The Prague Post Online: Opinion: NATO looks east

December 1st, 2008

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NATO looks east

Russia, Georgia and radars in an excerpt from Havel's speech on the alliance
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August 20th, 2008 issue

By Václav Havel

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There is a reluctance to speak about it, but even the expansion of NATO, just like the expansion of the EU, must end one day.

Although both bodies are chiefly based on respect for certain values, they both have their geographical dimension and physical frontiers. These need to be defined as soon and as specifically as possible. History shows that vague or disputed frontiers are frequent causes of wars. Every political entity must know where its territory begins and where it ends. Uncertainty on that score has been one of the age-old problems of Russia, which has complicated the lives of many of its neighbors, and it would not be a good idea to imitate Russia in this respect.

Nonmembership in NATO or the EU is no disgrace. New Zealand shares the same values as NATO, yet it would not occur to anyone that it should be a member; it is located elsewhere. The same applies to the European Union.

I even believe that the eastern frontiers of both of those entities — which, unlike their western frontiers, are uncertain — should not only be agreed on as soon as possible, but they should actually be identical.

Russia is an enormous Eurasian power — bigger than the rest of Europe — and the West has to maintain a partner relationship with it. This demands absolute respect for mutual frontiers. In my opinion, it starts with the border between Russia and the Baltic states and follows the Russo-Belarusian and Russo-Ukrainian border down to the Black Sea. This is absolutely obvious from the map, and has a more or less historical and cultural basis. Membership in NATO and the EU should continue to be open for the entire Balkans and also, of course, for all nonmembers in Europe, such as Austria or Switzerland.

Naturally it is up to individual countries whether they want to join one or the other organization — or both.

It would seem that even some non-European countries, such as Georgia, are interested in joining the European organizations. I cannot predict how things will turn out, but, from the point of view of a worldwide security order, it would be more practicable in my entirely private opinion if countries like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and others — and maybe a free Chechnya also one day — were to create their own powerful, supranational political and security entity.

The issue of where the frontiers of the various supranational or continental groupings are located, where they begin and where they end, is bound up with the question of how political, economic and security issues are handled on a global scale.

What we understand today as globalization has one very important aspect: Namely, the discreet unification and standardization of the world — so that it is hard to tell whether you are at Los Angeles Airport or a new shopping mall in Prague.

In this constantly shrinking world in which uncontrolled urbanization accompanied by rising criminality is an increasing danger, it is as if we were being squeezed together more and more. I know from my own experience what can happen when there are more and more prisoners in one cell.

And what was the civilization whose long-term ethos enabled today’s globalization?

It was the Euro-American civilization, the richest part of the world. It is no surprise, then, that various identities regard it as the chief devil, which wants just one thing: to divest them of their uniqueness. [This leads to] the emergence of various fundamentalisms and then terrorism all the more dangerous in that it has a choice of tools unprecedented in history, from chemical and bacteriological weapons to nuclear arms.

Part of globalization is another, far more positive phenomenon: the distinct move towards large supranational partnerships, which allow smaller countries to join forces and stand up to the pressure of the bigger or richer ones. Development is away from the idea of the nation state as the summit of human organization towards the idea of supranational communities.

I am raising all these matters because I believe that NATO, in common with the EU or the U.S. as such, should systematically base its future, including security strategies, on the principle of equal coexistence between all the major integrated entities of today’s world and the dominant world powers.

I realize that NATO is linked with many countries and parts of the world by a network of various treaties. However, I believe this network needs to be strengthened, simplified and its various components mutually assimilated. I can envisage a day where NATO has a clear and simple security treaty with China, Russia, Latin America, India and other major parts of the world. That treaty structure must be based on absolute equality.

This does not mean that anyone can do what they like beneath its umbrella; on the contrary, partners will monitor each other’s actions and will have the right to exact appropriate sanctions for infringements. The rules of possible operations of one or both partners outside their own territories must be precisely laid down. I don’t have any illusions and realize that these reflections are a bit like day-dreaming.

