Senate Armed Services Holds Hearing on the Future of NATO

COLLINS:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary Feith, I want to follow-up on the discussion that you began with Senator Dayton about the deployment of our forces. I believe that it is time for us to take a hard look at our base structure in Europe.

For example, we have more than 70,000 military personnel stationed in Germany. And that obviously made sense in the context of the Cold War but, as you've just pointed out, today's strategic environment is very different.

As the boundaries of the alliance continue to move eastward, might it be advisable to consider shifting some of our base structure and the deployment of some of our troops to the territory of some of the newer members of NATO, and is that under consideration at the Department of Defense?

FEITH:

Senator, the short answer is yes, in that we're trying to think in a completely unconstrained way about what our military footprint should look like in the coming decades.

The ideas that we have been developing on this subject are that there is value in forward deployment. And we have a thought that there could be a number of places in the world, hubs as we're referring to them, where we could have a substantial presence, a large base.

But there are a number of other bases around the world where we might want to create forward operating bases or what we refer to as forward operating locations where our footprint would be a lot lighter, but by having certain relationships in place, certain rights established in advance, certain amount of infrastructure and maybe some personnel, we would have the capability to deploy rapidly into certain areas.

We are not looking at this issue from the point of view of creating so-called permanent bases. I mean, we always think that the word "permanent" should always be in quotes, because various bases where we've had permanent bases we no longer have bases, and so nothing is quite permanent.

But even large-scale bases with large sustained presence of U.S. personnel, there may be a few places where you want that, but in many other places around the world you don't want that. What you want, as I said, maybe a small number of U.S. forces and some infrastructure to allow us to bring forces in, arrangements so that we rotate forces through in regular exercises. And we're giving a lot of thought to this issue of how to get postured correctly so that we have the right kind of forward presence, but we're not tying ourselves down, as Senator Dayton was referring to. That's an important consideration. And also the idea of taking advantage of the expansion of the alliance to develop the kinds of relationship and presence with the new allies. That is an important part of our thinking.

COLLINS:

If we bring the total number, Secretary Grossman, of nations up to 26 countries, doesn't that further complicate the command-and-control and operational difficulties, make it more difficult also to achieve consensus in NATO? Perhaps Secretary Feith should also comment on this question.

GROSSMAN:

I don't think so, Senator Collins.

I mean, are there more people, is it more complicated? Of course, it'd be evident that it's more complicated because there are more people. But I believe that if you bring in seven more members on top of the three that you brought in a couple of years with the Senate's advice and consent, who are committed to this alliance, and as Doug said, to the community of values that we have, and that they have these niche capabilities that Senator Warner referred to, and that for goodness sakes of all of them, they are already prepared to spend seriously on defense, I think whatever challenges there are, we can work our way through them.

I want people around that table who are prepared to act and who are prepared to do something. And if you look at the history of the last enlargement, where we've brought in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, what happened to them two weeks after they signed up? They were in battle in Kosovo.

And so as we said in our testimony, these seven allies already act as allies. So I think this is actually a plus for the alliance, because it brings in people who want to be there and it brings in people who want to act.

COLLINS:

Secretary Feith, let me ask you something else instead of asking you to comment on that question. And that is you said in your testimony that the most serious or one of the most serious problems facing NATO is the inequitable sharing of the burdens of NATO with the United States offering by far the largest commitment of resources, whether you're talking financial, equipment or troops. We've heard for many years the debate over the need for the European nations to step up their investment in their military and their contributions to NATO, and you've cited the most recent commitments. What makes you—I don't mean to sound skeptical or cynical—but what makes you think this time it's going to be any different?

FEITH:

I think your skepticism is well grounded. I mean, there's a lot of history, which I referred to in my opening remarks, there's a lot of history of our being disappointed with unfulfilled promises regarding the development of capabilities.

I think that the point the chairman highlighted is, in part, an answer to why we think that there may be some way of mitigating this problem. If we can get allies that are not trying to pursue the full range of military capabilities focused on those areas where they can make a real contribution and become important partners for future coalitions, we can make sure that they have, if not the full range of capabilities, at least a set of capabilities that allow them to participate proudly and enthusiastically in the common effort. And we're looking to that as a way ahead to try to address this issue.

Once upon a time when we talked about the capabilities gap, I think a lot of people had in mind this idea that people were going to try to develop a full range of capabilities. Well, it's clear that nobody was going to have the full range of capabilities that could compare to that of the United States. And there was always going to be an enormous capabilities gap if you looked at it from the point of the total capability of one of the allies' forces versus—one of the other allies' forces versus those of the United States.

But if you think about it from the point of view of special operations forces with certain capabilities, or airlift, or intelligence capabilities in certain areas, there is no reason that a proper investment by a number of these allies couldn't get them up to top level, comparable level with us in important areas and also high- end areas.

I want to make the point that some people have suggested that this idea of niche capabilities means that the United States does the important or more glamorous work of military operations, and then we ask the allies to come in and do the peacekeeping or the less important work, as some people have described it.

I want to make it clear, that is not our concept whatsoever. We are delighted if our allies have high-end capabilities, have combat capabilities, have the ability to participate with us in whatever area they want to concentrate their effort in.

COLLINS:

Thank you.