Václav Havel, 2002, c/o Aura-Pont Praha Theo Publishing Pardubice, 2002 ISBN

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2 Václav Havel, 2002, c/o Aura-Pont Praha Theo Publishing Pardubice, 2002 ISBN

3 NATO, Europe, and the Security of Democracy Václav Havel Selected speeches, articles, and interviews

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8 Facsimile of the document on the accession of the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Treaty, February 26, 1999; Photo ČTK Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, signing the document on the accession of the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Treaty, February 26, 1999; Photo Oldřich Škácha

9 Contents Introduction 11 La Libre Belgique, December Reuters, January 1994 Corriere della Sera, December 1994 The Council of Europe 19 Strasbourg, May 10, 1990 (excerpt) NATO Headquarters 25 Brussels, March 21, 1991 Global Viewpoint, September Address to the Chamber of Deputies, Parliament of the Czech Republic 33 Prague, October 12, 1993 PBS television, October Luncheon hosted by President Clinton for the Presidents 40 of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic Prague, January 12, 1994 The Co-Responsibility of the West 43 Published in Foreign Affairs, March /April 1994 Czech Television, May Der Spiegel, February 1995 Nezavisimaja gazeta, Russian newspaper, February 1995 Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Conference 50 Mons, Belgium, April 27, 1995 Mladá Fronta Dnes, Czech newspaper, April Le Monde, June 1995 PBS television, October 1995 Vilnius University 59 Vilnius, April 17, 1996 The Washington Post, May NATO Workshop on Political-Military Decision Making 70 Warsaw, June 21, 1996

10 PBS television, May Moskovskoje novosti, Russian newspaper, June 1997 Plenary Session of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council 75 Madrid, July 9, 1997 The Washington Times, September The Fulbright Prize 77 Washington, D.C., October 3, 1997 Financial Times, February Polish Television, March 1998 The University of Warsaw 84 Warsaw, March 10, 1998 Conference on Europe a Culture of Shared Causes 88 Berlin, February 25, 1999 Prima Television, the Czech Republic, March NATO s 50th Anniversary Commemorative Event 92 Washington D.C., April 23, 1999 The Congress of the United States of America 94 Washington D.C., April 23, 1999 The Parliament of Canada Senate and House of Commons 96 Ottawa, April 29, 1999 (excerpt) NIN, Yugoslavian weekly, November Czech Television, March 2001 Conference on Europe s New Democracies: Leadership and Responsibility 102 Bratislava, May 11, 2001 Inaugural Session of the NATO Russia Council 114 Pratica di Mare, May 28, 2002 Quo vadis, NATO? 115 Published in The Washington Post, May 20, 2002 The Editor s Thanks 122

11 Introduction This book is being published to mark the summit meeting of the leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance taking place in Prague in November The editor and author of this Introduction set himself the task of offering the public an insight into the views of Václav Havel through a selection of texts covering a period of thirteen years, from 1989 to 2002, and dealing with the cultural identity of European civilization, the import and purpose of the North Atlantic Alliance as guarantor of the security of Europe and its democratic principles, as well as the relationship between Europe and the United States. In his published texts, Václav Havel has devoted considerable attention to the process of NATO enlargement as well as to the complex and still contentious relationship between the North Atlantic Alliance and the Russian Federation. The texts that have been selected give proof of his sustained and systematic interest in the question of security beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia and, later, the Czech Republic. From Václav Havel s speeches and his many interviews for the Czech and foreign press, radio and television, the Editor was particularly concerned with selecting those in which Havel sought to provide answers to questions raised by developments that have taken place from the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet empire until the present, and especially those in Europe. The reader of Havel s texts will note the way in which, shortly after the political earthquake that occurred in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, he like many others adopted for a brief period a euphoric and rather naive view of a future without the traditional enemy, without the risks and dangers that had hitherto prevailed. In several of his speeches and interviews he returns to the reasons for this feeling and the circumstances that shaped it, and sets out to explain them. For example, in a speech delivered at Warsaw University on March 10, 1998 he says: My first comment. In those years when we, as so-called dissidents, resisted the totalitarian rule in our countries, and also at the time of the revolutionary changes that followed, we would probably all have agreed that one of our main objectives had to be the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, that chief instrument used by the Soviet imperial power to subjugate our countries. We were less clear about what should follow, that is what new type of European collective security should be created. Many, at that time, perceived NATO as a kind of Warsaw Pact twin, established so that democratic states could jointly protect themselves against the spread of Communist power, a twin that would lose its raison d etre once the adversary had gone. They considered the establishment of some completely new pan-european security alliance, unless they were so naive as to be- 11

