The issue came to a head when NATO foreign ministers met in Budapest this week for their semiannual session-the first such gathering held in a formerly communist country, and the first attended by the new U.S. secretary of State, Colin Powell. It was a critical preparatory meeting for Bush’s first encounter with NATO leaders, set for Brussels in mid-June.
Instead of pointing the way to a harmonious summit, the talks in the Hungarian capital showed that the alliance is increasingly clouded by Bush’s new defense strategy.
Besides refusing to endorse Bush’s plan, allies stated explicitly that they expect to be consulted thoroughly before the Washington takes any steps toward a missile-defense system.
The allies also appeared to be upset by the stance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who wants U.S. troops out of the Balkans. With U.S. allies repeatedly asking Powell to repeat an earlier assurance about the U.S. presence in the region, the secretary of State made a public statement that he and Rumsfeld discussed the matter frequently. “We know that our presence is still required and, as I said previously, in shorthand, we went into this together, and we’ll come out together.” Powell added: “If you’ll notice, we have not taken a single unilateral action with respect to reducing the size of U.S. contributions.”
While promising to consult allies on missile defense, Powell sounded determined to press ahead with the Bush administration’s program. “We know we have to move forward. We can see the threat. The threat is clear, and we have to deal with that threat….” he told fellow ministers.
The “threat” from “rogue” states is anything but clear to America’s allies, however. In the joint statement at the end of the meeting, the 19-member alliance said the joint consultations will include “appropriate assessments of threat,” implying that no one else shared Bush’s perception that there is a threat.
The administration had sent a team of top officials to Europe and Asia in early May to win assent to stronger language, drafted during a visit of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Washington in February. “We recognize the existence of a common threat stemming from the growing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and increasingly sophisticated missiles for their delivery,” Bush and Blair said in a joint statement at the time. Their remarks called for a “review of our common strategic assumptions … so that they reflect … the growing threat from WMD-armed adversaries in regions of vital interest. We need to obstruct and deter these new threats with a strategy that encompasses both offensive and defensive systems,” said the statement.
But the Budapest statement contains no reference to “a common threat.” “Clearly not all the allies are yet on the same page, so today’s communique has in some cases more general language,” a senior U.S. official told reporters.
The final statement did implicitly accept Bush’s views that the 1972 ABM treaty should be replaced or modified because it prohibits testing for a missile-defense system. Six months earlier, a NATO ministerial statement called for “preserving and strengthening the ABM treaty as the cornerstone of strategic stability.” In the latest communique, all mention of the ABM treaty was dropped.
