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<P ALIGN="CENTER" class="style74"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="style69 style31"><span class="MsoNormal style78"><span class="style18 style117"><span class="style36 style26"><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span class="style18 style117"><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style="font-family: color: #336699"Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-style: italic;"><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style="font-family: color: #336699"times new roman", times, serif; font-style: italic;"><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style="font-family: color: #336699"Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-style: italic;"><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style="font-family: color: #336699"times new roman", times, serif; font-style: italic;"><span style=""><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><span style=""><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'><img src="../../images/csdr_logo.jpg" name="image" width="284" height="86"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></font></P>
<h1>The New NATO and Global Security</h1>
<h2>Ambassador Nicholas Burns</h2>
<h3><br>
<B>OPENING REMARKS</B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><br>
</FONT>The list of distinguished guests at this workshop is long and impressive,
but I would like to acknowledge Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu of Romania,
Minister Nikolai Svinarov of Bulgaria, Minister Gela Bezhuashvili of Georgia,
Minister Vecdi Gonul of Turkey, and Colonel General Aleksandr Skvorzov,
Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, as well as Acting U.S. Undersecretary
of Defense Mike Wynne and former Supreme Allied Commander General George
Joulwan. It is an honor to be with you and to be again among friends of NATO. Germany
is an important and valued NATO ally. With some 7,600 troops deployed abroad,
Germany contributes significantly to NATO’s current peacekeeping operations
in Bosnia and Kosovo, to Active Endeavor, NATO’s counterterrorism operation
in the Mediterranean, and to NATO’s top priority mission in Afghanistan.
There, under NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, Germany has
taken a key leadership role with its deployment of a provincial reconstruction
team in the northern Afghan city of Konduz. The U.S. welcomes Germany’s
contributions. As the second largest country in the Alliance, Germany’s
active participation and leadership and its strong voice in NATO will remain
vital to the health of the Alliance as it undergoes an exciting transformation.
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>THE CONTINUING NEED FOR NATO</B><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B> </B>
</FONT> </h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Since I arrived at NATO in August 2001, the Alliance has weathered two
significant historical events that are having—and will continue to have—a
profound and lasting impact on transatlantic relations. The first was,
of course, the September 11 attack on the U.S., which brought the Alliance
together under Article 5 for the first time in our history. NATO allies
reacted by launching the most revolutionary reforms in our history, creating
a new organization ready to stand on the front lines of the war on terrorism.
The second event was the Iraq War, which plunged the Alliance into a crisis
of confidence and disunity in 2003. That crisis has subsided and NATO has
emerged strengthened in 2004 for its new peacekeeping roles. The United States, Germany, and all of our allies can be proud of our 55-year
alliance in NATO. Times have changed, but NATO’s mission is the same today
as it was in 1949: to defend the peace and the territories and citizens
of all allied countries. However, NATO’s task for this year is twofold:
to advance the political and military reforms that September 11 triggered
within the Alliance, and to restore the transatlantic unity so badly strained
by the Iraq War but so essential to NATO’s success as we seek to build
a peaceful world and confront the new security challenges of our era. Today NATO faces a new challenge far different than any we have confronted
before. It is not a confrontation between states, as it was during the
Cold War, but a threat from failed states and, especially, small but fanatical
terrorist groups. The violence that Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and other
terrorist groups are inflicting upon innocent people in every corner of
the world is truly appalling and truly dangerous for all of us. We see
terrorism as an existential threat to all who prize freedom and security.
We must confront it, not just by military means but through soft power,
through a broad international effort to cooperate in intelligence and law
enforcement, and through diplomatic and economic means to protect our peoples
and to promote a more peaceful future. The surest path to success in this new campaign is to make full use of
the major institutions upon which international stability is based: the
United Nations, the G-8, the European Union, and NATO. </FONT></p>
<h3><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B style="font-weight: bold; font-variant: normal; text-transform: none; color: #006699; font-style: normal;" #invalid_attr_id="normal">NATO’S TRANSFORMATION</B> </FONT></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">From 2002 until the present time, NATO has accomplished its most fundamental
re-tooling since its creation in 1949. Now the Alliance is active, strong,
and fully modernized for the challenges ahead. We are creating a new NATO,
one that is different in mission, membership, and capabilities from the
Cold War NATO or even the NATO of the 1990s. NATO allies answered the September
11 wake-up call, agreeing on the blueprint for change at the Prague Summit
in 2002. The results of our transformation efforts should be evident at
NATO’s Istanbul Summit. NATO’s most profound change has been its transformation from a defensive
and static military alliance, which massed a huge, heavy army to deter
the Soviet threat to Germany and Western Europe, to a more flexible, modern,
and agile force focused on responding to threats from well beyond the European
continent and focused on a new vocation—peacekeeping and stabilization
efforts. Simply put, NATO’s past was focused inward, on Cold War threats
directed at the heart of Europe. NATO’s future is looking outward, to expanding
security in the Greater Middle East, that arc of countries from south and
central Asia to the Middle East and North Africa, where the new challenges
to global peace are rooted. This transition is happening as we speak. While the majority of deployed
NATO forces are today in Bosnia and Kosovo, the majority could well be
in Afghanistan and Iraq one year from now. History has given NATO a new
challenge and we are responding to it with a new strategic vision. The
changes are most evident, most comprehensive, and most impressive in our
military capability. The result is that NATO remains today the strongest
military alliance of our time.
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>Military-Related Changes</B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Consider the military changes that have occurred during the last two years: 1. NATO allies agreed to acquire the new military capabilities necessary
for expeditionary missions far from Europe—modern airlifting and refueling,
precision-guided munitions, combat service support—redefining the way we
plan and think about our national and collective defense. 2. Our priorities in 2004 are to acquire capabilities to give NATO’s political
decision makers and military planners additional technological tools, such
as Alliance Ground Surveillance, an integrated Air Command and Control
System, and missile defense, to defend against new global threats and enable
decisive action when we need it. Mindful of export controls and technology
transfer issues, the Alliance is already taking important steps to acquire
such new systems. 3. NATO adopted a leaner and more flexible twenty-first century military
command structure and created a new Alliance Transformation Command in
Norfolk, Virginia. 4. NATO created a new Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Defense Battalion,
spearheaded by the Czech Republic along with 12 other allies, to protect
our civilian populations in the event of an attack using weapons of mass
destruction. 5. In our most important and decisive shift, we are building a NATO Response
Force to give us a powerful capability to deploy our troops within days
to perform any mission—whether hostage rescue, humanitarian relief, or
response to a terrorist attack—in another part of the globe.</FONT></p>
<h3><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">
</FONT><B style="font-weight: bold; font-variant: normal; text-transform: none; color: #006699; font-style: normal;" #invalid_attr_id="normal">Politically Based Changes</B><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B> </B></FONT> </FONT></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">These revolutionary changes on the military side of NATO have been complemented
by equally creative political changes within the Alliance: 1. Seven Central European countries joined NATO on March 29, 2004, completing
the Alliance’s greatest enlargement since our founding in 1949 and strengthening
us with more countries to jointly promote peace and freedom in the Balkans,
Afghanistan, and Iraq. NATO enlargement extends our sphere of security
eastward, virtually across two continents, and helps to consolidate the
democratic revolution in the former Warsaw Pact countries. Forty percent
of NATO’s members were formerly communist countries. The new members add
real value, both militarily and politically, to our collective strength. 2. NATO has changed in one other important respect. We know that our greatest
strategic aim is to help create, in President Bush’s words, “a Europe whole,
free, united, and at peace”—everything Europe was not during the tumultuous
twentieth century. NATO launched the Partnership for Peace in 1994, and
the emerging democratic peace in Europe is a major, historic achievement
for which NATO deserves much credit. But a united Europe will be sustained
only if we build partnerships with those countries that are outside NATO
and the EU but are nonetheless critical for Europe’s future. 3. To that end, NATO has begun important partnerships with Russia, Ukraine,
central Asia, and the Caucasus. The new NATO-Russia Council is redefining
our relations with Moscow, promoting closer relations between our militaries.
In addition, in NATO’s partnership with Ukraine, we are seeking stronger
and sustained initiatives for domestic and military reform. In central
Asia and the Caucasus, the U.S. has called for new strategic outreach and
engagement, including expanded political and military activities with that
vital region. <B> </B></FONT></p>
<h3><B>CONTINUING BROAD-BASED TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION </B> </h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">These substantial changes in our military capabilities, membership, and
partnerships have positioned NATO for an ambitious future. But we would
be well advised to learn from the lessons of the Iraq crisis that engulfed
NATO in 2003 as we promote a future of broader transatlantic defense cooperation.