12 lieve that the new era, in which we were all democrats, no longer needed any security alliances. Very quickly, however, Václav Havel discovered new or rather renewed tasks for NATO, tasks that he derived from its founding document, the Washington Treaty, when he placed the emphasis on the original goals of the signatory states. For him, NATO is the guarantor of the internal stability of a democratic Europe, a means of defence against any potential aggressor, no matter where such an aggressor might come from, and finally a form of protection against any kind of threat to civic freedom, the rule of law and democracy. For the North Atlantic Alliance to be successful in carrying out these more than complicated tasks, Havel felt that it had to be transformed in such a way as to gradually incorporate all the countries in Europe that had created a sufficiently stable democratic culture at home and wished to become a member of NATO. For Václav Havel, NATO is a defensive security system. What it should defend and what it should furnish firm support for are the values of the Western concept of democracy, civic freedom, law and responsibility transcending the narrow horizons of domestic interests. He expresses this idea succinctly in one of his speeches: The Washington Treaty, which established NATO, does not state that its purpose is defence against the Soviet threat, but rather the defence of democracy. In Havel's view, the transformation of NATO does not consist in transforming a defensive alliance into something that is called a security system, but that makes no differentiation between the quality of the regimes in individual states, that perhaps is also prepared to safeguard the right of all kinds of dictatorial regimes to impose limitations on their own citizens. On the contrary: it consists in strengthening an awareness of Euro-Atlantic democratic values, whose permanence and inalienable nature are the basic guarantee of a world free of war. If, nevertheless, Havel speaks of NATO as a security system, he does not forget to add that it is a defensive security system as well as a security system whose members also feel a responsibility when democracy is threatened outside their own countries and who are prepared to ensure it prevails even at the cost of taking up arms. In a situation where, through the NATO-Russia Council established in Rome, Russia has been given a strong voice in the formulation of the future strategy of NATO, the term defensive is doubly important, in view of the open-ended Russian views on the European security system. In a speech delivered on May 11, 2001 in Bratislava at a conference on Europe s New Democracies: Leadership and Responsibility, Václav Havel offered a wide-ranging contribution to the question of Russia s participation in decisionmaking processes relating to European security. Among other things, he made the following comment. It seems to me that Russia despite the remarkable progress it has made towards democracy and a market economy is somehow still grappling with a problem with which, to my knowledge, it has grappled for more or less 12

13 its entire history, that is, with the question of where it begins and where it ends; what belongs to its domain and what is already beyond it; where it should exercise its decisive influence and from what point onward it cannot do so. Lack of the natural self-confidence of an entity that is sure of its identity, and thus also of its boundaries, seems to be replaced by a slightly imperialistic rhetoric accompanied by nationalist bombast, which we know so well from people like Mr. Zhirinovsky, but which appears in Russia in a more cultured form on a much wider scale. For example, I find it almost absurd that such a large and powerful country should be alarmed by the prospect of three small democratic republics at its borders joining a regional grouping which it does not control; or that it should feel a need to build around itself an additional cordon sanitaire at a time when hundreds of transcontinental missiles could destroy Moscow from Nevada, or New York from the Urals, in a matter of minutes. And a while later he continued: It is my profound conviction that Russia does not deserve that we behave towards it as we would towards a leper, an invalid or a child who requires special treatment and whose whims, no matter how dangerous, must be understood and tolerated. In addition to the fact that such an attitude does not help Russia at all, and actually insults it, it also strengthens Russian misconceptions and doubtful inclinations. For that matter, such a policy does not help the Western statesmen either, as it leads them towards sliding into hopeless compromises. In his speeches, Václav Havel devotes most attention to Europe, and he sees Russia as its powerful, autonomous partner, characterized by its vast geographical spread, its huge military potential and its own tradition. It is nevertheless a partner which, in its history and its current concerns, belongs to a slightly different civilizational and cultural sphere than that of the Euro-Atlantic region. In contrast, the smaller-sized and small European states that have thrown off their former Communist regimes and built firm and lasting foundations for the new democracy should, in the interest of a stable and secure Europe and if they so wish, be admitted to the defensive alliance of democratic principles that is the North Atlantic Alliance and, unlike Russia, thus become an integral and equally responsible part of the organization. These are countries that have based their existence as states on the principle of civic freedoms, from which in turn are derived the other freedoms, including the right and capacity to sustain and develop their own national cultural identity. Václav Havel has devoted exceptional energies, involving much highly skilled diplomatic activity, to promoting the expansion of the alliance. This he has done not only in the interests of the country which he heads as President, but for the benefit of the resurrected and now stable democracies of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania on the Russian border, as well as of Slovakia and Slovenia, which geographically and historically form part of what we have come to call Central Europe. If the upcoming NATO summit in Prague decides in favour of the widest possible expansion 13

