Gates: NATO’s future in doubt

Associated Press

BRUSSELS

In a stern rebuke, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Friday that the future of the historic NATO military alliance is at risk because of European penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat. The United States won’t carry the alliance as a charity case, the outgoing Pentagon chief said.

Some NATO countries bristled, but Britain quickly and heartily agreed.

Gates’ assessment that NATO could face “a dim if not dismal” future echoes long-standing concern of U.S. policymakers about European defense spending. But rarely, if ever, has it been stated so directly by such a powerful American figure, widely respected in the United States and internationally.

The remarks, at the close of Gates’ final overseas trip, reflect a new reality of constrained American finances and a smaller global reach.

Earlier in the week, Gates played “bad cop” to U.S. President Barack Obama’s good, criticizing Germany’s abstention from the air campaign in Libya two days after Obama lavished an award and fancy White House dinner on visiting Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But Gates spoke for the Obama administration, and his warning Friday was aimed squarely at Europe’s priorities.

“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.

That assessment may cause Europeans to question the future of their defense relationship with the United States, on whom they have counted for a large measure of their security for six decades.

It comes on the heels of the withdrawal of one American combat brigade from Europe as part of a significant reduction of U.S. troops in Europe.

The U.S. has been the brawn behind NATO since its birth in 1949. But the disparity between strength and allies’ investment has only grown wider.

In a question-and-answer session after his speech, Gates, 67, said his generation’s “emotional and historical attachment” to NATO is “aging out.” He noted that he is about 20 years older than Obama, his boss.

For many Americans, NATO is a vague idea 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.