Microphone?
(UNKNOWN): Give him a microphone.
ASMUS: Radek, keep on talking and see if it comes on. Or just
maybe the...
(CROSSTALK)
ASMUS: Radek, why don't you temporarily use the hand mike here?
SIKORSKI: All right. It's not really a live issue in Poland, but
that's because people generally don't read the details of treaties. But
I have it in front of me.
And if you were a lawyer, you could not actually -- it would be
difficult to get a sense of what people understand it to mean, namely a
guaranteed commitment to come to our assistance by military means. So I
think it's legitimate to discuss it, because Article 5 is implied. It
is what we make it to me by our posture, by our readiness, by our
capabilities, and by our presence.
And here I do have some concerns. For example, some of the
contingency plans are dated. I can't remember when we last exercised at
the divisional level. It's really a question about the nature of the
alliance.
Do we want to be a worthwhile political club? Or do we want to be
a hardcore military alliance, in which not just the international staff,
but thousands of our officers know one another and have gelled into a
collective culture? That seems to me to be missing in recent years.
ASMUS: And if I can just press you a little bit more, what would
be more important for you, having been defense minister, as well,
exercises, presence, all the above? Are there certain things -- NATO is
going to be re-writing a Strategic Concept in the years ago. I think
this is an issue that will be on the table.
We talked before -- just before you arrived about how, since 1997,
we have not conducted any exercises in your part of the world and your
country, anything to do with Russia. So these are things you think NATO
should in a modest way be doing?
And politically and psychologically, because you and I went
through this debate also about presents in the debate in '97 when we
decided not to deploy troops, not to deploy nuclear weapons, but to rely
on infrastructure. Is that somehow -- it doesn't seem to be enough
politically today for at least some people in the region.
What would you propose specifically that we think about putting on
the agenda in the years ahead?
SIKORSKI: NATO should not politicize its core functions. For
example, threat assessment process and intelligence-gathering process
should be for real. There should be no taboos at that level. And, in
fact, there are some taboos, even at the threat assessment level.
So once the treat assessment is skewed by political correctness,
then the process of planning and contingency planning is also skewed.
Therefore, the process of building up capabilities and permanent
infrastructure is also not directed at the real potential threats. And,
therefore, war-gaming and exercising also suffer. So I think we should
start at the beginning, and then other things will follow.
ASMUS: OK. I want to give the panelists a chance to respond to
anything that's just been said, and then perhaps we'll go to the audience.
General Ralston?
RALSTON: If I could just add to what the foreign minister said,
in 2001, I had one of the East European countries that had recently
joined NATO come to me at a very high level and said, "We have a
problem, because our people are concerned, our citizens are concerned
that there is not a NATO plan for the defense of our country." And as
the foreign minister says, there was a problem because the NAC would not
authorize a formal planning exercise to do that.
At SACEUR, I said I have responsibility to do prudent military
planning. So I said I will put together a prudent plan and invite the
president of the country to come to SHAPE, spend as long as you want, go
through the plan in any detail you want to go through, and then you can
go back to your country, and then it's up to you to convince your
citizens that you've been to SHAPE, you're satisfied with the planning.
That was a small step. I do believe we need to exercise those
steps. What are the beddown locations? How do you get forces in and so
forth? That can be done in a non-threatening way.
But right now, formally, the alliance is not doing that. I think
there informally are some activities underway.
ASMUS: Great.
OK, let's go to you, to the audience. Identify yourself and,
please, more questions than comments, if we can do that.
First, Hans, and then...
QUESTION: Hans Binnendijk from the National Defense University in
Washington. It's sort of a hypothetical question. If Georgia were in
the alliance today and if Russia would continue with the kinds of --
call them paramilitary operations that we've seen over the last couple
of years, and if the Georgian president came to NATO and said, "This
triggers Article 5," what would the response be? What would the
obligations be?
General Ralston, what would you do, as the former SACEUR? If you
were in that SACEUR position, what would you recommend? Let's do the
whole panel.
ASMUS: I might take two or three questions, because there's a
lot, and that will give you a chance to think about that.
QUESTION: Jamie Shipp (ph). This is certainly going to be the
key debate when NATO re-drafts its Strategic Concept sometime next
year. And I agree there are two aspects here. There's classical
Article 5, where clearly, as we enlarge, we have to make very, very
clear that there is not a first-class membership and a second-class
membership, some countries having not only contingency plans, but also
concrete arrangements, and other countries, which may be in far more
exposed areas, precisely not having those arrangements.
For example, it strikes me that the farther we go east in the next
few years, the more difficult is going to be not to have any NATO
infrastructure (inaudible) in a classical sense, whether it be command
posts, whether it be forward-deployed troops.
