Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washingtonpost.com
October 15, 2008
By Robert Burns, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The United States and its allies must find new approaches -- and create new institutions -- to deal with the long-term threats posed by violent extremism, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.
In a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gates said the security of the American people will depend increasingly on an ability to head off the next insurgency or stop the collapse of another failing state. He focused specifically on Afghanistan, but nuclear-armed Pakistan also is at or near the top of the Bush administration's list of countries in danger of falling victim to internal chaos.
Gates stressed that this effort is about much more than flexing U.S. military muscle.
"Our own national security toolbox must be well-equipped with more than just hammers," he said.
In Afghanistan, where a U.S. force of about 33,000 troops and a NATO-led force of similar size is fighting a revitalized Taliban insurgency, the international community needs to work more closely together, Gates said.
"These efforts today -- however well-intentioned and even heroic -- add up to less than the sum of the parts," he said, adding that a NATO meeting he attended last week in Hungary was designed to take concrete steps to reverse that equation. He did not predict that the result would be adequate.
"Afghanistan is the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and civilian, the public and private, the national and international," he said.
Gates repeated his oft-stated frustration with the limitations that some individual NATO member countries place on how their forces may be used in Afghanistan. And he alluded to his long-running campaign to get NATO members to contribute more troops to an increasingly complex fight there.
"A number of our allies and partners have stepped forward courageously, showing a willingness to take physical risks on the battlefield and political risks at home. But many have defense budgets that are so low, and coalition governments that are so precarious, that they cannot provide the quantity or type of forces needed for this kind of fight," he said.
Gates, who took over at the Pentagon in December 2006 with words of worry about possible setbacks in Afghanistan, said it is now clear that success there will depend on much more than military power.
"That country has become the laboratory for what I've been talking about for the past year -- how to apply and fully integrate the full range of instruments of national power and international cooperation to protect our security and our vital interests."
October 15, 2008
By Robert Burns, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The United States and its allies must find new approaches -- and create new institutions -- to deal with the long-term threats posed by violent extremism, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.
In a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gates said the security of the American people will depend increasingly on an ability to head off the next insurgency or stop the collapse of another failing state. He focused specifically on Afghanistan, but nuclear-armed Pakistan also is at or near the top of the Bush administration's list of countries in danger of falling victim to internal chaos.
Gates stressed that this effort is about much more than flexing U.S. military muscle.
"Our own national security toolbox must be well-equipped with more than just hammers," he said.
In Afghanistan, where a U.S. force of about 33,000 troops and a NATO-led force of similar size is fighting a revitalized Taliban insurgency, the international community needs to work more closely together, Gates said.
"These efforts today -- however well-intentioned and even heroic -- add up to less than the sum of the parts," he said, adding that a NATO meeting he attended last week in Hungary was designed to take concrete steps to reverse that equation. He did not predict that the result would be adequate.
"Afghanistan is the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and civilian, the public and private, the national and international," he said.
Gates repeated his oft-stated frustration with the limitations that some individual NATO member countries place on how their forces may be used in Afghanistan. And he alluded to his long-running campaign to get NATO members to contribute more troops to an increasingly complex fight there.
"A number of our allies and partners have stepped forward courageously, showing a willingness to take physical risks on the battlefield and political risks at home. But many have defense budgets that are so low, and coalition governments that are so precarious, that they cannot provide the quantity or type of forces needed for this kind of fight," he said.
Gates, who took over at the Pentagon in December 2006 with words of worry about possible setbacks in Afghanistan, said it is now clear that success there will depend on much more than military power.
"That country has become the laboratory for what I've been talking about for the past year -- how to apply and fully integrate the full range of instruments of national power and international cooperation to protect our security and our vital interests."