[/caption]Michael Cosgrove - American Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ blunt warning on NATO countries’ lack of defense spending commitment couldn’t have come at a better moment, and Europe will ignore his words at its peril.
His farewell speech to the NATO Council in Brussels yesterday offered the bleakest prospects yet for continued American involvement in NATO and commitment to Europe, and it is sure to cause a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching in capitals from Warsaw to Madrid and from London to Paris and Berlin.
It comes at a time when NATO countries are heavily involved in military operations in Afghanistan and Libya and are being called upon by rebel movements in Syria and Yemen to intervene in what are turning out to be serious and bloody conflicts involving major civilian casualties at the hands of security forces there.
He compared those countries that are “willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership ... but don't want to share the risks and the costs”, adding that "This is no longer a hypothetical worry," he said. "We are there today, and it is unacceptable."
Gates demanded that urgent steps be taken to avoid "the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance" and criticized the fact that European defense spending has gone down by almost 15% since 9/11.
His harshest words however – and his starkest illustration of the limited nature of NATO capabilities – were saved for the ongoing campaign in Libya. In a blistering attack on European operations there he said that “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 US, once more, to make up the difference.” America currently funds the effort in Libya to the tune of 75%, a figure that Gates said is not to the liking of American taxpayers.
The conclusion, as if anyone in the stunned audience had any lingering doubts about what message he was trying to convey, was “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience 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,” Mr Gates told the Nato summit in Brussels {…] If current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US 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.”
This speech has sent shock waves through NATO and European defense circles and the relatively muted reaction to it stands as evidence that they know he is right although they are not yet admitting it in public.
There have been an increasing number of signs – and fears – that America may be turning away from Europe in favor of more involvement in Asia and with China, and Gates’ speech will have done nothing to dissipate those fears.
If Europe doesn’t buck its ideas up soon and start paying its fair share of its defense and intervention capacity instead of hypocritically accusing America of acting like a ‘global policeman’ whilst simultaneously benefiting from its military aid (remember Yugoslavia?) it is doomed to slide, slowly but surely, into oblivion on the world stage.