And that will be a real debate, because I already have the
impression that we were rather premature, for example, in withdrawing
some of our naval commands at the end of the Cold War -- much of NATO's
naval command structure has been dismantled -- or withdrawing aircraft
from Iceland.
It was very interesting that the last American aircraft left just
a few weeks before Russia resumed flying its strategic bomber fleet over
that part of the world.
This is not said in any provocative sense, but it strikes me that
it's going to be increasingly difficult to ask countries to invest in
expeditionary forces or to deploy their troops in Afghanistan if NATO is
not providing that protection at home.
But there's also the new Article 5, Ron. And I agree. But I have
three things to say about this. I think there has to be three
principles that guide this.
The first principle is that anything which is a threat to an
individual ally has got to be simultaneously a threat that the alliance
as a whole takes seriously. I think there's been a little bit too much
of a tendency to say, "It's your problem. It's your perception. It's
not ours."
(CROSSTALK)
QUESTION: ... solidarity, which is the foreign minister of Turkey
raised, absolutely.
The second thing is we've got to get out of this culture that we
cannot discuss something that we're not taking a direct responsibility
for. I agree entirely with what the president of Estonia said about
debundling (ph) being a key answer to energy security. And that, of
course, is an E.U. issue, not a NATO issue.
But NATO has got to do a better job of scanning the horizon, of
identifying the challenges, identifying what needs to be done,
formulating recommendations. We've got to become more of a think-tank
and not just an operational alliance, which then sort of sensitizes its
member states to issues which perhaps can then be better handled by the
E.U. or the United Nations.
For example, climate change, which has a horrendous security
implications -- almost finished, Ron -- is not a subject that's ever
discussed in NATO.
The third thing is I totally agree with what President Ilves was
saying, that the response is not necessarily military. It's
multifaceted. Joe Ralston is right we have to have the full spectrum.
But that means that Article 5 in future is something that's going to be
managed collectively by E.U. and NATO together, much more than by NATO
itself than in the past.
I wanted to say that. That's not a question. It's more of a
statement. Forgive me, Ron.
ASMUS: That's OK, Jamie. You get special license sometimes.
Sometimes. Thank you.
Sir, here, front row, then we're going to come back to the panel.
And then I'm going to come back up here.
QUESTION: Anton La Guardia of the Economist. I was wondering,
given the discussion about Russia and given Jamie's point about
expeditionary warfare, do members of the panel see too much emphasis
being paid on expeditionary warfare to the detriment of territorial
defense, particularly countries such as the Baltics, or even now for
Poland. Are we worried too much about warfare far away and not worrying
about defense at home?
ASMUS: OK, let's come back to the panel. Don't feel obliged to
answer. Just pick up the one that you feel -- Radek, do you want to go
first?
SIKORSKI: There are several connections between expeditionary
warfare and core responsibilities. One is that I think it should be an
implied or even an overt deal.
We will help you, the alliance, the United States, with your
expeditionary activities in places where we have no selfish national
interest -- one was Iraq, of course outside NATO, another is Afghanistan
-- provided you give us an occasional reminder that the territorial
function of NATO still stands.
And in that context...
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BABACAN: ... and, similarly, the imminence of threat seemed much more severe in Turkey and Greece before 1952, when the two neighbor countries joined NATO.
Of course, history cannot be replayed, but I believe that it will not amount to speculation if I claim that it was this notion of solidarity, this perseverance (ph) of allies throughout the Cold War, which ensured the much-feared Soviet tanks never tested the Fulda Gap.
And so solidarity was based upon the trust that allies felt towards one another. The incentive we felt to maintain the second-biggest army at all costs in the alliance with the view to bolstering NATO's southern flank against the longest border with the Soviets was an item (ph) of this trust and feeling of mutual solidarity.
ASMUS: Mr. Minister, if I could just -- solidarity is a key principle here.
BABACAN: Yes.
ASMUS: Do you in Turkey today feel that you have the solidarity vis-a-vis the new threats in stability to the Middle East in the same way that we had that solidarity during the Cold War?
BABACAN: Well, if we are talking about new kind of threats, whether you call it global terrorism or, let's say, disruption of flow of very precious resources, of course this has not been tested. We don't really know what is going to happen if really the time comes.
But on the other hand, for more than 50 years, for more than half a century, the NATO has proved to be a strong entity. And NATO went through enlargement. NATO went through an expansion process.
Now, NATO has PFP arrangements with some countries. NATO has MAP procedures for countries, in a way, involving more and more countries in the neighborhood. And this is a valuable process, concept in itself.
ASMUS: President Ilves, Article 5 was a key reason why Estonia wanted to join NATO. I think when you joined NATO, you didn't expect perhaps that the first act of some kind of aggression you faced might be a cyber attack.