Nonetheless does anyone know a better way to limit conflicts in the future? And doesn’t there exist a certain moral minimum that is common to all civilizations and which could provide the basis for such a structure? And doesn’t today’s world possess enough instruments for mutual inspection and sanctions if required? I am not proposing any new, epoch-making steps for the Alliance in the immediate future. I am simply talking about the spirit which might govern its work in the future.

NATO was set up originally as a bulwark against Stalin’s westward expansion. It is very sad that today, almost sixty years later, Russia is once more giving us cause for concern. It would be disingenuous not to speak about it. And it would be almost suicidal to imagine that mutual presidential embraces on an American ranch or at a Russian dacha will put everything right. Unobtrusively, yet irrepressibly, a dictatorship of a fairly new type is coming into existence to the east of the area under NATO protection. All basic human and civic freedoms are gradually and quietly being suppressed under the banner of the aggrieved ideology that everybody is doing Russia wrong or that they are all covert enemies. The system of formal democracy and one-party rule familiar to us from communist times is being revived. The secret police are once more becoming all-powerful. The nation’s enormous wealth is passing into the hands of the powerful or their friends.

Admittedly, on the harmless fringe of public life, there are people, associations, political parties or media who are tolerated and operate freely although they are critical towards the regime. However, everything that is free and has any major influence is destroyed in subtle ways. Important international humanitarian organizations are made to leave the country. The best journalists are leaving the media. Troublesome people disappear mysteriously or are murdered. Political murders and even major terrorist operations are never properly investigated. The judiciary is becoming an offshoot of the executive.

An enormous nation inhabiting an enormous territory is lapsing into apathy and adapting to the status quo. It is accepting the propaganda-fed cult of the leader that is even sometimes reminiscent of the cult of Stalin. Those of you who have read the book about Litvinenko’s death or the diary of the murdered Anna Politkovskaya will know what I’m talking about.

I believe none of us has the right to remain silent and pretend — maybe for energy-saving reasons — that we can’t see these things. The sort of treaties I envisage for the future ought to give the partners the right under natural law to criticize such things and monitor their future remedy.

And that is not all. It is as though the old problem of Russia, which I’ve already referred to, is coming back to life. Russia is once more losing its awareness of where it begins and where it ends. It once more hankers after manipulating its “near abroad,” its sphere of interest or, quite simply, the territory flanking it. It’s as if it still thought that what once belonged to it will do so for all time. The threats it has continued to make to Poland and the Czech Republic in response to the possibility that we could, from here, using American missiles, render harmless a missile offensive — aimed possibly at us — are almost comical. Its attempts to divide countries by means of its energy policies are, alas, not entirely without success.

The situation with China is not dissimilar. There can be no tolerating its support of the massacre in Darfur or its systematic destruction of the Tibetan nation, along with its traditions and culture.

In short, I am in favor of a sort of network of thoroughly elaborated security treaties that will be familiar to and respected by all, covering conventional, nuclear or terrorist attacks or preventive/follow-up action, which would provide a guarantee that presidents would do less mutual embracing at their ranches or dachas and concentrate more on straight talk and not ducking the issues.

Politeness and falsehoods have never yet preserved the peace.

— This is an edited version of a speech given by former President Václav Havel Feb. 28 in Brussels at a conference hosted by NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). The full text of the speech appears in the current summer issue of the journal The New Presence. Translated from the original speech in Czech by Gerald Turner

Reader's comments:

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[02:17 24/08/2008] : Its great once again hear the words of the WISE President Havel. His wisdom is as precise as it is complex (in the difficult changes of today's world). He has never taken the simple path and his rich guidance is not bending to Russian intimidation though critics of the Missle Treaty appear to be. Thank you Vaclav, we miss you!

Tom McCallin
Denver, USA

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