Event Summary
Even as America wrestles with the new challenges of forging a stable relationship with China and containing ethnic and religious conflicts from the Balkans to Asia and Africa, fundamental tensions have refocused America''s security interest back on the trans-Atlantic links to Europe. On 26-27 March, thirty senior security specialists, half from Europe and half from the U.S., met under the auspices of the Belfer Center and the Army War College at the Kennedy School to examine the challenges and explore alternative futures.
At the heart of the current tensions in trans-Atlantic relations lies the need to reconcile three somewhat autonomous developments. These are the next round of NATO expansion, scheduled for discussion in 2002; the content and speed of evolution of the European Security and Defense Program (ESDP); and the transformation of U.S. security policy toward Europe under President George W. Bush. The group spent two days establishing points of mutual understanding on each of these three issues and then debating where they were compatible and where there was potential for one program conflicting with another.
The level of concern from Europe was reflected in their delegation of senior participants, including Esko Aho, former Prime Minister of Finland; Toomas Ilves, Foreign Minister of Estonia; Klaus-Peter Klaiber, Assistant Secretary General of NATO; Gen. (ret.) Klaus Naumann, former Chairman of the North Atlantic Military Committee; and Dmitrij Rupel, Foreign Minister of Slovenia.
The basic issues which emerged included whether ESDP would produce a competitor or complimentary force for NATO; whether European defense budgets would allow the creation of an independent defense force and modernization of their militaries to remain interoperable with the U.S.; and whether the U.S. was willing to curb specific national interests, such as missile defense, to continue its policy of building consensus with its European allies.
http://www.ausa.org/RAMPnew/TASpage.htm