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Introductory
Statement
by NATO Secretary General,
Lord Robertson
at the Press Conference with Defence Secretary Rumsfeld
following the
Study-seminar
I am pleased to have this opportunity with Secretary Rumsfeld
to brief you on this morning’s study seminar, Dynamic
Response 07.
At the meeting of Alliance Defence Ministers in June of
this year, Secretary Rumsfeld kindly invited his colleagues
to participate in a ground breaking event in conjunction with
our informal meeting here in Colorado Springs.
The theme of the seminar was transformation and the vehicle
for addressing it was NATO's new Response Force.
Defense Ministers and their senior military and civilian
advisors were presented with a complex scenario, set in 2007,
which drew out the implications of transformation and examined
how the NATO Response Force might operate in a fictional crisis.
The scenario involved a NATO stabilisation operation in
a fictitious partner country and a parallel and terrorist threat
involving chemical and biological weapons. Not a likely eventuality
but by no means an impossible one either.
As the scenario unfolded, Ministers discussed freely the
implications, for them as decision makers, for their national
armed forces and for NATO.
This was one of the best discussions we have had among Ministers
in my four years as Secretary General. But because it was private,
and designed to inform and provoke not to reach decisions or
conclusions, I cannot go into details about what Ministers
said.
But I can say that the seminar reached the following common
understanding of what needs to be done:
First, future crises will require:
- prompt decision making in capitals;
- advance planning in NATO; and
- rules of engagement to deal with the unexpected.
Second, crises which start small can finish big,
and crises can happen concurrently. NATO therefore needs
to be more flexible.
Third, better intelligence gathering
analysis and sharing is needed at all stages of a crisis.
Fourth, NATO needs good practical working relations
with the UN, the EU and countries in a crisis region. And we
need to be able to explain what we are doing and why to our
publics.
And finally, NATO countries must complete the Prague
transformation agenda, and make their armed forces much more
genuinely usable for deployed operations.
In my view, the study seminar was a great success. It generated
a range of insights into the continuing process of NATO’s
transformation. I hope that other imaginative events can be
organised for future Ministerial meetings.
Let me turn now to Secretary Rumsfeld for his impressions.
[ Statement by US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld ]
Before I take your questions, I will briefly sketch the
course of the regular meetings that will take place later today
and tomorrow. Allied and Invitee Ministers will meet this afternoon
to discuss the Alliance’s overall transformation efforts.
There will be a Ministers-only dinner this evening which
will be an opportunity to continue our discussions in a more
intimate setting.
I expect a key theme to be how we can increase the deployability
and usability of NATO's forces. This is a major challenge.
Out of 1.4m soldiers under arms, the 18 non-US Allies have
around 55,000 deployed on multinational operations in the Balkans,
Afghanistan and elsewhere, yet they feel overstretched. If
operations such as ISAF in Afghanistan are to succeed, we must
generate more usable soldiers and have the political will to
deploy more of them on multinational operations. The blunt
message from Colorado is this: we need real deployable soldiers
not paper armies.
Following on from the issue of usability, we will tomorrow
take up NATO’s current operations, especially in Afghanistan
and the Balkans. At 12:00, I will hold a concluding press conference.
Thereafter, NATO and Invitee Ministers will be joined for
a working lunch by the Russian Defence Minister, Sergey Ivanov,
after which the NATO Ministers will hold an informal meeting
with him. Issues will include current operations and defence
reform.
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