It's a year after that. NATO has taken certain steps. Do you have, in the Baltic states and Estonia in particular, what was the impact of that cyber attack, in terms of your thinking and the thinking of the region about Article 5 and what it means? And do you think NATO would do a better job if you experienced another cyber attack next week or next month?
ILVES: I think the issue really comes down to looking at the treaty. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what your definition of "armed" is. And I think that the -- I mean, we shouldn't look at the tools -- the tools shouldn't matter or the weapons should not matter.
If you blow up a hospital or blow up an electricity plant using dynamite or with a rocket, it has an effect. If you shut it down through a distributed denial-of-service attack or DDOS attack from botnets, but the effect is the same. And it is intentionally caused.
The problem that we face is that we're not dealing -- we've moved out of the traditional paradigm, because Article 5 presumes a symmetry. And NATO's strength comes from having symmetry plus a little more. That is, you know what the other side has, and you just need some more tanks, some more TLEs, if you will. You need a few more planes. And then deterrence -- you know what your response will be and deterrence presumably will work, and did.
When it comes to either cyber attacks, which I should mention have not only occurred to Estonia, but have been directed against the Pentagon, against the Fati Ministry (ph), the Ministry of Defense in Germany, against the Defense Ministry in the U.K. And this issue was raised by Mrs. Merkel in one of her visits abroad to the country she thought had done it, that this not -- it's not strictly an Estonian case.
We need to sit down and figure out what we do about these things, because it's not -- I mean, there is no symmetry in this. What is the response to -- I mean, what is the response after being attacked?
We have determined in Estonia a number of defense mechanisms and, in fact, the attack on Estonia went actually fairly -- was fairly light because a month earlier we had, in fact, gamed -- or a month earlier, we had elections where you could vote with a 128 binary key chip in the -- we have in our I.D. cards, which meant that we figured that, in a country of 1.3 million, it would be every hacker's dream to get 17 million votes for one party.
And so we gamed all these things. And so when we didn't -- we got some attacks, but nothing real, but it wasn't -- I mean, the hacking world didn't go crazy over us. But because we gamed it, when these DDOS attacks did come, we were prepared much better than most.
Well, I don't know what we have to -- I mean, there are a number of things we can do. One of the things -- well, several things became clear. One of them is that -- we noticed that we were attacked. But there are presumably countries in NATO that might not even notice they've been attacked. We just happened to be very digitized. But if you don't have your banking system completely based on sort of digital banking, then it doesn't matter.
The second thing is what became very clear to us is that there are -- that the law is a very powerful weapon. And, in fact, only the United States actually has a robust set of laws to deal with cyber terrorism. France and the U.K. are also pretty good.
But since almost by definition cyber crime, cyber terrorism is cross-border -- it would be kind of dumb to do it in your own country, because you just find out who's doing it -- that what we need within NATO and the European Union and more broadly are a common series of laws, a convention that would mean that countries that harbor cyber criminals will be forced to extradite them.
But we still have not answered the question of, what do we do if we are attacked? Who do we attack back? How do you respond?
ASMUS: General Ralston, you used to be in chair at SACEUR of thinking about how we respond as NATO to attacks. You spent your career worrying a lot about a huge single attack, which was a huge challenge. But when we look at the spectrum of very different kind of threats and attacks, if you were back in your old job at SACEUR advising the SACEURs of the future, what would your advice be for this bigger NATO with more members that has to organize itself for a much different spectrum of issues? How do we do it?
RALSTON: Well, first of all, I'd like to make the point that we as human beings do a horrible job of predicting what our next attack is going to be. How many people predicted the events in 1988 of 1989? How many people in 1997 thought that we would be going -- NATO would be going to war against Serbia in 1999?
How many people in 2000 would have ever predicted that, within a year, NATO would have invoked Article 5 based on an armed attack -- and I agree with the president -- the attack of 9/11 wasn't done with bombs, wasn't done with guns. It was an airliner flying into a skyscraper.
So, first of all, the unpredictability of the threat, that says that you have got to have a toolbox that can respond with actions across the spectrum, whether it's cyber attack that the president has talked about. What about if it's an attack against your economic system by turning off the energy supply? What do you do about that, in addition to the conventional armed attacks that we think about?
And I believe this should be the primary work of Allied Command Transformation. They are tasked with trying to project threats of the future. What are appropriate responses?
First of all, you've got to -- I think NATO countries need to increase their defenses against cyber attack, for example. And then there are a series of things that you can have in the offensive toolbox, as well, that are proportionate. But I think the thought process needs to be taking place now.
ASMUS: At the previous conference we did on the eve of Riga, we had Senator Richard Lugar do the keynote. And he in that speech, which some people in the audience may remember, said that energy security was the Article 5 threat of the future and that NATO should consider actions like cutting off energy supplies to be the equivalent of an Article 5 threat.