We would be wise not to overreact to U.S. and European differences on Iraq
for several important reasons. First, this is not the only disagreement we have had with some European
countries in NATO in the last half-century. NATO survived arguments over
the Suez, Vietnam, Pershing missiles—even differences over strategy in
Bosnia in the early ‘90s—by learning about, adapting, and compromising
with each other. And we emerged strengthened and changed each time. Ours
is a strong but flexible alliance, durable enough to sustain different
points of view. NATO is, after all, a democratic alliance that does not
require the ideological uniformity of the Warsaw Pact to remain successful
and united. Second, the great majority of Europeans and Americans understand a central
fact—our security is indivisible. Terrorist attacks in New York, Washington,
and more recently in Istanbul and Madrid have proven that. We need each
other’s support in one alliance to meet the security challenges of the
modern world. NATO will stay strong because our mutual interests demand it. European
allies need the U.S. and continue to rely on the U.S. for the nuclear and
conventional defense of the continent. Of the many issues Europeans are
debating for their new constitution, for example, what is missing is the
call for an overarching European security umbrella to maintain peace on
the continent. No such initiative is needed because NATO and the U.S. provide
that now, as we will in the future. The United States also needs Europe. We Americans cannot confront the global
transnational threats that go under, over, and through our borders and
that are the greatest challenges of our time without Europe. Weapons of
mass destruction and terrorism, the huge increase in international crime,
narcotics flows, trafficking in human beings, global climate change, AIDS—there
are no unilateral solutions to these challenges. Instead, we can hope to
succeed only through multilateral cooperation, including with Europe. There
is a saying in the U.S., “We all live downstream.” In an era of globalized
threats, no matter where we are in the world, we live downstream from them.
What happens in one region of the world affects all others. Therefore, when all is said and done, the U.S., Germany, and other European
nations are natural allies. We are the most like-minded peoples on the
planet, sharing a common history, common democratic values, and an interconnected
economy. NATO will stay together because we need each other.
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>NATO GOALS</B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">As we look toward the Istanbul Summit, here are the top goals for all of
us in NATO:<FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"> </FONT>
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>Reinforcing NATO’s Peacekeeping Role</B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Our first goal is to reinforce NATO’s long-term peacekeeping role in Afghanistan.
I returned from Kabul and Kandahar recently and I was impressed by the
positive difference we are making in that great but impoverished country.
Currently there are nearly 2,000 German troops deployed in Afghanistan
under NATO’s UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force. In NATO’s
effort to expand the ISAF mission beyond Kabul, Germany has taken a lead
role with its Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Konduz. NATO now
aims to establish five more PRTs before the Istanbul Summit to bring stability
to important provincial cities. As ISAF expands, the U.S. hopes conditions
will allow for NATO to take command of all PRTs in its new area of responsibility. There is no international goal more important than helping the Afghan people
to rebuild their shattered country. To be successful, NATO will need to
commit even more troops and military resources in perhaps the most difficult
mission we have ever undertaken. We must help the Afghan government to
extend its authority outside Kabul and to prepare for nationwide elections.
To do that, the U.S. calls on other European nations to contribute more
troops and resources to join the 15,000 American troops already there,
in order to construct a more vigorous and effective NATO presence in the
country. </FONT></p>
<h3><B>Collective Military Role in Iraq</B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Our second aim for 2004 is to examine how NATO might take on a collective
military role in Iraq, as President Bush has suggested. No matter our differences
on the war itself, Europeans and Americans now share a common interest
in fighting terrorism and seeing democracy take root in Iraq. We know that
the coalition must continue its efforts in Iraq lest chaos and even greater
violence ensue. NATO is currently providing support for the Polish-led multinational division
in Iraq, where 17 NATO allies are contributing forces to maintain security.
President Bush recently said—along with Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld,
and a number of NATO foreign and defense ministers—that we should explore
a more formal role for NATO in Iraq, such as turning the Polish-led division
into a NATO operation and giving NATO functional responsibilities. Defining
such a mission, after the passage of a new UN Security Council resolution,
will be a leading issue for NATO at the Istanbul Summit.
