The Future of NATO
By Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense
Text: www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1581 
Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa, Contributing Editor

Secretary Gates' recent speech on the future of NATO was refreshingly blunt about the unwillingness of our European allies to shoulder their share of the alliance's defense burden and the potential consequences for the alliance if this continues. Budget pressures in the United States, he noted, may produce a political environment in which support for NATO steadily erodes.

U.S. statesmen have complained about NATO burden-sharing for years. During the Cold War, while the U.S. decried and complained about European defense shortcomings, the geopolitical necessity of preventing the Soviet Union from overrunning or "Findlandizing" Western Europe trumped those concerns. What Gates did not address in his speech was the more important question of whether NATO still matters to U.S. geopolitical interests.

It has been twenty years since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. NATO was formed as a defensive alliance to prevent Soviet domination of Europe. That threat no longer exists, yet NATO as an institution expanded. Meanwhile, the current threats to U.S. security interests emanate from North Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim.