NATO: COMMON DEFENSE TO COMMON SECURITY GENERAL

JAMES L. JONES, JR.,
USMC SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE,
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS,
ALLIED POWERS EUROPE HEARING OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS

GEN. JONES: Mr. Chairman, Senator Hagel, as you both know, NATO is rapidly transforming. At the Prague summit in November of 2002, NATO members signaled their recognition of the changing security environment and the need to make major shifts in both organization and military capabilities of the alliance.

NATO is making progress and is perhaps in the midst, in my view, of the most fundamental physical and philosophical transformation in its history. While NATO's achieved some notable successes since 2002 in transforming its military structure, the alliance finds itself at the strategic crossroads between the 20th and the 21st centuries.

Nations of the alliance, now totaling 26, increasingly display greater political will to undertake missions at great strategic distances in Afghanistan, in Iraq and even in Africa. And I've put a chart up here just to focus your attention on the 30,000 or so NATO troops that are engaged at great distances in the world.

This collective will signals that NATO is becoming more proactive than reactive, more expeditionary than static and more diverse in its capabilities. And while this emergent NATO is to be celebrated, encouraged and supported, one cannot fail to emphasize that the political will to do more is as yet not completely accompanied by an equal political will to resource in men, money and material this newfound appetite. Despite non-binding agreements at the Prague summit of 2002 that nations should strive to maintain their defense budgets at no less than 2 percent of their respective gross domestic products, today only seven nations have achieved this goal. Similarly, in terms of manpower pledges of nations for support to headquarters and operations, we are currently not meeting our goals in that regard.

Finally, our efforts to procure agreed upon strategic capabilities such as strategic lift, the alliance ground surveillance system, computer information systems and the like have not been funded adequately, thereby perpetuating critical shortfalls in the alliance. Encouragingly, however, the recently concluded Munich Security Conference, to which you just referred, Mr. Chairman, lent great support to the primacy of NATO as the premiere venue for transatlantic discussions and future actions with regard to security issues.

Chancellor Merkel's eloquent speech at the conference on Saturday February 4 was instrumental in the conference's reaffirmation of NATO's enduring value to our transatlantic relationship.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Hagel, it is clear that publics on both sides of the Atlantic clearly understood what the alliance represented during the Cold War. We were united, despite occasional family disagreements, around a central anchor point of prevailing over the threat posed by the former Soviet Union.

Regrettably, I doubt that our publics today on either side of the ocean fully understand the need, nature and purpose of the alliance in the post-Cold War era of the 21st century. On that score, we can and must do better.

As we head towards the NATO summit of November 2006 in Riga, Latvia, NATO will strive to redefine itself in a world facing asymmetric challenges posed by non-state actors, emerging threats to energy supplies and perhaps critical infrastructures and a requirement for more proactive activities, security, stability and reconstruction to deter future crises from developing, all of which include the many facets of terrorism and all of which will define NATO's activities in 2006 and beyond.

Our secretary general, Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, is outlining an ambitious agenda for this year which will include new and revitalized partnership programs with special emphasis placed on the NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine relationships, possibilities for further NATO enlargement in the future and the development of new collective capabilities for NATO's military use.

From an operational standpoint, NATO is experiencing one of the busiest times in its history, with over 28,000 NATO and non-NATO troops from 42 nations serving under the NATO flag. We are conducting operations on three continents and I believe that this operations tempo will continue to increase in 2006. In Iraq, NATO has deployed a successful training mission to Baghdad to assist the government's efforts to establish security and stability. NATO's in-country staff officer mission complements the work of the U.S.-led Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq to train Iraq's security forces.

In September 2005 with support from the NATO training mission Iraq opened its national defense university. NATO has also provided numerous training opportunities for Iraqi officers and civilian leaders in educational facilities across Europe and coordinated the acquisition and delivery of donated military equipment from NATO nations to the Iraqi security forces.

In Africa, as I testified before you last September, NATO and the European Union jointly responded to an African Union request to airlift forces for the African Union mission in Sudan from across Africa. NATO generation and coordinated the majority of the airlift, provided personnel to assist with staff capacity building activities in key African Union headquarters and deployed training teams to work with their African Union counterparts.

NATO's support is committed until May 2006. A NATO-African Union strategic partnership is developing and extensions or expansion of NATO support beyond May 2006, if requested by the African Union, may be forthcoming.