14 of the Alliance, this will be a confirmation of the arguments that Václav Havel, as a firm believer in such an expansion, made throughout the 1990s. Václav Havel sees the new assurance of European security in, among other things, the indispensable presence of the United States on the continent and in shared American responsibility for the cultural values of Euro-Atlantic civilization, which serve as a guarantee of civic freedoms and the basis of both European and American democracy. Hence in his address to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament in October 1993 he spoke as follows: In connection with NATO's future, there has been much debate lately about the continued American presence in Europe. I am convinced that it is still indispensable. American isolationism in the twentieth century has always hurt both Europe and America itself: the less it involved itself at the beginning of the European and later global conflagrations, the more sacrifices it had to make in their final stages. Even now, when a new Europe is dramatically being formed, America cannot resign its co-responsibility for Europe's future. And in an article for The Washington Post in May 2002, touching directly on what will be discussed at the Prague summit, he wrote: The final issue NATO should now consider, in all seriousness, is that it stands on two feet one European and one American and, given the advances in European integration, that it must say once again, and very clearly, when it is going to walk on one foot or the other, and when it is going to jump or run on both of them. The editor of this selection of Václav Havel's texts would like to point out that everything Havel has written and said in his speeches, conversations and articles dealing with the question of the North Atlantic Alliance was conceived in Prague, the city where the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, in the capital city of a country that for almost fifty years in the twentieth century was the victim of two totalitarian systems. It is this experience of the tragic loss of freedom that makes the ideas, recommendations and fears expressed by Václav Havel in this book more urgent than would have been the case otherwise. In this connection, it is appropriate in closing to quote the last sentence of the short speech made by Václav Havel on the occasion of the inaugural session of the NATO-Russia Council in Rome on 28 May 2002: NATO was originally founded as a response to my country's subjugation by Stalin. May its summit meeting in Prague manifest to the whole world, once and for all, that the time of subjugation is over and an era of worldwide cooperation has begun. Luboš Dobrovský 14

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17 NATO, Europe, and the Security of Democracy

18 At the end of 1989 and during the first weeks of the year 1990, many politicians, including myself, regarded the world as somewhat simpler than it has turned out to be. At that time, we believed amidst the general atmosphere of euphoria owing to the fall of the Iron Curtain that various European structures would change more rapidly in order that they might correspond to the new situation in Europe. As far as I remember, I never insisted that NATO should be abolished; I proposed that the Warsaw Pact should be dissolved and that NATO should rapidly transform itself into an all-european security structure, that it should change its doctrine, perhaps even its name. As a functioning, existing democratic defence union, it was predestined to evolve into an all-european structure. La Libre Belgique December 1993 I believe that today the democratic West is sufficiently aware of the dangers entailed in a new appeasement, a new division of Europe, a new Yalta and that, although the solutions it will eventually adopt may be cautious, perhaps slow, perhaps all too pragmatic, they will not have the character of a betrayal of Central and Eastern Europe. After all its previous experiences, the West unquestionably understands in doing that, it would be betraying itself. Reuters January 1994 Russia has no right to dictate to other nations where they shall be permitted or not permitted to apply; or to dictate to different security groupings concerning who they shall be permitted, or not permitted to accept. The degree of decisiveness of NATO, and of the countries applying for membership in that organization, will determine whether or not this principle will be enforced. They must also convince the Russians that the enlargement of NATO is not aimed against them. Corriere della Sera December

19 The Council of Europe Strasbourg, May 10, 1990 (Excerpt) In the security and military sphere, the outward expression of the post-war division of Europe takes the form of two existing pacts the Atlantic Alliance and the Warsaw Pact. These are military groupings of rather different natures and histories and they have different missions. While NATO was born as an instrument for the defence of Western European democracies against the danger of expansion by the Stalinist Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was conceived as an offshoot of the Soviet Army and as an instrument for Soviet policy. The aim was to confirm the satellite status of the European countries over which Stalin had gained control after the Second Word War. If we then consider the geopolitical context namely that the Western European democracies adjoin the ocean in the West, and the former Soviet satellites border upon the Soviet Union in the East we can easily grasp the asymmetry of the whole situation. In spite of this, I believe that in this radically new situation both groupings should gradually move toward the ideal of an entirely new security system, one that would be a forerunner of the future united Europe and would provide some sort of security or security guarantees. It could be a security community involving a large part of the northern hemisphere. Hence the guarantors of the process of unification in Europe would have to include not only the United States and Canada in the West, but also the Soviet Union in the East. When I speak of the Soviet Union, I am thinking of the community of nations that country is in the process of becoming today. What are the implications of this for NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the light of the asymmetry to which I have referred? For both pacts, it means considerably strengthening the role they are already playing to some extent, the role of political players in joint disarmament negotiations. It also means the diminution of their former role as instruments of defence of one half of Europe against a possible attack from the other half. In brief, both pacts should function more clearly as instruments of disarmament rather than instruments of armament. It seems that NATO, as a more meaningful, more democratic and more effective structure, could become the seed of a new European security system with less trouble than the Warsaw Pact. But NATO, too, must change. Above all it should in the face of today s reality transform its military doctrine. And it should soon in view of its changing role change its name as well. This should happen because of the victory of historical reason over historical absurdity, and not 19

