How Afghanistan has Strengthened NATO

摘要

In a farewell speech in Brussels, outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates painted a bleak future for NATO. The Alliance's failings are well known: NATO members appear increasingly divided 'between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of Alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership ... but don't want to share the risks and the .costs'.1 Budget pressures are bringing closer the prospect of 'collective military irrelevance'. Should European leaders not redress this state of affairs, the United States may reconsider its underwriting of European security, which would herald, in Gates's words, 'a dim, if not dismal future of the transatlantic Alliance'.