Now, that hasn't necessarily been picked up in that form by the alliance, although energy security is an issue at the summit. If you had to prepare for that kind of -- help us think through what a proportionate spectrum of responses might be for something like that. Obviously, Turkey is an important energy hub, wants to be an even more important energy hub.
How do we do this kind of planning? And, Tom, you talk about, "Well, the defense against cyber attack is also legal measures." Do we discuss those in NATO? Do we agree on those in NATO? How do we -- what's the new -- let's think through how this new paradigm might emerge and what may be at the GMF conference or the next NATO summit, what kind of issues we should be addressing directly.
ILVES: Well, NATO has common standards for vetting personnel, for security of communications. I don't see -- I mean, it's not -- I don't see why we can't agree among NATO members to adopt sort of a common set of legislation on doing these things.
On energy security, I think I would just make one sort of brief comment here, which is that we shouldn't merely think in terms of someone shutting off gas, because, I mean, that is a possibility. It has been used. And Keith Smith of CSIS will point out that, at least last year, there have been 41 instances of Russia -- I mean, the Soviet Union or its legal successor state using energy for political ends.
And, in fact, if you look at the Russian Federation's homepage in English, you can read there that energy is a foreign policy tool in the views of the -- but I would -- but we shouldn't think about shutting energy off. I think a lot of political decisions are being made in Europe today not -- I mean, indirectly, because -- well, let's make this kind of decision, because actually this means that we will have a better energy mix or maybe it will be a little cheaper.
And so we see this -- the energy security issue I think is more refined. It's not simply someone, Gazprom, saying, "You're not getting anything." It has to do with manipulating policy within NATO and the European Union member states.
ASMUS: Mr. Babacan, are there things that you would like to see NATO do that it's not doing today? I mean, you mentioned the word solidarity. And I think we all know, at the end of the day, that the core of Article 5 is not just those words I quoted before, but the quality of your relationships with your allies.
And are there things that Turkey would like to see NATO do? You are, in many ways, among the most exposed countries in the alliance to all the kinds of new threats we're talking about, living on the edge of the Middle East, being a key country in energy security.
I'm not sure sometimes whether Turkey wants to hold on to the old definition of Article 5 for fear of it changing and degrading Turkish security or whether Turkey is one of those countries that, as President Ilves put it, wants, sees (ph) NATO to move to a new paradigm, because you are actually exposed to all these new threats we're talking about.
BABACAN: Well, actually, in 1999, a document called Strategic Concept was drafted. And I just would like to read only one sentence out of it: "Alliance security interests can be affected by other risks of a wider nature, including acts of terrorism, sabotage, organized crimes, and by the disruption of the flow of vital resources."
And this was in 1999, two years before 9/11 and about a decade before the energy security actually came to the agenda for all of us. So, actually, all of these threats were probably being considered, talked about. But then when we actually faced the reality probably, we start to pay more attention to this.
At the core of the concept of solidarity, especially for NATO, the understanding is we are ready to help our allies in case they are in difficulty. We get prepared for that. We spend resources on that. And we do it because, if one day, if we're faced with difficulties, then we will receive the same kind of help and understanding and a sense of urgency.
So this is at the core of this concept. Is NATO doing it enough? Is Turkey happy? Well, maybe on the global terrorism issue, NATO could do more, because terror has no region, no ethnicity, no religion. And terror has no nation. It could hit anywhere, everywhere.
So what we would very much like to see is to see a closer, more cooperation in that field. We are, for example, facing with the terrorist organization called PKK. It exists in many countries, but they have organizations, but they are hitting us especially, causing civilian and some non-civilian deaths.
Or, as you suggested, the question of energy, and especially it's going to be more and more of a vital issue, not just pipelines, but also key energy routes, key energy sources. This is also something which should be probably more high up in the agenda of NATO.
ASMUS: General Ralston, you heard the minister talk about terrorism. Congressman Tauscher was here last night and asked, what was the threat that should keep America and Europe together in the future? She also said radical Islam, terrorism.
Imagine the following scenario, that there was a major terrorist incident in Europe, a major European city, and the intelligence you read the next morning showed it could be traced back to the Taliban who were responding to NATO's ISAF mission and successes we had had, perhaps, in defeating the Taliban on the battlefield, the issue we were talking about just a few hours ago here.
Imagine going to the NAC. Imagine at SACEUR going to the NATO Council, the military committee, and thinking about how we should respond. What would your advice be? Do you think we are set up to deal with these kinds of threats or do we need to be thinking much more ambitiously about -- is it just a question of political solidarity or is there structural changes we should be thinking about?
Imagine if this had happened on your watch. What would you have done?