20 because of a victory of the West over the East. The present name is so closely linked to the era of the Cold War that it would be a sign of a lack of understanding of present-day developments if Europe were to unite under the NATO flag. If the present structure of the Western European security alliance can become a precursor or a seed of a future pan-european alliance, it is certainly not because the West will have won the Third World War but because historical justice has triumphed. A further reason for changing the name is its obvious geographical inappropriateness. In a future security system, only a minority of members would border on the Atlantic Ocean. As far as the Warsaw Pact is concerned, it seems that when it ends its role as the political instrument of European disarmament, and as an escort of some countries in their return to Europe, it will lose its purpose and dissolve. What originally came into being as a symbol of Stalinist expansion will, in time, lose all its raison d etre. The great northern security zone, as is obvious at first sight, may essentially be called the Helsinki zone: the countries which could, and should, belong to it are in fact the participants in the Helsinki process. And what this implies is obvious enough. The new structures, which would emerge in parallel with the transformation or gradual dissolution of the old structures, could grow out of the foundations of the Helsinki process. The Czechoslovak proposal to establish a European Commission for Security as a starting point for a united Helsinki security system and a guarantee of a united Europe stems from this idea. The participating states in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe have been informed of this initiative, and I do not need to explain it here once again. As the Warsaw Pact gradually dissolves or loses its purpose and as NATO gradually transforms itself, the significance of this Commission would grow, along with any new structures around it. Let me try to summarize these considerations. If the Helsinki security process started to expand from the field of recommendations to participating states to the sphere of joint treaty commitments, a broad framework of guarantees could be created for the emerging political unity of Europe. The accelerated course of history compels us to immediately project every political consideration into some comprehensive timetable. I shall attempt to do this for the question at hand. It is possible and let us hope it will happen that a summit of the states participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe will be convened in the course of this year. I would like to assure those states proposing to hold it in Prague that Czechoslovakia would consider this a great honor and would do its utmost to ensure its success. However, more important than the venue of this summit are its content and its purpose. We have already suggested it could do more than is planned for in the present agenda. 20

21 In the first place, the summit could if all the participating states agreed establish the proposed European Commission for Security, which would begin working as of January 1, Czechoslovakia proposes Prague as its headquarters. The Secretariat, or its representative part, could have its headquarters in one of the beautiful Prague palaces near Prague Castle. Of course it would be gratifying if the first of these European institutions were given a mandate to be located in Prague by a summit held in Prague, but naturally this is not a precondition. The summit could establish those headquarters in Prague even if it were held somewhere else. This year s summit, should it be convened, could also decide that the conference known under the working name of Helsinki II and planned for 1992 would be held in the autumn of next year. The third and most important decision that could be taken at this year s summit would be one on the content and purpose of Helsinki II and on the immediate start of its preparations, for which purpose the proposed Commission also could serve. This task would be the drafting and perhaps the signing of a new generation of Helsinki Accords. The novelty of these Accords would be that they would consist not merely of an extensive set of recommendations to governments and states, but of a set of treaties on cooperation and assistance in the sphere of security. In other words, there would be some sort of obligation to provide mutual assistance in the case of an attack from the outside and to submit to arbitration in the case of local conflicts within the zone. Clearly, such negotiations and accords would finally fix the existing European borders and, through the system of treaties and guarantees, could close the chapter on the Second World War and all its nefarious consequences, mainly the prolonged and artificial division of Europe. In conclusion, by the end of next year the foundations of a new and united Helsinki security system could be laid, providing all European states with the certainty that they no longer have to fear one another because they are all part of the same system of mutual guarantees, based on the principle of the equality of all participants and their obligation to protect the independence of each participating country. Allow me one more remark, concerning nuclear weapons in Europe. These weapons produced never to be used became in the post-war period part of a security model that, paradoxically, ensured peace through a balance of fear. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe, however, paid a heavy price for the efficiency of this nuclear model by remaining in the grip of a totalitarian straitjacket. An excessive quantity of any type of weapon, particularly of the nuclear variety, inevitably disfigures the territory on which it is deployed. This applies particularly to those that can only reach beyond their backyards and which we call tactical. 21

