NATO Expansion

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to express my support for the ratification of the protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 on the accession of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

NATO has been perhaps the most successful military alliance in history, ensuring the peace and security of Europe for over fifty years. I believe these seven countries will not only benefit immeasurably from their inclusion in NATO, but they will all serve to further strengthen the alliance in ways that we could not have imagined in 1949. Though they are all fledgling democracies, they bring with them a zeal for the democratic process that we all share.

In 1997, I had concerns about admitting the last three nations into NATO—Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. I had significant concerns about the cost we as a nation might incur by allowing these countries with immature political and social structures and outdated militaries to enter the alliance. But time has proven that these costs are less than we imagined, and I believe that the cost required to bring these next seven nations into the alliance should be well worth the investment.

At the same time, I continue to have reservations about the likelihood of true interoperability with these seven new nations. These seven nations use military hardware that is a product of the Soviet armed forces, and it is rapidly reaching the end of its useful life. Very little of this equipment is compatible with the latest hardware, weapons, and ammunition currently utilized by the United States. The militaries of the seven new nations are also top heavy with senior officers who were trained under the old Soviet regime. As with the ground forces, their air forces are also products of the Soviet era, and are greatly outdated. Finally, interoperability within the communications arena will be extremely challenging, at best, until these militaries become proficient in English.

Despite these misgivings, I still believe that we should admit these seven nations into the NATO alliance. The NATO alliance ensured victory in the Cold War and has preserved the peace in Europe for over fifty years. But in order to survive for the next fifty years, the alliance must be willing to make much-needed changes to its charter. I support the Warner-Levin-Roberts amendment and its two major provisions that the President of the United States placed on the agenda at the North Atlantic Council. First, I agree that we must eliminate the "consensus rule," the antiquated requirement in the NATO charter that nearly prevented NATO from protecting one of its own members, Turkey, before the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This rule may have worked when the alliance was first formed in 1949 with its original 12 members, but it cannot work any longer. Secondly, I support the need for a new rule in NATO that authorizes the members of the alliance to suspend the membership of any country in NATO which no longer supports the ideals of the alliance. The recent refusal of support on the part of some of our NATO allies during the build-up for and execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom has again shown the need for such a change. Only with these two critical steps will NATO continue to thrive and be as critical to peace and security in the 21st Century as it was in the 20th Century.