Closer to Europe, NATO's only Article 5 operation, Operation Active Endeavor, continues to not only counter terrorism and illegal activities in the Mediterranean, but provides an opportunity for non- NATO Partnership for Peace and Mediterranean Dialogue nations to enhance their involvement and interoperability.

In 2006, indeed this month, two Russians vessels will deploy to Operation Active Endeavor, joining the mission along with Ukrainian vessels anticipated next year. Formal discussions have commenced on the possible involvement of Algerian, Israeli, Moroccan and Georgian participation as well.

May I take a moment, Mr. Chairman, to underscore the value of your trip to Algeria and Morocco just a few months ago to assist and to coordinate the release of 404 prisoners and their return from Algeria to Morocco, which has been the anchor point of a resurgence of goodwill towards the United States in the north African region.

On mainland Europe, we recently observed the 10th anniversary of international involvement in the Balkans. Through its security sector reform initiatives, NATO has successfully set the conditions in the region for the peaceful transition to democratic institutions and progress towards politically subordinate and reformed militaries.

Working closely with the European Union, political institutional incentives linked to the standards of behavior have encouraged Balkan states to recognize the benefits of closer integration with the European Union and NATO and led to considerable progress in the capture of persons indicted for war crimes. However, more work remains to be done in this area.

NATO's forces in Kosovo are undergoing a transition to a lighter, more mobile and deployable structure that exploits technology in a more agile and better trained force to manage the security situation. As the Kosovo status talks develop over the coming months and Consensus is hopefully reached between ethnic Kosovo, Albanian and Serbian communities, NATO should be postured to reduce force levels significantly in the province and in the Balkans in general.

NATO's most ambitious operation, the International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF, currently encompasses half of the territorial land mass of Afghanistan and will expand into the south and then to the east in 2006. And this chart to my left is a graphic pictorial of the diversity that is present in Afghanistan and the sectors and the stages by which NATO has expanded.

First going to the north, then to the west, near Herat and now shortly to the south and then around to the east, if you will, in a counter-clockwise direction. As NATO assumes responsibility for security and stability, its force levels will ultimately surpass that of the coalition and will constitute one of the largest operations in alliance history.

It will go from 9,000 troops at present to 25,000 when expansion is complete. It is envisioned that when expansion is complete that the United States will still be the largest troop contributing nation to this mission. In ISAF, NATO has built on the coalition concept of provincial reconstruction teams and successfully supported the government of Afghanistan at its presidential, national assembly and provincial council elections.

Expansion will present NATO with many new and complex challenges, but NATO and U.S. coalition commanders are working very closely to ensure that the transition of responsibility is effective and continues to provide credible, professional and legitimate Afghan political and security infrastructures.

Finally, through its primary transformational vehicle, the NATO Response Force, the alliance attempts to meet emerging crises across the full spectrum of military missions at strategic distance and in the most challenging of environments. Most recently and due to its agility, flexibility and expeditionary nature, the NATO Response Force was selected to assist in the humanitarian relief efforts for both Hurricane Katrina and in the wake of the Pakistan earthquake.

But the NRF faces challenges. Force generation efforts for future NATO Response Force rotations are not producing a complete and balanced force, which is a cause for concern. The principal reason for this problem, I believe, is that NATO has not reformed its 20th century funding mechanisms that require nations to pay all costs associated with the transport and sustainment of their deployed forces.

We have yet to take into account the full impact of the 21st century expeditionary nature of NATO operations. NATO's funding arrangements were appropriate when forces did not deploy outside the European theater of operations, such as during the Cold War.

However, with operations being conducted today at great distances, our current approach to resourcing our operations actually acts as a disincentive for nations to contribute forces for deployments. While NATO has made progress in approving revised funding guidelines to fund critically needed strategic lift and support of this year's NRF certification exercise, scheduled for June in Capo Verde, Africa, as well as the operational and strategic reserve forces, much work remains to be accomplished.

As we speak today, full operational capability for the NRF by October of this year is still at risk. As I conclude these opening remarks, I'd like to leave you with a final thought. Today, the transatlantic security link embodied by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is viable, vital and vibrant.

The proposals being considered by the nations in 2006, if adopted, will go a long way towards helping NATO enhance its increasingly critical role and providing collective security and strategic stability. NATO has been and needs to remain a great alliance. Great alliances should be expected to do great things.

It is possible -- even probable, in my view -- that NATO's most important contributions and most important missions still lie in its future. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the privilege to make these opening remarks, and I'd be happy to respond to any questions you might have.