21 September 2002
Background Briefing on Rumsfeld at Informal NATO Ministerials
(Defense secretary to attend various meetings in Warsaw Sept. 23-25)
(4390)
Following is a Defense Department transcript of a background briefing
by a senior defense official on Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's trip to
the NATO ministerial meetings in Warsaw. The Secretary will hold
bilateral meetings September 23 with his counterparts and with senior
members of the Polish government; will meet with all the NATO defense
ministers on September 24; and will meet with the Russian minister of
defense in the new Russia-NATO Council on September 25:
(begin transcript)
Defense Department Transcript
Presenter: Senior Defense Official
Friday, Sept. 20, 2002
BACKGROUNDER ON SECRETARY RUMSFELD'S MEETING WITH NATO MINISTERIALS
(Background Briefing on Secretary Rumsfeld's upcoming trip to the
informal NATO ministerials in Warsaw)
Staff: Okay, this will be a background briefing by a senior defense
official on the SECDEF's upcoming trip to the informal NATO
ministerials in Warsaw.
At this time, I'll introduce the senior defense official.
Sr. Defense Official: Hello. Looking forward to traveling with you all
again -- or many of you. I think this is the traveling team that's
going with, is that right, pretty much?
Q: Not me! (Laughter.)
Sr. Defense Official: Not you? Oh, no. Did I do it again? Did I make
another faux pas?
Q: (Off mike) -- who are not traveling with you.
Q: Right. (Off mike) -- are always getting shoved aside. (Laughs.)
Sr. Defense Official: (Laughs.)
Anyway, I wanted to give you some background, obviously, on this trip
to Warsaw. The Secretary is going to be leaving. He will be, in
addition to having a full day of meetings on Tuesday of NATO defense
ministers, as well as Wednesday with the Russian minister of defense
in the new Russia-NATO Council, he'll also be having some bilateral
meetings on Monday with some of his colleagues and some of the members
of the Polish -- senior members of the Polish government.
This is the -- Warsaw is really the last major ministerial-level NATO
meeting to prepare for the Prague summit, which is coming up in
November. The themes that we're focusing on for that Prague summit, as
I think you know, are: enlargement, new members, new relationships,
including our continued relationships with Russia, relationships with
member of the EAPC, as well as our relationship with Ukraine; and new
capabilities.
And it really falls on the defense ministers to focus on the last set
of issues -- the new capabilities issues. And that really is focused
around two major initiatives that were announced out of the June
defense ministerial this year, and that is a new capabilities
initiative, which will -- in which allies will join together and
commit to specific times and dates for providing certain kinds of
capabilities for the Alliance that we think are necessary to deal with
the 21st century threats, including the ability to deploy forces and
sustain them outside NATO's traditional area of operations.
The second component of that is the command structure review, which is
ongoing. It's being done principally through NATO military channels.
But the purpose of this command structure review is to streamline the
command structure, not just for the sake of saving resources, although
that's an important objective, but also for the purpose of making that
command structure more agile and more able to sustain itself and
deploy out of area. And as NATO foreign ministers said in their
meeting -- what was it, last May, I think? -- that the alliance needs
capabilities to be able to generate and deploy capabilities wherever
the alliance may call on its members to do so.
In addition to that, the Secretary plans on introducing a new idea,
which may well be taken up after this meeting in Prague, to develop a
NATO response force. This would be a standing capability that NATO
could develop over the next couple of years that would give it the
ability on short notice to deploy a certain level of force, as yet
undetermined, obviously, because it would be something that NATO would
have to work out, on a very short-notice basis -- seven to 30 days,
something like that; a capability that NATO does not today have.
And the real -- we think this idea has a lot of merit both because
it's the kind of capabilities that we think we will be more useful for
NATO in the future, it also will give NATO the ability to focus the
capabilities initiative and the command structure review to produce
this kind of a force. So in a way, we might think of the capabilities
initiative and the command structure review as the input, and the
output of this -- what does NATO get if they successfully do those
things -- they will get a responsive force that can deal very quickly
across the full spectrum of conflict with a variety of potential
contingencies, ranging from small things, such as NEO-type operations,
all the way up to high-intensity conflict.