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>Expanding Our Engagement in the Greater Middle East</B><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B> </B></FONT></FONT></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Third, NATO must expand its engagement with the Muslim world and Israel
to help those countries find their way toward a more peaceful future in
the Greater Middle East. Germany’s foreign minister and other German leaders
have spoken out on the need for Western democracies to engage with the
Muslim world, and the U.S. wants NATO to be one of the building blocks
for our long-term engagement in this vast region. Since 1994, NATO has
developed relations with seven countries in the Mediterranean Dialogue—Algeria,
Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia—and the U.S. continues
to support this effort today. However, while we believe this is a valuable
framework for cooperation, we also believe that there are opportunities
for even more fruitful cooperation with Arab countries in a wider, more
energetic initiative. When NATO’s heads of state and government gather in Istanbul, the United
States hopes that NATO will do its part to support the broad effort to
reach out to the Greater Middle East by announcing an Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative. This initiative should complement the other elements of support
for indigenous reform in the Greater Middle East by engaging interested
countries in the region in fostering security and stability. At NATO, we have identified a number of security goals that Europe and
North America share with many countries across the Greater Middle East:
fighting terrorism, stemming the flow of weapons of mass destruction, improving
border security, and stopping illegal trafficking of all kinds. Our focus
should be on practical cooperation with those countries that wish to have
a closer relationship with NATO. Modernization in these countries is not
Westernization, and they will evolve according to their own traditions
and history. But the Greater Middle East, Europe, and North America must
chart a common path to defeat terrorism, create peace, and promote democracy
for the future. Long-term change in the Middle East will help to attack the foundations
of the terrorism crisis and give democracy and justice a chance to take
root and grow. It is a challenge that none of us, neither Europeans nor
Americans, can avoid, and that all of us must embrace as one of the critical
foreign policy tests of our time.
</FONT>Improving NATO-EU Relations<FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B> </B></FONT> Our fourth goal is to improve relations between the two great institutions
responsible for Europe’s future—NATO and the EU, especially to consolidate
peace in the Balkans. The EU’s enlargement on May 1 was a great day for
Europe. We in America applaud the EU, wish you well, and support a strong
and vibrant EU on the world stage. The twin enlargements of the EU and
NATO advance our common goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace, and
integrate Europe East and West for the very first time in Europe’s long
history. NATO is now ready to consider our peacekeeping mission in Bosnia a success
and conclude it in December 2004. We have done an outstanding job there,
having stopped the war and kept the peace for nearly eight and a half years.
Our leaders will consider supporting a new EU mission under the Berlin
Plus framework for military cooperation agreed to by the two organizations.
And in Bosnia, NATO should maintain a military headquarters in Sarajevo
to help authorities bring Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, two indicted
war criminals, to justice, and to advise Bosnia on defense reforms. However,
the U.S. wants NATO to maintain an effective presence in Kosovo to prevent
any repetition of the violence we saw in March of 2004. Together, we must
continue to support the transition to stable, market-oriented democracies
in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Macedonia so that the Balkan States can take their
rightful place in an integrated Europe. NATO and the EU sometimes differed in 2003 in theological disputes over
Berlin Plus and EU defense plans. We can improve relations between the
two organizations by avoiding rivalry in the defense sphere, improving
defense trade cooperation, and cooperating to stem the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. NATO, of course, should remain the core of
Europe’s defense; the United States will always defend NATO’s centrality.
The choice is not, however, as some in Europe would suggest, between a
Europe under the U.S. yoke and a Europe completely detached from the U.S.
We can instead choose a future of cooperation between NATO and the EU.
</FONT></p>
<h3><B>Improving Relations with Russia </B></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">Finally, our fifth aim is to elevate NATO’s relations with Russia. Constructive
engagement with Russia, through the NATO-Russia Council, has helped make
our citizenry safer and more secure today than at any time in the last
50 years. There is so much NATO can do with Russia, from search-and-rescue
at sea to theater-missile defense to greater cooperation in the Black Sea
to joint peacekeeping. Our NATO-Russia Council is a good forum, but we
can set our sights higher on a closer relationship that will put our past
rivalry behind us forever These are our top five goals at NATO for 2004. It is an ambitious and vital
agenda and one that we must fulfill in this time of great challenge for
all of us. NATO’s prospects for achieving such an ambitious 2004 agenda
will depend on how successful we are in removing the current major obstacles
to good U.S.-European relations.
