Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I welcome our two witnesses today: Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Dan Fried and United States Army General Bantz Craddock, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

What value does the NATO Alliance hold for the United States today, fifteen years after the end of the Cold War?

That is the general question posed by our hearing today.

Perhaps a good way to answer that question is to ask ourselves what Americans would lose --- and Europeans as well, since they are our partners and have a big stake in the answer --- if NATO ceased to exist.

First, the United States would lose a major means of influencing trends and policies in Europe.

It might lose access to a source of military manpower that is of proven use in peacekeeping missions.

It would lose bases and facilities that are a force multiplier for the American military.

Above all, it would most likely lose a stable Europe once NATO dissolved.

That stability is also the most important thing our European allies might stand to lose if NATO were to cease to exist.

It is easy to forget today that, after centuries of European conflict and two world wars, trust and cooperation between major European states did not always come easy or last long.

It is also easy to forget that instability in Europe led to American involvement in two world wars.

Reconciliation between France and Germany seemed an impossible concept in the late 1940s, but look at how well they cooperate and consult today.

An independent Poland, lying between Germany and Russia, faced invasion and dissection at the hands of its neighbors in the late 1700s and again before World War II.

What do we see today?

Poland as a comfortable neighbor of Germany, its new ally—a Poland that does not overly fear a possible, future Russian aggression, knowing that it has the support of the United States and the leading states of Europe.

I would suggest that, if NATO were to end tomorrow, the European states’ historic distrust might well rise again, and, within a short time, the integration and unity that blossomed behind NATO’s shield would begin to unravel.

Some observers say that the awareness of these obvious benefits do not mean that, in the absence of a common threat, NATO won’t fade away in any event.

Time will tell if they are right.

It seems obvious that we do indeed see a problem in NATO in the sense that Americans and Europeans have differing views on the threats that now face them and how to address them.

Whether it is terrorism, proliferation of weapons and technology of mass destruction, or conflicts in other regions that might cause instability and allow trans-national criminal networks and terrorists to gain ground ---- many in Europe do not see those threats in the same way that the United States does.

And, if threats are not seen in the same way, a common strategy cannot really be developed.

Without a common strategy, military capabilities in turn tend to be ignored and start withering away.

We have seen that general weakening of military capabilities among the European NATO allies since the end of the Cold War --- to a degree that, when the United States led the NATO operation against Serbia in 1999, the extent to which its success relied on American military force and technology came as a disappointing surprise to the United States.

Many of us today look at the United States mission in Iraq and the reluctance of some of the major states of Western Europe to have NATO more actively support the invasion and stabilization of that country as a first sign of divergence within NATO.

In fact, however, the NATO experience in the Balkans in the 1990s had already led American officials to worry that many European NATO allies’ general lack of readily-deployed military capabilities meant that they would not be that useful if NATO engaged in major military operations in other regions.

Following the Kosovo operation, the United States chose to take the lead in the invasion of Afghanistan, with NATO taking command of the peacekeeping force there only after more than a year and a half had subsequently passed.

As a result of the sharp differences over Iraq, some again see NATO, as potentially splintering.

But, let’s recall just a few of the other serious disagreements that NATO has survived:

• French opposition to West German rearmament in the 1950s;
  
• US opposition to the British and French military operation in the Suez canal area of Egypt in 1956;
  
• US and European differences over support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Yes. There are serious issues that the NATO allies now need to address.

But let’s recall those past disagreements that NATO survived and also look at what has gone right in NATO since the end of the Cold War.

• The American commitment to NATO has allowed the peaceful reunification of Germany;
  
• NATO’s expansion has promoted the consolidation of democracy in Eastern Europe;
  
• The US commitment to NATO has provided the reassurance within Europe that there will be no rebirth of the old geopolitical divisions within Europe.
  
• The strengthening of the European Union has continued, while American has stayed in NATO.

Both the United States and its European NATO allies have tough questions confronting them.

The United States still does not know how to best persuade its European allies to devote the resources necessary to ensure that so-called “out of area” NATO operations can be effective.

The United States also cannot agree that its ability to protect its vital interests from terrorist attack must be constrained through often-slow consensus decision-making, such as that used within NATO.

European states still have to come to grips with the meaning for them of the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Europe and the plots for other attacks that have been foiled.

Europe also has to come to an understanding of what the potential radicalization of parts of its growing Muslim minority communities might mean for its security.

As allies, we should work to find answers to these and other truly difficult questions.

I hope that our witnesses today will give us some insights as to how those answers may be found.