Q: What is NEO?
Sr. Defense Official: NEO --
Q: NEO.
Q: What does that mean?
Sr. Defense Official: A noncombatant evacuation.
Q: (Off mike.)
Sr. Defense Official: Yeah. Sorry. That's right. There's NEO and
there's MIO and -- (laughs). Sorry.
Q: Are you talking about ground, air and naval force all together, or
ground --
Sr. Defense Official: The idea would it would have components that
would be tailorable to the mission. So it would be joint. It could be
commanded by what's called a combined joint task force headquarters
that would deploy forward to where the mission required it to deploy
to. And it could have various levels of land, maritime or air
capability, depending upon what the mission was. So it would have to
be flexible enough to be, in effect, tailorable but also standing
enough so that it can move quickly.
Yes?
Q: Do you have any idea -- excuse me. Would this -- do you envision
this as being mainly European troops, as opposed to American?
Sr. Defense Official: No, what -- we would anticipate that this would
be a NATO force, so that it would have both North American as well as
European components to it. But I think it's also important to
emphasize that NATO allies -- many of our European allies are going to
have build capabilities to make this force a reality. And so it will
in fact require a substantial refocusing of investment efforts to make
this happen over the next couple of years.
Q: And was this sparked in large measure by 9/11? I mean, is this
anti-terrorism, what we're talking about?
Sr. Defense Official: I think there's no question that 9/11 and the
need for NATO to think about problems out of its traditional area of
operations is one of the things that sparked this, yes. And in fact,
as I said, the foreign ministers took a major decision in May when
they said that NATO needed forces that were capable and sustainable
wherever the alliance may need them to deal with terrorist threats and
other kinds of threats.
So -- and as you know, traditionally, NATO has been rather reticent to
deal with out-of-area operations, and I think that the foreign
ministers' move really reflects a kind of a changing attitude among
defense and foreign ministers and capitals that they need this kind of
capability.
Yes?
Q: There's some concern in Europe that this will draw resources and
energy away from the Europeans' Petersburg Rapid Reaction Force that
they're trying to put together.
Could you talk a little bit about how those things dovetail or how
separate they are?
Sr. Defense Official: We don't see this in any way as a competitor. In
fact, forces that could be developed by nations for use in a European
rapid reaction force could also be usable in this NATO force. So as
far as we're concerned, we see them as complementary activities. The
main thing is for NATO allies to develop the kinds of secure
communications, airlift, and those things necessary to be able to
deploy out of area.
Now, as I understand the European rapid reaction force, that maybe one
difference between the two is that we would envision this force
capable of dealing with problems at the high end of the conflict
spectrum. So as I understand the European rapid reaction force, it is
dealing more with peacekeeping operations and those kinds of
activities. And that was a determination that I think the European
Union made themselves.
Q: What kind of -- well, first of all, when you say that it's a
standing force, can you give us a sense of how large a force is
standing? And will it be just a standing headquarters? And also, what
kind of capabilities will countries have to acquire in order to make
this force a reality?
Sr. Defense Official: At this point, this is going to be a proposal,
and there's going to have to be study done between now and Prague, and
then if in fact heads of state decide to bless this, there will
probably be further work that will have to be done after Prague.
You know, I don't think there's a set size or scope. That's something
that NATO military authorities are going to have to work on and make
recommendations to defense ministers on. But I think we're thinking
about something that's large enough that it can sustain itself. You
know, typically from an American military standpoint, that's been
something that's at least been, at the land force level, sort of
brigade-sized element and that could be used in initial entry
operations and then backed up later with forces that were not quite as
high a readiness state as that.
In terms of the kinds of capabilities -- secure, deployable
communications; NBC protection; precision strike capabilities; airlift
-- potentially tanker-type lift. These are the kinds of things that we
think are necessary for the alliance to focus on to give it -- as well
as a headquarters structure, as you rightly point out, that is able to
deploy quickly -- deploy quickly forward.
Yes, I think you had one more.
Q: What percentage are you looking for, as far as the U.S. --
(inaudible) -- of it? Is it more than 50 percent, less than 50
percent?
