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proving NATO’s irrelevance, the events of September 11 actually served to reinforce the logic
underpinning the 1990 decision to enhance NATO’s political dimension and the new institutions
and initiatives that ultimately sprang from it. NATO laid the foundation for its current outreach
to the Caucasus, Central Asia, and even the Greater Middle East during the 1990s—a fact that
skeptics of NATO’s post-September 11 relevance generally tend to ignore.
That said, NATO appears to have no illusions about the nature of its partnership with
Central Asia and the Caucuses. As de Hoop Scheffer has emphasized repeatedly, NATO “first
and foremost is an Alliance about values,”, and the extent to which Partnership serves to enhance
security in the Euro-Atlantic region will ultimately be a function of whether the Partners in any
given region democratize. The Secretary General drove home this point during an outreach trip
to Central Asia in the Fall of 2004, telling his listeners at several stops that NATO’s liberal
democratic values are “not only for the Allies but also our Partners. The more we share these
fundamental values, the stronger our Partnership will be.”
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Noting that NATO was making a
concerted effort to promote cooperation with Central Asia, he also warned that “the countries of
Central Asia themselves have major role to play.” “They have to show the necessary political
will to press head with political and economic reforms, to streamline their military
establishments, and to work together with their neighbors to address regional problems such as
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Speech by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer during his visit to the Kyrgyz Republic,
October 19, 2004.
Convention