NATO HQ Brussels 11 May 2006

Speech Video interview with General Lance L. Smith, Q: Today, we're speaking to General Lance Smith. Welcome General. Over your first six months, when briefing the North Atlantic Council and the Military Committee and during country visits, what has been your primary message? LANCE SMITH (General): Well, I mean... You know, we're working on transformation together. It's important to NATO. It's important to the individual nations. But my real key message is this is a national responsibility. They own transformation. Now, we see ourselves as the engine of change. But the nations are ones that actually have to do it. I mean they have the capabilities, they have the resources and they, physically, have to do it, and they have to invest in it. And it's not cheap. Q: Not cheap or easy. SMITH: Not cheap. And they know it's not cheap but they, you know, we really have to do this. Q: So what is so different about the military forces needed in the future compared to those we've had? SMITH: Well, I mean we had... We are not going to fight the next war on the North German plain. And, you know, we used to use preposition stocks. We flew out of static air bases. Our soldiers were forward deployed. And when they came in, they all knew where to go. We knew who the enemy was. And we don't have that anymore. We're fighting an enemy that has no borders. They have no rules. There is no Geneva Convention for al-Qaeda. And they're fighting globally. And so we have to have the ability to go where the enemy is, which means that we have to be able to deploy and then sustain a force. We have to be able to operate together. And we have to be able to use all the elements of national power. Q: General Smith, why the focus on interoperable, deployable and coherence? Can you explain this a little bit, to start with : interoperable? Hard to say, sometimes it's hard to understand. SMITH: Well, I think we all saw in Kosovo in 1999, that even after, you know, many, many years serving together and training together as an Alliance, we sort of went on a spending holiday for a while, and everybody was looking for a peace dividend. And we saw that we weren't really able to operate as effectively together as we thought. We had some surprises. We all couldn't operate at night. Some people had no night vision goggles or didn't have compatible lighting for their aircraft. We couldn't talk to each other secure in many cases. So we were talking in the clear. And the enemy had very good capability to monitor that. And so, you know, the realization that you have to not just invest but you have to keep up with technology so that we all have the same capability to fight together that what interoperability is all about. Q: Deployable? SMITH: Well, you know, it's... we operated out of static bases, like I said. And so, you know, even the US , the F-15 squadron that we had in Bitburg when they wanted to deploy they really didn't have the kits to be able to do that. They had to really do a lot of things differently that they had trained to and planned to. And so as we fight this global war, we have to be able to deploy. And that's not cheap. You have to have the strategic airlift to be able to do that and not just to get the forces there in the first place. But as we're experiencing in Afghanistan , you have to be able to sustain the force. Q: Yes. Coherence, focus on coherence? SMITH: Well, you know, coherence is really about bringing all the elements of national power into this fight. The military can't do it alone. I think that's absolutely clear in the type of wars we're fighting. Q: You said that al-Qaeda doesn't have an army, an air force or a navy? SMITH: No they don't. And they operate within societies. And they use technology very well. They do their command and control over the Internet. They use the media extremely well. They don't have to tell the truth. They can set up events strictly for the media and we have to be able to operate in that arena. And the military isn't always the best vehicle to do that. We need our information resources. We need our diplomatic resources. And we need economic resources to be able to fight this fight. So we've got to get our politicians in country, and I don't mean that from the higher level folks but the lower level people out of the ministries need to be able to help set up new ministries and to work with the countries. Q: Rely on non-governmental and international organizations as well. SMITH: Well, I mean that's a fact of life now. The international organizations and non-governmental organizations are often there before we get there and they're going to be there afterwards. And so the things that we do and how we conduct ourselves all are going to impact those organizations and... and actually they are the ones that are going to really help to rebuild the country and stabilize the country. And so it's important that we include them in the planning process and coordinate with them as much as possible. And if we're fortunate and if we enter the crisis early enough we can preclude having to go to war. And by operating together maybe we can work through it without breaking a lot of things or killing people. Q: Winning the war but also winning the peace. SMITH: Exactly. Q: The ability of individual NATO nations to contribute capability to NATO varies dramatically. And with the high cost of technology how come some of these nations be expected to make a viable contribution? SMITH: Well, this isn't about size. And it's not about resources. I mean everybody comes to this Alliance with different capabilities and all of them are needed. There's no single nation out there that can do everything. And even the smallest nation has capabilities that they can provide to the fight. And so, one of the very good things about the defence planning process is it helps identify those capabilities that are needed for NATO. And the nations are able to look and see where they can contribute and then offer those to the Alliance. That's what an Alliance is all about is providing your niche capabilities to be able to contribute. Q: Are the nations transforming? SMITH: Yes, everybody transforms at different rates. Some people have further to go than others. Some people... Q: You have confidence it's working. SMITH: I have confidence that everybody is trying to transform. I mean they... I don't think there is any nation out there that doesn't recognize that there is a requirement to continue to build the capabilities to fight a different kind of war. Q: You've been to Romania and Bulgaria recently. And they're some of the newer nations. They still face the same problems as the rest of NATO, don't they? SMITH: Well, they face same problems but at the same time they have different problems. Having been former Warsaw Pact countries, the type of equipment that they have is different. But they're the ones that are really trying the hardest to make sure that they can be active members of the Alliance. And I see very positive things from those countries. Q: I'm sure you're going to say yes, but was ACT a good investment for NATO? SMITH: Well, of course it was. I mean, especially given the current OPS tempo, the operational tempo that the Alliance is undertaking with efforts in Kosovo, in Afghanistan and some level of effort in Africa, you know it is easy to just look three inches in front of your nose and just worry about the current operations. And somebody has to be thinking about the future and where we're going to go in the future and we're charged to do that. I think it's very wise to have an organization established that focuses on that and we... Q: (inaudible) ..won’t sit still… SMITH: Well, that's right. They're going to change and as the threat changes we need to be able to adopt, or adapt and I think we are. And that's part of our job is to develop those concepts and then experiment with the concepts so that we're ready for any threat that the future may bring. Q: General Smith, thank you for reassuring us. Thank you very much for talking to us today. SMITH: Thank you. I enjoyed it very much. (...)