Former US Ambassador to China Nick Burns Talks NATO Action Post September 11

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Christina (0:07)

We've been talking a lot about 9-11, what it did to the country, what it did to the world, but now we're gonna focus a little bit on how it altered geopolitics.

David (0:14)

Yes, our next guest spent August 2001 packing up the ambassador's apartment in Athens, getting ready for a move to Brussels. Nick Burns moved there to be the US. Ambassador to NATO and got there 12 days, I believe, before the events of September the 11th. He's now Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at the Harvard Kennedy School and joins us now. Ambassador Burns, great to have you with us once again. And I wonder if you could take us back to that day. We've been reminiscing over the course of these last two hours about the events of a quarter century ago. How did you see what was unfolding and indeed what happened in the hours that followed?

Nick Burns (0:46)

David, it was obviously a catastrophic day for our country and for people around the world. And at NATO headquarters, we couldn't reach Washington for several hours because the White House had been evacuated, the State Department in Pentagon evacuated, the Pentagon attacked. And so my combined military and diplomatic staff was trying to figure out what can we do to help the home front? And my phone rang. And it was David Wright, the Canadian ambassador, and he was the senior ambassador at NATO, the longest serving. And he said, Nick, I think we can invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. An attack on one shall be considered an attack on all. It had never been invoked in NATO history. We hadn't had a war in Europe since the Second World War. And boy, was that a shot in the arm. And within hours, I received calls from the Danish ambassador, the German, Italian, Spanish ambassadors, the British ambassador. They were all with us. And by the next morning, we were ready to invoke Article 5 It's unanimous vote of NATO. If one country had descended, it wouldn't have occurred. And I called back to Condoleezza Rice, who was a close friend. She was the national security advisor, and she gave me the president's personal authority at four in the morning in Washington to vote for this.

And I'll never forget what she said. She said, look, before you vote, one more thing.

I said, what's that? And she said, it's good to have friends in the world. And I think we all felt that. When the American people woke up on the 12th of September, we had NATO, Canada, all the Europeans ready to go into battle with us. They all did go into battle in Afghanistan, most of them into Iraq subsequently. So, you know, I've reflected on this a long time. David and Christina was ambassador in China. The Chinese don't have any allies who will go to bat for them. The Russians don't, but we do. And so I think we should deeply value, respect our allies. That's the lesson I learned on 9-11.

Christina (2:41)

Ambassador, that's so interesting to me. I actually didn't know. I had assumed the US had asked to invoke Article 5 I didn't realize the idea had come from other allies themselves to trigger that clause. I did want to ask you, as we were talking about having you on and all the different things we wanted to speak about, when it comes to Article 5, you talk so much about how important it was for the US to have allies.

The US has strained a lot of those relationships, especially with Europe, right now with Canada. If the same circumstances were to present themselves again, we talk so often about whether the US would hold up its end of Article 5 Do you think the Europeans, the Canadians, the other NATO members would be so ready to trigger that mutual defense treaty again, given where those relationships are right now?

Nick Burns (3:24)

Well, that's a very good question. I would hope that, God forbid, we ever had another episode in the attack on the United States like 9-11, and I hope we never ever do.

I would hope the Allies, of course, would defend us. I'm an American. I would want our country to be defended. But it goes both ways. And the way NATO works, it works on trust, it works on mutual commitment. So if we as Americans want to be able to call on our Allies on a day like that, then we need to be good to them and respect them and show that respect and build up NATO. And I do think President Trump has not done that. And I wish, I hope he'll change course. I hope he'll show greater respect for Canada.