</FONT> ROADBLOCKS TO STRONG U.S.-EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIPS <FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"> A significant obstacle to good relations is the persistent gap in military
capabilities between the U.S. and the rest of its allies. If NATO is to
field long-term missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and remain in Kosovo,
our European allies will need to spend more—and more wisely—on defense,
as well as produce more effective militaries. The capabilities gap between
the U.S. and all its allies is huge and growing. The U.S. will spend $400
billion on defense in 2004; the 25 other allies combined will spend less
than half of that. The problem is not just the spending gap but the fact
that the U.S., by devoting more to research and development, is yielding
far more from its defense investments than our allies, who still devote
a considerable portion of their budgets to territorial defenses and high
personnel costs. In addition to the technology gap between us, there is an even more critical “usability gap.” Of Europe’s 2.4 million men and women in uniform, only
roughly three percent can now be deployed on our priority missions in the
Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Declining budgets, poor training and standards,
and a continued reliance on conscription account for a Europe that cannot
put a sufficient percentage of its troops into difficult missions against
twenty-first century threats. Defense Minister Struck has announced an ambitious plan to transform the
Bundeswehr to enable German troops to deploy more quickly. If those reforms
are successfully implemented—and if appropriate resources are forthcoming—Germany
can become a leading player in NATO’s military transformation and a key
contributor to the new NATO response force. However, with Germany’s defense budget frozen, it is uncertain whether
the necessary resources will be provided to successfully transform the
military forces and acquire modern military capabilities. Ultimately, this
is a political decision for Germany as well as for several other countries
in the Alliance. Finally, there are two other barriers to a healthy transatlantic relationship
that all of us must overcome in 2004 and beyond. A few leaders on the Continent
have called for Europe and the European Union to become a counterweight
to the U.S. This suggests that our future should be one of strategic rivalry
and competition—the very antithesis of the transatlantic community we have
built together since the end of the Second World War. Such a reversal would
amount to a colossal strategic error. It would repudiate the primary factor
that has produced two generations of peace and unparalleled security and
unity in Europe—the presence of the United States military on this continent
and the existence of NATO. I do not believe that the vast majority of Europeans
would support such a future or that it will occur. But Europe’s responsibility
to preserve healthy transatlantic ties, it seems to me, is to reject this
competitive view of our common future and to avoid the gratuitous anti-Americanism
that was all too evident in European public discourse during the past year. Americans have an equal obligation to reject unilateralism and to work
instead to preserve the great multilateral institutions such as NATO that
are so important for our common future. For the U.S., President Bush and
Secretary Powell have emphasized repeatedly our commitment to “effective
multilateralism.” The U.S. commitment to working within NATO has never
been clearer than in the past year. Nonetheless, many European critics
have accused the United States of losing interest in NATO since September
11, 2001, and using it as a toolbox. Ironically for these critics, it is the United States that has proposed
nearly all of the initiatives that have reformed NATO’s structure and mission
in the last two years. And it is the United States that now calls for ambitious
NATO deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and outreach to the Greater Middle
East. The United States has demonstrated its genuine desire to see the
new NATO act collectively. We hope now that our European allies will agree
to use NATO as dynamically as we wish to do in 2004 and for years to come. </FONT></p>
<h3><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B style="font-weight: bold; font-variant: normal; text-transform: none; color: #006699; font-style: normal;" #invalid_attr_id="normal">CONCLUDING REMARKS</B><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"><B> </B></FONT> </FONT></h3>
<p><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17">It is true that acting in alliances is not as efficient as acting alone.
Alliances do not move as fast, and they may complicate decision-making
and even the tactics used in the field. But alliances are very effective
in producing sustained, long-term commitment in the most difficult crises,
as we have seen NATO do so successfully in the Balkans. When the new Secretary General of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made his
first official visit to Washington, President Bush assured him of NATO’s
centrality in the U.S. national security strategy. The United States will
continue to voice America’s abiding commitment to multilateralism and to
NATO. NATO’s numbers tell the story: we are a forum with 46 countries in
the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a partnership with 41 countries
in the Partnership for Peace program, a dialogue with seven Mediterranean
states, and an alliance with 26 members. Where else but in NATO could any
of us replicate this vital web of multilateral relationships? NATO remains today the world’s most powerful and important alliance, dedicated
to preserving peace and freedom for all of our peoples. While it took 55
years for Europeans and North Americans to build this alliance, it continues
to serves as our bridge across the Atlantic, our principal forum for working
together and for our mutual protection in a dangerous world. In President
Kennedy’s words, NATO allies will continue to be the “watchmen on the walls
of world freedom.” We have many challenges before us, but the U.S. remains
dedicated to working with our allies and partners alike to keep NATO at
the center of the great effort to build a democratic, peaceful, and secure
world in the years ahead.
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#1f1a17"></FONT>
</p>
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