(JASON REED/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES ) - US Defence Secretary Robert Gates shakes hands with Co-President of the Security and Defence Agenda (SDA) Jaap De Hoop Scheffer (L) prior to delivering a speech to the Security and Defence agenda think tank in Brussels
Gates repeated the criticism on Friday, saying that the $300 billion that non-U.S. NATO members spend annually on defense “could buy a significant amount of usable military capability. Instead, the results are significantly less than the sum of the parts.”
He said that the best hope for NATO was for European leaders to push harder to protect their budgets from further cuts, and he urged them to work together to coordinate their military capabilities.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says America's military alliance with Europe, which has been the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades, faces a "dim, if not dismal" future. (June 10)
“It is not too late for Europe to get its defense institutions and security relationships on track,” Gates said.
Korski, a defense policy expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a pan-European think tank, complained after the speech that “we are getting used to upset defense secretaries spewing bile at regular intervals.” European governments “face dramatic budget pressures, and that means cuts in health, education and also defense,” he said, adding that “to assume that defense would be immune to the effort of balancing budgets is absurd.”
Korski rejected “the idea that everybody shares the same risk assessment” as the United States “and that everyone must show solidarity” with Washington. For example, “many Europeans, excluding the British, don’t regard Afghanistan as a threat,” he said, and Eastern Europeans do not feel the Americans show sufficient sympathy for their fears of Russia.
Eyal, of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said the speech would be “very welcome” in Britain and France, however, because “privately this is what officials have articulated for years.” Gates “identified the key problem, which remains Germany,” he said. “You can argue that there are many countries that do not contribute their fair share, but most of the others don’t matter, and smaller ones would likely fall into line if Germany did.”
Eyal said: “It’s a shame politicians say what they think only when they are about to depart, but the Europeans needed this cold shower, and if it’s up to Gates to administer it, so be it.”
The speech amounted to “an outburst of frustration that is bigger than bottom line of defense cuts,” he said. “It’s about the lethargic way the Europeans walk on the world stage,” lacking a sense of urgency and thinking that “at the end of the day the Americans will always be there and do Europe’s bidding.”
But the speech “hasn’t caused a great rift,” Eyal said. “Deep down, there is no one in Europe that doesn’t think that what Gates said is absolutely the truth. No one argues he’s exaggerating problem. It’s not a rift. It’s worse. It’s an act of indifference.” The missing reaction in Europe, he said, is to reconsider burden-sharing and “how the Europeans can contribute more to the common pot.”
In Germany, one analyst said that Gates’s reaction to European defense cuts was understandable even if he was overreacting to disagreements within NATO.
“The Europeans do not understand that they will have to take much greater care of their own security,” said Constanze Stelzenmueller, a Berlin-based fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “They haven’t translated that into their defense budgets.”
NATO members disagree not just about spending levels, but also about what constitutes a threat, Stelzenmueller said. However, she said, “it is to be expected, and in fact normal, for allies to disagree with each other on how to react” to situations such as that in Libya. “I don’t think that that in itself undermines the alliance.”
Correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
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