22 We therefore welcome President Bush s proposal to abandon the planned modernization of these weapons. Should the summer NATO conference decide on the gradual elimination of these less-modern missiles now deployed in Central Europe, we would welcome this move with a great sense of satisfaction. What justification is there for the existence of weapons that can only strike Czechoslovakia, the eastern part of Germany now in the process of unification, and possibly Poland? Whom will they deter? The new governments elected in the first free elections after several decades? The new, democratically elected parliaments? I said in the Polish Parliament that our society sometimes reminds me of freshly amnestied prisoners who have problems finding their bearings under conditions of freedom. People are full of prejudices, stereotypes and notions shaped by long years of totalitarianism. Can they understand the purpose of weapons targeted at them? The supporters of the former regimes in our country and elsewhere are still lying in wait for their chance. It would be a historical paradox if this chance were to be provided by those who helped us in the past in our struggle against totalitarian regimes. In my opinion, the main disaster of our modern world has been its bipolarity, the fact that the tension between the two main powers and their allies was indirectly transferred in one way or another to the whole world. This situation persists to this day. The world is constantly being torn apart by this tension and stifled by the existing superpowers. The chief victims of this unfortunate state of affairs are the one hundred or so states inaccurately called the Third World, the developing world, or the non-aligned world. The anxiety of this world over the possibility that the emergence of a united Helsinki security zone could only widen the gap between the North and the South is understandable but groundless. The very opposite is true. It would be an important step from bipolarity to multipolarity. In addition to the powerful North American continent and the rapidly changing and liberating community of nations of today s Soviet Union, we would have the emergence of a large European connecting link. These three entities, living in peace and mutual cooperation, would indirectly open up new opportunities for a fully fledged existence to other countries, other communities of countries. The entire international community would start shifting from an arena of mutual competition, of direct or indirect expansion of the two superpowers, into an arena of peaceful cooperation among equal partners. The North would cease to threaten the South through the export of its interests and its supremacy. Instead it would radiate toward the South the idea of equal cooperation for all. Against the massive background of this broad northern or Helsinki security zone, or simultaneously with its emergence, Europe could relatively swiftly, and 22

23 without the obstacles that until recently seemed insurmountable, become politically integrated as a democratic community of democratic states. This process would no doubt go through several stages and be mediated by several different mechanisms. It may be that in the first stage, say within five years, a community could be established on European soil that we might call the Organization of European States and, with the beginning of the third millennium, God willing, we could start to build the European Confederation proposed by President Mitterrand. With the gradual consolidation, stabilization and growing competence of the future Confederation, the whole Helsinki security system would ultimately become capable of ensuring its own security, at which point the last American soldier could leave Europe, because Europe would have lost its reason to fear Soviet military strength and the unpredictability of that powerful country s foreign policy. Every move leading to this goal should be encouraged. The more varied and parallel the attempts undertaken the better, because the greater the chance will be that one of them will succeed. In conclusion, I should mention two topics that are of interest to practically the whole world and closely related to the future of Europe. The first is Germany. We have already formulated the Czechoslovak viewpoint, but I will repeat it. It was always clear to us that the artificially divided German nation would one day unite in a single state. There were times when such a view publicly proclaimed sounded like a provocation, and was considered as such by many Germans. We are glad, not only because we are not in favor of the artificial division of any nation, but also because we perceive the fall of the Berlin Wall as the fall of the whole Iron Curtain and hence as a liberating phenomenon for us all. As we have said time and again, the unification of Germany in a single democratic state is no obstacle to the European unification process but should in fact be understood as its motivating force. Our thoughts and actions toward the construction of a new European order should keep step with the unification of Germany. Hence we welcome the so-called Four-Plus-Two plan. At the same time, we fully understand our Polish brothers concern over the western border of their state. We consider this border as final and support Poland s full participation in all negotiations related to its borders. Such negotiations could, in our view, wind up at the Helsinki II conference, which should not only formally confirm existing borders, as did the first Helsinki conference, but provide legal guarantees for them as well. The second urgent theme is the future of the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia unreservedly recognizes every nation s right to its own identity and to the free choice of its state and political system. I am convinced that the present process of democratization we are witnessing in the Soviet Union is irreversible. I am convinced that all the nations of the Soviet Union will peacefully move to the type 23

