October 25, 2007

Ambassador Victoria Nuland United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Interview with NOS TV (Dutch media organization) Noordwijk, Netherlands

NOS: About Afghanistan, you can’t really be happy about what’s been committed yesterday because it’s not really a strong commitment of one of the allies to help out in the south.

Ambassador Nuland: I think we had a good day yesterday, I must tell you, and I also think the Netherlands had a good day yesterday. A month ago you started asking allies whether they could come help in Uruzgan, looking for more partners. Yesterday we had three or four allies step up and say they’re ready to help the Netherlands. I think that’s a good measure of NATO solidarity. I think it also speaks to what we’re going to have to do in Afghanistan. Because when countries like the Netherlands, who have been out there really punching above your weight class for more than a year, say we don’t want to leave but we need a little bit of help now, we need a little bit of rest so we can repair our equipment and rest our force, others have to come to their help. That’s what we heard yesterday and that will set a good pattern, I hope, for NATO in the future.

NOS: What does it say about NATO if a member state says okay, we want to reduce, and you have to scrape it off 50 there, maybe 20 there? Is that NATO solidarity?

Ambassador Nuland: I think we had a good amount of solidarity yesterday. I think your Minister made a very strong case that you all have been working hard, that it’s time for everybody to rally around. I think people heard that and I think people are rallying around.

This is like a family. When somebody says I need help, another member of the family may not stand up immediately, but eventually we come together. I think what was important yesterday was that the Ministers sat together and remembered what this is about. This is about ensuring that Afghanistan never goes back to being that battleground of terror, never goes back to being a failed state, and it’s about our future and our kids’ future, not only in security terms but in counter-narcotics terms.

NOS: You have a very positive tone but can you understand that for instance if you live in the Netherlands and you follow the debate over the last weeks, and also of yesterday, that you doubt NATO solidarity. If one of the member states would say come to help and there’s not really a clear offer of the member states really to help out.

Ambassador Nuland: I think you haven’t followed the story. We had three or four member states yesterday gave concrete offers. I’m not going to speak for them, but there are three or four states out there.

But I think there’s another piece that’s important, particularly for Dutch audiences. You tend to look at the situation in Uruzgan and that’s important. But we need to look at the entire nation of Afghanistan -- 26 allies, 11 partners, 35,000 troops across the country, the biggest, most ambitious NATO mission we’ve ever had. That’s not nothing for NATO. And it’s important not only that we succeed in Uruzgan, but that we succeed all over the country.

NOS: On missile defense. There is the suggestion that the project could be postponed. Or is that too strong interpretation of the discussions that are going on at the moment

Ambassador Nuland: I think that’s a misreading of the situation. As you know, Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice were in Moscow to see Putin and to see Lavrov about ten days ago. One of their goals in missile defense was to try to address some of the Russian concerns and make it clear that we think we can cooperate. We also think that we share a threat.

One of the issues the Russians had raised was well, we think that the threat is not going to come on as quickly as you Americans say. So the proposal that Secretary Rice and Gates made was okay, but we need to be ready so let’s conclude the negotiations with the two countries, let’s build the sites, but we don’t need to activate them, we don’t need to turn them on until we see that the threat warrants. So we acknowledge that none of us knows how fast the threat could come on, but we also made clear that we’ve seen in North Korea and elsewhere that we can be surprised, so we need to be ready.

NOS: One last question back on Afghanistan, at the beginning of the week your Minister noted that it’s strange that an alliance with two million soldiers can’t come up with the forces needed in Afghanistan. If you look now back at the discussion yesterday, isn’t that still the case? What has changed over the last 24 hours?

Ambassador Nuland: Look, I think Americans do have concerns on a macro level that European militaries are shrinking. The European defense budgets are shrinking. For us it is not a safe world out there as we see, as more and more of us are involved in more and more parts of the world. NATO involved in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Others of us involved in Iraq, in Lebanon, in parts of Africa. We all took a peace dividend after the Cold War and militaries shrunk. In the United States, our military is growing again, our budget is growing again, our deployments are growing again. Our message to Europeans is: it’s time for yours to do the same because it’s not a safe world out there. We need more forces, more capabilities, but we also need more civilians -- more police trainers, more people who are good at working anti-corruption programs, strengthening governance. So we need more of it if we want to stabilize our world.

NOS: My very last question. On the training of Afghan troops. What’s the relevance? Is that the exit strategy for NATO?

Ambassador Nuland: First of all, it’s the strategy for the Afghans being able to manage their country. We always said this was about helping a democratic Afghanistan achieve stability, achieve prosperity. So first and foremost, Afghans don’t want us there forever. They want to be able to do this themselves, both on the military side and on the development side. So we’ve got to invest in training the Afghan National Army, training the Afghan National Police. But as you have said, it’s also our exit strategy eventually, because increasingly what we want are NATO soldiers who are currently in the lead with Afghan supporting, we want that to be reversed, for Afghans to take the lead in more and more operations as they’re starting to do now in RC East, with us in a supporting role. That will allow us to begin to withdraw.

But it’s going to be awhile. It’s not going to be quick. We need to make sure that we’re there until the Afghans ask us to go because they feel strong enough to handle it themselves.

NOS: Thank you very much.

Ambassador Nuland: Thank you.