69
drug smuggling and human trafficking.”
117
117
Ibid. See also speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at Baky State University,
Azerbaijan, November 5, 2004 (http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2004/s04110sd.htm).
Indeed, the impetus for political and economic reforms in the region will ultimately have
to be indigenous, but in the post-September 11 strategic environment, NATO has both a moral
and strategic obligation to engage the region with the essentially political tools that have proved
so useful in constructing Europe whole and free. Continued engagement, in fact, is the only
approach consistent with NATO’s post-Cold War transformation and the evolution of its political
dimension. In the wake of September 11, the vision of a Europe whole and free and at peace is
not only incomplete; it demands the adoption of political goals that extend beyond Europe. The
Partnership with the Caucasus and Central Asia should therefore be viewed as an opportunity for
NATO to address the political and economic conditions on NATO’s periphery that fuel a variety
of transnational threats, including terrorism, and thereby potentially threaten the very civilization
NATO was designed to preserve.
Convention