Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Remarks on Missile Defense and Russia
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the NATO Strategic Concept Seminar on Monday and urged Russia’s cooperation in preventing nuclear proliferation and other transnational threats. (Source)
Clinton said missile defense “will make this continent a safer place. That safety could extend to Russia, if Russia decides to cooperate with us. It is an extraordinary opportunity for us to work together to build our mutual security. Missile defense, we believe, will make this continent a safer place. And that safety could extend to Russia if Russia decides to cooperate with us. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for us to work together to build our mutual security in the 21st century. The spirit of collective defense must also include nontraditional threats. And we believe NATO’s new Strategic Concept must address these.”
Relations between NATO and Russia soured last year after NATO criticized the former Soviet Union for invading Georgia. Clinton told the audience what NATO expects from Russia:
“We have real differences with Russia on several issues. And we intend to use the NATO-Russia Council as a forum for frank discussions about areas where we disagree. We will use it to press Russia to live up to its commitments on Georgia and to reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states. We will use it to challenge the assertion put forward in Russia’s new military doctrine that NATO’s enlargement and its global actions constitute a military danger to Russia. We will also use the Council to advocate on behalf of human rights and individual liberty – these are principles and values that Russia committed to uphold when it accepted the NATO-Russia Founding Act.”
Russia and NATO are cooperating in training counternarcotics officers from Afghanistan and Central Asia to stop drug trafficking, and Clinton said she hopes there will be missile defense cooperation as well.
“[W]e hope to extend that cooperation to other fields, again, most notably in the area of missile defense…NATO and Russia should have a regular exchange of information on posture, doctrine, and planned military exercises, as well as specific measures to permit observation of military exercises and to allow visits to new or significantly improved military installations. We look forward to working closely with all of our Allies, Russia, and our other partners in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty during the coming months to reverse the erosion of this valuable regime. If we truly believe that our security is indivisible, we must do more to strengthen the sense of strategic reassurance across the Euro-Atlantic area. As we look ahead, our challenge with Russia is to build a relationship where the principles that both sides have agreed to on paper are consistently respected in practice.”
Tags: Hillary Clinton, NATO, Russia, Strategic Concept