"We are products of the same history, reaching from Jerusalem and Athens to Warsaw and Washington," Mr.Bush said. "We share more than an alliance. We share a civilization. *Its values are universal* (emphasis added), and they pervade our history and our partnership in a unique way." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 16, 2001
President Urges Expansion of NATO to Russia's Border
WARSAW, June 15 — President Bush called today for an Atlantic Alliance that would stretch all the way to Russia's borders, delving more emphatically and aggressively than any of his predecessors into a matter guaranteed to make Moscow nervous.
On the day before his first meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr.Bush used a speech in the capital of this former Soviet bloc country to urge a broad, steady expansion of NATO into the countries of Eastern Europe that are not now in the alliance.
He sought to reassure the Russian government that this was not a confrontational strategy by declaring that neither the United States nor Europe were enemies of Russia — and that Russia was indeed a part of Europe.
"All of Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between, should have the same chance for security and freedom and the same chance to join the institutions of Europe as Europe's old democracies," Mr. Bush said, seemingly envisioning a day when even the European Union might expand that far.
The president defined Poland as the "center of Europe" rather than a country closer to the eastern boundary of the current alliance.
Referring to the steady expansion of the alliance, which will be discussed in detail next year at a meeting in Prague, Mr. Bush said, "The question of `when' may still be up for debate within NATO."
He added, "The question of `whether' should not.
"As we plan to enlarge NATO, no nation should be used as a pawn in the agendas of others. We will not trade away the fate of free European peoples. No more Munichs. No more Yaltas."
Those phrases referred to historic pacts that assigned European countries to different superpowers' spheres of influence and captured an East-West paradigm that Mr. Bush, in his most detailed and sweeping remarks yet about the future of the relationship between the United States and Europe, declared moribund.
"As we plan the Prague summit," he said, "we should not calculate how little we can get away with, but how much we can do to advance the cause of freedom."
In the meantime, he added, referring to his next meeting, in Slovenia, "I will express to President Putin that Russia is a part of Europe and, therefore, does not need a buffer zone of insecure states separating it from Europe. NATO, even as it grows, is no enemy of Russia. Poland is no enemy of Russia. America is no enemy of Russia."
Three former Soviet bloc countries — the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland — joined NATO in 1999, and the 10 central and eastern European countries that are seeking admission next year include former Soviet allies like Bulgaria and Romania. The 10 countries also include the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, once Soviet republics. Russia has long been opposed to having those neighboring nations absorbed into the Atlantic Alliance.
Mr. Bush did not single out and endorse any specific candidates today. He did not say exactly how many candidates in all should be added to NATO next year.
But he did go so far as to mention a country beyond that list of 10, saying, "The Europe we are building must include the Ukraine, a nation struggling with the trauma of transition." Ukraine, too, is a former Soviet republic.
Mr. Bush's remarks, which lasted 26 minutes, significantly longer than usual and by far his most extended public comments since he arrived on Tuesday in Europe, were delivered to hundreds of professors, students, government officials and diplomats at Warsaw University.
Those people were obviously just one of Mr. Bush's many audiences. The president was speaking, as well, to Mr. Putin and alerting him that the United States would not defer to or be dissuaded by Russian anxieties. Russia, Mr. Bush seemed to say, could become a friendly partner to his world vision or it might find itself alone.
The president was also speaking to European allies and once again trying to lay down markers and exert his will, as he has tried to do on global warming and missile defense, without equivocation.
And he was speaking, as a president always does, even in the first year of his term, to voters at home. Important Midwest swing states are densely populated by Polish-Americans and Roman Catholics, and Mr. Bush's address was rife with religious sentiments and adulatory references to John Paul II, the first Polish pope.
He cast god and religion as the forces that successfully challenged Communism and talked about the belief in a divine "author of dignity" as "the main reason Europe and America will never be separated."
"We are products of the same history, reaching from Jerusalem and Athens to Warsaw and Washington," Mr. Bush said. "We share more than an alliance. We share a civilization. Its values are universal, and they pervade our history and our partnership in a unique way."
Mr. Bush also made a point of mentioning his father, former President George Bush, who strongly supported Poland's democratic transition in 1989. The fondness with which many Poles remember the former president guaranteed his son a warmer greeting here than he had received in Belgium or Sweden, two earlier stops on a five-day five-nation trip.
But the current president also chose Poland for its symbolic significance as a former Soviet bloc country that has made a successful transition to democracy and capitalism.
Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who accompanied him, marveled at the differences between the Poland of more than a decade ago, which she visited as a foreign policy expert in the first Bush administration, and the Poland that she saw today.
As Mr. Bush ended his speech late this afternoon, Ms. Rice could be seen wiping tears from her eyes. She had said at an earlier news conference that she found it "really extraordinarily moving" to see "the Polish flag flying next to the NATO flag" at an event that she and the president attended.
Over the course of a long day, Mr. Bush visited the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, a plaza in the general area where the Nazis detained hundreds of thousands of Jews in the early 1940's before transporting them to death camps. He also talked extensively with the government leaders.
At a news conference before his speech and in the university speech, Mr. Bush was careful to mention repeatedly that support for including more eastern European countries in European institutions was not meant as a provocation to Russia.
He and administration officials said one main message for Mr. Putin on Saturday would be a desire to work more closely with Russia and to have its cooperation and input on a missile shield.
"We want Russia to be a partner and an ally, a partner in peace, a partner in democracy, a country that embraces freedom, a country that enhances the security of Europe," Mr. Bush told reporters.
Phil Gordon, an expert on Europe who worked on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said that there was "a fine balancing act that the administration is trying to pull off." He noted that although Mr. Bush was clearly supporting including a Baltic state in NATO, the president "doesn't say anything about the timetable."
"I think the momentum behind the Baltic states has been extraordinary over the last six months," Mr. Gordon added. He said the state most likely to gain entry was Lithuania, in part because it has the smallest Russian minority in its population and its membership would not upset Russia as much as the including Latvia, which has a larger Russian minority.
Mr. Bush's speech looked even further into the future, albeit vaguely. "Our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long," he said. "Every European nation that struggles toward democracy and free markets. And a strong civic culture must be welcomed into Europe's home."
But he was careful to assert that "the Europe we are building must also be open to Russia."
"We have a stake in Russia's success," he added, "and we look forward to the day when Russia is fully reformed, fully democratic, and closely bound to the rest of Europe."