LOCATION Kyiv, Ukraine

SPEAKER Sir Stewart Eldon, UK Ambassador to NATO

EVENT Atlantic Treaty Association 55th General Assembly

DATE 09/10/2009

I’m very grateful to the Atlantic Council of Ukraine for inviting me to participate in this panel session on the Strategic Concept.

The UK has long been an advocate of NATO taking a new look at its Strategic Concept, or mission statement.  The current one dates from 1997, and though much of it remains valid the time has come for an updating to ensure the Alliance can set the right context for its activities in the complex security environment of the 21st Century.

For that reason, we welcomed the initiative to adopt a Declaration on Alliance Security at the Strasbourg Summit earlier this year, and participated wholeheartedly in its drafting.  

The Declaration sets out a number of basic propositions that in one sense should be seen as the preface to the new Strategic Concept.  Interestingly, it was not put together in the traditional NATO fashion of lowest-common-denominator consensus drafting.  Rather, we engaged in a process of iterative dialogue between the NATO Council and the then Secretary General, who held the pen.  The NAC commented on successive versions of the Secretary General’s draft, without getting into commas and full stops, until all were content with the final draft.

A similar procedure will be followed in respect of the new Strategic Concept.  The draft that will go to Heads of State and Government at the Summit in Portugal next year will be submitted by the Secretary General.  But it will be prepared with the full involvement of the NAC, and Ambassadors will work closely with their Ministers to ensure their national views are fully respected.  We hope this procedure will result in a document that means something, that is clear and that will energise the Alliance as we move into the second decade of this century.

The Secretary General has said that the preparation of the new Strategic Concept will be the most open and inclusive process the Alliance has ever undertaken.  We support that.  If the Strategic Concept is to do its job properly it must be accessible to ordinary people in the Alliance and its Partner nations.  It must mean something, and it must inspire.  There is an opportunity for Ukrainians to contribute to the debate, and I hope you will do so.

To start the process off, Heads of State and Government at Strasbourg mandated the Secretary General to establish a Group of Experts to advise him on the new Strategic Concept.  The Group is chaired by Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State.  Former Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon is the UK Expert.  They serve in a personal capacity and are independent of their governments.  Their role is to advise and ventilate the issues, rather than draft, but they will be pivotal in shaping the debate.

To do so they will travel and consult widely.  NATO will organise four major seminars, attended by the Experts, PermReps and MilReps.  The first will be in Luxembourg on 16 October focussing on NATO’s fundamental security tasks.  Others will follow in Brdo (13 November, on NATO’s Engagements in an Era of Globalization); Oslo (January 2010, on Partnerships and Beyond); and Washington (February/March 2010, Transformation: Structures, Forces and Capabilities).

But these formal seminars will only be the tip of the iceberg.  There is considerable interest in the process among think-tanks and other NGO’s in the UK, and I’d expect considerable debate in my own country and other Allies.  I’d encourage a debate in Ukraine too, and welcome this conference as a beginning.

The consultation phase will come to an end with a public report by the Group of Experts to the Secretary General in the early summer of 2010.  I think it would be most useful if this could take the form of advice on what areas of the existing Strategic Concept need to change, and in what direction.

Let me give you a personal view of what will and what will not change:

• Article 5, on collective defence, is and will remain the fundamental basis of the Alliance.  But I would also expect the new Strategic Concept to recognise the importance of expeditionary operations to NATO’s contribution as a provider of security in the 21st Century.  There is no contradiction between the two; in this day and age deployable and expeditionary capabilities are required to ensure the defence of Allied territory and interests.
• I think the new Strategic Concept is likely to reinforce both NATO’s key values and its importance as the primary forum for Euro-Atlantic consultation on security issues.
• Nuclear deterrence will remain of fundamental importance, while recognising the equal importance of the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons as proposed by President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
• NATO’s open door will remain, and the Alliance will strongly defend the right of all countries to choose membership of whatever military alliances they wish without outside interference.
• By the same token, Russia’s importance to the Alliance as a strategic partner will be recognised.  But it takes two to tango, and we will not accept Russian actions that go against our values or the norms of international behaviour.

This may sound old hat, and perhaps rather unexciting.  But I would expect the new Strategic Concept to contain some important new elements.  These will include:

• NATO’s response to new threats and challenges, such as Energy Security, Climate Change and Cyber-attack.  Except perhaps in the most extreme of circumstances these are unlikely ever to amount to an Article 5 situation, and very often the Alliance will not be in the lead in responding to them.  It will nevertheless be important to define the sort of role it could play.
• The importance of NATO working with other international organisations and stakeholders to complete its missions.  The UN – and perhaps especially the EU - are of key importance in this area. Afghanistan teaches us the importance of this sort of co-operation.
• Partnerships as a further key enabler of NATO’s activities.  We need a less rigid system that will allow both the Alliance and its Partners to make the most of what is on offer.

This is a daunting menu, but ultimately one that should be well within our capabilities.  It’s also one that Ukraine can influence through enlightened discussion and debate.  I look forward to discussing the issues with you here today.

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