24 of political sovereignty they desire, and that the Soviet leadership will give precedence to the free transition to this over the threat of a violent confrontation. The time is not too distant when some republics will become completely independent and others will establish a new type of community, whether a confederative association or a looser type. In my view, there is no reason why, against the background of an extensive Helsinki security system, some or all of the European nations of the present Soviet Union could not at the same time be members of a European confederation and of some eventual post-soviet confederation. The present Soviet leadership, which proclaims a scientific understanding of historical processes, undoubtedly understands that all nations naturally aspire to their own identity and that the present structure of the Soviet state inherited from czarist, and later Stalinist, hegemony is artificial. For all these reasons we believe that the West should at last free itself from its traditional terror of the Soviet Union. One can hardly admire Mr. Gorbachev and fear him at the same time. We cannot endlessly scare one another with the spectre of hawkish, conservative forces poised to overthrow Mr. Gorbachev and return the Soviet Union to the 1950s. And in no way can one cultivate this spectre simply to provide the military industry with work orders. There is no way back, and the future of the world today no longer stands or falls with one person. Nor is it any longer in anyone s power to stop this new and strikingly forward-looking course of history. In conclusion, allow me to mention an anxiety we frequently meet with nowadays the fear of national, ethnic and social conflicts in the Central European arena, which might be fostered by long unresolved and latently spreading problems. This fear leads to the question as to whether our part of Europe will soon become a powder keg of the Balkan type. It is our common task to exclude the possibility of such a threat and render such fears immaterial. This is chiefly the responsibility of our countries, which must proceed with speed, coordination and complete mutual understanding to solve the problems we have inherited. But it is also the responsibility of the Western European countries, which could help us a great deal by supporting us in this complicated process. 24

25 NATO Headquarters Brussels, March 21, 1991 Mr. Secretary-General, Ministers, Ladies and gentlemen, From the time when I was young I heard in my country from all official places, as well as from all information media, only one thing about the North Atlantic Alliance: that it was a bastion of imperialism and an incarnation of the Devil himself which threatened peace and wished to destroy us. I am happy that today I can speak the truth from this rostrum: that the North Atlantic Alliance was, and is, through the will of the democratically elected governments of its member countries, a thoroughly democratic defence association which has made an important contribution to the fact that our continent has not known the troubles of war for almost an entire half-century and that a great part of it has been saved from totalitarianism. If Western Europe enjoys such a degree of democracy and economic prosperity as it does today, it owes this undoubtedly also to the fact that it managed, together with the United States of America and Canada, to create this security alliance as an instrument for the protection of its freedom and of the values of Western civilization. I am happy that today I can apologize, on behalf of the Czech and Slovak nations, for all the lies told about you for years by my predecessors on behalf of these same nations. I am happy that I can address you today as a representative of a democratic and independent country that shares your ideals and wishes to cooperate with you and to be your friend. When the totalitarian systems collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe and democracy prevailed in that territory, and when, as a result of this, the Iron Curtain, which used to cut Europe in half, collapsed as well, everything seemed quite clearcut and simple to us in the first thrilling weeks and months of freedom: the Warsaw Pact, as a relic of the Cold War and a formal expression of our satellite standing and our subordination to Stalin s, and later to Brezhnev s, Soviet Union, would dismantle itself in a peaceful fashion. The North Atlantic Alliance, on the other hand, would begin to transform itself rapidly until it became part of a completely new security structure which would include the whole of Europe and would join it with the North American continent, on the one side, and with whatever the Soviet Union turned into on the other side. At the same time, it seemed to us that the most sui- 25

26 table political ground for the establishment of such a security structure might be the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would necessarily acquire fresh impulsion and a new order. It seemed to us that such an extensive system of security safeguards could be a good background, and simultaneously a guarantor, for the integrating Europe. We were quite aware right from the start that NATO, today the only functional and tested defence alliance on European soil, would play an important part in this process. We felt that NATO could be a good nucleus, foundation or support for such a future pan-european security union. It was not only we, in Czechoslovakia, who thought this way a similar chain of thought was also followed by many other European politicians and a large part of the public. A year filled with dramatic events has passed and today we see that the paths of history are more winding, and more complicated, than we believed them to be at the time of the first enchantment with the great changes that we were part of as witnesses or participants. I do not mean to say that it is necessary to give up the ideal of which I have spoken. We have not abandoned it because we have not lost faith that Europe is travelling in this direction. We have merely ascertained that the path towards it will clearly be longer and more complicated than we originally thought. Actually, several important developments in the course of the last year have underpinned our faith in this ideal: 1) Germany has been united surprisingly quickly. 2) New bilateral treaties, which can constitute the beginning of a new European arrangement, have been adopted or are under preparation. 3) The historical Paris Charter for a New Europe has been passed, giving a new meaning to the Helsinki process. At the same time, under the pressure of its new tasks, this process is beginning to institutionalize itself and establish its permanent bodies. 4) The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe has been signed. 5) It has been decided that all the military bodies and structures of the Warsaw Pact will be abolished by the end of March. The Warsaw Pact, thus, has reached the final phase of the course on which it set out in Prague in the spring of last year and which, unequivocally, aims at its self-liquidation. The symbolic full-stop will be put to its existence, as we firmly believe, by the meeting of its supreme body at the beginning of July, once again in Prague. 6) Soviet troops are withdrawing, or will soon start to withdraw, from Central and Eastern Europe, back to the Soviet Union. 7) The European countries of the former Soviet bloc have begun to build closer links to the established European international organizations. Following Hungary, Czechoslovakia has become a full member of the Council of Europe and is now negotiating, like Hungary and Poland, for association with the European Communities. 26

