Gates Says NATO Security Gains in Afghanistan Can Be Sustained

10 June 2011

Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed NATO and the mission in Afghanistan at a Brussels conference June 10

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the gains made in Afghanistan by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) over the past two years can take root and be sustained over time with proper allied support.

“Far too much has been accomplished, at far too great a cost, to let the momentum slip away just as the enemy is on its back foot,” Gates said in a June 10 speech to the Security and Defense Agenda conference in Brussels. His remarks came at the end of nearly three days of meetings by the NATO defense ministers.

It is Gates’ final meeting with NATO as secretary of defense. After 45 years of government service in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon, he retires at the end of the month. Current CIA Director Leon Panetta has been nominated by the president to become the next defense secretary and recently completed his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is not expected to have any opposition in the full Senate.

Gates told security experts that troop-contributing nations must continue supporting the security mission and not withdraw forces on their own timelines because of the risks that would create for other nations’ forces. The United States is considering the size and pace of a troop drawdown beginning in July, but Gates said, “I can tell you there will be no rush to the exits.” That troop drawdown is now being studied by the Defense Department and President Obama, and it will be based on conditions in Afghanistan.

Gates said the vast majority of the U.S. surge forces that arrived in Afghanistan over the past two years will remain through the summer season, and some troops will be reassigned from areas as those areas are transferred to Afghan control.

“As the Taliban attempt their inevitable counterattack designed to increase ISAF casualties and sap international will, now is the time to capitalize on the gains of the past 15 to 18 months — by keeping the pressure on the Taliban and reinforcing military success with improved governance, reintegration, and ultimately political reconciliation,” Gates told the security experts.

Afghanistan has been NATO’s first major test of the 21st century, and it has exposed shortcomings, Gates said: Members of the 28-nation alliance must examine new approaches to procurement, training, logistics and sustainment to meet the demands placed on a security alliance that is more than a half-century old.

“In the final analysis, there is no substitute for nations providing the resources necessary to have the military capability the alliance needs when faced with a security challenge,” Gates told the conference.

Gates said that the president believes it would be a grave mistake for the United States to withdraw from its global responsibilities. But he also acknowledged that domestic demands for less government spending and smaller government will affect the resources devoted to national security.

“The relevant challenge for us today, therefore, is no longer the total level of defense spending by allies, but how these limited and dwindling resources are allocated and for what priorities,” he said.

DEFENSE MINISTERIAL

During the NATO defense ministers’ meetings, they endorsed a decision to extend the NATO-led coalition air operations over Libya for an additional 90 days from the end of June, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. “This sends a clear signal that NATO will stay the course and will keep up the pressure for as long as it takes to bring this crisis to an early conclusion,” he said June 8.

For the first time in three years, the 29-member NATO-Russia Council defense ministers met to address a range of issues, including work on missile defense, Libya, Afghanistan and shared projects.

The defense ministers discussed the European missile defense plan for the first time since the 2010 Lisbon NATO Summit. The summit set in motion renewed NATO-Russia discussion on theater missile defense, as well as discussions on possible ways to cooperate on territorial missile defense, according to NATO.

“While [the defense ministers] agreed that NATO and Russia are coming closer to reaching agreement on the key principles which should govern this cooperation, more work will need to be done over the next few months,” a NATO statement said June 8.