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We must strengthen NATO's Partnership for Peace with non-member allies. And we must build a stable partnership between NATO and a democratic Russia. An expanded NATO is good for America, and a Europe in which all democracies define their future not in terms of what they can do to each other, but in terms of what they can do together for the good of all that kind of Europe is good for America.
Finally, our doctrinal evolution has been undertaken with appropriate consultation with our NATO Allies and others. We are fully consistent with NATO's strategy of flexible response. We are greatly accelerating our ability to reinforce Western Europe with massive ground and air forces in a crisis.
It constitutes a vital American interest and the pivot of NATO's southern flank. But it is derided by the EU, its NATO membership notwithstanding. It is here, in the Balkan, that the New World Order and the End of History hypothesis are being tested. A new European balance of the Big Powers will emerge here. But hitherto, alas, this particular concert of Europe has been quite a cacophony.
Still, NATO's chances of replacing the EU as the main continental political alliance are much higher than the EU's chances of substituting for NATO as the pre-eminent European military pact. the EU is hobbled by minuscule and decreasing defense spending by its mostly pacifistic members and by the backwardness of their armed forces.
But Putin is not Boris Yeltsin, his inebriated predecessor who over-played his hand in opposing NATO's operation in Kosovo in 1999 only to be sidelined, ignored and humiliated in the postwar arrangements. Russia wants a free hand in Chechnya and to be heard on international issues.
We welcomed the reestablishment of Greece's links to the integrated military command structure of the Atlantic Alliance a move which we had strongly encouraged as a major step toward strengthening NATO's vital southern flank at a time of international crisis and tension in adjacent areas.
We must strengthen NATO's Partnership for Peace with non-member allies. And we must build a stable partnership between NATO and a democratic Russia. An expanded NATO is good for America, and a Europe in which all democracies define their future not in terms of what they can do to each other, but in terms of what they can do together for the good of all that kind of Europe is good for America.
Yet, appearances aside, it does not signal a fundamental shift in Russian policy or worldview. Russia could not resist the temptation of playing once more the Leninist game of "inter-imperialist contradictions". It has long masterfully exploited chinks in NATO's armor to further its own economic, if not geopolitical, goals.
We welcomed the reestablishment of Greece's links to the integrated military command structure of the Atlantic Alliance a move which we had strongly encouraged as a major step toward strengthening NATO's vital southern flank at a time of international crisis and tension in adjacent areas.
Finally, our doctrinal evolution has been undertaken with appropriate consultation with our NATO Allies and others. We are fully consistent with NATO's strategy of flexible response. We are greatly accelerating our ability to reinforce Western Europe with massive ground and air forces in a crisis.
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