27 8) On the initiative of France, a conference is being prepared for the spring of this year, in Prague, to discuss the idea of an all-european confederation. All these are steps in the right direction. All these actions are bringing us closer to the ideal of a Europe which is not divided up into blocs, Europe as a peaceloving community of democratic states and independent nations, a united Europe as a continent of security. Nevertheless, as I have already said, progress toward this vision will probably be more complicated than it originally appeared and there are circumstances which force us not to forget, because of bold conjectures about future arrangements, to take into account the problems and dangers of the present day and to draw appropriate consequences. Let me briefly mention the most important of these problems. 1) It has turned out that the building of a democratic system and the transition to a market economy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are meeting with more obstacles than were originally expected and that the unfortunate inheritance which these countries must deal with goes deeper and is more pervasive than we all expected. The general demoralization which the Communist regime left behind is deeply embedded and the shock caused in society by the sudden arrival of freedom in its life has been unexpectedly strong. Our countries are threatened by political and social upheavals, material privations, criminality, a growth of social despair and, thus, also the danger of populism. These democracies are very fragile and, therefore, vulnerable because everything in them is actually in the process of rebirth. The economies of these countries will hardly recover in the foreseeable future without massive foreign aid. The completely artificial market, based on compulsory exchange of poor-quality goods, that operated for years within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance has collapsed and it is now difficult for enterprises to find markets for their products under the new conditions. 2) The long-suppressed desire of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe for selfdetermination suddenly came to the fore in all its unsuspected urgency and frequently produces nationalism, xenophobia and nationality intolerance. 3) Certain aspects of the development in the Soviet Union give us valid reasons for concern. Progress toward democracy, the self-determination of peoples and a functional economy in the Soviet Union is becoming precariously complicated. Conservative forces are clearly mobilizing in the effort to turn back the wheel of history and renew against the will of the citizens and peoples the centralist and authoritarian system. The Soviet Union is witnessing a growing tension and instability, which may have an unfavourable effect on the entire international situation. As immediate neighbors of the Soviet Union we may be hit by a disintegration of the economy and social frustration in that country harder than anyone else because we are still economically dependent on it and are not sufficiently prepared for such eventualities as, for 27

28 instance, the mass migration of populations or the possible disruption of supplies of basic raw materials for power generation. Attempts to deal with political problems and renew the unity of the state by military force have already appeared in the Soviet Union, which is decidedly not a good signal for the international community. 4) The difficult economic situation has been further complicated by the crisis in the Persian Gulf. 5) In the face of certain conditions, advanced industrial countries hesitate to provide generous assistance to our region and their policies are beginning to bear signs of distrust, a wait-and-see attitude and increased caution. As a result of all these factors, our countries are sliding dangerously into a certain political, economic and security vacuum. The old imposed political, economic and security links have collapsed, but new ones are coming into being slowly and with difficulty, if at all. At the same time, it is becoming evident that without appropriate external links the very existence of our young democracies is in jeopardy. All this together forces us to try in parallel with steps paving the way for long-term prospects to quickly build up new links within the scope of what is possible and what exists today. This, of course, is also the case in the sphere of security and defence. Modern Czechoslovak politics suffered one chronic deficiency: it relied too much on others. After all our bitter historical experiences we want, finally, to begin by doing something ourselves. We have launched an extensive reconstruction of our army in the spirit of a new military doctrine based on the principle of sufficient defence capacity against a threat from any direction whatsoever. We should like to have an army considerably smaller than hitherto, but of considerably better quality; an army capable of defending not only our territory, but first and foremost democracy and freedom; in other words, the principles on which we are constructing our new society. We shall strive for its increasing professionalization and undertake redeployments aimed at its even distribution throughout our country. At the same time, however, we must also seek, like any other state of our size, our new international security links and guarantees. For us this means, first of all, rapidly creating a system of bilateral agreements with our neighbors and other states. We are preparing new agreements with Poland, Hungary, Germany and the Soviet Union and we should also like to negotiate agreements with France and other countries. None of these agreements is to be in the nature of an alliance, but each of them should include a security element in some form. We attach particular importance to the agreements with Poland and Hungary. These are neighbors with whom we are linked by many analogical problems. At our recent meeting in Visegrád we agreed, inter alia, to coordinate our policy in many respects and to try to introduce symmetry into the agreements 28

