14 October 2010
Clinton, Gates Urge NATO Reform to Meet 21st-Century Threats
Washington — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged members of NATO to individually and collectively focus on 21st-century threats such as cyberattacks and ballistic missiles and expressed support for a proposed Strategic Concept that was presented to alliance members in Brussels by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Speaking with Gates in Brussels on October 14, Clinton said NATO countries face an array of challenges including terrorism, ballistic missiles, cyberattacks and the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
“Relying on the strategies of the past simply will not suffice. NATO began as a regional alliance, but the threats we now face are global, and our perspective must therefore be global as well,” she said.
Clinton also said NATO countries, including the United States, must improve the integration of their military and civilian capacities.
“Today’s security challenges are rarely just military. Usually they are political, and always they are both. They call for the contributions of a wide range of people, from military strategists and weapons specialists to diplomats and development experts,” she said.
Clinton and Gates were joined in Brussels by the other foreign and defense ministers of the 28-nation alliance, as well as Rasmussen, principally to discuss the proposed Strategic Concept, which is the first update of NATO’s long-term security strategy since 1999 and is meant to shape the alliance’s vision for the next 10 years.
The draft concept, which reportedly calls for reforms such as streamlining the alliance’s structure, linking U.S. and European missile defense systems to more effectively counter threats from countries such as Iran, enhancing cooperation with Russia, and focusing more on combating cyberattacks, is expected to be debated and adopted at the upcoming NATO summit that will be held November 19–20 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Rasmussen said October 14 that the meeting in Brussels had resulted in a commitment to modernize the alliance for the 21st century, as well as “a clear mandate for reform,” by which he expected the alliance to agree in Lisbon to a command structure that would reduce personnel from 13,000 people to 9,000 and the number of NATO agencies from 14 to three “without diminishing the level of ambition of what the alliance can do.”
NATO is moving toward a consensus on how to protect European countries against missile attacks, and “we should make it possible for Russia to cooperate with us and to share the fruit of that cooperation,” Rasmussen said, adding that he hopes Russia will accept an invitation to a NATO-Russia Council summit in Lisbon.
“Based on today’s discussion, I know that the Strategic Concept will actually provide an even stronger framework for NATO’s future. It will be a Strategic Concept that will improve NATO’s capability to address the new threats of today and tomorrow, like terrorism, cyberattacks and missile attacks and other emerging security challenges,” he said.
According to an October 14 article from the American Forces Press Service (AFPS), Clinton and Gates expressed strong support for the draft Strategic Concept in a closed meeting of the foreign and defense ministers.
“The secretary-general’s draft does a good job of capturing the complexity and uncertainty of today’s security environment, and strikes the proper balance between security concerns both in and out of area,” Gates said, according to AFPS.
Clinton said the draft “strikes the right balance” between disarmament and deterrence, as well as with NATO’s relations with Russia and the need to enhance NATO’s capacity for conducting civilian-military operations.
The document’s final version “must express the alliance’s enduring commitment to protect freedom and security through collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security,” as well as meet emerging security challenges and “explain to our publics how NATO will continue to deter and defend against all threats to peace, prosperity or democracy — including terrorism, proliferation and cyberattack,” Clinton said, according to AFPS.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
