Gates: Prospects for U.S.-NATO alliance "dim"
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates gestures while speaking during a media conference after a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, June 9, 2011. / AP
Updated at 7:25 a.m. Eastern
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BRUSSELS - America's military alliance with Europe — the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades — faces a "dim, if not dismal" future, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a blunt valedictory address.
In his final policy speech as Pentagon chief, Gates questioned the viability of NATO, saying its members' penny-pinching and lack of political will could hasten the end of U.S. support. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a U.S.-led bulwark against Soviet aggression, but in the post-Cold War era it has struggled to find a purpose.
"Future U.S. political leaders — those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me — may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost," he told a European think tank on the final day of an 11-day overseas journey.
Gates has made no secret of his frustration with NATO bureaucracy and the huge restrictions many European governments placed on their military participation in the Afghanistan war. He ruffled NATO feathers early in his tenure with a direct challenge to contribute more front-line troops that yielded few contributions.
Even so, Gates' assessment Friday that NATO is falling down on its obligations and foisting too much of the hard work on the U.S. was unusually harsh and unvarnished. He said both of NATO's main military operations now — Afghanistan and Libya — point up weaknesses and failures within the alliance.
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"The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense," he said.
Without naming names, he blasted allies who are "willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets."
"He's spent the last four and a half years begging NATO to contribute their fair share," says CBS News chief national security correspondent David Martin. "Now, with just three weeks left... he's just speaking his mind."Gates, a career CIA officer who rose to become the spy agency's director from 1991 to 1993, is retiring on June 30 after 4? years as Pentagon chief. His designated successor, Leon Panetta, is expected to take over July 1.
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Martin stressed the point Gates made about dwindling Cold War memories in the minds of America's body politic, noting that, already, most American politicians - including the president - aren't old enough to remember the "glory days of NATO", and they're likely to wonder increasingly, "what's in it for us?"The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops based in Europe, not to stand guard against invasion but to train with European forces and promote what for decades has been lacking: the ability of the Europeans to go to war alongside the U.S. in a coherent way.
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The war in Afghanistan, which is being conducted under NATO auspices, is a prime example of U.S. frustration at European inability to provide the required resources.
"Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military, NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more," Gates said.
For many Americans, NATO is a vague concept tied to a bygone era, a time when the world feared a Soviet land invasion of Europe that could have escalated to nuclear war. But with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO's reason for being came into question. It has remained intact — and even expanded from 16 members at the conclusion of the Cold War to 28 today.
But reluctance of some European nations to expand defense budgets and take on direct combat has created what amounts to a two-tier alliance: the U.S. military at one level and the rest of NATO on a lower, almost irrelevant plane.
Gates said this could spell the demise of NATO.
"What I've sketched out is the real possibility for a dim, if not dismal future for the trans-Atlantic alliance," he said. "Such a future is possible, but not inevitable. The good news is that the members of NATO — individually and collectively — have it well within their means to halt and reverse these trends and instead produce a very different future."
Gates has said he believes NATO will endure despite its flaws and failings. But his remarks Friday point to a degree of American impatience with traditional and newer European allies that in coming years could lead to a reordering of U.S. defense priorities in favor of Asia and the Pacific, where the rise of China is becoming a predominant concern.
To illustrate his concerns about Europe's lack of appetite for defense, Gates noted the difficulty NATO has encountered in carrying out an air campaign in Libya.
"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference," he said.
His comment reflected U.S. frustration with the allies' limited defense budgets.
"To avoid the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance, member nations must examine new approaches to boosting combat capabilities," he said.
He applauded Norway and Denmark for providing a disproportionate share of the combat power in the Libya operation, given the size of their militaries. And he credited Belgium and Canada for making "major contributions" to the effort to degrade the military strength of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.
"These countries have, with their constrained resources, found ways to do the training, buy the equipment and field the platforms necessary to make a credible military contribution," he said.
But they are exceptions, in Gates' view.
A NATO air operations center designed to handle more than 300 flights a day is struggling to launch about 150 a day against Libya, Gates said.
On a political level, the problem of alliance purpose in Libya is even more troubling, he said.
"While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission," he said. "Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."
Afghanistan is another example of NATO falling short despite a determined effort, Gates said.
He recalled the history of NATO's involvement in the Afghan war — and the mistaken impression some allied governments held of what it would require of them.
"I suspect many allies assumed that the mission would be primarily peacekeeping, reconstruction and development assistance — more akin to the Balkans," he said, referring to NATO peacekeeping efforts there since the late 1990s. "Instead, NATO found itself in a tough fight against a determined and resurgent Taliban returning in force from its sanctuaries in Pakistan."