Sr. Defense Official: That's something that we haven't really worked
out. And it's something that I think will, in large measure, depend
upon allied interest in the project.
Yes.
Q: Are there past contingencies or situations that you can offer to us
that would explain how you would envision this being used with our
situation -- like with Kosovo or something like that, where you
thought this would've been really useful to have?
Sr. Defense Official: Potentially, this, yeah, could've been used in a
Balkans-type operation. It might be -- and of course, Kosovo was a
pretty high-intensity operation. But there might be other, much
smaller operations in which it would be involved in. It could be, as I
said, involved in a very small-type operation like a non-combatant
evacuation operation. Or if NATO found it necessary to be involved in
a more high-intensity conflict, it might be an initial- entry force.
It might be available to go as NATO, or it might go along with other
forces that were involved. This would depend largely, really, on what
the North Atlantic Council decided it wanted to use the force for.
Q: May I follow up on that? If it might be -- and how did you phrase
it? -- an "initial-entry force" -- in other words, could this be used
-- say, in the off chance we might do something in Iraq, could this be
the initial force that might be used for that?
Sr. Defense Official: Well, obviously, you know, that's a very
theoretical question, and the idea that something would happen in Iraq
-- but I think I'd have to say no, because we would not envision --
it's going to take several -- I think a couple of years, at least, to
try to develop these capabilities.
So if you're talking about specific things that are going on --
Q: (Off mike.)
Sr. Defense Official: If you're thinking about something going on
right now, I doubt we're talking about something like that. But on the
other hand, you know, the ability to contribute to high-intensity
operations is -- would be a goal of the force. But I want to caveat
that by simply saying that this is a proposal, and so if in fact the
ministers want to proceed on with this, they're going to have to have
some discussion about what they would see the uses of such a force.
Yes?
Q: A new topic, if I could. The Secretary on the Hill this week a
couple times expressed his concern about the next leadership of the
ISAF force. He said he hoped that the follow-on command team would
take it for more than six months, a year or longer. Is that a topic of
the NATO defense ministers? And have you gotten any indication that
any of the NATO members other than Turkey are going to become the new
commander after December?
Sr. Defense Official: We are talking with allies now about the
possibility of a follow-on. And I think the Secretary's view is shared
by a number of allies that it doesn't make sense to do this every six
months; that if in fact you are going to expect to have some kind of
an international force in Afghanistan, that it's necessary to have it
for a longer period of time. And, you know, initially, you know,
obviously I think it did make sense to do it on six-months rotations
because we weren't really sure what the long-term prospects were going
to be. I think now there's a sense that there's a role for a
stabilizing force, at least in the Kabul area, and therefore,
something longer, a year, 18 months, makes a lot of sense.
I would expect that as they review the general progress on the global
war on terrorism, that this issue of a follow-on force and both who
might lead such a force and whether or not NATO might in some way be
able to support that capability would be a discussion that would come
up.
Q: But you haven't gotten any early indications, Germany, France,
anybody saying, "Well, we're interested"?
Sr. Defense Official: At this point, I mean, we don't have a -- we
don't have a firm commitment from anybody. And it would be better, I
think, for those countries that might be interested to kind of express
their interest publicly rather than me characterizing what their
interest would be.
Yes?
Q: The Secretary, on Monday, from the podium, was asked about giving
an intelligence briefing to some of the defense ministers about Iraq.
Is that to all of them, some of them? It is going to be done in
bilats? And when is that going to happen?
Sr. Defense Official: I think there's probably going to be a general
-- both a general discussion about Iraq as well as a review of the
intelligence situation. My sense is that would be done with all the
ministers.
Q: At one time?
Sr. Defense Official: Yeah.
Q: And when will that occur?
Sr. Defense Official: I'm not exactly sure when it is.
(To staff) Do you know?
Staff: Late afternoon. Sometime in the afternoon.
Q: Monday?
Q: Tuesday?
Q: Late afternoon when?
Staff: Tuesday.
Sr. Defense Official: Well, the only day they're meeting! (Laughs.)
Q: Oh! Okay.
Q: Do you have a list of the bilaterals that you could give us?
Sr. Defense Official: I think -- I think we should be able to do that
eventually. I don't know that they're all nailed down at this point.
