Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise today to voice concern about the current state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1949, more than 60…”

“I rise today to voice concern about the current state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1949, more than 60 years ago, the United States joined with 11 other nations to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, in order to ensure the mutual security of the member nations. From the beginning, the United States has served as NATO's backbone and provided a major share of the cost in manpower and resources. We have consistently answered the call of our NATO allies when they needed us, even when there was no clear United States interest involved. For example, in 1993 the U.S. military answered the call to participate in the NATO air action to enforce a U.N. ban on all unauthorized military flights over Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, the United States stationed over 10,000 personnel in support of peacekeeping missions in Bosnia. For the following 9 years we continued to retain a large number of forces there. In 1999 the United States again stepped up and provided a major share of the military resources for operations in Kosovo. At that time I argued that we were assuming too many commitments in areas of the world where our own interests were vague. When President Clinton announced that he intended to send 4,000 U.S.…”