STRENGTHENING NATO AND EUROPEAN SECURITY
STRENGTHENING NATO AND EUROPEAN SECURITY


"We want all of Europe to have what America helped build in Western Europe - a community that upholds common standards of human rights, where people have the confidence and security to invest in the future, where nations cooperate to make war unthinkable. That is why I have pushed hard for NATO's enlargement and why we must keep NATO's doors open to new democratic members, so that other nations will have an incentive to deepen their democracies."

President Clinton
San Francisco, California
February 26, 1999

Early in his first term, President Clinton outlined a vision of a Europe peaceful, undivided and democratic for the first time in history. Safeguarding Europe's freedom by inviting emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe to join NATO has been central to his vision, and his success in enlarging the Trans-Atlantic alliance to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in March 1999 marked a historic step towards realizing it. President Clinton has also made clear this would not be NATO's last round of enlargement, reaffirming during the Washington Summit in April 1999 that the door remains open for new members. President Clinton has also spearheaded efforts to ensure that NATO meets the new security challenges of the next century, forging agreement on a new Strategic Concept. He also reaffirmed that NATO will honor the fundamentals on which the Alliance was founded, most notably in Kosovo, where NATO launched an air campaign that reversed ethnic cleansing and ended a decade of repression. Just as NATO proved the basis for Western Europe's stability and integration after World War II, a growing, evolving NATO is proving a basis for stability and integration for all of Europe in the post-Cold War world.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is also contributing to building a peaceful, undivided and democratic Europe. At the November 1999 Istanbul Summit President Clinton and the leaders of other states participating in the OSCE, including Russia, signed a new Charter for European Security that recognizes European security in the 21st century increasingly depends on building security within societies as well as security between states.


A RECORD OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

NATO

The Clinton Administration has led efforts to adapt NATO to meet new security challenges. Responding to President Clinton's call to embrace the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, NATO heads of government at the 1994 Brussels Summit committed to launch a process of enlargement that "would reach to democratic states to our East, as part of an evolutionary process, taking into account political and security developments in the whole of Europe.

OSCE/CFE

REFERENCES

Washington Summit Declaration, April 23, 1999.

Speech by President Clinton at the Washington Summit, April 23, 1999.

Remarks by President Clinton at Baltic Charter Signing Ceremony, January 16, 1998.

Madrid Summit Declaration, July 8, 1997.

Brussels Summit Declaration, January 10-11, 1994.

OSCE Istanbul Summit Declaration, November 18-19, 1999.

OSCE Charter for European Security, November 18-19, 1999.

Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed
Forces in Europe, November 19, 1999.

Final Act of the Conference of the States parties to the Treaty
on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Statement by the President on the CFE Treaty, November 19, 1999.

OSCE Vienna Document 1999.

OSCE Vienna Declaration and Chairman's Summary, November 2000.


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