I'd have to check on that. I think he's planning on meeting with --
what? -- his Dutch colleague and -- what? -- his Polish colleague,
probably, and his Italian colleague. Off the top of my head, I think
those are lined up.
Q: Monday?
Sr. Defense Official: They're going to be scattered throughout the two
and a half days there. Remember, we have time on Monday; we'll also
have time in between meetings on Tuesday, and then there will be some
time on Wednesday around the NATO-Russia Council meeting.
Q: How about the French?
Sr. Defense Official: Actually, I think there isn't a meeting -- there
isn't a meeting with the French. I believe that the Secretary of
Defense will be meeting with his French counterpart later in the year.
They already have a meeting set up for later in the year in the
regular schedule. As you know, she's a new minister of defense.
Q: Can I take you basically back to the question that Tom raised about
the ISAF? Is there any thought to the idea of NATO taking the lead
role, as opposed to an individual country?
Sr. Defense Official: I think there's more interest in seeing how NATO
might be able to support and facilitate another country, particularly
if a country is going to take the lead and is going to sign up for
more than six months, you know, they're probably going to be
interested in, for example, how can we have a force-generation process
where six months in, if a particular country that's helping them and
needs to leave Afghanistan, where there's a process by which
replacement forces could be generated. And NATO might be able to play
a role in that context. So I think --
Q: It's not now, right?
Sr. Defense Official: Pardon me?
Q: It's not now?
Sr. Defense Official: No. No. And so I think that there is some
discussion going on, but at this point, it's just that -- discussion.
Q: Aside from NATO -- I'm sorry.
Q: Can I go back to the deployment issues? How does this concept
differ than NATO standing alliance rapid-reaction corps that they set
up, you know, seven or eight years ago to do exactly the things you
were talking about? You know -- the ARRC.
Sr. Defense Official: Yeah, this is different than -- the concept is
different from the ARRC in the sense that this would be a very
short-term, seven-to-30-day reaction capability. In other words, as
opposed to -- I think the ARC is probably on a probably more like a
90-day.
Q: And a heavy armor --
Sr. Defense Official: And it's a very heavy force, right. And the
other thing is -- is that it would -- you know, at least as we would
propose it, that you'd have forces that were earmarked for this for a
six-month period. So at any one time, you'd have, let's say, a group
of forces getting ready to be on-call, another group of forces on-call
and then another group standing down from that. And you could imagine
that sort of -- people rotating their forces through that every couple
of years.
Q: Like the Air Force is organized into Air Expeditionary Forces now,
so that every nine months, a year, they rotate out guys on call. Is it
kind of the same (concept ?)?
Sr. Defense Official: A little bit like that, yeah.
Q: Will they train together?
Q: Can I ask you about the new defensive capability --
Sr. Defense Official: The idea would be they would, yes. I mean, our
concept -- again, I really want to -- before we get too detailed on
this, I just want to say that we have -- we're going to be making a
proposal on this, and so, obviously, NATO is going to have to review
it and is going to have to determine both whether it has merit, on the
one hand, and also, if it does have merit, how they would want to
shape it.
Charlie, you have --
Q: Yeah. Aside from NATO overall, is the Secretary going to be
discussing with individual ministers seeking their support for a
possible -- if there is a conflict in Iraq, seeking everything from
basing rights to overflight rights, perhaps forces -- is he going to
be speaking with individual ministers about that kind of thing.
Sr. Defense Official: As far as I know, that would be premature, given
where we are today. So I doubt it.
Yes.
Q: Will he be briefing the ministers on the new national security
strategy? And -- (inaudible) -- the question of preemption policy and
preemption?
Sr. Defense Official: There's no plan to do a briefing on the new
national security strategy, no.
Q: Why is there a planned briefing -- oh, excuse me.
Sr. Defense Official: I'm sorry.
Q: Go ahead. I should have raised my hand.
Q: Given the various economic problems and budget problems that many
of the European countries are having, how much -- how confident are
you that they'll be able to build these new capabilities that you're
calling for?
