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Rumsfeld Urges Continuing NATO Transformation To Meet Threats

14 February 2006

Finds content, tone of North Atlantic alliance defense ministerial heartening

By Rebecca Ford Mitchell
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he was “heartened by the tone and content” of informal meetings held by NATO defense ministers in Taormina, Italy.

“In this struggle against violent extremists the need for the alliance is clear,” he said at a press conference February 10.  “All NATO members are targets of intimidation and attack and all must work together in new and innovative ways.”

Rumsfeld said the ministers committed to meeting the financial contributions needed to make the NATO Response Force fully operational in 2006.  The NRF is central to the alliance’s shift from a static, Cold War defensive posture to one that is agile and expeditionary.

NATO’s ability to deploy rapidly smaller, highly trained units wherever required for a full range of missions is necessary “in a world where threats have a way of emerging in unpredictable places and in unpredictable ways,” the secretary said.

He said he continued to urge his counterparts to examine the percentage of the gross domestic product that is invested in defense within their respective countries.  NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has suggested that each NATO nation should try to dedicate 2 percent of its GDP toward building appropriate defense capabilities. (See related article.)

One innovation NATO is considering to become more effective, Rumsfeld said, is a composite headquarters for the NATO mission in Afghanistan.  Under this plan, which he acknowledged only is under discussion, a number of countries would participate in headquarters operations simultaneously instead of rotating through the leadership a single country at a time, to allow for continuity and the preservation of institutional memory.

Rumsfeld also said that the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council was candid, constructive and informative, and that in his private meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, they spoke of matters that will be discussed further during a bilateral session in March.  The secretary characterized the U.S.-Russia defense relationship as “healthy.”

Defense ministers from the seven non-NATO countries participating in the alliance’s Mediterranean Dialogue also held their first meeting during the ministerial.

When considering the alliance’s role in today’s battle against violent extremists, the secretary said he is reminded of words spoken by former NATO Commander and U.S President Dwight Eisenhower during the early years of the Cold War: “We face a hostile ideology, global in scope, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.  To meet it successfully, we must carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty at the stake.”

By adjusting to the realities of new threats and continuing to work together, Rumsfeld said, NATO “can successfully meet the great peril of our age.”

A transcript of Rumsfeld's remarks is available on the Defense Department Web site.  

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)