RALSTON: Well, I think there are several things. And it's not just a matter of solidarity. There are things that the military needs to change, they need to be better prepared to implement.
One of the things that the alliance has done recently is in special operations, at least getting a special operations coordinator. That's a tiny step. I personally believe much more needs to be done, in terms of fielding the appropriate forces to deal with terrorism. We're not where we need to be as an alliance. So that's one concrete thing that militarily we need to focus more on.
You, again, without getting into the hypotheticals, because we could spend all day here, but, yes, you need to have different force packages, force levels. And to use your example that you just started, OK, maybe you need to have a much, much more robust package in Afghanistan. If this is really terrorism emanating from there into the cities of Europe, OK, it's time to go to war.
The alliance is not at war today. We have an operation. The military is at war in Afghanistan. But the nations and the people of the alliance, they're not at war. It's business as usual going on in your countries.
ASMUS: President Ilves...
ILVES: Thinking a little bit more about these issues, I think that what we really do need to -- I mean, as we have these new threats that are really very new, either -- I mean, specifically in the area of cyber attacks and energy, that we have to then -- we have to change our metaphors and get out of the war metaphor, I mean, because things -- in fact, you can suffer tremendously or suffer tremendous damage and it's not the result of bombs, which means that the response may have to come from a different field or a different area.
And we cannot therefore -- we should get away from the idea that, well, if the response is legal, it's not a NATO issue, that, in fact, if it's physically damaging to us, but the way to deal with it is enforcing the -- in the case of gas, maybe the -- I mean, the response really to dealing with energy insecurity is to implement the unbundling of the gas supply and the routes, because, after all, if you make Microsoft do it, but you don't want Gazprom to do it, we're not following our own laws.
But, in fact, that is one way of increasing our energy security dramatically. And this completely illegal ownership of means of supply and the supply under E.U. rules should be ended.
But we can't say, "Oh, that's not a NATO issue," because we're not dealing with triggers and tanks. In fact, it is a NATO issue because it affects our security.
ASMUS: OK. I'm going to turn to the audience in a minute, but there's one more part of the Article 5 debate we haven't touched on yet. It's the slightly impolite part. It's about Russia.
And I was hoping that Minister Sikorski will join us. I think he's coming soon.
In Poland -- and I think in some other parts of Central and Eastern Europe -- let's be honest. We enlarged NATO. We did so in the hope of pulling Russia closer to us at the same time. You heard about this from Wolfgang Ischinger this morning. And we basically decided at that point Russia was not a military threat and we would do no Article 5 defense planning against Russia as a confidence-building measure.
I don't know if that has changed. I suspect it hasn't. So since 1997, I do not believe NATO has done a single staff, command or major exercise directed against Russia.
You see and you hear -- and will hear today -- concern in Central and Eastern Europe about Russian political behavior. Now, no one's saying Russia is coming back as a military threat, although the Russians have conducted several exercises over the last decade.
Is it time that we should think about Article 5 defense planning vis-a-vis a more politically assertive and potentially aggressive Russia? Or is that something that remains off the table?
On queue, Minister Sikorski arrives. Thank you very much.
I used your name in vain a few minutes ago, Radek, as I was talking about the debate in Central and Eastern Europe about whether the Article 5 commitment you enjoy today is sufficiently robust, if it's hollow, the way it impacts on missile defense and the desire to have more American -- how many do we have, six American soldiers in Poland, seven?
SIKORSKI: I think it's doubled to 12.
ASMUS: I think it's up to 12 now. OK. Looking back, the debate we have today, not just in Poland, but across the region, on Article 5 in Central and East Europe, in part triggered by a Russia that is seen as politically aggressive, in part triggered by the lack of an American military presence that some countries want, is this an issue that, when NATO looks ahead toward re-writing the Strategic Concept that Minister Babacan quoted before, is this an issue that's coming up and one we should tackle?
I'm going to ask this to President Ilves just to let you get acclimatized for a second, but I'm sure you might want to jump in on that issue, as well.
ILVES: Well, I think we do a disservice to Russia because we failed to take it seriously. I mean, they last year threatened to target their missiles against European capitals. What was the response? They, as I understand, threatened to re-target their missions on Ukraine if it gets the membership action plan.
And we just say, "Oh, we need a strategic partnership with a country that every time it wants to change our behavior threatens to target us." I won't even mention about Operation Return (ph) several years ago, which involved a massive simulation of a return to the Baltic countries, which stopped right at our border. I think we should take Russia much more seriously.
ASMUS: OK.
Radek, hollow commitments, Article 5, the Polish debate? You and I were on a TV debate some months ago, prior to your coming back as foreign minister, in which you spoke, in my recollection, quite eloquently and forcefully about how some of your countrymen were having doubts about Article 5.
And if you look at the public opinion polls, Poland, a country that you would imagine to be strongly pro-American, pro-NATO, public support for NATO in Poland is going down dramatically, say the GMF polls.
Is this a real debate? How important is this debate in Poland and in your view and the region more generally, and why?
SIKORSKI: (OFF-MIKE)
ASMUS: Mike?
SIKORSKI: (OFF-MIKE)
ASMUS: You're talking about Article 5?
(UNKNOWN): Microphone?
(UNKNOWN): Give him a microphone.
ASMUS: Radek, keep on talking and see if it comes on. Or just maybe the...
(CROSSTALK)
ASMUS: Radek, why don't you temporarily use the hand mike here?
SIKORSKI: All right. It's not really a live issue in Poland, but that's because people generally don't read the details of treaties. But I have it in front of me.
And if you were a lawyer, you could not actually -- it would be difficult to get a sense of what people understand it to mean, namely a guaranteed commitment to come to our assistance by military means. So I think it's legitimate to discuss it, because Article 5 is implied. It is what we make it to me by our posture, by our readiness, by our capabilities, and by our presence.
And here I do have some concerns. For example, some of the contingency plans are dated. I can't remember when we last exercised at the divisional level. It's really a question about the nature of the alliance.
Do we want to be a worthwhile political club? Or do we want to be a hardcore military alliance, in which not just the international staff, but thousands of our officers know one another and have gelled into a collective culture? That seems to me to be missing in recent years.
ASMUS: And if I can just press you a little bit more, what would be more important for you, having been defense minister, as well, exercises, presence, all the above? Are there certain things -- NATO is going to be re-writing a Strategic Concept in the years ago. I think this is an issue that will be on the table.
We talked before -- just before you arrived about how, since 1997, we have not conducted any exercises in your part of the world and your country, anything to do with Russia. So these are things you think NATO should in a modest way be doing?
And politically and psychologically, because you and I went through this debate also about presents in the debate in '97 when we decided not to deploy troops, not to deploy nuclear weapons, but to rely on infrastructure. Is that somehow -- it doesn't seem to be enough politically today for at least some people in the region.
What would you propose specifically that we think about putting on the agenda in the years ahead?
SIKORSKI: NATO should not politicize its core functions. For example, threat assessment process and intelligence-gathering process should be for real. There should be no taboos at that level. And, in fact, there are some taboos, even at the threat assessment level.
So once the treat assessment is skewed by political correctness, then the process of planning and contingency planning is also skewed. Therefore, the process of building up capabilities and permanent infrastructure is also not directed at the real potential threats. And, therefore, war-gaming and exercising also suffer. So I think we should start at the beginning, and then other things will follow.
ASMUS: OK. I want to give the panelists a chance to respond to anything that's just been said, and then perhaps we'll go to the audience.
General Ralston?
RALSTON: If I could just add to what the foreign minister said, in 2001, I had one of the East European countries that had recently joined NATO come to me at a very high level and said, "We have a problem, because our people are concerned, our citizens are concerned that there is not a NATO plan for the defense of our country." And as the foreign minister says, there was a problem because the NAC would not authorize a formal planning exercise to do that.
At SACEUR, I said I have responsibility to do prudent military planning. So I said I will put together a prudent plan and invite the president of the country to come to SHAPE, spend as long as you want, go through the plan in any detail you want to go through, and then you can go back to your country, and then it's up to you to convince your citizens that you've been to SHAPE, you're satisfied with the planning.
That was a small step. I do believe we need to exercise those steps. What are the beddown locations? How do you get forces in and so forth? That can be done in a non-threatening way.
But right now, formally, the alliance is not doing that. I think there informally are some activities underway.
ASMUS: Great.
OK, let's go to you, to the audience. Identify yourself and, please, more questions than comments, if we can do that.
First, Hans, and then...
QUESTION: Hans Binnendijk from the National Defense University in Washington. It's sort of a hypothetical question. If Georgia were in the alliance today and if Russia would continue with the kinds of -- call them paramilitary operations that we've seen over the last couple of years, and if the Georgian president came to NATO and said, "This triggers Article 5," what would the response be? What would the obligations be?
General Ralston, what would you do, as the former SACEUR? If you were in that SACEUR position, what would you recommend? Let's do the whole panel.
ASMUS: I might take two or three questions, because there's a lot, and that will give you a chance to think about that.
QUESTION: Jamie Shipp (ph). This is certainly going to be the key debate when NATO re-drafts its Strategic Concept sometime next year. And I agree there are two aspects here. There's classical Article 5, where clearly, as we enlarge, we have to make very, very clear that there is not a first-class membership and a second-class membership, some countries having not only contingency plans, but also concrete arrangements, and other countries, which may be in far more exposed areas, precisely not having those arrangements.
