The Transatlantic Partnership: Challenges and Opportunities
XXV. Robert Bosch Fellowship Foundation Program for Future American Leaders
Chargé d’affaires John M. Koenig
Berlin, September 18, 2008
As prepared for delivery.
Dr. Sandschneider, Dr. Liedtke, State Minister Gloser,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dr. Liedtke, thank you for giving me the opportunity to welcome with you the fellows of the 25th annual Bosch Foundation Program for Future American Leaders. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Foundation for its ongoing support of this very important program.
Over the past 25 years, more than 400 Americans have participated in this program. The alumni have all gone on to careers that touch on many different spheres of transatlantic relations. This is very important to the U.S. government and the American people. The relationships established through programs like the Bosch fellowships are the basis the strategic partnership that has served us well in the past and that will serve us well in the years ahead.
This year’s group of fellows includes journalists; economists looking to gain insight into EU economic policies; and a number of people interested in learning from Germany’s example as a leader in alternative sources of energy. For those fellows, I am sure it will be interesting to pick up on how the German media and the German people respond to these issues as they are discussed and debated in the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Energy will certainly be one of the topics that a new President and his team will have to deal with. It includes many related issues: how to continue to power economic wellbeing and human development in both developed nations and the developing world; whether nations can be truly independent if they are dependent on a small number of energy suppliers for their economic health; how those few major energy suppliers use their resource-based position of political, economic, and strategic power; how the dollars and euros spent on energy get used – on furthering democracy, development, and peace in the world, or lining the pockets of a few, or funding terrorists or sources of instability. Energy challenges touch every nation on this earth.
In the broader context, it will be interesting for all of you to experience an American election campaign through European eyes. There is enormous interest in this year’s presidential contest on both sides of the Atlantic. No matter which of the two candidates, however, becomes the next president of the United States, the good news for Europe is that each one of them is a committed and confirmed Atlanticist. Both recognize that Europe is America’s most important partner in addressing the challenges of the 21st century. The successes or failures of a 21st century policy infrastructure will be defined first and foremost by the U.S. and Europe.
The next administration will look at the transatlantic partnership as critical to what the United States does in Europe and beyond. The world may have high expectations for a new U.S. President – but rest assured that that President, no matter who it is, will have high expectations for resolve and support from our Allies and partners, as well. It won't be a question of America making demands on Europe; rather a question of Europe and the United States, together standing up to their responsibilities in the world. Senator Obama's visit to Berlin and Paris, the key capitals of Europe, was meant to signal the importance of Europe and our mutual foreign policy agenda.
The 44th president of the United States will take office at an extraordinarily challenging time. He will face ongoing conflicts with U.S. troops engaged alongside allies in Afghanistan and Iraq to help the people in those countries to build stable, safer, and more prosperous societies; active nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea; the ongoing search for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement; and longer-term challenges from Russia and China. The same issues that President Bush, and Secretaries Rice and Gates, and our NATO and EU Allies have been dealing with these last several years, everything from terrorism and WMD proliferation, Iran and Iraq, to Darfur and greenhouse gases won’t go away just because the United States elects a new President.
The election campaign is dramatic. I find it exciting, but despite campaign slogans focused on change, there are some time-honored approaches that still make sense.
First, and foremost, we must have confidence in our democratic values, and pull together to proclaim and defend them – freedom, democracy, economic opportunity, human rights, the rule of law: To guarantee opportunities for people to build strong families, societies, and countries, in safety and security. This was our approach through the tough years of World War II, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War years. It is equally true today. Related to a reinvestment in values, is the need to strengthen our sense of community and the tools of our transatlantic partnership.
First among these, in my opinion, is NATO. This is the one place where U.S. and European Allies sit together at one table to debate and decide together. From 2003 to 2006, I was posted at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels. In my day-to-day work, I saw a NATO of 26 members and 31 partners working effectively and providing security in eight different operations. I was involved in efforts to expand NATO’s Afghanistan operation from Kabul to the north, west, south and east of the country, in launching NATO’s support for the African Union Mission in Sudan, and in activating the newly created NATO Response Force to lead a disaster relief operation after the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.
That is the kind of strong NATO we need in the future.
NATO enlargement, along with EU enlargement, became the means by which the vision of a “Europe whole, free and at peace” started becoming reality. The United States – under the leadership of Presidents George H. W. Bush, President Clinton, and President George W. Bush – has supported the right of every country emerging from communism to chose the path of its own development, and to choose the institutions, such as NATO and the European Union, that it wants to associate with and join. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, over 100 million Europeans have found security, stability, and greater prosperity, in significant part as a result of being welcomed into the NATO Alliance.
