SALON

Wednesday, Jun 15, 2011 1:42 PM UTC

Gates says NATO alliance in danger of breaking

Retiring defense secretary says strategic alliance's future is "dim, if not dismal"

By

Topics: Robert Gates, U.S. Military,

Gates says NATO alliance in danger of breakingSecretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaks during an interview with The Associate Press in his office at the Pentagon Monday, June 13, 2011 in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(Credit: AP)

Robert Gates calls it “aging out.” He’s not referring to his imminent retirement as defense secretary. He’s talking about a generational expiration date on the American embrace of Europe as a pillar of U.S. defense strategy.

Gates made a splash with a scathing speech last week in Brussels, home of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in which he said the 62-year-old alliance faces a “dim, if not dismal” future. He was not disowning NATO but warning that a years-long fraying of trans-Atlantic ties could eventually break the bond.

“I am worried,” he said in an Associated Press interview in his Pentagon office on Monday.

Throughout the Cold War, beginning with NATO’s founding in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and its East European allies, a military and political partnership with Western Europe was fundamental to U.S. defense policy.

But in the 20 years since the demise of the Soviet Union the security landscape has been reshaped. And for a growing number of Americans, NATO is an obscure relic of a bygone era.

It’s not just the reluctance of most European governments to shoulder a bigger share of the financial burden of providing their own defense that bothers Gates, although he said this is at the core of the problem. What has added to his worry is what Gates sees as an emerging new view among younger Americans of the proper priorities for American foreign and defense policy.

“People like me who have an emotional stake in Europe and NATO are aging out,” he said in the interview. “For a lot of these younger people,” including newer members of Congress bent on cutting government budget deficits and trimming U.S. commitments overseas, “they don’t have these kinds of attachments.”

Gates said he had no regrets about the blunt message he delivered in Brussels, which included an explicit warning that the European members of NATO face the very real possibility of “collective military irrelevance.”

“I don’t feel I went too far,” he said. “I’ll tell you one place I got pretty unanimous positive reaction, and that was in the United States of America — across the entire political spectrum.”

Sean Kay, a professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University and a specialist in European and international security, said in a telephone interview that the U.S. might get Europe to do more for its own defense if it began withdrawing troops and considered moving U.S. European Command headquarters to U.S. soil.

“A key premise of NATO’s founding was that Europe needed the confidence to get on its feet” after the devastation of World War II — “not that it should be a permanent appendage to American military power,” Kay said.

Even though the threat of a land invasion of Europe is nearly nonexistent, the U.S. still keeps a small number of nuclear weapons in Europe. And the Obama administration is moving ahead with plans for a NATO-wide network of missile interceptors and radars designed to protect all European members from missile attacks by Iran.

Gates, who began a 27-year CIA career in 1966 and has worked for eight presidents, is a firm believer that the U.S. should not relinquish its predominant military role in the world. And he is adamant that maintaining that presence in foreign lands — not just in Europe but also Asia — is a crucial underpinning of that role.

“Make no mistake, the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power — the size, strength and global reach of the United States military,” he said in a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame last month.

And that will not end when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, he added.

“Our military credibility, commitment and presence are required to sustain alliances, to protect trade routes and energy supplies, and to deter would-be adversaries from making the kind of miscalculations that so often lead to war,” he said.

In the AP interview, Gates said he does not foresee a sudden rupture with Europe or NATO.

“I don’t think it will be as dramatic as a break,” he said. “But it’ll just be slowly growing apart — it’s a troubled marriage.”

Leon Panetta, the CIA director who is Gates’ designated successor, agrees that NATO is not shouldering enough of the defense burden. But in written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee prior to his confirmation hearing, Panetta was far less explicit about his view of the alliance’s future.

“It is my sense that a number of our NATO allies, while fulfilling their current commitments, have been underperforming in terms of their own investments in defense capabilities,” especially in deployable combat forces, he wrote.

He added that the U.S. has “enormous stakes in a strong, mutually supportive NATO alliance.”

More Robert Burns.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 19 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation
56 points57 points | 3 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator who voted against federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
40 points41 points | comment
vote
"Apparently, we have deserving and undeserving disasters, Oklahoma senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn explain"
30 points31 points | 2 comments
vote
Obama opposes GOP bill on Keystone XL oil pipeline: The White House said Tuesday that the bill “seeks to circumvent longstanding and proven processes” by removing a requirement for a presidential permit. The legislation also says no new environmental studies are needed.
22 points23 points | 2 comments
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
19 points20 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations