Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott gives a morning news briefing on April 24 in Uris Hall before his afternoon lecture in Goldwin Smith Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography
The Cold War may be over, but NATO remains a crucial agent of peace and stability in Europe, argued U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in a lecture April 24 to about 250 students, faculty and administrators in Goldwin Smith Hall.
"More Europeans have died violently in the last five years than in the previous 45," Talbott said. "So while the Cold War in Europe is over, hot wars have devastated communities, extinguished lives and threatened the peace of the continent."
After being introduced by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings, Talbott laid out the Clinton administration's vision of a post-Cold War NATO that can reduce both internal and external threats to Europe and promote and strengthen democratic values and institutions. This alliance will be most effective, he said, if it admits nations formerly under Communist control. Currently, NATO comprises the United States, Canada and 10 mostly Western European nations; 12 Central and Eastern European nations have applied for membership, and their requests will be considered at a summit in Madrid this July.
"The enlargement of NATO is a key part of America's attempt to ensure that Europe is a more peaceful place in the 21st century than it has been in the 20th," Talbott said. Denying membership to countries like Hungary and Poland, he argued, would unfairly punish them for once being under Soviet control and might lead them to revert to "the patterns of behavior and misbehavior that characterized the period before the Second World War.
"You'd have, in Central Europe, a volatile mix of poverty, anxiety and militarized nationalism," he said. "That's the way we began this century -- and it's not the way we want to end it."
To those who question America's interests in Europe, Talbott said, "Europe's fate is inextricably bound up with our own -- and vice versa." He noted that half a million American lives were lost in wars that started in Europe and that $13 trillion U.S. dollars were spent on national defense during the Cold War -- much of it in Europe.
"If Europe is indeed safer and more prosperous," he told students, "then the United States will be too, and your children and your grandchildren will be less likely to have to go 'over there,' as your forefathers did, to fight and perhaps die."
However, NATO expansion is not without its own perils, he said.
"It is extremely important that all American citizens understand what is at stake here," he said. "NATO enlargement involves extending to the new member states America's responsibility to defend their territory as though it were our own. That means being prepared, if necessary, to send our soldiers, sailors, flyers and Marines -- many of them approximately your age -- to fight in defense of nations that only a few years ago were our adversaries because they were the allies -- albeit unwilling ones -- of the Soviet Union."
Addressing the thorniest issue of NATO expansion -- Russia's opposition -- Talbott said, "NATO does not regard Russia as an enemy; it is determined to cooperate with a new Russia in building a new Europe just as assiduously as it worked to deter Soviet aggression in the old Europe." Talbott predicted Russia will accept NATO expansion, however reluctantly, and work within the framework of the new alliance.
President Clinton has stressed the benefits of such expansion in his meetings with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Talbott said.
"Today, a partnership with NATO holds out the promise of something better both for Russian and its neighbors -- true security and stability, based on cooperation rather than on subjugation and intimidation...at a critical moment, when Russia is trying to open its society and economy to the outside world," Talbott said.
Talbott offered students an unusual insider view, having spent two decades as a journalist at Time magazine before becoming deputy secretary of state in 1994. At Time his posts included editor-at-large, State Department correspondent and Eastern Europe correspondent, and he twice received the Edward Weintal Prize for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and diplomacy. He also has written five books on arms control and Soviet affairs.
Talbott's lecture was the inaugural event of a new series at Cornell sponsored by the Walter LaFeber and Joel Silbey Fund in American History, established by David F. Maisel '68 in honor of two of Cornell's most distinguished history professors. The fund is meant to foster interaction between students and visiting historians, and that interaction was evident in the question-and-answer session after the lecture and at a reception for Talbott at LaFeber's home.
Reactions to Talbott's points in both forums were mixed.
"I think he made a very strong and compelling case for expanding NATO, said Ken Lee '97, government. However, fellow senior and government major Jeffrey Tompkins wondered why peace and security in Europe could not be maintained through other organizations, like the European Union, that Russia may perceive as less threatening.
"When I asked him that question, he just danced around it," Tompkins said.