The area of former Yugoslavia was the most terrible exception to the mostly good history of post-1989 Europe. The violent breakup of that country threw that region into a downward spiral from which the successor nations are only now recovering. But we believe that NATO enlargement – along with EU enlargement – can do for the Western Balkans in this decade what it did for Central Europe in the previous decade.
There is another part of Europe still at risk and where NATO has unfinished business, as Russia’s recent actions in Georgia have dramatized. This is the main issue that our defense ministers will discuss when they meet this week. The causes of the dispute between Georgia and its breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are complex, and all sides made mistakes and miscalculations. But key facts are clear: Russia sent its army across an internationally recognized boundary, to attempt to change by force the borders of a country with a democratically-elected government and, if possible, overthrow that government – not to relieve humanitarian pressures on Russian citizens, as it claimed.
The leaders of Georgia and Ukraine aspire to NATO membership. Neither nation is ready for NATO membership now. Both nations realize this. Both countries face challenges. Ukrainian society is far from united about the prospect of NATO membership and many Allies question the maturity and stability of its leadership. Quite apart from the issues arising from Russia’s attack on it, Georgia has much work to do in strengthening its democratic institutions before it would meet NATO standards.
This is why the United States supports approving both countries entry into NATO’s Membership Action Plan, the so-called MAP. MAP is not a promise or guarantee of NATO membership. It is a work program to help these countries make the progress they must make if they are to become NATO members someday.
Russia has made clear that it would regard even a MAP for Georgia or Ukraine with hostility. We believe this position is the wrong choice, both for the long-term security and stability of Russia’s neighbors as well as for Russia itself. NATO enlargement, along with integration into the EU, created in Central Europe an area of peace, security and stability. Stable, free market democracies along Russia's border rather than dictatorships are in everyone's interest, including Russia.
The United States does not believe in or recognize “spheres of influence.” I remember as a young diplomat working in our Embassy in East Berlin in the 1980s the dreadful line that was drawn through Europe. That must never happen again. No country has the right to declare that nations on the wrong side of a line cannot join the great institutions of Europe and the transatlantic family.
The United States and its European allies have responded in coordinated fashion to the Georgia crisis, and must continue to do so. The United States and Europe working together will have far more impact on Russia than we will have by working alone.
NATO and Russia have many common interests, and should work together to address them. There is no zero-sum game between NATO and Russia, where a gain for one is a loss for the other.
Russia would like to divide us as well -- Europeans from Americans. How many times have we heard Prime Minister Putin or Foreign Minister Lavrov warn Europeans in the last few weeks to move away from the United States in order to protect their interests with Russia? I don't dispute that those interests are real, but I am concerned that all of us -- Europeans and Americans -- will have much more success in defending and promoting them if we stand together based on our long tradition of mutual support, and our living tradition of shared values. We want to build a better future together -- and when I say together, I would hope that Russia would be an ever closer partner in this community. Recent events have caused alarm, and faced us with the very real possibility that Russia wants a future that more closely resembles its imperial past. That is not a path that will lead to greater opportunity for the people of Russia or greater stability, prosperity, and freedom in the world. Together, secure in our own partnership and values, Americans and Europeans must devise ways to advance the cause of a Europe, whole, free, and at peace -- a cause that is manifest in this great, reunited capital of a reunited Germany.
We want to have a productive, cooperative relationship with Russia – both bilaterally, and through NATO. But this cooperation needs to be based on working with a Russia that respects its neighbors.
We have many overlapping interests with Russia. This was true before Russia invaded Georgia and it is still true now, whether it is in Iran, Afghanistan, or on issues like counter-terrorism or counter-narcotics. Russia’s development in the 21st century will require it to have a cooperative, not antagonistic, relationship with the United States and Europe.
The spread of freedom and security benefits is a hallmark of transatlantic foreign policy. It sends a powerful message: namely, that there is a reward for putting cooperation over conflict.
The common transatlantic agenda is proof of that message. That doesn’t just go for countries and governments; it also goes for partnerships between institutions and individuals. That’s where innovation and sharing ideas comes in. The strong tradition of organizations like the Robert Bosch Foundation broadens the network of stakeholders involved in implementing practical solutions. To each of you, thank you again for your commitment and support.
On behalf of the Embassy, I wish the Fellows of 2008 an interesting and successful year.
Thank you.