NATO chief tells members to forget egos, pool resources - Summary

Brussels- NATO nations must forget their national egos and pool their resources if the alliance as a whole is to remain capable of dealing with all the modern world's security threats, the alliance's secretary general said in a major policy speech Monday.

NATO is currently revising its strategy to deal with the new threats of the 21st century, scaling down its heavy weaponry in Europe to concentrate on more distant missions. But defense spending is coming under heavy pressure as the economic crisis bites.

"I understand that there are strong national interests at work here, and in the current economic climate, there is a real danger of protectionism," NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the Belgian High Institute for Defense in Brussels.

"But we must resist these temptations - purely national thinking is no longer affordable," he added.

Allies should therefore give up on expensive national arms programs if it would make more economic sense to set up shared ones, Rasmussen said.

"We must overhaul our defense industrial markets - particularly here in Europe - to reduce the fragmentation and make them stronger," he said bluntly.

That is a controversial proposal, since NATO members are fiercely protective of their national defense industries and the many jobs and billions of euros in orders which they can generate.

"It makes no sense for Europe to have 16 naval shipyards and 12 separate manufacturers of armored vehicles," the NATO boss said.

NATO members therefore should "pursue collaborative and multinational projects wherever possible, and seek out opportunities for consolidations and mergers," he said.

Together, NATO's 28 allies make the most powerful alliance in the world. But they range from behemoths like the United States to minnows such as Iceland, Estonia and Luxembourg, whose total population is smaller than that of most major world cities.

Of the alliance's 28 members, 11 - Albania, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Iceland, Norway, Slovakia and Slovenia - have populations of below 6 million.

That means that it would be all but impossible for them to buy all the complex weapons systems which make a modern army.

"We cannot expect all nations, even the bigger ones, to cover the full spectrum of high-end capabilities, such as strategic air transport, combat helicopters, fighter aircraft or main battle tanks," Rasmussen said.

The Dane therefore called on NATO nations to make cooperation on defense spending and procurement a key part of the strategy.

They should, for example, regularly purge their militaries of staff or capabilities which are no longer needed, team up to develop and share new equipment, and set up a joint financial pool to pay for future missions. At present, each nation pays for its own involvement in NATO missions, and those which do not participate pay nothing.

"When I look at the extensive allied inventories of tanks and fighter jets and compare them with the analysis of what conflict is likely to look like in the future, I am convinced that we do not need them all," Rasmussen said bluntly.

Smaller nations should also specialize in certain agreed forms of warfare, while all should help reform the NATO bureacracy, he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/320678,nato-chief-tells-members-to-forget-egos-pool-resources--summary.html.