For example, it strikes me that the farther we go east in the next few years, the more difficult is going to be not to have any NATO infrastructure (inaudible) in a classical sense, whether it be command posts, whether it be forward-deployed troops.
And that will be a real debate, because I already have the impression that we were rather premature, for example, in withdrawing some of our naval commands at the end of the Cold War -- much of NATO's naval command structure has been dismantled -- or withdrawing aircraft from Iceland.
It was very interesting that the last American aircraft left just a few weeks before Russia resumed flying its strategic bomber fleet over that part of the world.
This is not said in any provocative sense, but it strikes me that it's going to be increasingly difficult to ask countries to invest in expeditionary forces or to deploy their troops in Afghanistan if NATO is not providing that protection at home.
But there's also the new Article 5, Ron. And I agree. But I have three things to say about this. I think there has to be three principles that guide this.
The first principle is that anything which is a threat to an individual ally has got to be simultaneously a threat that the alliance as a whole takes seriously. I think there's been a little bit too much of a tendency to say, "It's your problem. It's your perception. It's not ours."
(CROSSTALK)
QUESTION: ... solidarity, which is the foreign minister of Turkey raised, absolutely.
The second thing is we've got to get out of this culture that we cannot discuss something that we're not taking a direct responsibility for. I agree entirely with what the president of Estonia said about debundling (ph) being a key answer to energy security. And that, of course, is an E.U. issue, not a NATO issue.
But NATO has got to do a better job of scanning the horizon, of identifying the challenges, identifying what needs to be done, formulating recommendations. We've got to become more of a think-tank and not just an operational alliance, which then sort of sensitizes its member states to issues which perhaps can then be better handled by the E.U. or the United Nations.
For example, climate change, which has a horrendous security implications -- almost finished, Ron -- is not a subject that's ever discussed in NATO.
The third thing is I totally agree with what President Ilves was saying, that the response is not necessarily military. It's multifaceted. Joe Ralston is right we have to have the full spectrum. But that means that Article 5 in future is something that's going to be managed collectively by E.U. and NATO together, much more than by NATO itself than in the past.
I wanted to say that. That's not a question. It's more of a statement. Forgive me, Ron.
ASMUS: That's OK, Jamie. You get special license sometimes. Sometimes. Thank you.
Sir, here, front row, then we're going to come back to the panel. And then I'm going to come back up here.
QUESTION: Anton La Guardia of the Economist. I was wondering, given the discussion about Russia and given Jamie's point about expeditionary warfare, do members of the panel see too much emphasis being paid on expeditionary warfare to the detriment of territorial defense, particularly countries such as the Baltics, or even now for Poland. Are we worried too much about warfare far away and not worrying about defense at home?
ASMUS: OK, let's come back to the panel. Don't feel obliged to answer. Just pick up the one that you feel -- Radek, do you want to go first?
SIKORSKI: There are several connections between expeditionary warfare and core responsibilities. One is that I think it should be an implied or even an overt deal.
We will help you, the alliance, the United States, with your expeditionary activities in places where we have no selfish national interest -- one was Iraq, of course outside NATO, another is Afghanistan -- provided you give us an occasional reminder that the territorial function of NATO still stands.
And in that context...
... NATO still stands.
SIKORSKI: And in that context, the connection is a negative one.
The more we spend on expeditionary warfare, Iraq has cost us 600 million
in sort of current costs, perhaps the same again in the equipment
depreciation, which for us is quite a bit of money, the less we have for
the modernization of our forces, modernization for the sake of future
expeditions but also for our own territorial defense.
So I think the way that incentives are structured in NATO now are
not helpful. The more pro-NATO you are the more out of pocket you are
and the less you have for modernizing your forces. Not good. We should
finance some logistical and other parts of expeditionary missions out of
NATO funds so that there would be positive incentives for countries to
join in.
ASMUS: Great, thank you.
SIKORSKI: I guess I have a couple of points. On Georgia I think
it's important to keep in mind the last year when a missile was fired
within Georgia by an unidentified plane at a radar installation. The
response was that several countries, including my own, sent experts to
investigate the missile and realized it didn't come from Georgia though
it was fired in Georgia by a plane that didn't come from Georgia. What
was the response?
Well in NAC there was refusal to visit Georgia even. And the E.U.
presidency decided that this was something best handled by the OSC so it
didn't do anything, gave it to the OSC where Russia has a veto. And so
nothing came out of it. So the problem is that this is a country that
has no recourse to any kind of security. What the solution should be, I
mean different countries have different solutions but I don't think the
current situation is either adequate or stable, given the signals that
we're sending.
