THE ‘NEW ATLANTIC INITIATIVE’ OFFERS A FRESH IMPETUS TO WESTERN SECURITY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD

(Washington, D.C.): Last weekend witnessed the
creation of what is, arguably, the most important new
institution for the defense and expansion of freedom
since the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in 1949 — the New Atlantic Initiative.

With the active participation of influential world
leaders, statesmen and other prominent security policy
practitioners, this Initiative has been launched with an
extraordinary meeting — dubbed the Congress of Prague —
that was convened to give expression to several key
ideas. Not least of these is that which galvanized former
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Czech President
Vaclav Havel, former U.S. diplomat Edward Streator, National
Review editor John O’Sullivan and others to action:
The prospect that the fruits of a Cold War victory may be
lost by a passive West, unconcerned about the need to
preserve and enhance the Atlantic Alliance that made that
victory possible and inattentive to the renascent menace
of authoritarianism. As Lady Thatcher put it: wp=”br1″>

“…In recent years we have heard repeated
suggestions that the West was essentially a Cold War
construct, rendered irrelevant by the end of a
bipolar world. In fact, it was — and is — nothing
of the sort….Our energies must be directed toward
strengthening NATO which is as important in the
post-Cold War world as in the circumstance of its
creation. NATO’s role should be expanded. It must be
prepared to go out-of-area, where so many of today’s
threats lie. It must be prepared to accept the Czech
Republic and other Central European countries as full
members giving them much needed reassurance in a time
of growing fear about future instability to the
East….[And] economic integration on the Atlantic
basis can nurture this vital Atlantic relationship in
defense and foreign policy.”

An Urgent Priority — Defending Against
Missile Attack

Perhaps the Iron Lady’s strongest warning was that
concerning “the proliferation of advanced missiles
and missile technology that has fundamentally altered the
threat over the last few years.” She observed: wp=”br1″>

“There are many imponderables in precisely
assessing the timescale of the threat; but they
should increase our vigilance….It is not only the
terrible consequences of the actual use [of ballistic
missiles], but the implications of their threatened
use, that should disturb us. For that threat casts
doubt on the ability of the West to project its power
beyond our shores.”

Her insights on this score were powerfully echoed in a
statement delivered by Senator Jon Kyl,
a freshman from Arizona whose emergence as one of the
Senate’s most formidable intellects on national security
matters was evident in his selection to deliver an
address originally slated to be given by Henry Kissinger.
Sen. Kyl, a recipient of the Center for Security Policy’s
Keeper of the Flame award, decried the policy of Mutual
Assured Destruction that has both helped contribute to
the United States’ absolute vulnerability to ballistic
missile attack — and prolonged that of its allies. He
asked:

“Is there any weapon other than missiles to
which we believe we are better off being vulnerable?
No one suggests that we would be more secure by
renouncing defense against strategic bombers or
warships. It makes no more sense to conclude that we
should remain without a defense against
missiles.”

That this sentiment was broadly shared among
participants from various NATO nations was evident in a
document presented to the Congress of Prague by a
distinguished subcommittee on security policy, chaired by
America’s Richard Perle and Britain’s Brian Beedham: wp=”br1″>

“In a more unpredictable and complex world,
the potential contribution to stability of a global
system of ballistic missile defenses may prove to be
very great indeed. In our opinion, NATO provides the
best means for providing the organizational
infrastructure which would enable America’s allies to
make a significant contribution in both economic and
technological terms to the research, development and
deployment of a system answering common needs and
concerns.”

In this manner, a powerful Transatlantic impetus has
properly been given to the debate that will begin in
earnest on the floors of the U.S. Senate and House over
the next few days — a debate that House Speaker Newt
Gingrich recently, correctly described as “the most
important national defense debate since Churchill argued
for building radar” in the peacetime years before
World War II.

A New Focus on Economic Security?

One participant in the Congress of Prague — the
William J. Casey Institute’s own Roger W. Robinson, Jr.
— urged that the New Atlantic Initiative give increased
attention in the future to the nexus between economics
and national security. In a powerful intervention, Mr.
Robinson, who formerly served as the Senior Director for
International Economics on the Reagan National Security
Council and now holds the Institute’s William J. Casey
Chair, argued that the concept of international economic
security could emerge as the leading policy portfolio for
the balance of this decade and the 21st Century. wp=”br1″>

Robinson acknowledged the difficulties in executing a
responsible economic security policy. For example, he
observed that taking action to advance the West’s common
security concerns is often viewed as disruptive to normal
trade, financial, energy and technology flows
(specifically, economic sanctions, cases of
extraterritoriality, challenges to contract sanctity and
the strong aversion to any form of capital controls). And
for those in the political/military field, many elements
of the international economic portfolio seem hopelessly
arcane and not suited to security-oriented policy making
(e.g., the access of sovereign borrowers to bond and
interbank deposit markets, official export support
programs, and other of our trade and financial mechanisms
and institutions).

Mr. Robinson nonetheless contended that:

“From this point forward, the firewall
between global security developments and the markets
will inevitably be breached with greater frequency
and violence. Although I’m an ardent free-trader, economic
and financial sanctions against proliferators and
other strategic trade offenders — which are
continuously diluted or undermined by a lack of
allied unity or waived altogether as the U.S.
Administration is doing with regard to the Chinese
sales to Pakistan — will need to be
strengthened and more creative policy tools
identified if we are to deter
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile
threats, to name but two.

“The support of our nations for
exports and jobs simply cannot be permitted to
supersede our common security concerns or the
ultimate violence to the international markets will
inflict potentially debilitating costs on our
populations. I therefore submit that we can
no longer afford to bifurcate these two global policy
portfolios, just as we can no longer afford to eschew
strengthened multilateral export controls and other
essential economic security measures. Accordingly, I
think a major upgrading of NATO’s Economic
Secretariat and operations is in order as soon as
practical.”

These suggestions appeared to resonate positively with
key participants and organizers of the Congress of Prague
and seem likely to feature in future work performed as
part of the New Atlantic Initiative. wp=”br1″>

The Bottom Line

The distinguished participants agreed to the following
overarching principles to guide the New Atlantic
Initiative:

“Our mission at this Congress of Prague…is
to reunite the family of Western civilization and so
to ensure its future. There is grave danger that the
links among us might be broken again, or gradually
erode, owing to shortsightedness and the failure of
statesmanship on all sides. We must not allow
that….Just as the Atlantic Community preserved the
freedom of Western Europe and America in the last
fifty years, so it must now entrench that freedom,
build upon it, and reaffirm common purposes for a new
era.”

The importance attached by those democrats in Central
Europe most immediately at risk from this danger was
summarized by President Havel — a man who as a
celebrated playwright and author remembers well the
inability of an earlier generation of his countrymen to
arouse the international community to the threat posed by
Adolf Hitler. He concluded his keynote address to the
Congress of Prague with the following, memorable words: wp=”br1″>

“Dear friends…you [are going to issue] an
appeal to the conscience of the politicians of this
world. I have read the text of the appeal and, I must
tell you, it has appealed to my heart, indeed. May it
appeal to the politicians of today. Let it not have
the same fate of the manifesto of the Czech writers
of 1938 which was heeded only by those who had no
actual influence on political affairs.”

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