Sr. Defense Official: I think it's a very serious question. I think
one of the things I am concerned about -- the Secretary's made
comments about this before; Lord Robertson has certainly made comments
about this before -- that countries need to focus their resources and
they need to spend more money. Obviously, that's up for the -- these
individual countries to decide what they want to spend money on.
What we've tried to do with the new capabilities initiative is say,
"Here are some things that are more important than other things that
you ought to be spending your resources on." And on the command
structure review, we want to streamline that structure so that we are
not wasting money on command elements that we don't need, that are not
appropriate for the new kinds of threats we're dealing with.
The other thing that, as you will recall, came out of the June
ministerial -- and I think a number of allies have really picked up on
this -- is the idea of developing some niche capabilities, some role
specialization, where they can kind of be experts in a particular area
that could then be provided to NATO for all kinds of operations. So we
are seeing quite a bit of interest in that idea.
But I have to say, you know, I think allies are going to still need an
enormous amount of encouragement to move forward.
Yes?
Q: Is -- I was just wondering, is the German defense minister on the
list for a bilateral meeting? (Soft laughter.)
Sr. Defense Official: I don't know. I don't think so. Right?
Staff: (Off mike.)
Sr. Defense Official: No. No, he's not.
Q: Is that because of Chancellor Schroeder's remarks and for this --
Sr. Defense Official: No. No. In fact, I think you probably know the
German defense minister -- this is his first meeting, and obviously
the -- they're -- we will just -- we're having elections coming up
here. And I think that -- yeah, I think there's a general sense that
we let those elections go by, let the politics sort themselves out,
and then there will be opportunities for meetings.
Q: Has Secretary Rumsfeld briefed Secretary -- I mean Minister Ivanov
on this rapid reaction proposal while he was here?
Sr. Defense Official: The focus of our discussions, both bilaterally
and multilaterally, in terms of the meetings over at the State
Department today, were really not focused on NATO issues. So no, he
did not.
But I think we'll have an opportunity after NATO reacts to this to be
able to do that. I think that we thought it might be more appropriate
that, since this is an initiative for our allies, that we have a
conversation with them about it and see whether there's interest at
the allied level.
Q: Do you anticipate any talk about Air Force tankers and talk about
of getting more Airbus tankers, or buying Airbuses instead of Boeing
at all?
Sr. Defense Official: I -- there may -- I doubt it, let's put it this
way, that it's certainly something that we're going to be bringing up.
Defense Official: Yes?
Q: Just housekeeping. Is he going to meet with Robertson on Monday?
Are you trying to -- or --
Sr. Defense Official: (To staff) Do we have a --
Staff: Tuesday morning.
Sr. Defense Official: Tuesday.
Q: Tuesday morning? Would you be kind enough to brief us, or do you
plan to brief us, on Monday afternoon?
Sr. Defense Official: I think that both Ambassador Burns and myself
will brief you jointly.
Q: On Monday afternoon?
Sr. Defense Official: Right.
Q: Not too late.
Sr. Defense Official: Pardon me? On Monday.
Q: On Monday.
Sr. Defense Official: On Monday, yes.
Q: But not Monday night.
NOTE: Comments made here not transcribed in accordance with the ground
rules.
Q: Is the Secretary going to hold press (inaudible) both on Tuesday
and Wednesday or just on Wednesday, before he goes?
Sr. Defense Official: I think you better ask -- you better ask Torie
that, if you don't mind, because I don't know.
Q: Okay.
Sr. Defense Official: I think she probably -- probably knows.
Q: Do you know what his plan is yet to go to anyplace other than
Warsaw at this point?
Sr. Defense Official: I know of no plans to go anyplace other than
Warsaw at this point. My expectation today is that we'll be back here
on Wednesday night.
Staff: One more question, gang; then we've got to get (the senior
defense official) out.
Q: Do you know -- will U.S. fighter jets be patrolling over Warsaw or
will there be NATO fighter jets, any special security precautions
being taken? I know that such precautions are being taken for Prague
already.
Sr. Defense Official: Not that I'm aware of.
Staff: And that's "Mr. Senior Official" to you. (Laughter.)
Q: (Off mike.)
Sr. Defense Official: No, no, that's fine.
Great. Thank you very much. Look forward to traveling with you.
Q: Thank you.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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