Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is privilege to speak here at Columbia University, for the second time in fact. Columbia University is close my heart--my office has hosted a number of interns from here, I have a number of friends closely associated with Columbia, and, in fact, three members of my delegation during this visit to the US are alumni of the great center of learning.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to speak to you today about Baltic security. For several months now, high-ranking Russian political and military figures have been making statements that would suggest support for an imminent reinstatement of the Soviet Union. Several Russian parties have even raised the banner of the re-establishment of a Greater Russia within the 1989 borders of the Soviet Union in their election campaigns. Recently, these statements have taken on a tone reminiscent of Cold-War era rhetoric, and have prompted many observers to ask whether the Baltic States, too, feel threatened?
This heightened rhetoric reflects a long-term trend and is not a series of unrelated and isolated events. Certainly, it is cause for concern. A hypothetical comparison helps clarify this concern: imagine if a popular political party facing elections in Germany were to make a central plank in its platform the reinstatement of the Third Reich within its 1942 borders. In modern Germany this would be impossible. But Russia is the Land of Possibilities.

Concern over the future of Russia, then, is understandable. However, I would posit that this saber rattling of late has less to do with whether the Baltics feel threatened by Russia than whether Russia feels threatened by the increasingly speedy integration of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with the West.
Since 1991, when the three Baltic states formalised their re-instated independence, we have been moving steadily in a westward direction. The laws of nature do not of course allow for physical movement, but the rules of international politics have allowed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, each at its own speed, to pursue a policy of integration that has been rather successful to date.
Integration is something of a misnomer, with Estonia being a case in point. We have belonged in Europe for more than 700 years already: how could we possibly integrate into an entity where we have essentially established ourselves over the centuries?
This is something many of you who have visited my country already know. When one walks about the old part of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, one can feel Europeanness radiating from every medieval house and every church steeple. Not only was Tallinn one of the most notable Hanseatic cities: in the present state of affairs it is one of the best preserved cities of the whole merchant league. The poetry of stone perpetuates history.
As for the scheme of society, it is perpetuated and maintained through the legal system. Ladies and gentlemen, Estonia has been part of the Roman-Germanic legal system for over 700 years. And this is more important than well-preserved Gothic or Classicism. It is a nursery where everything else springs up; it is the prerequisite, basis and guarantee of the survival, development and success of our state.
So we cannot speak about integration into Europe. What we can speak about is integration into all-European security and economic structures. And that does not mean creating a new situation, but rather restoring a normal Europe. It is not so much an economic or security issue as basically a matter of political judgment. Europe needs strong democratic leaders of the league of de Gaulle and Adenauer, decades ago, who would be able to make decisions, who are not be afraid to decide.
When we speak of integration with all-European structures, we have the EU and NATO in mind. These two organizations are like two sides of the same coin: the one side tells us the currency, and the other the name of the state holding and protecting that currency. We see the EU and NATO as complementary and mutually perfecting each other. The hallmark of the EU is prosperity, and that of NATO is security. What they have in common is stability. Shifting into a world of mathematical terms, stability is the intersection of the EU and NATO. In view of this mathematical image, Estonia's aim is obvious: entrance into both NATO and the EU, which should happen as early as possible and as late as necessary.
All of this, however, makes Russia nervous. Not only are we going far fast, we also constitute a living example right on the border of what is going wrong in Russia. It is no wonder, then, that Russia feels threatened by the decisive and irreversible relocation into the West of what many leading circles in Moscow erroneously regard as having belonged to Russia.
Taking this delicate if not to say precarious situation into account, the West must recognise four truths. First, it is time to accept that the security of the Baltic States is integral to European security. European security, in turn, is integral to trans-Atlantic security. Thus, the safety of the Baltic States should not be of interest just to those states in the region, it should be of passionate interest to all of you seated here today. If Berlin became a symbol during the Cold War for the West's defence of democracy, then the Baltic States play that role today. We can no longer speak of building a new European architecture without also articulating a policy regarding the security of the Baltic States.

Second, it is time for decisive action on NATO and EU enlargement. We are already well past the initial stages of building a European security structure: a viable framework that includes Central Europe is nearly in place. During talks on the renunciation of Germany, a similar debate took place over whether former East Germany should be in NATO. A decisive stance, such as that adopted by the United States that former East German membership in NATO was non-negotiable, is what we need now. It is not only late, it is also unacceptable to ponder the plans of architects who speak of spheres-of-influence and to consult contractors who wish to build on sand or worse, on a slippery slope.

Third, it is time to recognise that the bear was just hibernating, and has now woken up. It is not merely a matter of semantics whether the time we now live in should be called the post-Cold War; or the Cold Peace, as my colleague Boris Yeltsin, with whom I spoke yesterday, said last December at the Budapest CSCE summit; or the neo-Cold War. The name we choose to use reveals our philosophical point-of-departure on the future of Russia, and differing assumptions lead in turn to differing policy prescriptions.
Fourth, it is time to engage the non-Russian states of the CIS in a much more energetic manner than that to date. These states balance and counterbalance Russia, and as such are vital to stability in this vast area of the world. Here I have in mind first and foremost Ukraine, Moldova and Kazakhstan: Ukraine because of its geographic position and size; Moldova because of the presence of Russian troops there that are actively assisting separatists in the so-called Dniester Republic; and Kazakhstan because of its size and enormous natural wealth.

I would single out Ukraine for a moment, because just before I came here today, I had a good meeting with President Kuchma. I come away from that discussion with a reaffirmation of what I knew before: before Ukraine gave away its bomb, the United States and many others paid enormous attention to Kiev. Afterwards, however, they lost interest, and that loss of interest was reflected in lessened political contacts, the distribution of foreign aid and a host of other policy elements.
The fact that I mention those three states first does not mean the West should pay less attention to the others. The Turkic connection in the Caucasus and the Muslim element in the rest of Central Asia should not be underestimated. On Saturday, the day I arrived in New York, I had a meeting with President Aliev of Azerbaidjan, and I can assure you that he is thinking in strategic terms. Let us just recall how many observers, several among them Sovietologists from this very university, were surprised by the events in Alma Ata in 1986. We should learn from our mistakes.
In September of 1993, The Wall Street Journal printed an open letter entitled, "What the West Must Do in Bosnia:" "Even if, like Kuwait in August 1990, all Bosnia (and not just Sarajevo) were seized, it would be essential for the democracies to make clear, as they did in the case of Kuwait, that violent border changes and ethnic cleansing will not stand. If the West does not make that clear, it will have nothing persuasive to say..." {end of quote}.
Ironically, the message in that letter remains applicable today. Democracies must be willing to stand by the principles upon which their states and societies are based. If the world's democracies do not speak out for morality in foreign policy, then they will lose our ability to influence the course of events.
This applies to developments in Russia and the CIS as well. The West has an enormous role to play in helping stabilise those states east of the Baltics, an area we know as the former Soviet Union. Stability there enhances the security of the Baltic States, of Europe as a whole and finally of the trans-Atlantic community. The time to act is now.

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