(2014-0069-F) NATO

The materials in FOIA 2014-0069-F are a selective body of documents responsive to the topic of the FOIA. Researchers should consult the archivist about related material. During the forty plus years of the Cold War, the security of Europe from the threat of a possible Soviet invasion was the primary responsibility of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Beginning in the mid-1980s’ serious discussion began within Europe of enhanced coordination between the emerging ideas of a common European Community and an allied European Union security policy. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then with the end of NATO’s traditional rival, the Warsaw Pact in July of 1991, the times were ripe for a radical change in the strategic concept of the NATO alliance. Under the EU treaty, signed on February 7th, 1992 in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the signatory countries agreed to develop a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In addition, the EU treaty also called for the implementation of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI). After many hours of negotiations this ESDI agreement called for a separate European military organization focused on the WEU that would be nominally subordinate but parallel to NATO. In June of 1992, at a meeting near Bonn, Germany in the Hotel Petersburg, the WEU, in the framework of the ESDI agreement, defined three categories of possible missions that this separate but subordinate military organization could be called upon to accomplish. These categories came to be known as the Petersburg tasks: “humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks, and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking” At the ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council [NAC] on June 3rd, 1996 in Berlin, this military alliance structure was further defined within the NATO Alliance as a “separable but not separate” part of NATO.2 Then, at the fiftieth anniversary Washington NATO summit in April of 1999, NATO further defined the role of the ESDI by granting EU member states access to NATO planning capabilities and also access to all NATO military assets for use in any future EU-led operations. Records that are responsive to this FOIA include press releases, NATO communiques and various drafts of communiques, media reaction reports, cables between US State Department officials and the US Mission to NATO concerning the 1996 Berlin and the 1999 Washington NATO ministerial meetings, NSC Staffer emails concerning press guidance, congressional reports on various NATO Summits, and the Partnership for Peace program, invitations to conferences and meetings, and various speech drafts. The majority of these records related to this FOIA case are closed for national security reasons.