Now on the other issue, on expeditionary force, I think there's also
the additional issue that we'll become more and more of one. I mean we
are a country in Afghanistan proportionally with a lot of people given
their small size and we're there without caveats in Helmand. So it's
not simply expeditionary. I mean if you're in there with no caveats in
Helmand, it's a lot different from being in the north with caveats.
ASMUS: OK. General?
RALSTON: To answer the issue on Georgia and not to try to evade it,
but let's go through the political steps before we ever get to that
point. First of all will Georgia be given membership action plan status
or not. That's a decision obviously being discussed. Let's assume that
they are at some point.
Then let's go back to the five criteria that they have to meet,
functioning democracy, free market economies, to be in control of the
military, no border disputes with your neighbors and be interoperable
with NATO. Let's assume that all those have been met before the
decision is made as to whether they're a member of the Alliance or not.
Then you have the situation that you talked about, OK now you have a
member of the Alliance who has peaceful relations with their neighbors
and they've had an invasion of some kind. Then that is now a political
decision for the NAC to take. And SACUR awaits the next guidance on
what to do about that.
UNIDENTIFIED: In my view it is I think important to analyze the
issue for first allies and then for those countries which its NATO have
some extended kind of relations. For Georgia and also for some other
countries as well, like Ukraine, it is very important for NATO to keep
an open-door policy and to have those countries in a way anchored to
meet the criteria so that meeting the criteria actually will inherently
solve many problems of security as well. Then the country is more open,
more democratic. Then it actually implements the role then security
issues also differ and change in a more positive way.
And for the case of Russia, I think it's important to remember here
that in December Russia did suspend the CFE Treaty obligations, which is
quite an important issue for all Europe. And it is a subject where I
think we should all, as NATO allies, be very, very careful about and
find some kind of an agreement with Russia to have them back on board.
ASMUS: Right. Lots of questions, please short, brief, provocative
if possible. If first -- back here then here and then over here. So
please introduce yourself. I call you Esther but not everyone may know
you.
BRIMMER: Thank you, Ron. Esther Brimmer, Center for Transatlantic
Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS. And thanks to the panel for their
comments. I wanted to get to this point that essentially we're talking
about how we handle territorial security now and it's looking at
societal security. And this afternoon we focused on particularly cyber
security.
But I would suggest that are areas which are actually vitally
important to our society that we haven't even touched on but which could
also be important to the Alliance, including for example health
security. One could imagine an attack on our societies using biological
elements that might initially appear as a public issue. One could
imagine there might be a whole realm of cooperation among first
responders in NATO countries where yet at this point we're not looking
at the return of the civil defense side.
So to build on the other question, if we had what looked like a
public health crisis, couldn't we talk about it in the NAC? And could
we organize ourselves to respond?
ASMUS: Yes. Let me just mention that Esther's center has done a
very scary gaming exercise of exactly such a scenario. Sir?
UNIDENTIFIED: Romania, it's very clear that we are already debating
the nuclear strategy concept of the land. My proposal will be maybe to
think more about bringing at the same table also an institution which is
very important in our countries, I mean the Minister of Interior. At
NATO every six months we have a meeting of the Minister of Foreign
Affairs or the Minister of Defense.
But I think it's time now in NATO, now that we are speaking about
cyber attacks and about pressures and about other issues to bring also
in NATO the same table, at least one per year, also the Minister of
Interiors. Because even we are speaking about pandemics or we are
speaking about some other issues, I think the Minister of Interiors are
playing a very important role. So I would like the panel to talk a
little bit if it is possible in the future (inaudible) also Minister of
Interiors to be included in the (inaudible) conferences of NATO.
ASMUS: Thank you very much. Former Minister Pascu?
PASCU: Well thank you. When I look at the agenda of the summit and
we see there that we have to discuss energy security, cyber attack,
missile defense, I really wonder whether the Soviet strength has
disappeared because the Soviet Union disappeared. And I'm wondering if
somehow the threats have changed themselves, but they are still there.
Of course we have a different relationship to Russia now. But the
threats are there.
I think you know also that when it comes to Article 5 we certainly
have to take into consideration what was said that the content of
security concept is changing. It is becoming more complex. And
therefore the threats are becoming more complex and we should also
address that. And also institutionally we should try to find out the
ways to respond to that.
But is there the political will to do that? Are we ready to accept
this sort of extension of Article 5 or making more complex the Article 5
because we know that we have to honor the obligations to answer those
threats or not. And I would conclude by saying that the problem is, if
the NAC is recognizing that a situation is qualified to be called
Article 5, this is a crucial thing because it's a matter of time.
How much can you deal on your own with a situation until NAC is
convened and discuss, debate and comes to the conclusion that it is an
Article 5, which activates the mechanism of response. How long to we
resist in that situation alone? Thank you.
ASMUS: OK I'm goin