He also offered praise and sympathy, noting that more than 850 troops from non-U.S. NATO members have died in Afghanistan. For many allied nations these were their first military casualties since World War II.
He seemed to rehearse his position in the coming debate within the Obama administration on how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan this year.
"Far too much has been accomplished, at far too great a cost, to let the momentum slip away just as the enemy is on his back foot," he said.
He said the "vast majority" of the 30,000 extra troops Obama sent to Afghanistan last year will remain through the summer fighting season. He was not more specific.
In a question-and-answer session with his audience after the speech, Gates, 67, said his generation's "emotional and historical attachment" to NATO is "aging out."
He said he is not sure what this means in practical terms. But if Europeans want to keep a security link to the U.S. in the future, he said, "the drift of the past 20 years can't continue."
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I'm not against Gay people but I'm against closet Gay Republicans who bash Gay people. Gates is a closet Gay. No question about that!
What does a CIA operative know about running Texas A&M University? It shows you how the Power Elite give each other "WELFARE" jobs!
I will elaborate. NATO is frugal, but NATO enjoys the economic security that comes from not having a war-making machine that parallels the USA.
The USA still has Cold-War Mentality and Cold-War fiscal policy with respect to allowing the National Security Agency to write blank and classified checks which clearly has inflated the deficit spending levels for the past 40 years.
Our nation-building history has a questionable success rate, but an expensive price tag.
Our tendency to inflate our superiority and international ego on the diplomatic scene with defense being our crowning jewel is playing out and revealing the limitations of our means.
The unthinkable scenarios keep happening, no matter how much we flex our muscles and spend to uphold our image as a dominant force.
An efficient use of budgeting within our means has to part of our defense culture. No reality is more sad to know than the fact that children not yet born are saddled with a burden to pay for weapons we bought and retired 20-30 years ago.
The USA has chosen a path of going to war for any reason our politicians decide on and not one based on self defense. I feel that makes our country scary and unpredictable. We have chased imaginary WMDs by one President to imaginary lives being saved by another. IMHO the policies of our country, as they are today, make killing and destruction seem endless.
The British Press...are you kidding me? Don't read Press which has little to no honor...and that includes ours.
Take Lybia, for example. What interest does any NATO member other than the United States have in promoting the doctrine of American Exceptionalism...which is the basic justification for our military intervention there? Lybia wasn't threatening either the U.S. or any member of NATO.
Look at Afghanistan. Does anyone really think that most NATO mwembers were going to make a committment to a multiyear war in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the world in more than in name only?
What was NATO's interest in Iraq?
This all started with some NATO members wanting to go into Bosnia to prevent the commission of crimes agauinst humanity being committed against Muslims by the Serbs. NATO couldn't get any consensus among its Europeran members to deal with a uniquely European problem, so some of them called for "U.S. leadership"...whatever that means. Although that operation (which was not free of controversy) was ultimately successful, it had nothing to do with any NATO member and was a classic example of "mission creep." However, the precedent of taking military action outside of NATO's original mandate as a Western European defensive alliance had been set.
And by the way, that didn't seem to earn us very much political capital with the Muslim world, now did it? Did it make us any safer or prevent any attack on either the U.S. or NATO members? No!
Will Rogers once observed that all Europe needed to do to get the U.S. to do its bidding was to call for "American leadership" and we would fall all over ourselves to advance a European political agenda that wasn't ours...and he was right. Bosnia was the classic example of this...
...and today's NATO is the result. Britain is the only dependable member of NATO for the United States today when it comes to supporting U.S. military action.
Yet many are continually calling for us to cut defense budgets. Answer a few quesions truthfully. If North Korea of Iran had the nuclear weapons and the means to reach the United States do you think they would hesitate to fire them? Both countries are currently led by whacko dictators who have announced publically what their intentions are...and some of you want to cut our defense capabilities,
Just remember, you can hide your head in the sand but don't forget to realize in doing so your a-- is still showing.
Case in point, Iraq War II. Europeans largely ignored it but since the only country willing to contribute had signed on, why should Bush care what France, Germany, etc, say? They wanted a delay for an unspecified time period at the end of which we'd be in exactly the same position. But what if France, Germany and maybe even Russia had said, "Give the sanctions another 6 months to force Iraq to provide the information we want and if nothing happens then we'll each contribute a division." That might have given Bush pause. But since most of these countries don't have the resources to field large units overseas, they had no leverage.