29 which we prepare. None of us has the intention of building up any new pact in place of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. At the same time, however, we feel that cooperation can considerably facilitate our return to democratic Europe. By the same token, Czechoslovakia attaches great importance like Poland and Hungary to its cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance. We have welcomed the possibility of establishing diplomatic liaison and expanding mutual contacts. We have greatly appreciated the Declaration from the NATO Summit in July and the Communiqué from the December session of its Council. These documents confirm for us that NATO is very well aware of the historically new situation in Europe and that it is beginning, with regard to this situation, to change itself to some extent and to open up to cooperation with the new European democracies. I also remember well the recent visit of Secretary-General Wörner to Czechoslovakia and my meeting with the members of the Political Committee of the Alliance. I think we shall do well to follow on from these meetings, as well as from the talks conducted by our Foreign Minister here in Brussels. We know that for many different reasons we cannot become full members of NATO at present. At the same time, however, we feel that an alliance of countries united by a commitment to the ideal of freedom and democracy should not remain permanently closed to neighbouring countries which are pursuing the same goals. History has taught us that certain values are indivisible; if they are threatened in one place, they are directly or indirectly threatened everywhere. We should welcome it if a solid system of cooperation and exchange of information between Czechoslovakia and NATO was to be set up soon at the most varied levels. We should like to intensify our dialogue on security questions, expand contacts among military representatives, and cooperate in the fields of science, information science and protection of the environment within the framework of the Third-Dimension programme. We are glad that members of our Parliament are gradually joining in the work of the North Atlantic Assembly. We believe that associate membership offers them a broad scope for contacts in all directions and active participation in the deliberations of the Assembly committees. I am happy to note that the visit of the Chairman of our Federal Assembly, Alexander Dubček, to the North Atlantic Assembly will be repaid by a visit of President Rose to Czechoslovakia next week. Our mutual cooperation will undoubtedly be advanced still further by the Conference on the Future of European Security, which will take place under the auspices of the NATO Secretary-General and the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister at the end of April in Prague. On this occasion we shall be happy to meet the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, General Eide, in our country. We shall be no less pleased to welcome the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, General Galvin, in June. 29

30 We feel that our citizens should know more about what the North Atlantic Alliance actually is. It would perhaps be worthwhile to consider opening some kind of NATO Information Bureau in Prague, and possibly also in Bratislava. I firmly believe that this all-round and intensifying cooperation, based on mutual trust and shared values, will strengthen the feeling of security in our society and will result in appropriate guarantees, thanks to which the Czechoslovak citizens will not have to fear the future and, in the case of any threat, will not feel isolated and forgotten by the democratic community. Czechoslovakia does not want to direct its cooperative potential in the security sphere, as far as international institutions are concerned, at NATO alone. We believe that our approaching association with the European Communities will also enable us to participate in debates on its political union, including its security and defence aspects. We are also prepared to develop contacts with the Western European Union, whose role will probably grow with the process of European integration. The Western European Union could, in the future, be a kind of bridge between NATO and the European Communities, including their associate members, and thus become yet another building stone in the edifice of a future united Europe. As I have already said, in spite of all complications, we are not abandoning the idea that a solid framework for the integrating Europe could be provided in the future by the Helsinki process which through its trans-atlantic dimension would, inter alia, be a good connection between Europe and its natural partner, the continent of North America. Czechoslovakia, therefore, intends to continue to take the initiative within the CSCE, pinning high hopes on the planned Helsinki II meeting, which we expect to contribute to European security by strengthening the binding force of the adopted accords in terms of international law. I have already mentioned the disquieting signals which are coming from the Soviet Union and the threat which instability in that country may pose to Europe. Neither our concern about the future developments in the Soviet Union nor our interest in intensifying security links with Western Europe mean, in any way, that we would wish to isolate the Soviet Union from Europe and move the Iron Curtain to its borders. On the contrary: the future security structure of a democratic Europe is unimaginable without the participation of the democratic community of the nations of the present Soviet Union. If we support their quest for self-determination, democracy and prosperity, we are doing so, inter alia, because we wish to live, cooperate and develop good neighbourly relations with these nations in a shared expanse of democracy. Their isolation from Europe and the world is, on the contrary, the goal of those in the Soviet Union who long for the restoration of the old order. Ladies and gentlemen, The event that gave you the immediate impulse to the signing of the Brussels Trea- 30